Matrix Survival: One random treasure chest per day

Chapter 504 Delicious Fruit Rabbit!

"That's why I don't like chatting with people like you who are incredibly lucky; it makes me feel like a piece of trash!"

Li Zheng sighed with deep feeling.

Luckily, I have a system that allows me to use cheats; otherwise, I wouldn't even be qualified to have an equal dialogue with these people.

"Tch, are you trying to put yourself in Versailles in front of me?" Zhan Zhouzhou said with utter disdain. "Even if we're lucky, can we compare to you?"

"When most people don't have genetic abilities, or even if they do, they're only at the single-element silver or gold level, you've already mastered a dual-element water and fire ability, right? And it's not low-level either!"

"When no one else has diamond-grade weapons, you've already discovered the blacksmith shop, and you can even help us out, so we can benefit from it too."

"Now it's even worse. You've got top-tier items before everyone else, and you're still complaining about your bad luck?"

At this point, Zhan Zhouzhou squinted and complained, "You scoundrel, sometimes I even suspect you're more like the Matrix's favorite son than Feng Shan!"

"..."

Li Zheng opened his mouth hesitantly. He really wanted to refute Zhan Zhouzhou's comment that he was lucky.

Although the Ice and Fire Attachment is a dual-system Platinum-level gene ability, it actually plays more of a supporting role and does not significantly improve attack or defense.

Moreover, he had risked his life to obtain the Rock Ice Flame; if anything had gone wrong, he would have been dead.

As for the blacksmith shop, that was all thanks to the Eye of Preys; it had nothing to do with my own good luck...

Finally, regarding the "King-level" title, it's unclear whether Zhan Zhouzhou was referring to the high-energy cores obtained from this event or the Bloodthirsty Demon Blade.

If you're referring to the high-energy core, then the event isn't over yet, is it?
Those high-energy cores are not yet usable, and Li Zheng cannot even be sure of their ownership!

Who knows what uncontrollable accidents might happen later?
If it refers to the Bloodthirsty Demon Blade, then that's even more absurd!
That thing seemed to have been subdued and appeared quite obedient.

Actually, he's harboring evil intentions and might suddenly turn on his master at any moment.

I take a huge risk every time I use it.

If we have to say that Li Zheng is luckier than others, perhaps it's because he awakened the treasure chest system at the beginning of the game.

Even so, although it seems like there's a treasure chest every day, the items that come out of the chests are limited, and their value isn't as incredible as you might initially imagine.

In terms of actual value, the daily rewards from opening treasure chests are roughly equivalent to Li Zheng exploring 1 to 10 more rooms.

Aside from that one time when over a ton of fertilizer raw materials were unloaded...

"what?"

This was Zhan Zhouzhou's first time entering Li Zheng's capsule residence. She looked around in surprise and asked, "You've renovated this place?"

"Uh...yes, there are twelve floors in total." Li Zheng nodded frankly; there was no point in hiding such a thing.

"See, this is your problem. You clearly have more good things than us, but you're envious of our so-called good luck." Zhan Zhouzhou circled the doorway twice, and the first door she opened was the restroom right next to the exit.

She was immediately captivated by the bathroom facilities: "They even have a bathtub and a shower? They're living a good life!"

As a clean and tidy girl, Zhan Zhouzhou was genuinely envious of these living conditions.

You should know that they are still in the 'bath tub' stage. Although they no longer lack water resources, they still have to find a way to boil hot water themselves.

"How do you handle wastewater here?" Zhan Zhouzhou looked around at the door for a while but couldn't find a drain.

Li Zheng pointed to the door next to him and said, "That's the composting workshop. The sewage outlet is directly connected here. After impurities are removed by special composting equipment, it is connected to the water purifier behind it, which realizes water circulation."

"Tsk~" Zhan Zhouzhou opened the door of the composting workshop and took a quick look, full of envy: "If capsule dwellings weren't untradeable, I would trade with you for this bathroom."

She then looked at the several uniquely designed modified capsules next to her and walked over curiously: "What good stuff is this... Wow~ You can even keep living things in your capsule residence!"

Upon seeing the two groups of domesticated creatures in the enclosure, the female warrior Zhan was completely stunned.

She had tried to catch a few live creatures and put them in her capsule home, but without exception, they all suffocated.

Unexpectedly, Li Zheng had already obtained the blueprints for modifying animals to be kept in captivity!
This is a bit much!
It's important to understand that obtaining this kind of modification often means that Li Zheng will never have to worry about food again, as the creatures he raises alone can sustain his daily needs.

