Although he was anxious about where the remaining sheep was, he could only herd the other twenty back to the farm first.
Once Youyou finished picking tomatoes, she could help him look for it.
Youyou was seething, and practically everyone rubbed her the wrong way.
Her boyfriend usually spoiled her. Now that he was gone, she had even less control over her temper.
Zuo Cheng'an shrugged and glanced at the tomatoes in the bamboo basket, which had already begun to change color slightly, without saying anything.
The rats were most active around the warehouse, so he would inevitably have to deal with the woman.
He had wanted to get off on the right foot with her, but if she wasn't interested, so be it.
In his field of vision, two enormous gray rats were crouching at the mouth of a crack in a nearby wall, poking their heads out.
They seemed to be coveting the tomatoes Youyou had just carried inside.
Although their bodies were hidden in the shadows within the crack, Zuo Cheng'an had never taken off his night-vision goggles.
That made it easy to see what was inside.
He quietly circled upwind, then lunged forward and thrust his pitchfork!
"Squeak, squeak-!"
[Killed 'Steel-Toothed Rat' X1. Obtained item 'Swift Rat Dagger'] [Killed 'Steel-Toothed Rat' X1]
When he pulled the pitchfork back, two rats were skewered on it.
Unexpectedly, the first Steel-Toothed Rat to die had dropped a dagger item for Zuo Cheng'an.
Could the first kill in every instance have a guaranteed item drop?
Putting that speculation aside, Zuo Cheng'an checked the item's attributes.
The system listed its effects as follows:
[Swift Rat Dagger (White)] [Category: Weapon] [Effect: Attack +1] [Description: Getting stabbed by it is like getting bitten by a rat! Guaranteed to hurt!]
One point of attack was practically nothing. Having it or not hardly mattered.
Its reach was also shorter than his pitchfork's.
The Swift Rat Dagger's only advantage was that it was an item, so players could put it in their inventory and take it out of the instance.
The pitchfork, however, couldn't be taken out.
Damn it, my pitchfork god-of-war trial was about to expire!
With something to show for his efforts at last, Zuo Cheng'an was full of energy as he continued searching for more unlucky Steel-Toothed Rats.
Another thing was that after he killed the two Steel-Toothed Rats, the "0/100" on his quest panel changed to "2/100."
That meant the game had recognized the two Steel-Toothed Rats he had just killed.
When the time came, even if he didn't have enough corpses, Red-Eyes wouldn't be able to do anything to him.
Zuo Cheng'an, who had thought he would have to lug a huge pile of corpses around, breathed a sigh of relief.
While working on his quest, he couldn't help wondering how the other players were progressing.
This was where the live comments came in handy.
Setting aside the textual pollution, they were pretty useful sometimes.
[One, two, three, four, five... eighteen, nineteen, twenty. No matter how I count, there are only twenty.]
[You know what? Seriously! I fucking counted twenty too!]
[Could the rabbit be lying on purpose? There aren't twenty-one sheep at all, and saying there are is a lie. Didn't this guy offend the rabbit? Makes sense he'd get screwed over.]
[Impossible. All quests given to players can be completed. If Red-Eyes said twenty-one, there must be twenty-one sheep.]
[So the last sheep has been hidden?]
One sheep missing?
Zuo Cheng'an remembered that Wang Guangfei, the man in the young couple, had been assigned by Red-Eyes to herd the sheep back into their pen.
He had thought it would take the least time and effort, with the only real danger being those meat-eating sheep.
Who would have thought the catch wasn't the danger, but that one simply couldn't be found?
If Wang Guangfei still hadn't found the missing sheep by nightfall... he would have both feet planted on the fast track through life.
Whoosh-and his whole life would be over.
While reading the discussion in the live comments, Zuo Cheng'an killed another Steel-Toothed Rat that had emerged from the granary after eating and drinking its fill.
Seeing that he had frightened the Steel-Toothed Rats in this area enough that they didn't dare show themselves for now,
Zuo Cheng'an shouldered his pitchfork and headed over to look around the cowshed.
When Red-Eyes had shown them around earlier, he had caught a glimpse from outside the cowshed.
Like the sheep's troughs, the cows' troughs bore traces of having held flesh and blood.
Where there was food, Steel-Toothed Rats would come calling.
Since very few live comments discussed the cowshed, Zuo Cheng'an had prepared himself for an extremely stomach-turning environment.
When he had come by earlier, he had only given it a cursory glance from outside.
Even from outside, the cowshed had looked like it was striving for greatness through manure. But inside... had a toilet exploded here?
How many years had it been since anyone cleaned it?
Cleaning this place in a single day-this really was a Ladder Tower instance.
The direction was a little strange, but the difficulty certainly qualified!!
The one assigned to clean the cowshed was Fu You, the younger of the two sisters.
At that moment, she had covered her entire body with a cloak that seemed to be an item of hers. Wearing gloves modified from clothing, she was huffing and puffing as she pushed cartload after cartload of rubbish out of the farm.
Through the Eye of Truth,
he could see that only a few eyeballs were following Fu You to broadcast her live.
Most had gone to watch Youyou pick tomatoes and admire a beautiful woman at work, or to follow Wang Guangfei in search of sheep, playing a real-life spot-the-difference game.
Others had gone to watch Fu Yu collect eggs, and quite a few were following him too.
After all, although the audience in the other world had a taste for the extreme, it wasn't quite this extreme.
Fu You was in an awful mood from sweeping up cow dung. Zuo Cheng'an didn't go over to get on her bad side and make trouble for himself. He killed a few Steel-Toothed Rats around the cowshed, then withdrew.
Unexpectedly, however, he spotted a doghouse beneath the clutter piled outside the cowshed.
The doghouse was clearly sized for a large sheepdog. Its owner seemed to have been very attentive. Although it was covered in dust inside and out, he could still tell it had once been painted, and there was a wooden plaque for a name.
But now it had been reduced to somewhere to pile clutter.
Seeing this finally answered Zuo Cheng'an's earlier question.
No wonder there were no dogs on the farm. Presumably, there had been one before, but something had happened to it, and afterward the farmer had been unwilling to keep another.
Time flew, and the sun inside the instance had reached its highest point.
The players were all busy with their own quests. None spoke to one another, but all quickened their movements without prompting.
Just then, an argument broke out at the entrance to the farm's tomato warehouse.
Zuo Cheng'an had already hunted over eighty Steel-Toothed Rats and would soon finish his quest, so he spared some attention to listen.
"Wang Guangfei! Why are you dragging your feet? Why haven't you finished your quest yet!? Can that sheep burrow underground or something? Is it really that hard to help me fill the warehouse first?"
"How many times have I told you? The warehouse is so big, there's no way we can finish it quickly.
"Rather than that, come outside with me and have another good look before the sheep gets too far away. Once we find it, won't I be able to help you?"
Youyou tried to reason with him. "Finding the sheep takes luck. If we're unlucky, we might not find it all day.
"But my work doesn't take luck. As long as we work quickly, we'll finish in no time!"
Wang Guangfei was trying to reason with her too. "See? Didn't you just admit that finding the sheep takes luck?
"What if I'm unlucky and still haven't found it by nightfall? That's why I need to make every second count right now!"
After listening for a while, Zuo Cheng'an felt that both of them made good points.
The viewers in the live comments felt the same, and had even split into two camps.
With something entertaining to watch here, more and more eyeball cameras gathered.
They had almost completely surrounded the young couple.
Before you continue