They didn't have the Eye of Truth skill and couldn't see the items' descriptive notes, so they could only guess based on experience from other instances.
[I bet you can only pick fully ripe, completely red tomatoes. When Red-Eyes checks tonight, it'll definitely throw out any tomatoes that still have green on them,
then use the excuse that the players failed to "fill an entire warehouse" to tear them apart and kill them.]
[I think it's a special tomato variety. You're bound to get some rotten tomato juice on you while picking them, and anywhere the juice touches will swell up and fester.]
[You're all so vicious. I love it, hahahaha!]
[My imagination isn't as good as yours. My guess is that the farm's chickens are all protective mothers. They'll peck anyone who dares take their eggs, and if the players dare fight back,
they'll be in serious trouble when Red-Eyes comes back and sees the injured chickens.]
As the viewers sent comments offering their guesses, they revealed a great deal of information to Zuo Cheng'an,
making him even more cautious about his upcoming "whack-a-mole" job.
Unlike him, the others didn't seem particularly worried. They even remarked carelessly that the so-called ladder instances weren't much after all.
Wang Guangfei, the man in the young couple, seemed eager to show off in front of his girlfriend.
"What the heck? It's just herding sheep? That buddy of mine absolutely refused to come. Once I get out and become a first-rung player, I'm going to laugh at him!"
"Yeah, all I have to do is pick tomatoes. Other than the fruit being pretty gross, there's nothing to it. And here we were, being so cautious and running all those instances. There was no need at all."
Youyou recalled how he and her boyfriend had prepared for the ladder instance before coming in.
The two of them didn't have many points and couldn't bear to spend them on guides that would let them clear with a C or even B rating.
They could only just afford some ordinary guides that guaranteed they would clear in one piece.
That meant they would only receive a D or D+ rating at settlement. With luck, they might earn one free attribute point.
If they encountered an old instance that too many players had already cleared, they wouldn't even get that one free attribute point!
As a result, their strength grew extremely slowly. Forget buying items for protection-their points weren't even enough to cover food and lodging!
When they saw that they really couldn't keep surviving, tempted by the various discounts and benefits the game offered players who had climbed the ladder,
they had finally gritted their teeth and committed to entering the Ladder Tower, hoping to scrape their way into the first rung. That way, each of them could receive a subsidy of one point per week.
One person meant one point, and two people meant two points.
Wouldn't that cover a week's food?
The twin sisters, on the other hand, had properly maxed out two attributes and only chosen to climb the ladder after reaching a bottleneck,
even though normally, raising just one attribute to the bottleneck would have been enough.
Because they prioritized quality over quantity, they had experienced far fewer instances than the young couple.
To earn free attribute points in an instance, not only did they have to avoid instances that too many players had cleared, but their ratings couldn't be too low either.
But the rewards were proportional to the risks.
After just four instances, Fu Yu and Fu You already had two stats maxed out.
They were much more efficient than the young couple, who had barely maxed out a single stat after more than a dozen instances.
Red-Eyes seemed very busy. It assigned each player a task and set the inspection time for after sunset.
Muttering about having to return to the boat and getting seasick, it disappeared from the players' sight.
The players exchanged glances, then hurried toward their assigned locations.
Soon, only Zuo Cheng'an remained.
Having watched Red-Eyes leave, Zuo Cheng'an finally no longer had to restrain himself.
Otherwise, with a health bar that wasn't at 100% constantly bobbing in front of him, he really wanted to go up and slash it!
Wait, he didn't have a blade.
Apart from the beginner instance, where the game provided players with free weapons and armor, none of the other instances offered such benefits.
With that in mind, Zuo Cheng'an could only search nearby for a suitable weapon.
With the Eye of Truth, he didn't have to worry about taking the wrong thing and bringing death upon himself.
Most of the farm's acreage consisted of the vast tomato fields on the slopes outside. Apart from the fields,
the remaining structures, such as the chicken coop, sheep pen, cowshed, and granary, didn't take up much space.
Still, it was strange that such a large farm kept neither cats nor dogs.
Aside from the places where the "little animals" lived, there was only a two-story, red-roofed house that appeared to be the farmer's residence.
Zuo Cheng'an gave the door an experimental push. Sure enough, it was locked.
Seeing this, the viewers who had been endlessly guessing in the comments about what kind of instant kill awaited him when he opened the door deflated too.
A locked door didn't mean he couldn't get in through the chimney.
With all three of Zuo Cheng'an's physical stats maxed out, climbing onto the roof was as easy as breathing.
But time was short, and Zuo Cheng'an had no time to waste exploring everywhere.
A hidden quest was all well and good, but a hundred wild monsters wasn't an easy target to reach either.
And he wasn't particularly interested in personally experiencing the consequences of failing to meet the quota Red-Eyes had set.
What if, once the instance ended and the rules no longer restrained it, it could do whatever it wanted to the players?
For Red-Eyes to have earned the title of Mad Rabbit, its methods of tormenting humans had to be far beyond ordinary.
Luckily, Zuo Cheng'an found the long-handled weapon he needed in a dust-covered storage shed-a pitchfork.
[Pitchfork: made on ??? Farm, an unassuming murder weapon]
It had a wooden handle at one end and a U-shaped piece of metal at the other, with both tips sharpened to an extremely fine point.
Besides pitching hay, this pitchfork seemed to have also forked up the minced meat in the sheep pen's feeding trough,
because plenty of meat scraps and bloodstains still clung to it.
Don't dismiss a pitchfork as a weapon! It was long enough! And its tips were sharp enough!
Paired with the glasses that gave him night vision, he could hunt in all sorts of tiny gaps!
One thrust of the fork would definitely skewer a rat clean through!
While fetching the pitchfork, Zuo Cheng'an also encountered Youyou returning with a basket of tomatoes she had already picked.
His boyfriend seemed to have gone outside to look for the flock of sheep.
From far away, Zuo Cheng'an could already hear the tomatoes in the basket bawling.
The sound was quite unsettling.
"Stop making so much noise!! You've already been picked, so why are you still screaming!! Keep it up and I'll smash you to pieces!"
Youyou had little patience. The enormous workload left her struggling to breathe!
The feeling reminded her of the time before she entered this world, when she had been constrained by congenital heart disease.
Even walking a little faster would leave her palms cold and her gasping for breath.
The warehouse didn't look big, but its rows of shelves could hold a surprising amount. She estimated that she would have to pick all the tomatoes covering more than half the hill to fill it.
At that moment, Youyou was especially glad she had maxed out her speed before entering the ladder instance.
Otherwise, she might really have met her end here because she couldn't complete the task.
She could only hope her boyfriend, Wang Guangfei, could hurry up with herding the sheep so he could come back and help her pick tomatoes.
The tomatoes' incessant bawling in the basket left the woman agitated, and she had no patience even when she encountered a player who had entered with her. "Get out of my way!"
The game's tasks had already been issued. They didn't require the players to cooperate; everyone had their own work to do and only needed to handle their own business.
Naturally, there was no need to waste effort maintaining those so-called relationships between players.
With that, she entered the warehouse, carrying the basket of tomatoes on her shoulder.
Wang Guangfei's situation wasn't looking good.
Red-Eyes had said it had twenty-one sheep,
but when Wang Guangfei found the flock grazing outside the farm and counted them over and over,
no matter how he counted, there were only twenty sheep in the flock!
Nineteen white sheep and one black sheep! There was no mistake!
Before you continue