"Oh right, I only recently got the animal pen blueprints, so I just kept a few small animals to play with." Li Zheng walked over and found the pack of forest wolves sitting in a neat row, staring longingly at the outside of the pen. When they saw Li Zheng, they all lowered their heads and whimpered.

Li Zheng then remembered that he hadn't fed the wolf pack and the rabbit pack today.

They casually gathered some feed and, together with Zhan Zhouzhou, threw some into the feeding trough to call the wolf pack over to eat.

At this time, the wolf pack still only had the alpha male as its sole offspring; the other wolves only watched as the wolf ate them without the wolf retaliating.

The pregnant she-wolf, though only pregnant for less than a day, was already too lazy to move. She lay in the corner of the pen, sniffing the aroma of the feed with her nostrils twitching, and then looked at the husky guarding her not far away.

The husky, who had been drooling over the delicious smell, suddenly felt a gaze fixed on it. It immediately lowered its head and cowered, only to find a mother wolf behind it.

"Woo..."

The moment their eyes met, it understood what the mother wolf meant. It shrank back, stood up, and sneaked into the center of the wolf pack like a thief.

After being forcefully squeezed by other wolves several times, it carried a mouthful of food to the mother wolf.

The mother wolf enjoyed her food without a care in the world, showing no intention of sharing it with the husky.

Seeing the wolf eating so enthusiastically, the husky cautiously approached the mother wolf and nudged her neck with its nose, showing a friendly and ingratiating manner.

The mother wolf glanced up at it, ignored it, and continued to eat the food in front of her.

The husky was overjoyed and lay down next to the mother wolf, gently rubbing its head against her belly.

"Is that a husky?"

These two unique individuals caught Zhan Zhouzhou's attention. She stood at the door for a while and looked at them with disgust: "They're really ugly. The white hair on their heads looks like a Mediterranean."

Looking at the husky's sycophantic behavior, Li Zheng laughed and said, "I named it Mediterranean."

"Yes, that's very apt."

Zhan Zhouzhou asked curiously, "Is the other one a wolf? Why are they so affectionate?"

As soon as the question was asked, Li Zheng's expression became a little unnatural.

What could he say?
Yesterday, in order to exhaust the husky, I gave it an aphrodisiac, which led to it accidentally getting pregnant?
Stop it!
How could he possibly say something so absurd?
"They're all canines, maybe they just hit it off." Li Zheng casually made up a story to cover up the matter, and gestured to the other side: "Come on, there's a vegetarian group over here, you might like them~ Om?" When he arrived at the Rongrong Rabbit enclosure, Li Zheng glanced inside, and the scene inside made his last word rise in pitch.

Five mutated individuals appeared among the originally grayish rabbits. Their fur had turned completely white, and they looked soft and fluffy, like a few small white clouds mixed into a large dark cloud.

On each of these white-haired rabbits, there were several fruit-like objects of different colors, ranging from two to five.

"This is... a mutation?"

Li Zheng was overjoyed. He hadn't expected that these rabbits, who hadn't been very helpful at first, would suddenly become so energetic, with five of them mutating at once!
He opened the animal pen, went inside, and dragged out a rabbit. After observing it carefully for a while, he discovered that this group of mutated Banyan Rabbits were all heading in the same direction.

Beneath the soft white fur grew eerie woody buds, with colorful fruits growing at their tips, resembling tiny lanterns of various colors, peeking out from beneath the white fur. Combined with the increased cuteness of the fur after it turned white, they were quite adorable.

New species (unnamed)

Grade: Gold

Rank: Common

Description: A new species born from the careful breeding of the Rongrong Rabbit through **(Is it necessary to display identity?)

Some of its internal blood vessels grow to the surface of its body and transform into wood-based substances, which can produce sweet fruits with different flavors.

Note: The taste and quantity of fruit are related to their living environment and the quality of their diet.

If the fruit is not removed for a long time after it ripens, the fruit itself will pick all of the fruit and eat them in order to continue to form new fruit.

Consuming these fruits will not affect the quality of the next batch.

"Goodness, are they going to produce and sell their own stock?"

Looking at the last message, Li Zheng wondered how frequently these fruits would condense. If it was fast enough, perhaps these mutated rabbits wouldn't need to be fed anymore; they could just eat the fruits that formed on their own.

"Mutation?" Zhan Zhouzhou asked, "These different rabbits are a new breed you cultivated?"

“Yes, although animals kept in animal pen can’t help in battle, they can be used to breed new species, and some unique individuals can even be kept as pets.” Li Zheng picked three colorful fruits from the rabbit and handed one to Zhan Zhouzhou: “Try it and see how it tastes.”

Both individuals possess the Eye of Preys series of abilities, and no toxicity indications were found in the fruit's properties, proving that it is safe to consume.

