[Personal house: Apartment Simulation Model Energy reserves: 100 Current furnishings: light bulb, single bed, toilet, water heater, shower, range hood, poor-quality electric cooker, simple clothes rack, plastic storage shelf]
The personal house information screen showed a model of Ye Fei's current home.
Every furnishing inside appeared as a model, with the energy cost of using each item marked beside it.
There were no external power lines, water pipes, sewage pipes, or anything of the sort. Everything now ran on energy.
Each use of the toilet consumed 0.1 energy. The shower's consumption depended on how long it ran, at 0.1 energy per minute.
The light, water heater, electric cooker, and range hood all consumed 0.2 energy per minute.
Energy for household use could be purchased with Survival Points. Ye Fei checked the exchange rate: 1:10.
The 100 energy he currently had was worth 10 points.
Once he understood how these things worked, Ye Fei began looking into his two household items of choice.
He opened one selection menu and first saw several broad categories, still restricted by region. He promptly chose Snow Mountain.
The Snow Mountain category was further divided into house and yard.
Thinking of the snow piled up outside, he naturally chose yard.
This time, the options that appeared were items used in yards in Snow Mountain.
After going through the choices, he finally selected a large broom, essential for sweeping snow out of the yard, and a snow shovel.
Before darkness fell, Ye Fei went outside and started clearing the snow with the large wooden shovel, tossing the snow inside the fence over to the other side.
The yard was small, and soon only a thin layer remained. He then swept the whole yard with the large broom.
He had not done physical labor in a long time. Although he had done this sort of work in the countryside as a child, clearing the yard still left Ye Fei drenched in sweat. His stamina seemed worse than it had been back then.
Still, his labor did pay off. After he cleared the snow from his yard, a completed-task reward suddenly popped up.
[Clean Little Yard: Keeping your yard clean can lift your spirits and help prevent potential dangers. Reward: 1 Survival Point]
It only gave him 1 Survival Point, but Ye Fei was not complaining. After all, he had not known there would be a reward before he started working.
Standing in the doorway and looking at his clean little yard, he felt quite satisfied.
Now that he had finished tidying up, it was already dark.
He closed the door, washed his hands, and started eating.
As for turning on the light...
He decided against it. He had no taste for luxuries and did not intend to consume his stored energy unless necessary.
One loaf of bread and a bottle of water were just enough to fill his stomach.
Lying on his familiar bed, Ye Fei finally managed to settle down and think about being suddenly transported to another world that had also become a game-something that was honestly enough to drive a person to despair.
"It's not all bad. At least I started with a house..."
Thinking back over his twenty-odd years of life, Ye Fei suddenly felt that things were actually pretty good now.
His parents had died in an accident. They had not left much money behind, but they had left a newly built house in the countryside.
Selling the house had paid for his schooling, and he had even gotten into a reasonably decent university. But because his relatives had not gotten a share of the proceeds, they were always berating him for leaving himself no fallback.
Then there was his aunt. Ever since he got into university, she had felt that her side of the family finally had someone to be proud of, and she liked boasting to her husband's relatives about how capable her nephew was.
But his life had never come with any cheats. Early on, he had been able to steel himself, sell the house, and focus entirely on his education, but after graduation, he had become nothing more than an ordinary wage slave at the bottom of the ladder.
His household registration was still in his hometown. A land consolidation project there required the villagers' signatures, so he had gone back a while ago to sign the contract.
That was when someone had asked him a question, and he had told them how much he earned. It had led to those scolding phone calls afterward...
They were not particularly close to him anyway, but being berated always left him annoyed. Now, at least, he no longer needed to dwell on any of that.
The house was small, but he no longer had to pay rent or worry about the rent going up next month, losing his job, or having no one to pay his wages.
Still, he was not naive enough to think surviving in this world would be easy.
A survival game-the name alone made it clear that survival, staying alive, was the foundation of everything.
"It's only a little past eight..."
Unable to sleep, Ye Fei checked the time. It was not even nine yet. He could not remember the last time he had gone to bed this early.
Even if he could not sleep, he could not turn on the light and waste electricity. Besides, there was nothing to entertain himself with even if he did. He had no phone or computer...
He opened the chat channel. He might as well read what the other players were saying.
He did not want to speak or find someone to chat with. Whenever he entered a new environment, he preferred to lurk and observe first. That had always been Ye Fei's habit.
[Snow Mountain/0293-1542-1001: Shut up, you above me. Anyone who hasn't completed the first task can't even open this screen yet. You sure love putting on a show!] [Snow Mountain/0099-5146-1888: Holy shit, I'm an idiot. I actually believed you, you bastard. I even felt sorry for you and gave you advice. Go die!] [Snow Mountain/1099-8866-1992: Feel stupid now? I never believed it!]
Those were the messages Ye Fei saw as soon as he opened the chat screen. He scrolled back through the channel and, sure enough, found someone crying and trying to win sympathy.
That person claimed he had not finished building his fence and was hiding in his wooden house, shivering from the cold, while listening to what sounded like a large animal clawing at his plank walls outside...
It sounded pretty miserable. Some people comforted him, and someone even offered to spare him some clothes so he would not freeze to death...
But after that offer was made, the person fell silent.
Although no one sent him anything, people still offered advice, some sincere and some not.
Only when someone pointed out that it was impossible to enter the chat screen without finishing the fence did many of them start calling him a liar.
"There are scammers everywhere..."
Seeing all this made Ye Fei suddenly realize that scammers really were everywhere.
They did not even know what this game world was like yet, and someone had already started scamming people...
After grumbling inwardly, he continued watching the chat channel to see whether anyone had other information to share.
Once the scammer had been exposed, the conversation quickly moved on to other topics.
Some people talked about their houses, cleaning them, arranging their rooms, and energy consumption.
When it came to survival necessities, their current circumstances, and speculation about the future, the conversation was much more normal.
Those with large houses might have had a harder time building their fences, but that was not a bad thing. They also had more room to move around inside their safe houses.
Then Ye Fei saw someone bring up combat power.
[Snow Mountain/0099-5117-1888: Has anyone worked out the highest possible combat power? I practiced martial arts before this and won provincial and city championships, but my combat power is only 8.]
The topic drew plenty of replies. Among the answers that were not wildly implausible, most players who spoke up fell within the 3-7 range.
Only a handful claimed to have 9.
After they chatted for a while, the basic picture became clear.
A score of 4 or below was below average, 5-7 was average, and 8 or 9 meant a strong ordinary person.
[Snow Mountain/0003-4656-1210: Mine is 1, and it's labeled below average too. But I think they should really make the categories more specific. How is mine just "below"? I'm so far below that I'm standing on the brink of death. I just want to ask: does anyone have 0 combat power?]
After the discussion had gone on for a while, someone spoke up to say he wanted to know whether 1 combat power was already the minimum.
There was a brief lull after his message, followed by people offering reassurance and sharing their own stats.
Someone said his father was over eighty and still had 2 combat power. He really had never seen anything lower.
Another said his child was only two years old and already had 1 combat power. He wanted to ask the person above with a score of 1 just how he had managed to get it so low.
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