Cave survival

The lighter's feeble flame seemed especially precious in the cave. Looking at the dirt around him, threaded with all kinds of roots, Yang Bo stayed still. This was the real world, after all, and he worried that digging underground might leave him suffocating to death.

He released the lighter and stood there for ten minutes or so, but felt no suffocation or discomfort.

"I don't feel stuffy at all. Could it be that I don't need oxygen anymore?"

Yang Bo took two deep gulps of the earthy-smelling air, and a smile spread across his face.

"Doesn't that make me invincible?"

He took out the lighter again. With a click, its yellow flame lit up his surroundings once more. Yang Bo raised an eyebrow and guessed, "Could Minecraft blocks actually create air?"

That guess wasn't all that far-fetched. After all, in Minecraft, placing a wooden door underwater could make air appear out of nowhere.

With no danger of suffocation, Yang Bo reached out and dug deeper into the ground. The things buried in the surrounding dirt grew increasingly strange. Looking at the bone in his hand, already converted into game data, and the human skull embedded in the wall, his expression shifted as he murmured:

"Though I don't know who you were or why you were buried here, I sincerely thank you for your contribution!"

Thump, thump, thump. Yang Bo knocked out the dirt block containing the bones. The remains yielded eight bones in total, more than a skeleton archer dropped in the game. Looking at the skull that was all that remained, he put it back where it had been, then took out a dirt block and sealed it in.

"Looks like I can obtain the game's resources and materials in the real world, too..."

For now, though, Yang Bo could only dream about it. Forget fist-sized diamonds-even arm-length pieces of gold were beyond a broke guy like him. A set of iron gear was his goal.

Although soil was divided into topsoil, subsoil, and substratum, Minecraft's rules converted all of it into identical dirt blocks. After digging about seventeen meters down, he looked at the gray ground beneath his feet, excitement stirring inside him.

He reached out and struck it, and cracks appeared there as well. But they spread far too slowly. Yang Bo stopped, knowing this meant his mining tier wasn't high enough.

Minecraft had a very "scientific" progression system. At the start, bare hands could only "collect" certain wooden objects, such as logs, planks, wooden doors, and wooden fences-things with a hardness of one.

Mining harder, higher-tier materials required the appropriate tools. Otherwise, even if he forced his way through, he would end up with nothing.

"Finally, stone! I'll try mining some first and see if it turns into cobblestone. If not, I'll have to think of something else!"

He took out the wooden pickaxe he had prepared and struck the stone beneath his feet. This time, everything went smoothly. Each blow produced a mass of cracks across the stone's surface.

Thump. With the familiar sound of an item dropping, a piece of cobblestone was drawn into Yang Bo's inventory.

"I can finally enter the Stone Age!"

He kept gathering the surrounding stone with his wooden pickaxe, planning to carve out a shelter here-a "home" of his own.

The wooden pickaxe had a full fifty-nine points of durability. To conserve materials, Yang Bo used it until only one point remained, then reluctantly tucked it into a corner of his inventory, planning to let it give one final burst of light and heat once he had made a furnace.

To prevent a cave-in, Yang Bo lined the ceiling with a layer of cobblestone. That way, he wouldn't have to worry about being buried alive underground.

He placed the Crafting Table and made two stone pickaxes and a furnace. Glancing at his hunger bar, which was only half full now, he frowned deeply.

"Now that stone and wood are taken care of, it's time to find a way to solve the food problem!"

Yang Bo sighed helplessly.

"Money makes a man mighty; without it, even a mighty man struggles!"

He opened the interface of the furnace in front of him. It was very simple, with only three slots. The top slot held items to be smelted, the bottom was the fuel slot, and the one on the right was the output slot, where finished items would appear.

He put the wooden pickaxe with its single remaining durability point into the fuel slot, then took out three logs and placed them in the input slot. He planned to make some charcoal first, then use it to craft torches. The instant he put them in, the furnace began burning automatically, with flames even appearing in the opening on its front. Compared with the game, the flames in reality looked far more lifelike, and the furnace's glow lit up the small space around him.

Normally, a furnace took ten seconds to process one item. To Yang Bo, those ten seconds passed in the blink of an eye. He took the charcoal out of the furnace and combined it with sticks to craft twelve torches.

"These will do for now. It's not like I'm going mining anyway!"

In the real world, mineral deposits weren't found just anywhere. If he really wanted to mine, he would have to leave New York and head for abandoned mines in the American Midwest, where he might find some remaining veins of ore.

He used cobblestone to make a set of stone tools, then held the Stone Sword and gave it a few light swings. It felt comfortable in his hand. After expanding the room a little, he picked a suitable spot and deliberately raised the ceiling there, then took a sapling that had dropped earlier out of his inventory and planted it on a dirt block.

He glanced at the height overhead and nodded in satisfaction.

"That should be about right. Let's see if it can grow underground!"

He took the bones contributed by that nameless volunteer out of his inventory and used the crafting grid to turn them all into bone meal. In Minecraft, bone meal was like super fertilizer for plants. As long as it was used on the desired crop, it could accelerate its growth.

Holding the clump of white pixels that looked as though it had been mangled, Yang Bo aimed it at the sapling on the ground and mentally willed it to activate. A mass of green specks appeared out of thin air and sank into the sapling, but this application of bone meal failed to grow it to maturity.

If once wasn't enough, then twice!

After he used four portions of bone meal, an oak tree made of blocks appeared in the basement. The once somewhat spacious room suddenly felt rather cramped.

"So I really can grow trees here. That makes things so much easier. If I went to the park to chop down trees every day, it wouldn't be long before the authorities sent someone to investigate!"

He picked up the wood and the three saplings that had dropped. Seeing a red apple floating above the ground, he happily walked over and picked it up.

"Finally, something to eat!"

He took out the bright red apple and bit into it without hesitation. Its crisp texture and rich sweetness made Yang Bo feel that it was the best apple he had ever eaten.

"I'll look into the vampire mod first, then go out in a bit and see if I can scavenge some scrap iron. If I can turn it into iron ingots, that'll make things much easier!"