The fruit is small, about the size of a green jujube, with a smooth skin, bright color, and a pleasant fragrance when held under the nose.

It's hard to describe what kind of fruit it resembles, but it smells very natural.

I chipped the skin with my teeth and took a small bite; the texture was somewhat like a yellow-skinned apple.

It's not crispy, it's very sandy.

It's not as juicy as fruits like pears or watermelons, and its sweetness is also very mild.

However, this light flavor suited Li Zheng's taste perfectly. He didn't like sweets, and this fruit seemed to have been grown just to suit his taste.

Throw the remaining fruit into your mouth and chew it heartily. Since it comes from rabbits, it has no pits, so you won't experience the disappointment of getting a pit stuck in your throat like when eating jujubes or hawthorns.

"Delicious! Much better than honey fruit!"

After finishing the fruit in her hand, Zhan Zhouzhou licked her red lips and exclaimed, "The rabbits you raised are so well-behaved that they're almost heartbreaking to see them produce such delicious fruit!"

"How about it?" Li Zheng asked, "Do you want to keep one?"

"Keep one?" Zhan Zhouzhou's eyes lit up at first, then she said regretfully, "I'd like to, but unfortunately I don't have a pet enclosure. These rabbits don't look like they can fight. If I keep them as pets, they might die in some accident someday."

“No stable? No problem, I can modify it for you!” Li Zheng showed off his stable modification blueprints. “However, I’ll have to charge you a service fee for modifying your stable.”

Transaction fees!
Upon hearing these three words, Zhan Zhouzhou snapped out of her reverie of enjoying the delicious fruit and became wary of Li Zheng: "Given your usual way of doing things, I know you're going to ask for an exorbitant price again!"

"Do you really think I'm such a swindler?" Li Zheng was both amused and exasperated. He hadn't been ripping off any players from the Dragon Kingdom when it came to selling items, had he?
The price only multiplies several times when trading with foreign players...

"As the saying goes, no merchant is honest..."

When Zhan Zhouzhou said this, Li Zheng stared straight into her eyes, making her feel guilty.

When Matrix first started out, she offered much more aggressive prices than Li Zhengke when trading with others on channel 879.

"Don't look at me like that. In the first few days of the game, nobody knew what the survival difficulty would be like here. Of course, I had to collect everything that was useful to me at all costs."

Logically speaking, Zhan Zhouzhou's actions are the choice of a normal person.

If Li Zheng hadn't obtained that massive amount of snake grass needles, ensuring he wouldn't have to worry about food, he wouldn't have been so generous, giving away several snake grass needles—each one extremely valuable at the time—to anyone he liked.

That said, Li Zheng was able to get so many snake grass needles thanks to Luo Aimang.

If it hadn't helped others abuse their power within the matrix and used the matrix's properties to cultivate plants, Li Zheng wouldn't have ultimately benefited from it.

Thinking about this, Li Zheng suddenly realized that the treasure chest system accounted for 80% of his current achievements and strength.

The remaining two-tenths of the success was thanks to Romain Rolland...

The nearly 30,000 snake grass needles were only "used up" by the time the starting point was established and Li Zheng threw them all into the legion's warehouse.

Luo Aimang, such a kind person in the Touching Matrix!
"Here you go, the blueprints are right in front of you. You can see at a glance how much material you need." Li Zheng zoomed in on the page so Zhan Zhouzhou could see it more clearly. "I won't charge you extra for the service fee. For modifying a 3x3 animal pen, I'll charge you 100 grams of vibranium. If you want to expand the area, I'll charge an extra 100 grams of vibranium for every 1x1 increase. How about that?"

A nine-square-meter animal pen is more than enough to house two or three animals.

They only charge 100 grams of vibranium, which is really not expensive!
It wasn't that Li Zheng didn't want to further reduce the size of the animal pen; the main problem was that 3*3 was already the smallest area allowed by the blueprints.

This size also means that even if players have enough materials, they shouldn't expect to get Li Zheng to modify the animal pen.

Their capsule homes were already too small, and once the renovations were completed, they wouldn't even have anywhere to live.

"Then the price of these rabbits..." Zhan Zhouzhou looked at the few white rabbits hopping around in the animal pen and was indeed tempted.

"Delicious Fruit Rabbit?"

Li Zheng smiled kindly: "Then we'll have to discuss the price properly. As you know, the stock of Delicious Fruit Rabbits is not much to begin with, and the breeding process is highly uncertain. If we sell these few, I'm not even sure if we can breed the same breed again in the future."

Upon hearing this, Zhan Zhouzhou knew that Li Zheng was waiting for the right price to go up.

Huh~
man!

What a pig's trotter!
(End of this chapter)