A ten percent strength boost.
What kind of black tech was this now?
Then again, was this thing supposed to be candy or a stimulant?
Chu Guang had no idea what was in it; the wrapper had neither a production date nor an ingredients list.
"And the duration is actually ten hours."
A ten percent buff looked pretty decent. In a crucial moment, even an extra tenth of strength was enough to turn the tide of battle.
It was just that sucking on a lollipop right before going into combat...
...clashed a bit with his image as an iron-blooded, Daniel Wu–tier tough guy.
Besides, when exactly the effect would kick in was another unknown.
After thinking it over, Chu Guang decided to put it away for now.
Having one more trump card in hand was never a bad thing.
...
Early the next morning.
The players logged on right on schedule.
Even though their real-world jobs during the day were exhausting as hell, the moment they logged on, their fatigue vanished completely. Every single one was brimming with energy and raring to go.
Fleeting White Horse's cement kiln had dried out completely.
He and Gale Force 8 made a trip to the construction site marked on the map, hauling dozens of kilograms of limestone back on a cart. Then they went down to the river to haul up several large buckets of clay and sand, grunting and sweating as they began their first trial firing of Portland cement.
In reality, the formula for ordinary Portland cement was publicly available on the internet.
Simply put, one crushed limestone and mixed it with clay and iron filings in specific proportions, then calcined the mixture in a specialized kiln heated to 1,450 degrees Celsius.
The cement clinker prepared through this method needed only sand and water added to it to form cement mortar that could be used in construction.
With the help of professional websites, one could even look up the specific material proportions for different kinds of cement according to construction requirements.
As long as one did their homework before getting into the game, it was far easier than transmigrating to ancient times and fumbling around from scratch.
Considering it was his first time doing this, Fleeting White Horse chose the simplest recipe. It was not too demanding on materials and could just barely be managed under the outpost's current conditions.
Relying on his "innate brute strength," he swung the hammer to smash the stones gathered from the construction site as finely as possible, mixed them with clay and iron filings reduced with charcoal, and loaded the whole batch into the newly finished kiln.
The charcoal was lit.
Pale smoke drifted up.
Fang Chang was enthusiastically lending a hand nearby, twirling the sticks tied to a clay disc—this was a crude blower made of a water pipe, bark, and cotton cord, capable of pumping a large volume of air into the kiln to make the charcoal burn even hotter.
"How are we supposed to tell the temperature inside the kiln?"
"No idea."
"No idea???"
"What do you expect? You got an industrial thermometer? Stop whining, just pump that blower harder and blast air in! Ah... if only we could get our hands on a generator."
"..."
Fleeting White Horse stroked his chin and sighed, leaving Fang Chang rather speechless.
This guy.
Ever since becoming the "construction captain," he really acted more and more like a site foreman.
While twirling the sticks, his mind wandered, wondering where those two animals, Gale Force 8 and Ye Shi, had run off to...
In truth, not only did the two of them not know, but even Chu Guang, as the manager, had no idea either.
Though he could confirm through the system whether players were online or offline, along with their general direction and distance, he could not pinpoint their exact coordinates.
At least, not yet.
Just as Chu Guang was wondering what those two players were up to, however, he saw them walking over carrying a bucket.
"Where did you two go?"
Faced with the manager's inquiry, Gale Force 8 answered truthfully.
"Near the mutant leech nest."
Chu Guang knitted his brows.
"Didn't I tell you not to go there?"
"We didn't go inside. We just set traps near the nest... Look, these are mutant leech larvae."
Before Gale Force 8 could speak, Ye Shi, seeing the manager's displeasure and terrified that hesitation would cost him favorability points, hastily set the plastic bucket on the ground and began explaining.
Chu Guang glanced into the bucket and saw several glass bottles containing palm-sized larvae.
Their bodies were contorted as they extended and retracted deformed mouthparts, writhing and burrowing over one another in a tangled mass that looked remarkably like tentacles straight out of an adult doujinshi.
