You Saved Our Whole Family

Chu Guang hadn't paid much attention to what expression Yaya wore when she stepped into the mutant leech nest. However, when she reappeared at the warehouse door carrying a large sack of mushrooms, her soot-stained face beamed with unmistakable joy. Looking at the hemp sack stuffed full of blue mushrooms, Chu Guang couldn't help but sound a little surprised. "So many?" Heaving heavy breaths, Yaya nodded vigorously and chuckled. "I went in three times! I almost got bitten, hehe." Chu Guang was speechless. *Three times?!* That was reckless beyond measure. He certainly wouldn't have dared. After weighing it, the sack of mushrooms came to seventy kilograms in total. This number vastly exceeded Chu Guang's expectations. By his original estimate, picking forty to fifty kilograms would have been pushing the limit, yet she had managed seventy. "That's 560 copper coins in total, equivalent to 56 silver coins. On top of that, 700 contribution points..." *Am I giving her too much?* *Forget it.* She had risked her life to earn it, after all. Hearing the numbers from the manager's mouth, Yaya leaped with excitement, pumping her fists in the air. "Nice!" "I'm rich, hahaha!" Chu Guang twitched. *I know I'm an NPC to you, but could you please find a private corner to celebrate?* A single silver coin was less than two millimeters thick; a stack of fifty stood about nine to ten centimeters tall, barely a drop in the ocean compared to the shelter's small treasury. Having collected her reward, Yaya hummed a tune and cheerfully skipped away. Chu Guang remained standing at the warehouse entrance, rubbing his chin in thought. Right now, the wealthiest players were likely Lao Bai and Fang Chang's group. In terms of both combat power and game comprehension, they sat firmly in the top tier. Lately, they had been hunting continuously and had mapped out nearly all the areas nearby with the highest game activity. Their daily earnings had climbed from 52 silver coins to a peak of 100. Even if hunting income fluctuated, they must have amassed a tidy sum over the past few days. For security reasons, Chu Guang inspected the players' storage lockers daily. Barring any surprises, the Cow and Horse Squad would be able to pool 200 silver coins today to buy the plot of land closest to the respawn point. Aside from them, other players' savings were steadily climbing as well. Even after spending on wooden weapons, iron weapons, leather armor, winter coats, tools, and food, even the poorest players held at least ten silver coins. *Perhaps I should update the 'bank' feature.* That way, it wouldn't just free up the players' storage space; it would also allow him to recirculate the silver coins they deposited. The more Chu Guang thought about it, the more sense it made. He immediately pulled out the small notebook from his pocket and jotted it down. Once an opportunity presented itself, this feature had to be implemented! ... While storing the mushrooms in the warehouse, Chu Guang took the opportunity to tally the inventory. Excluding the portion traded away to the Red River Town merchant, the remaining smoked meat was close to 700 kilograms. Factoring out daily consumption, about 100 to 200 kilograms entered the warehouse every day, with more than half contributed by the Cow and Horse Squad. Today was already the 20th. If luck wasn't too terrible, the stockpile could reach 2,000 kilograms by the end of the month. Trading half of that for grain and tubers would yield at least five tons or so. Calculated at four liang of meat and seven liang of rice per person per day, 1,000 kilograms of air-dried meat could sustain 100 people for 50 days, while five tons of grain could sustain 100 people for 142 days. Of course, these were ideal conditions. In reality, a discrepancy of more than twenty percent from theoretical estimates wouldn't be surprising. After all, appetite was tied to physical exertion. Those who worked hard grew hungry faster, while one meal a day was plenty when there was no work to be done. "...If I want to expand the closed beta test to 100 players, I must double the theoretical grain reserve. Especially meat... It would be ideal if game can still be hunted in winter. If not, things will get troublesome." Yet from another angle, maybe they wouldn't need that much food after all? When the cold grew severe, there was no need for everyone to log in, or even log in every day. While in hibernation, the clones' resource consumption plummeted drastically, allowing them to go up to seven days without eating. It was just that the players might not be too pleased about being kept off the job for so long; they would surely whine and complain on the official website. Chu Guang had already formulated a countermeasure, however. A simple announcement of server maintenance would solve everything. What server didn't require maintenance? It was entirely reasonable. Looking at the ledger in his hands, Chu Guang was contemplating the shelter's future when a player came jogging in from outside. "Lord Manager, some natives are here!" *Natives?