195: Chapter 191 Farm World Chronicles and Zhou Liang's drastic change in expression

Any streams with water, anything related to water, he didn't even want to touch.

The moment he confirmed it, the levitation force beneath his feet vanished abruptly.

Zhou Liang plummeted straight down from mid-air, wind rushing into his ears; before he could even scream, he crashed hard onto—

The grass.

Soft, slightly damp, and emitting a raw, grassy scent.

It didn't hurt.

Zhou Liang lay on the ground, unmoving.

In front of him was a blade of grass, with a dewdrop hanging from its tip.

He reached out and touched it.

The dewdrop shattered, and a chill spread along his fingertips.

A simple thatched cottage stood just ten steps away.

The yard, enclosed by a wooden fence, was small; on the left were three tilled plots of land, on the right stood a small stone-built well, and a hemp rope stretched between two bamboo poles served as a clothesline.

Zhou Liang climbed up from the ground.

He looked down at his feet.

Then—he stomped his foot.

A solid, real sensation.

A heavy, unswaying feeling with the unique resilience of soil traveled from the soles of his feet all the way to his knees.

It wasn't a deck.

It wasn't that unstable feeling of constant swaying amidst ocean waves.

It was ground.

It was land.

"Land..."

He crouched down and grabbed a handful of grass.

Crushed juices squeezed between his fingers, and the raw scent rushed into his nasal cavity.

His palms were stained with traces of soil—dark brown and damp.

A gust of wind swept across the distant plains, causing waves of green to surge and roll toward the horizon.

The wind blew against his face.

It was different from the sea breeze of the Magic Sea.

There was no salty, fishy smell.

It was the scent of grass, the scent of soil, and a faint hint of floral fragrance.

For a moment, he actually couldn't distinguish between reality and virtuality.

No, not just for a moment; even if he deliberately tried to distinguish them now, he couldn't find a single trace of falseness in the world before him.

A completely real continent.

For a fleeting second, he wondered if the Fate Master had pulled a fast one on them.

Perhaps he found a real world, and fearing it might scare them, told them it was virtual reality, a game world, just to let everyone adapt first?

But he immediately shook his head; how could that be?

There was no land above the Magic Sea.

Even if the Fate Master were a god, he couldn't create a continent out of thin air.

Zhou Liang stood there and took a deep breath.

Then he exhaled heavily.

Even knowing this was just a game, he almost shed tears.

He quickly pushed open the wooden gate of the yard and walked into his thatched cottage.

The house was not big.

Pushing the door open revealed a square main room with a square table and four benches.

Several items were placed on the table.

Three bags of seeds packed in coarse cloth sacks, two vegetable seedlings with soil on them, and six eggs, neatly arranged in a small bamboo basket.

The seed bags were labeled: Radish, Cabbage, Pumpkin.

The seedlings were green onions.

He walked around to the kitchen on the right side.

A stove, water vat, cutting board, and kitchen knife—everything was fully equipped.

A small pile of dry grass for kindling was stacked in the stove, and a few pieces of split firewood were piled against the wall nearby.

Then he walked around the outside to the left—the bedroom.

A wooden bed, covered with a dry grass mat, and a thin, coarse cloth quilt folded on top.

There was a simple wooden rack at the head of the bed, with a straw hat hanging on it.

A pale blue light point was embedded in the wall at the foot of the bed—that was the exit marker.

A line of small text floated beside it: [Lie on the bed to exit the Farm Realm.]

Zhou Liang walked through the entire thatched cottage, inside and out.

He figured it out.

This was exactly like those farming games where you plant and steal vegetables from before his Transmigration.

Except it wasn't 2D, it wasn't on a phone, and it wasn't flat, small square plots paired with cartoon vegetables.

It was real.

A real farm, virtual reality, with wind, light, tactile sensations, and smells, where one could walk barefoot in the mud.

After figuring out the operation of the game interface, he discovered more information.

The farm had a Rank, from one to ten, which was upgraded based on the comprehensive assessment of house renovations, land reclamation, and crop and poultry output.

He could consume karma points on the Farm Realm game interface to exchange for Little Green Water, accelerating the growth cycle of crops and poultry.

He could steal mature vegetables and poultry output from other players' farms.

Getting caught would result in being labeled a "Vegetable Thief," and those with the label would be denied teleportation by farms of the same Rank or higher that were equipped with guard dogs.

To remove the label, one had to offer equivalent crops as an apology.

Higher-Rank farms had an exemption from detection when stealing from lower-Rank farms, with a varying number of daily uses.

The farm had an automatic garden-closing function; the System would evaluate the player's real-time situation twenty-four hours a day and close the garden at any time.

Once closed, the farm could not be selected for theft.

Zhou Liang read through them one by one.

