A Post-Apocalyptic Journey to Another World

"I don't want gold!"

Huang Lin's words stunned everyone present: No gold? Barter? Isn't that redundant?

Huang Lin's next sentence plunged everyone into silence.

"I want the crystals that appeared on the bodies of those monsters after they died!"

One sentence drew everyone's attention to Huang Lin and Zhang Xi, who was shrouded in black robes. There was surprise, confusion, and apprehension. People are always filled with curiosity and unease about the unknown and mysterious.

After the monsters died, without exception, they dropped a glass-like crystal. Rumor has it that scientists analyzed this crystal and concluded that it contained a form of energy, different from known forms of energy such as electricity and magnetism. This was a new and wondrous form of energy never before seen.

However, this energy is difficult to utilize; once extracted from the crystal, it quickly dissipates into space, making it difficult to collect and control on a large scale. Currently, scientists have only managed to light a light bulb using a single crystal.

Everyone was certain these crystals had value, but what that value was remained unclear. At best, they were merely pretty ornaments containing a small amount of energy. Huang Lin's request for them had aroused everyone's suspicion. Huang Lin offered no explanation, fully displaying his charlatan nature of feigning profundity.

"Playing tricks!" The voices of a pair of university teachers and students broke the silence, but everyone seemed not to hear them. If anyone in the room looked down on Huang Lin the most, it would be the intellectuals.

Lu Haonan glanced sideways at the teacher and student, then turned back tentatively and said, "Master, my brothers... my employees have all collected these things. They're not really of any use to me anyway, so I'll just give them all to you. I just don't know what you'll use them for?"

"It's unspeakable, it's unspeakable." Huang Lin kept it a secret. In fact, he himself didn't know what they were for, since he didn't want them. The cigarettes, alcohol, and medicines were prepared by Zhang Xi when he purchased them a few months ago. As someone who had been reborn, even if he had no business acumen, he would still prepare some of these scarce items.

Seeing the still puzzled looks on everyone's faces, Huang Lin felt very satisfied. He was the kind of person who loved whatever he did. The reason he became a charlatan was partly because it was easy to make money, and partly because of his wicked pleasure in pretending to be a ghost. He then said, "Mr. Lü, when the time is right, you will naturally find out."

Lu Haonan immediately nodded and gave a look to one of his henchmen standing behind him, who immediately left. At the same time, a soldier behind Li Xianda also left.

Over the next few hours, everyone brought out their belongings to trade with each other. This gathering, to put it bluntly, was a black market transaction primarily focused on underground arms dealing. Li Xianda, as the son of the police chief and the division's quartermaster, naturally became the main character due to his potential access to good guns. The entire Pingyuan City now had a population of over 30 million, but the total number of firearms, new and old, was only a few hundred thousand. That's an average of one gun for every fifty-odd people, and ammunition was even scarcer.

On the one hand, gun production bases had also been attacked by monsters to varying degrees, making full production impossible; on the other hand, there were concerns about a gun oversupply. Within the government, two factions were at odds: one advocated for arming the entire population, while the other prioritized maintaining stability, starting with small-scale arming as a pilot program. Neither side could convince the other, resulting in a stalemate.

Furthermore, since the power to distribute firearms is concentrated in the hands of a few, embezzlement, misappropriation, and extortion are these people's forte. They simply use their power to take out a portion of the firearms to sell and line their own pockets. In private transactions, there is naturally some debate about the value. Huang Lin, Li Xianda, and Lü Haonan negotiated the price, while the others argued about the price of the items they had brought.

Zhang Xi silently gazed at the Horadric Cube in his sea of ​​consciousness. The amazing thing about the card treasures was that they could be stored in Zhang Xi's sea of ​​consciousness at any time, as if they had no physical form. It was this cube that made Zhang Xi decide to collect elemental energy crystals.