* Chu Guang pulled his gaze from the ledger, mildly surprised. Sun Shiqi had only just left on his front foot; it was impossible for him to have turned right back around. Could it be someone else? Handing the ledger back to the player serving as the warehouse keeper, Chu Guang looked at the reporting player and asked, "How many are there, and which direction did they come from?" "From the south! Two men and a girl!" *From the south?* Hearing that direction, Chu Guang had already guessed who the visitors were... ... At the outpost base's southern gate. An old man with a wrinkled face, clad in a beast-hide coat, looked up at the hundred-meter-wide concrete wall. His cloudy eyes were filled with shock and wonder. The last time he had visited Wetland Park had been roughly two years ago. The scavengers of Bet Street mainly explored southward. Unless hunting, they rarely ventured north along the elevated highway leaving the city, where they might encounter marauders preying on passing caravans. As for Wetland Park, it was a blind spot bypassed by both scavenging and hunting. There was little game to hunt and little junk to scavenge. Almost no survivor went out of their way to visit. Who could have imagined someone had erected a survivor settlement in this very forest! Though three meters seemed a bit low for a concrete wall, its advantage lay in being brand new and sturdy. Compared to the patched, dilapidated wall of Bet Street, it offered a far greater sense of security. Near the gate stood several shelter residents wearing blue coats. The old man summoned his courage and called out, "I've come to see your manager." No one answered him. Those people merely watched, whispering among themselves somewhat impolitely, though one couldn't tell whether their gazes held goodwill or malice. It seemed... More like sheer curiosity? "...Are you sure this is the place?" The old man turned to his second son beside him, doubt in his eyes. Carrying a large bundle on his back, Yu Hu met his father's questioning look and nodded vigorously, his tone firm. "This is it!" The hesitation on the old man's face deepened. "They don't seem very welcoming." With a subtle hint of awkwardness, Yu Hu leaned close to his father and whispered, "Maybe they aren't unwelcoming... Maybe they just don't understand what we're saying." The old man froze. *Don't understand?* *That shouldn't be... That outsider in the blue coat before understood us just fine, didn't he?* Yu Xiaoyu glanced at her father and brother, then peeked at the wall before them, her dark, round eyes wide with curiosity. This was her first time leaving Bet Street, and traveling so far from home. Chu Guang... Was he really here? Just then, a familiar figure appeared at the gate. The moment Xiaoyu recognized that face, her eyes lit up. However, there were too many strangers nearby. Hiding behind her brother, she revealed only half her face, peeking out timidly yet curiously. Flanked by a crowd of bluecoats, Chu Guang walked up to the three and halted. Looking at the old man leading them, before Chu Guang could even offer a greeting, the elder abruptly dropped to his knees with a thud, catching everyone around completely off guard. Chu Guang was stunned as well. *What is this about?!* "Dad?!" Yu Hu gasped in shock. But before he could ask, his father seized his arm and dragged him down onto his knees as well. Xiaoyu looked on in confusion. She didn't understand what her father and brother were doing, nor did she know what she ought to do, so she moved to mimic them. "What are you doing... Get up, quickly!" Chu Guang felt a sudden headache coming on and stepped forward to help the elder up. Yet the old man refused to rise. Keeping his head bowed, his Adam's apple bobbed for several moments before he finally squeezed out words from his throat. "Thank you." "You saved our whole family!" He was already old; at most, he could manage another two or three years before he could work no longer. In fact, even this year had been pushing his limits. And his son Yu Xiong, the eldest son of the Yu family and their strongest laborer, was the pillar of the household. If anything happened to Yu Xiong, the entire family would freeze and starve. The old man knew this full well. This outsider had not merely saved his son's life; he had saved their entire family. Chu Guang, however, hadn't thought that far ahead. He didn't calculate every single deed; saving