Emerging from the side door, Ding Shi headed toward the vehicle dealership. He had only taken a few steps when someone called out to him, "Hey."
Ding Shi stopped and turned around. Standing there was a gorgeous woman—one meter seventy-five tall, fair-skinned and fit, with long legs and broad shoulders.
"Are you heading to Jibei Province?" she asked.
Ding Shi did not answer immediately. Pointing toward the banyan tree, the beauty explained, "I saw you over there earlier."
"Yes," Ding Shi replied. "I'm going to Jibei Province."
"I have a car," she said, "and there's one seat left."
"I only have forty yuan," Ding Shi said with regret.
"Money is an issue, but not the primary one," she replied, an inquiring look in her eyes. "What can you do? Or rather, what can you bring to the team?"
"Why approach me?" Ding Shi asked in return.
"I used to be a headhunter for Fortune 500 companies," she said. "I'm usually a good judge of character. Even though you're truly broke, you have a great mindset. I'm not sure yet whether you'll be useful to the team, but when I run into someone like you, I'm willing to spend some time getting to know them. Who knows? You might just be what the team needs."
"What kind of person does the team need?" Ding Shi asked.
"For example, wilderness survival experience, or the ability to forage and hunt. As you know, our journey is far too long. If we can't secure survival resources in the wild, it will be very hard to complete the quest."
"I don't know any of that," Ding Shi said regretfully. "But I can drive."
"Can you drive a manual?" she asked.
Ding Shi nodded. "Of course."
Her eyes lit up. "I'll take you over."
The two chatted as they walked. The beauty's name was Chu Yu. Chu was a relatively rare surname, ranking outside the top five hundred in the Hundred Family Surnames, though in Taiwan it ranked within the top two hundred or so. When Ding Shi asked where she had gotten the funds to buy a car, Chu Yu answered frankly: right at the start of the instance, she had traded twenty dao for four hundred instance coins.
Some players had destinations in adjacent counties only fifty kilometers away—a mere one-hour minibus ride. To those people, instance coins were practically useless scrap, so Chu Yu had already planned during the preparation phase to snap up their instance coins immediately.
Sure enough, as time went on, twenty dao could now only fetch a hundred instance coins.
With Ding Shi's forty yuan added, the team possessed 1,500 yuan in assets, which would be managed and allocated by the team leader, Chu Yu. Ding Shi felt rather self-conscious; on average, the others had contributed nearly four hundred yuan each, while he had only put in forty.
"I can exchange another fifty instance coins," Ding Shi offered.
Chu Yu replied, "No. What is the purpose of instance coins? It's to help players complete the instance more effectively. Currently, the team has 1,500 instance coins, which is enough for us to clear it. Even if you handed over another hundred instance coins, you would still be the smallest shareholder. Increasing your investment serves no practical purpose and might instead drag the team into a zero-sum game. If I contribute 510 and you contribute 500, when we both want the last sip of water, the one who gave 510 will think they're more entitled to it. But if you keep an even mindset and don't view your teammates as rivals, even having put in only forty, you'll still have every right to that last sip."
Ding Shi hadn't had much schooling, and it took quite a few brain cells to grasp what Chu Yu meant.
Chu Yu believed that the Returning Home instance required a team cooperating against the outside world, not one competing internally. The first thing she had done was eliminate any sense of superiority tied to the size of one's financial contribution. For example, if there were a hunter in the party who was skilled at hunting in the wild, under normal circumstances his voice and importance would carry more weight. Suppose the rules stipulated that no one was allowed to touch a member of the opposite sex's face, but the hunter couldn't resist, touched someone's face, and offered a sincere apology. The situation would become impossible to handle. Some would argue he should be forgiven just this once; others would insist on strict adherence to the rules; and someone else might wonder if they, too, could break the rules once and be forgiven.
Chu Yu had resolved to bind both the members and herself with explicit rules, rather than relying on other means to solve team conflicts—means that included debate, voting, and the like.
...
