As for trading the same item repeatedly...
Song Xiaozhu kept feeling it could not be that simple.
If she really could complete all ten trades with one person, the reward for Quest B would practically be free. Both were level 1 Growth Quests; the difficulty should not differ so drastically.
After all, in the last Growth Quest, she had traded her life for Quantum Coins.
As for the items to trade, Song Xiaozhu had a good idea about that too. They would definitely be limited to "synthesized items." Selling plastic bottles to the recycling station certainly would not count as a trade.
There was no rush.
Song Xiaozhu reined in her thoughts.
Even without this Growth Quest, she had planned to trade with people.
No matter what
era
it was, money was a good thing.
With enough money, even ghosts could be put to work.
If she wanted to live well, she needed enough capital.
Drinking "low-pollution water," eating tasteless simple meals, and hiding on the heavily polluted Garbage Mountain all her life... that was not living.
Nor would it get her home.
"Let's go, Xiaozhu."
"Okay!"
Dark clouds on the horizon blocked the rosy dawn. Thin strands of light struggled through, shining on the gray community like fireflies.
The two girls, one tall and one short, one sturdy and one slender, headed briskly toward the logging camp.
Song Xiaozhu's knowledge of logging camps was limited to certain
farming
games.
In those games, logging camps and mines were both little models. The former showed wood, the latter stone. All you had to do was place them on the ground with your mouse, and they would automatically gather wood and stone.
Of course, games and reality were vastly different, but they were ultimately derived from
reality, so there was still some logic to follow. For example... logging camps were built where trees grew thickly.
Since coming to this world, the farthest Song Xiaozhu had gone was a garbage heap less than a kilometer from Bai Jing's shack.
Garbage Mountain was a collective term. To the people of Ink City, this entire area outside the city was called Garbage Mountain, including the scavenger community, the villages, and the logging camp.
The refugees living on "Garbage Mountain," naturally, drew very clear distinctions.
The logging camp workers looked down on the scavengers, the scavengers looked down on the village bandits, and the village bandits looked down on Ink City's bootlickers in the logging camp and scavenger community.
Chains of contempt existed everywhere.
After walking for about fifteen or sixteen minutes, covering roughly two kilometers-Qiu Shuyu walked fast, and Song Xiaozhu refused to fall behind, all but running to keep up-they spotted the tree farm in the distance.
The air quality here was noticeably better than on Garbage Mountain behind them. Even the gloomy gray mist had thinned considerably, gradually revealing towering trees.
Song Xiaozhu took one look and froze for a moment.
Unlike the "wild forest" she had imagined, the trees here grew with extraordinary uniformity. Every one stood a full twenty or thirty meters tall, with bare, slender trunks. Only at the very top, over twenty meters up, were there branches and leaves like little half-open umbrellas.
With their long trunks and sparse leaves, the entire stretch of woodland looked bleak.
Qiu Shuyu said, "This place used to be much like the community. Not a blade of grass grew here either. Later, high-level 'Purifiers' from the city came back again and again, purifying it for a long time before it barely reached its current size..."
She lowered her voice a little and continued, "I heard some conglomerate originally wanted to develop it to build a fortress, but... it never met the standards. In the end, their funding might have dried up, and nothing more came of it... Ink City benefited, though. Over a dozen years, a whole tree farm grew."
So it was an artificial tree farm...
Song Xiaozhu more or less understood.
After the Great Cataclysm, almost nothing could grow anywhere on the planet. The eventual rebuilding of civilization had also been the result of the survivors' struggle to stay alive.
With the planet's ecology altered, the plants and animals must have suffered too. Even if they had not gone extinct, they were probably vastly different from what Song Xiaozhu knew.
Song Xiaozhu had thought the logging camp here was built in a wild forest. She had not expected such an orderly artificial tree farm.
"Is this... New Poplar?"
"Yes. Around the logging camp, it's mostly New Poplar. There are some other species, but they're rarer. Ordinary loggers like
us generally aren't qualified to handle them."
They entered the tree farm as they chatted. From a distance, the New Poplars had looked tall and thin, their trunks seemingly no thicker than an arm. Up close, she realized they really were tall, but not quite so thin.
The New Poplar before them was a relatively thin one, yet its trunk was still as thick as Qiu Shuyu's thigh.
Through the New Poplar grove, they could see the logging camp built within.
The logging camp was much smaller than Song Xiaozhu had imagined. Compared with the scavenger community, which was like a small town, the logging camp was only the size of the community's recycling station.
The buildings were wooden and roughly constructed, surrounded by a wooden fence. The enclosure was empty. It looked as though tractors, logging machines, and sawmills had previously been parked there... most had now gone into the tree farm, leaving only tire tracks.
Neatly cut logs were piled all around the logging camp. Unlike the ones Qiu Shuyu had brought back, these were enormous, each over ten meters long, stacked very neatly like arranged building blocks.
Song Xiaozhu's eyes gleamed at the sight. Good grief...
How much [Raw Wood Material] could she synthesize from all this timber!
How many tools could she synthesize from all that [Raw Wood Material]!
Even if an axe sold for 3 yuan...
A hundred would be 300 yuan.
A thousand would be 3,000 yuan.
Prices here differed from those in Song Xiaozhu's world. Here, 3,000 yuan had the purchasing power of 300,000!
Song Xiaozhu swallowed nonexistent drool, her money-grubbing soul stirring.
Qiu Shuyu read her mood. She smiled and flicked her forehead. "Your Force is limited!"
She really was afraid this competitive girl would work herself to death.
Song Xiaozhu gave two light coughs and looked away.