the man had merely been an incidental effort. "You're putting me in an awkward position... Please, stand up first." Now was hardly the time for false modesty; he couldn't just let the elder keep kneeling. With that, Chu Guang applied a bit of strength and helped the old man up from the ground. Perhaps prompted by Chu Guang's remark about being put in an awkward position, the old man did not try to kneel again once on his feet. Instead, he reached over and took the bundle from his second son's back. It was wrapped in deerskin and filled with folded animal pelts, looking quite hefty. Holding it up with both hands, the old man offered it to Chu Guang, his voice earnest. "You are the benefactor of our Yu family. We cannot let you waste your precious medicine for nothing." "We have nothing else to give you. These pelts were stripped from mutant hyenas and reindeer—seven in total... Setting aside the tribute for the town mayor, this is our entire wealth." "I know these things are far from enough to repay your kindness, but if we do nothing, our consciences will never rest." "Please, accept them!" If he truly took the entire life savings of a destitute family, his own conscience would never rest. For a moment, Chu Guang didn't know whether to laugh or cry; accepting them felt wrong, but refusing them felt just as wrong. Right then, an idea struck him. Even if the old man took these pelts back, he would only end up selling them to Old Leech in Bet Street, who would gouge him ruthlessly and give him next to nothing. Chu Guang remembered clearly the wooden board hanging outside Old Charlie's grocery store: two chips for a mutant hyena pelt, four chips for a reindeer pelt. Among these seven pelts, four were mutant hyena and three were mutant reindeer. At Bet Street's prices, the old man could get twenty chips at most. Such unequal trade was pure exploitation, not to mention that twenty chips could buy almost nothing of value in Bet Street. Take green wheat, for instance: buying green wheat with chips in Bet Street cost a staggering three chips per kilogram, nearly three times the price at Brown Farm! That meant ten winter-grade beast pelts, sold and then traded, couldn't even fetch ten kilograms of grain. And that was before the grain price hike. Was that reasonable? It was absurdly unreasonable! Of course, when survivors traded pelts for chips, it was primarily to buy salt or other daily necessities rather than grain directly. After all, they grew some horned potatoes of their own, dug up tree roots, caught rats, and hunted to secure rations. Even so, that Old Leech went far too far. Chu Guang had long found him an eyesore! And so, Chu Guang decisively reached out, took the bundle of pelts, handed them to the nearest player, and instructed, "Take these to the warehouse, then bring back one kilogram of coarse salt. I'll pay you five copper coins for your trouble." Five copper coins were nothing to scoff at, but how could that compare to watching a cutscene? The player wore a reluctant pout. Even if he couldn't understand the manager and these natives jabbering at each other, who hadn't watched a movie or two without subtitles in this day and age? Yet the manager had already shoved the bundle into his hands, leaving no room for refusal. Seeing that the quest cutscene wouldn't progress until he moved, the young player had no choice but to sprint toward the base, no matter how unwilling his heart was. The wait was brief. The player who had run inside soon jogged back out carrying a black plastic bag. Chu Guang took the coarse salt from him and pressed it into the old man's hands. "I'll accept the pelts. This is about one kilogram of coarse salt—consider it an exchange of courtesies!" The old man stared blankly. When he saw the salt inside the bag, he panicked and pushed the bag back, refusing to accept it no matter what. "How could I!" "You are our family's benefactor! How could I take a gift from you?!" A whole kilogram of coarse salt! In Bet Street, 100 grams cost two chips, making one kilogram worth twenty chips. What was worse, the shopkeepers always skimped on weight, and higher-grade salt was marked up several times over. The bag of salt Chu Guang brought out was coarse salt as well, but its quality was leagues ahead of what the store owned by the old mayor sold. At the very least, it looked translucent, far less murky, and not nearly as yellowish! "Just take it. Think of it as me getting the better end of the deal this time." Pushing the plastic bag back into the elder's hands with finality, Chu Guang smiled at him and said, "Next time you have pelts like these, bring them to me." "One hyena pelt for 150 grams of salt, and one deer pelt for 300 grams." "However many you bring, I'll take them all!"