It was a brand-new, red, five-seater compact car—an "A-class" vehicle, which could roughly be understood as low on fuel consumption and tight on space. When Ding Shi and Chu Yu arrived, two men and a woman were sorting through cardboard boxes and shock-absorbent foam retrieved from trash bins.
Chu Yu clapped her hands to draw their attention. "Let me introduce someone. This is our new companion, Ding Shi."
"Hello, everyone," Ding Shi said.
"Wang Ritian."
"Here."
Hearing the name, Ding Shi felt a surge of respect. Ordinary people wouldn't dare bear such a name.
A burly man standing one meter ninety-eight walked over to shake Ding Shi's hand. Scratching his head sheepishly with an honest grin, he said, "I was supposed to be named Wang Hao, but when registering my household status, my dad was totally plastered and let the 'sun' character drop down." Today alone, he had already explained his name three times.
Ding Shi nodded. "That's great. It has real personality. I'm sure everyone will remember you because of it."
"Wang Kai," Chu Yu said.
Wang Kai was a bald man standing one meter seventy-eight. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, and tattoos covered his arms and back; one glance told you he was someone from the underworld. Shaking Ding Shi's hand, he said, "My friends all call me Brother Kai."
"Nice to meet you, Brother Kai," Ding Shi said.
Brother Kai clapped Ding Shi on the shoulder. "Good. From now on, you're my friend."
Chu Yu continued the introductions. "Mumu."
Mumu was a woman, one meter sixty tall, with short hair dyed yellow and purple, pretty facial features, and an alternative vibe. She extended her right hand, bent her middle finger down while keeping the other four fingers raised, and held up her hand toward Ding Shi in this idiosyncratic gesture.
Ding Shi instinctively tried to mimic the gesture with his own hand, only to find that his ring finger kept following his middle finger down.
Chu Yu said, "It is currently ten thirty in the morning. At eleven thirty, the supermarket will distribute boxed meals to people lining up at the relief window. We have one hour to prepare. Mumu, you and I will organize our route. The rest of you, gather as many cardboard boxes and styrofoam containers as possible. They can be used for camping in the wild, or as fuel."
"The supermarket actually hands out boxed meals?" Ding Shi asked in surprise.
Chu Yu looked at Brother Kai. Thumping his chest, Brother Kai said, "My moniker is Scout. I'm a private detective by trade, so I'm always digging for intel."
"But the instance said the NPCs are robots," Ding Shi said.
"Robots have two characteristics," Brother Kai said. "First, they respond to your questions in a formulaic manner. Second, they don't lie. As long as you ask enough questions, you can always uncover some useful information."
Ding Shi gave him a thumbs-up in admiration.
There were plenty of trash bins in the plaza, and Chu Yu had locked onto that resource immediately. She had first recruited Ritian from the crowd, valuing his physique and honest disposition. The second recruit was Brother Kai; while buying instance coins, Chu Yu had noticed Brother Kai chatting people up everywhere. Upon asking and learning his destination was Jibei Province, she invited him to join.
The third recruit was Mumu, who had brought her own capital into the group. Possessing five hundred instance coins, she had refused to sell them to Chu Yu and instead demanded to see the team members before ultimately deciding to join Chu Yu's squad.
Chu Yu had pocketed the massive sum and gone to inspect the cars, only to find that the system was being utterly ruthless: automatic cars generally had higher fuel consumption, and their prices were around thirty percent steeper.
It was already the year 2050, and ninety-nine percent of the cars on the market were automatics. Chu Yu, Ritian, and Mumu had no experience driving automatic cars, and while Brother Kai had taken his test for a manual license, he had driven automatics for ten years and lacked confidence in driving a manual smoothly.
The four of them had discussed whether to purchase an electric car. From the map, most charging stations were inside cities, with rarely any along the roadsides. Each recharge would require going into a city to locate a charging station and take several hours, making it impractical for people trying to make haste.
In the end, they had decided that Brother Kai would serve as the instructor and everyone would learn as they drove. Once up to speed, after all, there wasn't much difference between an automatic and a manual.
Chapter 40