Elemental crystals are currently of little use. Although they replaced gold as the hard currency after the Great Cataclysm, and humans can absorb their elemental energy through special energy-gathering arrays to increase their strength, the monsters invading Earth are currently too low-level, making their crystals invaluable. Ordinary level one crystals don't store much elemental energy and are extremely impure. They are also quite large, each about the size of a little finger, taking up a lot of space.

Furthermore, the current space environment on Earth is not suitable for using energy-gathering arrays to absorb crystalline elemental energy. Zhang Xi's numerous attempts have all ended in failure, and it is estimated that it will not be possible until after the Great Cataclysm. Finding special, temporary energy gathering points in the wild, like refining a powerful potion, and absorbing them for an hour or two would be largely pointless, and would be extremely dangerous without anyone guarding it.

During an experiment with the Horadric Cube, Zhang Xi discovered that the box could upgrade the Elemental Crystal. This was an incredible surprise.

In the previous life, it wasn't until five years after the Great Cataclysm that scientists achieved the fusion of crystals, and only the fusion itself; they fused many small, first-level crystals into one large piece to generate electricity.

Crystallization fusion can only occur between elements of the same level. Due to the different levels of impurity in the elemental energy, elements of the first level can only fuse with elements of the first level, and elements of the second level can only fuse with elements of the second level.

However, the Horadric Cube can fuse ten level 1 cubes into one level 2 cube!

In the previous life, the best elemental energy crystals used for cultivation were of level four or higher. Elemental energy below level four was too impure, resulting in very poor cultivation effects. The only way to obtain high-level crystals was to kill higher-level monsters, which is why high-level crystals were very expensive.

As the transaction neared its end, Lü Haonan's henchmen and Li Xianda's subordinates returned to the venue with a large bag. However, this time, Lü Haonan suffered a loss in purchasing power for the first time; he collected almost all first-level crystals, with only a small amount of second-level ones.

Li Xianda, on the other hand, brought mostly level-two crystals, with a few even reaching level-three. As the person in charge of supplies, Li Xianda received a large quantity of these crystals daily for storage. Furthermore, given that the soldiers were fighting on the front lines against many high-level monsters, it wasn't surprising that he brought out even better and more numerous crystals.

In the end, Li Xianda bought almost all the cigarettes and alcohol. Fortunately, he wasn't interested in the medicine, so Lü Haonan didn't leave empty-handed. The gathering ended quickly afterward, with everyone leaving in batches at different times to avoid attracting attention.

Zhang Xi and Huang Lin chose to leave last. Before leaving, Zhang Xi took out a talisman with a red pattern resembling a magic array drawn on it. Huang Lin was both puzzled and delighted upon seeing it, suppressing his excitement as he waited for Zhang Xi to continue. Zhang Xi didn't waste any words and said to Huang Lin, "This is our cultivation array. I am now passing it on to you, but remember, you must not pass it on to anyone else. This array will only take effect after six months, when the weather changes drastically."

Huang Lin took the yellow paper with both hands, knelt down with a thud, kowtowed and cried out, "Master!" Zhang Xi reached out to stop him and said, "I will not take on any disciples for now. We are destined to meet. You should cultivate this formation carefully and remember my words. We can only do so after six months when the situation changes drastically."

"I've remembered it," Huang Lin said, quickly kowtowing three times.

Zhang Xi gave Huang Lin an energy-gathering array for absorbing crystalline elemental energy for cultivation. He then explained some precautions to Huang Lin regarding the array. This energy-gathering array wasn't anything particularly profound; scientists had developed it a year after the Great Cataclysm, and it quickly spread.

Zhang Xi rewarded Huang Lin for his dedication and hard work by giving him a year's head start. Moreover, Zhang Xi had a feeling that Huang Lin would be very useful in the future.

(P.S.: If you think the book is alright, please give me two recommendation votes. I'm so jealous seeing other books with similar word counts getting thousands of votes! Also, I saw someone mention "brushing" in the reader impressions? Is this a sarcastic remark about my book's low numbers? It's probably the opposite of what "brushing" would result in such low numbers!)

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