For his first exchange, he had traded a handwritten copy of the Chakra Refinement Technique and a lump of chakra for the Perfected Rumble-Rumble Fruit.
That exchange had completely changed his fate.
For his second exchange, however much he looked forward to it, Fang Xu did not rush to take out the B-Rank ninjutsu scroll among his parents' belongings.
Something like that was valuable, but the risk was high too. If he got garbage in return, the loss would hurt.
Besides, what he most wanted to figure out now was just how broadly his exchange talent defined "special items."
Fang Xu took a small paper packet from the very back of the drawer. He opened it, revealing a small tuft of black hair inside.
The strands were stiff and pure black. They were Obito Uchiha's hair.
Two days earlier, Obito had been sleeping so deeply in class, his head buried in his arms, that he had not even responded when the teacher called his name. As Fang Xu passed behind him, he had casually plucked a small tuft from his head.
Obito had nearly jumped from the pain, but he had only thought his sleeping position had tugged on his hair.
Now, it would come in handy.
"Uchiha hair."
Fang Xu pinched a few black strands between his fingers, his gaze serious.
"Though it isn't a Sharingan, blood, or chakra, at least it came from the Uchiha Clan."
"If the exchange talent classifies it as a special item, I might get an unexpected gain."
Of course, he did not hold out much hope. A tuft of hair certainly could not compare in value to a complete bloodline.
This was more of an experiment.
If even something like hair could bring back something useful, he would have much more room to work with in the future.
Fang Xu placed the black Uchiha hair in his palm and silently said to himself.
Exchange.
The instant the thought settled, the tuft of black hair in his palm vanished without a sound.
The next second, the familiar tugging sensation appeared.
Fang Xu's consciousness seemed to rise, and the scene before him changed.
Beneath a gloomy gray sky, a ruined street stretched across his field of vision.
Cars had crashed into a pile by the roadside, their windows shattered. Dried bloodstains covered the ground.
The air reeked of decay.
At the end of the street, a young man stood holding a fire axe, panting heavily.
His clothes were covered in blood and grime, and several rotting zombie corpses lay at his feet.
The man's name was Zhou Yang.
He was a transmigrator who had crossed into an apocalyptic world.
He had just finished killing the zombies, and his face carried the excitement of having survived a brush with death.
"I finally have enough experience."
Zhou Yang wiped the blood from his face and leaned against a wall, calling out impatiently, "System, open the attribute panel!"
There was no response.
The only sound around him was the wind blowing through the abandoned street.
Zhou Yang froze for a moment.
"System?"
Still, no panel appeared.
The excitement on his face slowly stiffened.
Just then, a dozen or so black hairs suddenly drifted down out of midair.
They floated down in front of him, with a few even landing on his shoulders.
Zhou Yang was completely dumbfounded.
He looked down at the black hairs on his shoulder, then at the empty space before him.
"Wait, where's my panel?"
"System! Don't scare me!"
"Open the attribute panel!"
"Attributes!"
"Character information!"
"Point allocation screen!"
"Inventory!"
He called out several times in succession, his voice growing increasingly panicked.
Yet none of the familiar system panels appeared before him.
There were only those dozen or so black hairs of unknown origin, swaying gently in the wind.
Zhou Yang's face went pale.
An apocalyptic world was no joke.
Zombies, mutated beasts, shortages of water and food-any one of them could kill him.
The reason he dared to risk his life killing zombies was that he had a system.
He could gain experience and attribute points by hunting zombies.
Then he could level up, allocate points, and grow stronger bit by bit.
But now, the all-important attribute panel was gone.
It was like having the steering wheel ripped out of his hands.
Zhou Yang spun around twice in his anxiety, nearly losing his grip on the fire axe.
"System, answer me!"
"Is my experience still there?"
"Do the zombies I just killed count?"
"Can I level up? Can I allocate points?"
A moment later, he seemed to sense something, and his expression finally eased a little.
The system's core functions remained. Hunting zombies granted experience, and killing mutated beasts granted experience too.
Once he had enough experience, he could level up, and leveling up would give him attribute points.
He could still apply attribute points to his body. He simply could not see the panel anymore.
More precisely, it was as though something had forcibly ripped out the attribute panel plugin.
Holding a black hair, Zhou Yang's expression shifted from panic to blank shock, then from blank shock to gritted teeth.
"I've already transmigrated, and my system can still have missing parts?"
"Killing zombies doesn't drop equipment or crystal cores, but a handful of hair?"
"What kind of crappy thing is this?"
He looked up at the gray sky, stewing for a long while, but in the end, all he could do was inwardly complain that his system was shoddy junk.
The scene did not fade immediately.
On the gloomy apocalyptic street, Zhou Yang cursed for quite some time, until his voice was nearly hoarse, but no attribute panel appeared before him.
He could only brush the black hairs off his shoulders with a dark expression.
"Fine! You win."
"No panel, then. As long as the experience and point allocation still work."
Though Zhou Yang said that, his expression was as ugly as if he had just swallowed a fly.
For a transmigrator with a system, losing the attribute panel was like losing navigation.
He could still travel the road, but every step would be guesswork.
Carrying his fire axe, he walked over to a zombie corpse, crouched down, and deftly pried open its skull with the axe blade.
A rotten stench immediately poured out.
Frowning, Zhou Yang rummaged around inside a few times and soon pinched out a grayish-white crystal the size of a soybean.
Blood and grime clung to the crystal's surface, but it had a faint sheen. He rubbed it against the zombie's clothes and stuffed it into his pocket.
Then came the second corpse, then the third. He searched every zombie's head carefully.
Some had nothing, while others yielded a cloudier crystal core.
As Zhou Yang dug, he cursed under his breath through gritted teeth.
"Without the panel, how am I supposed to judge absorption efficiency?"
"What if I allocate my attribute points wrong?"
"Damn system, couldn't you give me a heads-up before you started shedding parts?"
"And these black hairs-which rotten bastard traded them over?"
Outside the vision, Fang Xu watched closely.
Zombies, crystal cores, a system, experience, point allocation...
The apocalyptic world's resource system was even more interesting than he had imagined.
Though Zhou Yang had lost his attribute panel, the system's core did not seem to have collapsed. Killing zombies granted experience, leveling up granted attribute points, and crystal cores were clearly an important resource in the apocalyptic world.
That meant the world held more than danger. There was also plenty of value to unearth.
Crystal cores...
Fang Xu stared at the grayish-white crystal in Zhou Yang's pocket, quickly weighing things up.
In an apocalyptic world, something like that could most likely strengthen the body or serve as some sort of energy material.
If he could figure out the rules of exchange in the future and trade worthless things from the Shinobi World for a batch of crystal cores, he might be able to solve his shortage of training resources.
Even if he could not use the crystal cores directly, he could still study them; energy materials from different worlds had value in themselves.
Especially now that he was following the path of Lightning Body Tempering, what he lacked most were resources that could help his body recover quickly and replenish what he expended.
This Zhou Yang is worth keeping an eye on.
Fang Xu made a mental note of the apocalyptic world.