But there wasn't enough foxtail grass in front of her to withstand
her wasting it like this.
What about the other weeds...
Song Xiaozhu didn't recognize many of them. Especially in this post-cataclysm world, species had gone extinct, mutated, or even evolved. There weren't many plants like foxtail grass that had stubbornly remained unchanged...
Fortunately, Song Xiaozhu didn't need to recognize them. She could just toss them onto the Workbench.
Success was a gain, and failure wasn't much of a loss.
All she had to do was pick them up and put them down, using a little stamina.
After a full eighty failures, Song Xiaozhu had to stop.
This probably wasn't a matter of being an unlucky player anymore...
She remembered what had happened when she synthesized an "edible simple meal"...
Could there be a problem with the raw ingredients?
Song Xiaozhu looked at the weeds in her hand...
Not all weeds could be used for synthesis. For some that didn't meet the requirements, the notification would tell her outright, "Insufficient Quantum Coins. Unable to perform Random Synthesis."
After so many attempts, she had also identified several kinds of "medicinal herbs."
Foxtail grass, for instance, was one she recognized.
There was also one with purplish leaves and a long rhizome when dug up. It looked a little like fish mint, but was blackish gray.
Another had very rough leaves covered in sharp thorns and looked quite ferocious. Song Xiaozhu had nearly pricked herself when picking it up.
The last kind also had thorns, but was smaller overall than the previous one, with less densely packed thorns. Song Xiaozhu named it Little Thornhead.
Yes, the previous one was Big Thornhead.
Apart from these four kinds, the others really were just weeds.
Song Xiaozhu pondered for a moment, and inspiration struck.
She had fallen into a mental rut too. Especially with [Raw Wood Material], the raw ingredients were all fairly large, so she only put in one at a time. She hadn't considered putting in several at once.
Weeds were far smaller than wood. Putting in just one really wasn't enough material.
And unlike other recipes, the synthesis of these [Raw Materials] had no explicit quantity requirement. It only said "any," a description that didn't specify a quantity, so...
Song Xiaozhu dug up three Big Thornheads and two Little Thornheads, put them on the Workbench together, and selected the [Medicinal Raw Material] recipe.
White mist enveloped them, and before long, a notification sounded:
"Synthesis successful. Obtained [Medicinal Raw Material] ×1; "Evaluation: one of the basic [Raw Materials]; "Effect upon use: none."
It worked...
Song Xiaozhu's heart bled. She had wasted so much foxtail grass, False Fish Mint, and Big and Little Thornheads. Aaargh!
Then she thought of the persistently high failure rate when she synthesized [Raw Stone Material].
Many stones were smaller than pieces of wood...
Putting in a few more would probably raise the success rate considerably too.
Ignorance can kill!
Song Xiaozhu clenched her fists and silently vowed, From now on, I have to think harder and experiment boldly!
The notification sounded again. "Repair progress: 1/3."
With [Medicinal Raw Material] successfully synthesized, every level-one recipe Song Xiaozhu possessed now had a synthesized product, so the third requirement of the Repair Quest counted as complete.
Song Xiaozhu looked at the [Medicinal Raw Material] on the Workbench. Unlike the other two [Raw Materials], [Medicinal Raw Material] wasn't a neat cube, but a tiny red capsule.
The notification asked whether she wanted to put it into the storage box. Song Xiaozhu said no, then picked up the [Medicinal Raw Material].
She wasn't worried about it being poisonous. After all, the raw ingredients were quite safe. A few Big and Little Thornheads wouldn't poison her just from touching them.
The [Medicinal Raw Material] was tiny, about the size of an ordinary cold-medicine capsule, only much more vividly colored. Its red was translucent, with something of a gemstone's luster.
Song Xiaozhu pinched it. It was surprisingly springy. She didn't dare squeeze hard, afraid she might burst it.
[Medicinal Raw Material] certainly couldn't be used directly. It needed support from subsequent recipes.
Song Xiaozhu put the red capsule into the small storage box, and a tiny number 1 appeared beneath it.
Synthesized products of this [Raw Material] type could surely stack. Song Xiaozhu wasn't surprised.
With a new synthesis method, Song Xiaozhu was even more motivated and efficient.
Going home was out of the question.
There were branches, stones, and medicinal herbs here...
She wasn't going home until she had reaped a bumper harvest!
Qiu Shuyu and the others rode in the vehicle for a little over twenty minutes. The New Poplars began to thin out, but they were larger, at least forty-odd centimeters in diameter.
If Song Xiaozhu had been here, she would certainly have been surprised.
These trees were old. They definitely couldn't have grown this large in a few years, or even a dozen or so. Some of the especially thick ones looked like century-old trees.
After all, it was now year 116 of the Dawn Calendar. Adding the hundred years of the Winter Era, only a little over two hundred years had passed since the cataclysm.
Century-old trees like these...
Logically, there shouldn't
have been so many.
Tian Man and the others knew none of this. They had been born at the very bottom, and apart from Qiu Shuyu, none of them had ever attended school or could read... They had seen these huge trees for so long that they found nothing strange about them.
After getting out, Tian Man quickly picked out a New Poplar a little over sixty centimeters in diameter.
Without machinery, trees with large diameters weren't easy to fell. They needed to work together to cut down a tree as efficiently as possible.
The rented truck could haul at most two trees...
Of course, that was profitable enough.
At triple the buyback price, one tree would keep them fed and watered without worry for a month!
Tian Man called out, "Come on, two to a team. We'll work from both sides!"
Liu Mu immediately said, "Brother Man, I'll take the right side with you."
Tian Man glanced at him but ultimately said nothing.
"Xiao Qiu, you and Liuzi take the left."
Qiu Shuyu gave a muffled acknowledgment.
Beside her, Luo Liuzi, who was short, sturdily built, and rather honest-looking, gave an awkward chuckle and said to Qiu Shuyu, "Um, how about we swap axes?"