The Management Game Is Actually Me

Lu Xingshi was a transmigrator, though the way he had crossed over was perhaps a bit off.

Normal people usually transmigrated into humans or other living beings, often accompanied by a system or some other kind of cheat.

He was different. He did have a cheat, but it was a farming and management game that didn't even have a name. More importantly, theoretically, this game wasn't his cheat—he was the game itself.

Lu Xingshi initially suspected that when he transmigrated, he had somehow been split down the middle.

Furthermore, this farming and management game was likely an unfinished, half-baked product, as he could directly alter his own underlying code.

In other words, he could open a console to make various modifications to the game. However, there were two minor issues.

The first was that he couldn't read the game code. In the beginning, his attempts at modification led to a mountain of problems, such as fire raining from the sky or grass growing in the clouds—a whole host of malicious bugs. Fortunately, he managed to revert them immediately.

After that, he became much more cautious, always inspecting the code before making any changes.

For example, he would compare the variables in the game code when fertilizing crops to track their growth, or observe the data fluctuations when livestock fell ill and recovered. By doing this, he learned the code for crop growth and livestock disease, allowing him to make direct changes.

This enabled him to make crops mature instantly or skip the treatment phase for livestock.

However, this led to the second issue: energy consumption. Every modification required a cost.

As a farming and management game, it was inevitable that selling products would be a core phase. Selling crops, livestock, and byproducts earned a currency called Gold Coins, and these Gold Coins seemed to be his food.

That's right, his food.

His existence seemed to require Gold Coins to sustain itself, consuming about 100 per day. At first, he was startled to see his Gold Coins disappearing on their own, but after observing for three to five days, he finally deduced the pattern.

This was one of the proofs that he was the management game itself, not a player.

Secondly, modifying game data also consumed Gold Coins. The amount consumed depended on the importance and quantity of the code Lu Xingshi changed.

He didn't need to worry about Gold Coins, though. As long as he managed things normally, he wouldn't run short. Just like now, he not only possessed a nine-figure sum of Gold Coins but also a massive amount of vegetables, fruits, poultry, and meat that he couldn't even be bothered to look at.

This led to some trouble. For instance, if he instantly ripened a crop, he would often find after selling it that he hadn't made a profit at all, and sometimes he even lost money. Therefore, he preferred to trade time for Gold Coins; unless it was a special situation, modifications weren't very cost-effective.

He did this to ensure his own survival, terrified of running out of food.

As for modifying Gold Coins directly, he had tried that too. It took about two Gold Coins to generate one, and the more he modified, the more he lost.

Lu Xingshi actually had many doubts, such as how this energy was generated. It felt like a bizarre violation of the conservation of energy. He had investigated for many years but couldn't find any answers, so he eventually had to shelve the matter.

As for how long he had been in this farming and management game, he wasn't sure, because the game was an unfinished product and many things were missing.

For instance, there was no concept of time, and many items seemed to be nothing more than textures. He had dug through his own code and found things like a Nuclear Power Plant Blueprint, a Combat Module, and Spirit Monsters, but they were all empty shells—completely unusable, just names.

However, it wasn't entirely empty. He had managed to extract an Iron Pickaxe and Ore, which added another source of income.

"Let's see how much work my Game Villagers have done today." Lu Xingshi floated out.

That's right, he floated. He looked like a Q-version mini ghost. This wasn't his true form; at first, his perspective was fixed in a top-down view, and it was only after fumbling around for a while that he gained a completely ethereal body.

It was roughly equivalent to controlling an invisible character.

As he floated out, he saw a large number of Game Villagers working—feeding the poultry, weeding and fertilizing the fields, and scattering fish food into the pond.

These Game Villagers were similar to the characters used by players, and Lu Xingshi could fuse himself into them to gain their abilities.

Although Lu Xingshi called them "villagers," they weren't actually small; they were the size of normal humans. It was only because his top-down perspective had been so high that they seemed small.

The Game Villagers had four abilities: planting, animal husbandry, gathering, and crafting, all of which had levels.

Without Lu Xingshi's control, these Game Villagers would work on their own, but there were limitations. For example, they wouldn't sell or buy items on their own—Lu Xingshi had to do that—and they wouldn't plan ahead. If there were no buildings like coops or fields, they wouldn't move.

Thus, he had spent a long time fumbling and learning from his mistakes to complete this highly efficient layout.

In fact, there was only one Game Villager at the beginning. The rest were created by Lu Xingshi using Gold Coins, with each one costing 10,000 Gold Coins to manifest.

He didn't create any more now because the place was already overcrowded. Any more would be inappropriate, as the interactive objects had physical volume and would cause collisions and congestion, making movement difficult.

"Not bad, another beautiful day." Lu Xingshi loved watching this scene. He didn't actually like talking to himself, but speaking occasionally helped maintain his language skills.

He turned back and opened the game panel. The panel displayed his Gold Coins, resources, and a whole host of other things. He scrolled to the very bottom, where there was a progress bar.

DLC: Download progress 99%

DLC referred to the game's subsequent downloadable content, such as expansion packs or additional features.

This had been there for a long time, and it cost one million Gold Coins to purchase, which Lu Xingshi had saved up for quite a while.

However, he hadn't expected that the truly long part wouldn't be saving the million Gold Coins, but the download process itself. Since there was no day-night cycle or time system, Lu Xingshi didn't know how long it had been downloading.

Regardless, it had been stuck at 99% for a long time, and he was just checking it out of habit.

Just as he was about to close it, the progress bar reached 100%.