All the previous information was game-play info for this Farm Realm, and Zhou Liang nodded repeatedly as he read.

When he saw the last piece of information, his eyes lit up.

The last piece of information was quite substantial, long, and detailed.

After reading it carefully, he understood that it meant the Farm Realm would use information from the Fate Platform to perform a real-time, all-weather assessment of the player's current status.

If the Survivor was in a situation where they couldn't get away, the manor would automatically close, preventing others from teleporting in to steal.

This was to avoid letting playing the Farm Realm game affect life in the Magic Sea reality.

Simply put, for example, if he was working, patrolling, hunting beasts, fighting in an Individual Sequence Contest, or if some disaster occurred nearby, or if something happened that he couldn't leave, that player's farm could not be stolen from.

This rule information resolved the faint worry that had indeed existed in Zhou Liang's heart just moments ago.

Because the Magic Sea was different from the Earth Star before his Transmigration; daily beast hunting, patrolling, and the Individual Sequence Contest were all top-priority, major events that one could not simply walk away from at any time.

So if he were doing these things while other Survivors were playing the Farm Realm, wouldn't his still-unprotected Rank 1 garden directly become a warehouse for others to stock up?

With his only concern alleviated, Zhou Liang secretly marveled that the Fate Master truly left nothing to chance, then rubbed his hands together.

"Let's farm first."

He picked up the radish seed bag from the table and walked to the tilled plots on the left side of the yard.

The System popped up step-by-step planting instructions—the spacing for digging holes, the depth for sowing, the thickness of the soil covering, and the amount of water to use; everything was detailed.

Following the instructions, Zhou Liang sowed the radish seeds one by one.

Then the cabbage.

Then the pumpkin.

Finally, he transplanted the two green onion seedlings to the corner of the field.

He drew four buckets of water from the well and poured it scoop by scoop onto the newly sown fields.

The water seeped into the soil, and the color of the dirt deepened.

He didn't touch the six eggs for the time being.

The System prompted that he needed to build a simple chicken coop first to hatch them.

He glanced at the Materials requirements.

Wooden planks, dry grass, and an estimated twenty minutes of construction time.

Simple.

He went to the meadow outside the fence and cut an armful of dry grass, then walked a bit further to find a few thin trees near the edge of the forest that could be chopped down.

He chopped them into planks one axe stroke at a time, carried them back, and built a waist-high chicken coop according to the System blueprint.

He put the six eggs inside, spread dry grass over them, and covered them up.

The System prompted: [Eggs are hatching; estimated natural hatching time: 21 days. Consume 1 karma point to double the hatching speed.]

Zhou Liang hesitated for a second—no speed-up.

Let them hatch naturally for now.

For a Bronze Grade Survivor like him, every single karma point was precious.

After dealing with the eggs, he looked at the fence again.

It was too short.

The wooden fence only reached his waist and was sparse, with gaps large enough for a child to crawl through.

It wasn't safe.

If other players came to steal vegetables, this fence would be as good as non-existent.

He immediately went to the forest edge twice more to cut wood, raised the fence to chest height, and filled in all the gaps with broken wooden strips to make it dense.

He also added a horizontal bolt to the inside of the gate.

Then came the kitchen.

There was too little kindling in the stove, so he chopped another pile of firewood and stacked it next to the stove.

Then the bedroom.

He took apart the dry grass mat and relaid it to be thicker, and spent 0.2 karma points from the System store to exchange for a cotton sheet to spread on top.

Finally, he stood in the center of the yard, hands on his hips, and scanned the farm he had just tidied up.

The fields were neat, the seeds were sown.

Watered.

The chicken coop was built.

The fence was reinforced.

The firewood was chopped.

The bed was made comfortable.

A strange... sense of satisfaction welled up.

It was different from the sense of accomplishment from hunting sea beasts.

It was also different from the excitement of winning a Sequence Battle.

It was that kind of—after honestly doing a day's farm work, standing in one's own yard and seeing everything in perfect order—a grounded sense of security.

Zhou Liang stood there blankly for a minute.

The sound of wind came from the distant grasslands.

Blue sky and white clouds.

Green grass swaying.

He took a deep breath.

Then, he was suddenly jolted—he glanced at the System time on the Farm Realm game interface.

It now showed a little past six in the afternoon; when he came in, he had specifically checked the time, and it was a little past two.

In other words, he had stayed in this Farm Realm for nearly four hours.

He had entered from reality at 7:30 in the evening.

He had to go on patrol at 9:30.

It was past—over an hour!

Zhou Liang's expression changed drastically, and he turned and rushed toward the thatched cottage bedroom.

He dove onto the bed, pulled the quilt up to his chin, and with trembling fingers, tapped the popped-up [Exit Farm Realm] button.