The Disappearing Trees Incident

[Stone Slab]

With a thought from Yang Bo, the stone slab in his inventory appeared in his hand. It was only a little over ten centimeters across. He aimed it at the gap in the ground, and a ghostly outline of a slab appeared there.

Place.

The slab in his hand instantly vanished and reappeared in its original position. If he hadn't placed it himself, he would never have believed it had been removed.

Right, I need to find some wood first!

There had always been a saying in Minecraft: if you wanted to get rich, start by punching trees. Wood was the foundation of survival. In normal survival mode, without wood to make a Crafting Table, you couldn't even craft a wooden pickaxe.

He looked up to check the time, but the tall buildings on either side of the alley completely blocked the sun.

It should be around ten in the morning. I'll look for a park nearby first. I remember there's a Central Park in Manhattan, New York.

Central Park lay between the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side. It was Manhattan's largest park, covering nearly 315 hectares and surrounded by towering buildings. Its place in the United States was irreplaceable, much like the place the Forbidden City and the Great Wall held in Chinese people's hearts.

After asking a few helpful residents for directions, Yang Bo reached Central Park, a place both familiar and unfamiliar to him. It was familiar because he had once played a computer game called Prototype, whose map was based on Manhattan. Naturally, it included the area's iconic Central Park.

But the size of Central Park in real life was nothing like its in-game counterpart. Yang Bo crossed the pedestrian crossing and entered the park. Its dense trees and lush green lawns stood in sharp contrast to the modern steel jungle behind him.

As Yang Bo gazed at Central Park before him, he had only one thought!

I'm living in this park from now on!!

The park was crowded, not just with locals but also with tourists drawn by its fame. Yang Bo looked toward a dense grove in the distance. Once he had picked his target, he walked straight toward it, only to discover upon arriving that there weren't many fewer tourists among the trees than out on the lawns.

Ugh, even finding a chance to punch a tree is this much trouble. If only I'd ended up in some small town!

Yang Bo sat on a bench in Central Park and waited for his chance to act. Three of the drumsticks representing his hunger bar had already disappeared, but as long as he stayed still, his hunger wouldn't drop.

He felt through his pockets and took out everything he had: three one-yuan notes, a pack of White General cigarettes, and an ordinary lighter. Aside from those, he had nothing else on him.

He opened the cigarette pack and counted eight remaining cigarettes. Taking one out, he put it in his mouth, lit it, and took a deep drag, easing his frayed nerves.

I'm here now, so I might as well settle in. I wonder if my sudden disappearance scared my big brother!

Time ticked by as Yang Bo sat on the bench, enjoying the breeze. Tourists continued to stream past, but he had nowhere else to go, so he waited patiently. Only when the sky gradually darkened did he rise from the bench, looking at the beautiful, fiery clouds on the horizon. With his body digitized, even sitting for several hours hadn't caused him any discomfort.

"People have finally left!"

It was dinnertime, and there were far fewer tourists in Central Park. Some still remained, but it was much better than during the day. At the very least, hardly anyone was left in this somewhat shadowy grove.

Yang Bo plunged into the grove and stopped before a large tree. Its trunk was thick enough that it would take two people to encircle it with their arms. If it was too thin, Yang Tao worried he wouldn't be able to punch any planks out of it.

Thump, thump, thump...

He reached out and struck the trunk. There was no pain at all; it felt as though he were pounding a cotton punching bag with his hands. Compared with the decorative stone slab, the cracks on the trunk clearly spread much more slowly.

With a bang, the entire tree before him suddenly turned into fist-sized brown cubes, which fell to the ground and kept spinning.

Yang Bo, who had been about to dodge, stared at the cubes on the ground in surprise. He hurried over and collected them all into his inventory.

"Is this one-click tree felling?"

He had prepared himself for two possibilities. First, he might punch out a section of the trunk while the upper portion remained suspended in midair. Second, once a section was missing, the mighty laws of Lord Newton might make the tree topple straight over.

But what had happened was completely beyond his expectations. Still, this was even better, since it would keep others from noticing.

He opened his inventory. That single tree had given him twenty-three blocks of wood and four Oak Saplings. Without hesitation, he placed some wood in his inventory's crafting grid. One block of wood could be broken down into four planks, and he used four planks to craft Minecraft's essential Crafting Table.

He glanced around and, seeing no one, placed the Crafting Table on the ground. It was light brown overall, with a pair of pliers hanging from one side. Compared with the texture in the game, these pliers were much more three-dimensional, though there was no way to remove them.

A three-by-three crafting grid was drawn on top of the Crafting Table. While no one nearby was paying attention, Yang Bo opened its interface with a thought.

Like the grid on the Crafting Table, the interface was a three-by-three window. To his pleasant surprise, there was also a green book beside the crafting window.

"It even has a recipe book! My inventory didn't have one, so I thought this was an older version. This makes things so much easier!"

Yang Bo had long since committed the original crafting recipes to memory. He even remembered some commonly used items from mods, but the more obscure recipes were beyond him.

"Wait... how do you make a cake again?"

He took out three blocks of wood and two sticks and crafted a wooden pickaxe, then began punching the Crafting Table. As more and more cracks spread across it, a crisp sound rang out. The Crafting Table shrank into a miniature version and was pulled into his inventory.

"I'll find somewhere to dig underground first and see if I can get any cobblestone. If I can't, I'll have to figure out a way to leave Manhattan!"

Manhattan was an island. Although bridges connected it to the mainland, running into the police would be trouble. Until he sorted out his identity problem, he was better off staying in Central Park.

Punching through the grassy ground with his bare hands was quick. After just seven or eight hits, an opening leading underground appeared. Yang Bo jumped in, then took out a dirt block and sealed the opening above him.

His surroundings instantly went pitch-black. With a click, Yang Bo took out his lighter and lit up the space around him. A saying involuntarily popped into his head.

"Bury the ancestor upright, and his descendants will turn out right!"