"Interesting... How did you pull that off?"
Back when he was in Bet Street, he had never heard of anyone catching these things.
While mutant insects were rich in protein, their parasite load was correspondingly high, and those parasites weren't the kind you could kill just by boiling them in a pot for a while.
Coupled with their specialized habitat, the fact that they rarely moved alone, and their unpredictable combat capability, few survivors ever showed any interest in them.
"Blood! We used animal blood to lure them into glass bottles with bait inside. The big leeches couldn't squeeze in, and once the small ones wriggled inside, they couldn't get out!"
Ye Shi explained excitedly, while Gale Force 8 added a couple of details from the side:
"These mutant leeches seem to feed at night and retreat to their nest come daybreak. Apart from a few bottles that got crushed, these little guys were all trapped inside. I only meant to test the idea, but it worked surprisingly well."
Chu Guang stroked his chin and nodded.
"I see... That really is a clever idea."
No wonder Gale Force 8 had asked him for a bit of game meat yesterday—so he had intended to use it as bait to catch juvenile mutant leeches?
Only...
"...What do you plan to do with them?"
Chu Guang looked at Gale Force 8 and pressed on.
"I don't know about normal leeches, but mutant leeches are definitely inedible."
"I wasn't looking for a way to eat them. I plan to use them for fishing."
"Fishing?"
"Yeah." Gale Force 8 nodded, looking slightly excited. "When I scouted the lake shore before, I saw some large black birds catching fish on the water! Since there are fish in the lake, we can get food by fishing!"
What a brilliant idea!
Chu Guang's eyes lit up immediately upon hearing Gale Force 8's words.
It wasn't that he hadn't tried fishing before; after all, compared to hunting, fishing carried far fewer risks.
It was just that his fishing skills were truly hard to put into words. Even with proper tackle and bait, he could barely catch anything, let alone without them.
In fact, it wasn't entirely his fault. If fish were that easy to catch, why hadn't survivors settled along the lake?
The fish in Ling Lake were themselves mutated organisms—what the survivors called "mutants."
After several failed attempts that ended up costing him the tackle he had spent so much time making, Chu Guang had given up on it.
"Do you know how to fish?"
Faced with the manager's question, Gale Force 8 froze for a second before answering:
"No... but I looked up fish traps online, and I plan to try making a few."
Though he wasn't sure whether the NPC could understand what "looked it up online" meant, the NPC hadn't reacted at all when they discussed real-world matters in previous conversations. Gale Force 8 assumed the program was coded to automatically filter out such remarks, so he simply spoke his mind.
Chu Guang was overjoyed inside, but maintained an impassive nod on the outside.
"All right. Since you know how to catch fish, I'll leave this to you!"
Having received their order, Gale Force 8 and Ye Shi immediately ran off to make traps.
Catching fish was way more fun than hauling bricks and chopping trees!
Chu Guang watched them gather some branches and plastic twine scavenged from who-knew-where, squatting near the corner of the wall to tinker away.
Leaving them to it, Chu Guang now had to figure out how to smoke meat using the tobacco leaves he had bought.
Yesterday, following the method used by the survivors of Bet Street, he had crushed the tobacco leaves, coated the meat with them, and slowly roasted it over firewood so the ketone- and alcohol-rich tar from the leaves would seep into the fatty layer of the meat to kill off parasites and microorganisms...
Yet, whether it was just his imagination or not, why did it smell slightly foul?
"This shouldn't be happening..."
Picking up a piece of hind leg meat and sniffing it closely, Chu Guang frowned.
Under normal circumstances, meat smoked this way should carry a scent of nicotine, its surface bearing a golden-brown, greasy sheen.
However, the piece of hind leg meat in his hand was visibly dark red, cooked on the outside but raw on the inside, and carried a faint stench of rot.
"Did I get the method wrong?"
Chapter 22