"Yip..."
The little fox kept staring at the chicken soup. When it saw Ye Fei ladling the soup into a bowl, it grew anxious again.
"You can't use this. I'll give you a little pickle dish, or you'll get scalded to death."
Looking at the little fox he had gone to so much trouble to save, Ye Fei couldn't bear to let it die like that.
He couldn't give it medicine carelessly, but sharing a little food was fine. He had told it before that it would have food if it stayed with him.
For now, he would let it taste the chicken soup.
Ye Fei set down the little dish and poured in a tiny amount. The thin layer cooled quickly.
"Yip, yip!"
He took the little white bundle out of the basket and set it down. It edged over and lapped up a couple of mouthfuls.
The chicken soup smelled delicious. The little fox's head still hurt badly, but that didn't stop it from feeling happy once it tasted the soup.
"Have some soup first. The meat needs to cool a little more before you can eat it, or it'll scald you to death..."
Ye Fei slowly sipped his own chicken soup. Seeing the little fox wait right where it was after finishing, he was pleased and poured it another tiny serving.
After another short wait, the meat wasn't so hot anymore. Ye Fei looked at the little fox, then at the meat in the basin, and finally picked out the chicken head and placed it in the dish in front of the fox.
If you won't accept me as your master, you're not getting the good stuff.
"Yip... arf, arf!"
The little fox finally got some meat and bit straight into the comb.
It bit off half the comb in one mouthful. The warmth kept it from rushing, and only after chewing and swallowing did it let out an excited cry.
Bite after bite, Ye Fei watched the little fox chew up and devour the chicken head, bones and all. It was half the size of his fist, and he finally understood what sharp claws and teeth really meant.
He tried biting into the chicken leg bone himself...
Although skulls and leg bones differed in hardness, he still realized that he had been underestimating the little creature all along because it had foolishly injured itself by crashing into something.
"Yip..."
After eating a chicken head along with the soup it had drunk earlier, the little fox was full.
Lying on the floor, it called to Ye Fei twice, then curled into a ball with its two little paws wrapped around its head, drowsily drifting off to sleep.
"Go to sleep. I'll take you out with me this afternoon."
Ye Fei scooped up the little bundle and put it back in the basket. He stroked it a couple of times to settle it to sleep, then went back to his meal.
After a chicken leg, a chicken wing, and half a basin of soup, Ye Fei was full and felt too lazy to move.
But he still had to go out.
Although he had finished the earlier quest, the more supply crates he had, the better. If he really couldn't find any, he could chop down trees for more supplies.
After putting away the bowl and basin and covering the pot, Ye Fei looked at the sleeping fox. Uneasy about leaving it alone in the empty house, he picked up the plastic basket, intending to take it along just like that.
But the moment he stepped out the door with the little fox, the plastic basket vanished, and the fox dropped toward the ground.
"You almost fell to your death..."
With a sudden burst of quick reflexes, Ye Fei caught the little fox, which was still asleep and whose health had only just recovered to half. He let out a long breath, then tucked the little creature into the right pocket of his padded coat.
His padded coat had two pockets, each large enough to hold four or five bottles of water...
He opened the door again and saw that the basket had returned to its original spot. Ye Fei now understood what was happening.
Everything in his home was a simulated copy created after he arrived, rather than a real physical object.
Only the things he obtained in this world, such as those wooden planks and the axe in his hand, could be carried in and out.
Looking at the various things in his home, he thought that perhaps, once he had the ability to build a new home in the future, this original replica would vanish altogether.
At the beginning, this world had simulated a home identical to their previous living environment, perhaps to preserve a connection to the past for players in their early days, or simply to keep them from all dying at the outset because they had nowhere to live.
Leaving home with a somewhat heavy heart, Ye Fei continued searching the area for any supply crates that might be there.
It had only been a little after seven when he found the little fox that morning and brought it home. Cooking the chicken soup and eating had taken two hours, so it wasn't even ten yet.
He circled the nearby area again and again, deliberately checking the direction of his home each time so he wouldn't get lost and be unable to return.
As the surrounding terrain grew familiar, Ye Fei found another supply crate around noon.
However, there was something unusual near the supply crate.
[Dying Seedling: A seed that lay dormant for years sprouted beneath a covering of ice and snow, but it could not survive in this utterly frozen snowfield.]
A strange splash of green in the snow caught Ye Fei's eye.
When he focused on it, information appeared above the green seedling.
He carefully scanned the surroundings several times. Only after making sure there was no danger did Ye Fei approach, use a wooden plank to clear away the snow, and gently lift out the seedling that had sprouted amid the ice and snow.
[Pine Seedling (green): Can be planted.]
There was no further description, and he didn't know what it would produce after being planted.
But with nothing but white as far as the eye could see, Ye Fei thought having a tree in his yard would be a good thing.
Otherwise, living in this snow-white environment all the time would practically give him snow blindness.
He put the seedling in his Inventory. Seeing that he had only two empty slots left, Ye Fei decided to try his luck and took out the supply crate he had just found to open it.
Identical items could stack, but supply crates couldn't.
[Opened Wooden Supply Crate: Bread +3, Water +2, Chinese Cabbage Seeds +5]
"Chinese cabbage? Seeds? They're counted individually?"
Looking at the five seeds in his palm, Ye Fei wondered whether, after planting them and growing the cabbages, he could let the plants keep growing until they flowered and produced more seeds...
But he soon saw that he couldn't.
[Chinese Cabbage Seeds (white): Single-use vegetable seeds, suitable for planting in loose soil where roots can take hold.]
He stared at them a little longer. The words "single-use seeds" reminded Ye Fei of the improved seeds he had complained about so many times while farming with his parents as a child.
In the past, when people farmed in the countryside, they set aside seeds from their own harvests and stored them carefully to plant the following year.
He couldn't remember when grain seeds had also become single-use items.
They could only buy them from the seed station every year. If they replanted grain they had grown themselves, it either wouldn't sprout, or even if it did, whole patches would soon die off...
Thinking of the past stirred some emotion in him, but he quickly put away the seeds and continued searching the area. He wasn't here to wallow in nostalgia.
Before you continue