Train Survival: You're really trying to survive!

Su Li and Zheng Hongyuan discussed the supplies. The amount sent wasn't much, far from enough for Su Li to build the various functional rooms.

Seeing this as a good opportunity, Su Li asked, "I also have some deals to make. I wonder if you'd be interested?"

"Oh? Tell me?"

Su Li listed out her [Joke Dagger (Black Iron Grade)] and her fertilizer [Abundant Quantity].

As soon as these two appeared, Zheng Hongyuan immediately sat up straight.

"We can accept the joke dagger. You're short on silver ingots right now, aren't you? We can give you 200 units of silver ingots. That's plenty. Do you have the recipe?"

Su Li replied, "We have the recipe. Five portions of Black Iron-grade monster meat can make one large batch."

“Is that so…” Zheng Hongyuan slowly sat down. “Five catties of monster meat, that’s more than enough for one serving…”

"We've obtained the 'Quantity More' item before. Similar items include 'Grow Faster,' 'Fewer Illnesses,' and 'Big Fruit,' among others."

"The yield is greatly increased. When used on non-superior plants, the yield will increase tenfold. When used on black iron-grade plants, the yield will increase threefold."

Zheng Hongyuan stroked his chin, beginning to consider the pros and cons of the transaction.

After thinking for a long time, Zheng Hongyuan opened the manual again and talked with the others.

After a while, Zheng Hongyuan closed the manual. Then he said, "We really need a lot of Liangduo right now. Here's what we'll do: we'll provide the materials, and you can make them. We need a total of 1 Liangduo. In return, we'll cover all the materials on this list, except for the materials for making equipment and furniture. But you'll have to pay for your own Survival Coins. We've almost used up all our Survival Coins buying those World Fragments. Our own team also needs to be upgraded, so please understand."

The Blue Star government's forces had ample supplies, but these were limited to basic resources like iron ore, silver ingots, and gold ingots. They also lacked elemental fragments.

Su Li's mouth dropped open. They've got all of this?

Su Li calculated the materials needed: a complete set would require 1800 wood, 1100 iron ingots, 1500 copper ingots, 1500 stone, 900 silver ingots, and 390 gold ingots, averaging about 230 elemental fragments per element. Furthermore, if Su Li were to supply the materials herself, she would need over 200 lower-grade magic energy crystals to synthesize these elemental fragments into higher-grade elemental crystals.

Gold ingots and magic crystals are extremely scarce right now. And all Su Li needs to do is click a few times on the equipment.

If Su Li provides the materials himself, he will be short of iron ingots, silver ingots, gold ingots, and magic crystals.

Su Li readily agreed to this good deal: "Deal, but are you really that short of fertilizer?"

Su Li originally thought she would just exchange some materials, but she never expected to be able to exchange so many.

What does this mean? It means that the Blue Star government has a huge food shortage.

"Yes. We are currently facing a severe food shortage," Zheng Hongyuan said directly, without hiding anything.

"According to our statistics, there are approximately 7 million surviving players. Of course, this figure does not include the young children in the system's care."

“Sulli, you are willing to continue exploring the fragments of the world, but for many people, they would rather give up their player identity and become an ordinary person.”

Zheng Hongyuan sighed, "Now, as long as you pay some contribution points, you can give up your player status. And contribution points are relatively easy to obtain."

Besides contributing the world's origin and civilization's essence, providing resources to Blue Star City, actively participating in civilization's development, and engaging in cultural creation will also earn you some contributions. The submitted resources will serve as capital for the construction of Blue Star City.

"Little by little, players will accumulate enough contribution points to give up their player status once they have submitted enough resources."

"We speculate that after several explorations, there will be a large number of Blue Star people in Blue Star City who have given up their player identities. Without exploration capabilities, how will these people make a living? They can only rely on farming."

Su Li interjected at this moment, "What about the foundation of civilization? If everyone gives up their player identity, who will acquire the foundation of civilization to maintain the flame of civilization?"

"The lives, constructions, and cultural creations of the inhabitants of a civilization can continuously produce the civilization's essence, but it can only be restored, not raised to its limit."

"The foundation of a civilization is its energy level. When the energy limit is raised to a certain level, various special abilities can be unlocked, and these special abilities require continuous energy consumption to maintain."

The world's origins brought by explorers can raise the upper limit of energy; the construction, cultural creation, and daily life activities of non-explorers are equivalent to continuously regenerating energy.

With that explained, Su Li understood. Giving up the player identity was essentially switching from a survival game to a farming game, except that the tech tree in this farming game depended on the explorer's progress.

The orthodox gameplay involves explorers constantly exploring the world and bringing back its origins, while farming players provide support from the rear.

This is a crooked farming gameplay where you don't explore, but instead use items to secretly attack other civilizations, plunder their cultural heritage, and raise the ceiling of your own civilization.

Su Li couldn't help but ask, "This is like adding a new gameplay mode. Why wasn't this mode available from the beginning?"

Zheng Hongyuan explained, "Because this is a mid-game mode. According to the setting, it should be unlocked when all players in the civilization reach level 5. Now that our civilization has perished and is being rebuilt, it's like we've unlocked this mode ahead of time."

After explaining the background information, Zheng Hongyuan continued, "Losing the player's identity also means losing all the conveniences provided by the Eternal System. One of these is the rapid growth of crops."

"Take wheat as an example. Its normal growth cycle is about 240 days. However, with the blessing of the Eternal Game, wheat only needs less than 10 days to grow."

"Without the support of the Eternal Game, if we plant crops in the newly acquired world fragments, we have to wait patiently for 240 days to get the first season of wheat. Even planting potatoes will take about 120 days."

Su Li realized the seriousness of the situation. Don't be fooled by the amount of meat Su Li had; it was because he was, after all, a high-level player ranked 49th on the leaderboard.

In the chat room Su Li had been in, people rarely talked about food. That was because the chat room was filled with skilled, cheat-like players who had survived multiple server merges and were practically brainwashed. Players who couldn't even afford basic necessities were long gone.

Many players are still at Train Level 1, below Level 2, sometimes starving, sometimes only having a few days' worth of food, and have survived until now by relying on items, luck, and escaping.

Otherwise, how could more than 90 billion people have died in just a few weeks?

Exploring the world will definitely become increasingly difficult. For players struggling to make ends meet, exploring the world is a near-death experience. Giving up their player status means they'll only need to focus on basic survival. They will definitely choose to give up their player status.

The United Government of Earth will not allow these Earthlings to abandon their player identities. When people are starving, they'll eat themselves; what wouldn't they do? This poses a huge security risk.

Once their basic needs are met, these players can unleash their surplus value, better support the explorers, and better build the Blue Star civilization.

Zurich's abundant supply can help them just fine.

The system provides crops; one seed can produce one unit of crop. According to the system's standards, one unit of these staple foods equals 10 jin (approximately 1 catties).

One serving of this product can increase the yield of a single unit of ordinary crop by 10 times.

To put it in perspective, that's 5 pounds of meat for 90 pounds of staple food. Ignoring magical energy cultivation and just considering filling your stomach, it's definitely a good deal.

Not to mention, besides the fruits for humans to eat, straw can also be used to feed animals.

With 1 portions of food, combined with the fertilizer they got from another player that grows faster [shortening the growth time by half], they can harvest 900 tons of food in 60 days. Adding this to the food they already had stockpiled, it will be enough to keep everyone going until the first batch of food is ready for harvest.

"The deal is done!"