American homeless people, surviving in the city

As Lin Qi made up his mind, the system pop-up disappeared like smoke.

Then, just like when he gained the [Bluster] ability, the string of characters [New Gold Rush] also turned into a stream of light and merged into Lin Qi's body.

A few seconds later, Lin Qi's body trembled.

Although he didn't feel any changes in his body, Lin Qi could still sense that he had indeed gained new abilities.

With a thought, he can, like the protagonist of the Assassin's Creed series, press [v] to mark high-value items in the surrounding area!

Unfortunately, compared to the abilities of the protagonist in Assassin's Creed, the abilities of the "New Gold Rush" are somewhat weaker. They can only mark items within a 15-meter radius, and can only mark one item of the highest value.

If he could use this skill indefinitely, or identify all high-value items, Lin Qi couldn't even imagine how awesome it would be to use it!

However, this skill is already practical enough for Lynch at the moment.

After Lin Qi made his choice, a new system notification popped up immediately:

[Congratulations to the survivor! You have successfully completed 3/3 of the basic wilderness survival mission!]

After completing the basic tasks, survivors should now possess the fundamental abilities to survive in the wilderness. However, the situation in the wilderness can change in an instant, so survivors must never let their guard down!

After completing the basic tasks, the system will unlock "Daily Tasks" for survivors!

Starting at 00:0 every day, survivors will have one opportunity to "apply for a daily task." The system will assign suitable tasks based on the survivor's current predicament to help them continue to survive in the wilderness!

After completing daily tasks, the system will award survivors with rewards of varying value based on the severity of the environment they were in when applying for the task!

If a survivor does not apply for a daily task on a given day, the application count can be accumulated, up to a maximum of three times.

[Today's daily task application count: 1/3!]

[Survivor's current environment: Unknown and dangerous environment. Survival difficulty: High!]

Oh?! So that's how the system tasks are obtained next.

However, the environment is determined to be... an unknown and dangerous environment. The system still can't understand that I'm currently in the city streets.

However, Lin Qi still agreed with the system's assessment of the survival difficulty of his environment as "high".

Since the survival difficulty is "high", according to the system's description, the rewards for accepting the mission at this time must be very generous.

Therefore, Lin Qi had no reason to delay.

With a thought, the number of times a task could be requested was randomly reset to zero, and then a new task window popped up:

You have used one of your daily application attempts.

[A new quest has been released: Clean chilblains! Quest objective: Clean the chilblains and surrounding tissue from your feet to reduce inflammation.]

In the cold winter, frostbite can be a ruthless killer for survivors. If left untreated, frostbite can lead to loss of mobility, and even the risk of blood inflammation and amputation!

[The living are requested to complete this task as soon as possible!]

After carefully reading the description of the new mission, Lin Qi understood.

Putting the future aside, his biggest problem right now is indeed the chilblains on his feet.

The chilblains on his feet tormented him all night, and even now, he can still feel the piercing pain with every step he takes.

Most of the time, his feet were numb from the cold wind, which was why he could ignore the stinging pain from the chilblains on his feet.

Even if the system didn't assign him any tasks, he planned to find some time to treat the chilblains on his feet.

The system has now issued the task at just the right time, which relieves Lin Qi of his worries and allows him to prioritize treating his frostbite.

As for the "Beginner Gold Miner" ability, which is also available once a day, Lynch believes there's no need to rush to use it.

The scanning range of the "Beginner Gold Miner" is only 15 meters, which is neither particularly short nor long.

In a vast city, the chances of finding a high-value item within a small circle with a radius of 15 meters are like finding a needle in a haystack.

Ideally, you should first roughly determine the possible locations of high-value items, and then use this skill to pinpoint their exact location.

But the real world isn't like some scavenging games where high-value items are always kept in wild safes, waiting to be taken.

After some thought, Lynch could only think that perhaps in Seattle's famous wealthy neighborhoods, such as the area where Bill Gates once lived, the Medina community on the west shore of Lake Washington, or the Clyde Hills community on the lake, it would be easier to find unclaimed high-value items.

But as a homeless man without any identity, he had no chance of getting into these communities.

If you force your way in, you'd be lucky to be kicked out by private security. Even if you were shot on the spot as an attacker, no one would care.

Aside from these affluent areas, Lynch couldn't think of anywhere else where it would be easy to find high-value items.

Therefore, instead of spending time searching the streets for the possibility of scanning high-value items, it's better to put this ability aside for now.

Prioritize completing new tasks. Once you've finished the new tasks, find a random place and test how the skills work.

Anyway, the skill cooldown refreshes every day, and there's plenty of time. Lin Qi had a good attitude and didn't care about the gains or losses of the day.

Having made up his mind, Lin Qi clutched the few dozen dollars he had left in his pocket and walked into a pharmacy on the street.

Based on his wilderness survival experience, Lynch knew quite a bit about how to treat frostbite.

For mild frostbite, with only some redness, swelling, and itching, you can apply petroleum jelly after cleaning the affected area and then bandage it with gauze.

But based on Lynch's physical sensations, the chilblains on his feet must have become quite severe. The affected areas might have broken open, or even developed blisters, turned black, and rotted.

In this situation, it is necessary to use a sterile blade or similar tool to clean away the necrotic tissue from the affected area, then disinfect with alcohol, apply antibiotic ointment, and finally bandage it.

Because the affected area had to be treated without anesthesia, the pain of the entire procedure was no less than that of Guan Yu undergoing bone-scraping surgery.

Lynch was confident he could grit his teeth and endure the pain of cleaning his frostbite, but he was more worried about not being able to buy the most crucial antibiotic ointment.

As expected, after approaching the pharmacy and consulting with the clerk, Lin Qi received the result he anticipated.

Street pharmacies don't sell antibiotics that can completely cure frostbite. Instead, they sell painkillers like ibuprofen, which are extremely cheap. You can buy a whole hundred tablets for just $4 or $5.

If you're willing to spend a little more money, $25-$40, you can also buy a super-sized package of 1000 pieces.

Lynch didn't want to rely on painkillers, which only treat the symptoms and not the root cause, to suppress his pain. So he bought only the most common 100-pill bottle of painkillers, along with tweezers, a knife, gauze, and iodine. Then he left the pharmacy and headed towards the greenbelt camp where he was staying.

Fortunately, the task only required cleaning the chilblains and reducing inflammation, not completely curing them.

Otherwise, without antibiotic ointment, this task would probably be very difficult to complete!