Free Web NovelChapter 2423: Chapter 2423: Beautiful Tomorrow Station
After a few days of preparation, Xu Huo basically had everything he needed, and the equipment and combat robots Xin Rong promised had also arrived. Additionally, there were various potions, evolution potions, nutrients, and healing potions in abundance. Finally, he saw two Eye of Platinum return tickets in the box.
Return tickets are the reward for clearing an instance. They are also tickets, but they can bypass the train and directly return to one’s own zone, so these tickets are a lifesaving prop in an emergency for a player.
Of course, people do buy and sell return tickets, but due to their rarity, those who can sell them won’t offer them at a low price. Most people trade return tickets not with White Notes, but by exchanging props and instruments. And in such transactions, as long as a proposal is made beneath the dimension, tickets will quickly be bought.
Return tickets are always in short supply in the entire game.
Except for players like Xu Huo who often clear levels but don’t return to their own zone, only then might there be a surplus of return tickets.
However, for him, the difference between return tickets and regular tickets is not significant. When needing to avoid being hunted by strong enemies and use tickets, his first choice is still regular tickets, to avoid bringing trouble back to Zone 014.
After preparing everything, Xu Huo took the Girl in the painting onto the train.
This time he was heading to Zone 020 beneath Wormhole Point C31. Before using the tickets, he had searched for the general conditions of this zone beneath the dimension. Although ranked lower, the zone’s development was quite good. However, in the early stages of evolution, the mutation and evolution speed of animals and plants far surpassed humans, causing most of the zone to be occupied by flora and fauna. Humans could only encircle some safe zones as strongholds. After years of development, both sides achieved a balance, with humans able to explore the undeveloped areas in small-scale, while mutated flora and fauna couldn’t enter the safe zones.
There are daily small-scale conflicts but all within controllable scope. In the past decade, no large-scale entry by mutated flora and fauna into cities has occurred.
Though the human-occupied area isn’t large, the "Beautiful Tomorrow Station" Xu Huo was heading to still had over twenty instances. Most of them were not closed-field instances and overlapped, making it difficult to determine which instance the ticket would go to. It wasn’t realistic to buy all the instance strategies ahead of time, so he could only buy them after knowing the instance name upon arrival.
Because of the regional differences, the train he boarded rarely sold potions and special, interesting small props, but rather traded more in plant seeds and small animal specimens. freewebnøvel.coɱ
In the carriage Xu Huo was in, there was a man and a woman respectively selling seeds and specimens.
"The specimens I sell are freshly made," the red-haired woman player displayed a reptile specimen in her hand, "as you can see, only freshly killed and prepared powdered insects can show this color. In the sunlight, it reflects gem-like shattered light, never outdated as decorative pieces, and they’re adorably cute, suitable for gifting to children and friends."
"It can also be eaten. In the powdered insect’s food list, there’s a special rock called Crane Rock. This rock contains some radioactive elements, but through the powdered insect’s consumption, digestion, and absorption, it perfectly removes these elements, leaving only the most valuable effect..."
She deliberately paused before continuing, "enhancement!"
This indeed caught many people’s attention, and someone asked, "What’s the difference between your stuff and potions?"
The questioner was also a female player, who laughed and said, "Potions are safe and have no side effects. Why eat your stuff?"
"Natural formed items are definitely better than artificially synthesized ones," the red-haired woman player winked charmingly, "Potions are effective once but using these improves your constitution fundamentally and lastingly!"
Whether the woman believed it, she still smiled, then took out money to buy two.
"Besides this, I have other specimens too." The red-haired woman player, seeing others were not interested, switched to another specimen, a fist-sized object soaked in a glass jar, "This is an embryo of a man-eating beast, inherently toxic, and excellent for making poison or buying for research, cost-effective!"
This drew inquiries from two people, but more showed no interest.
Players have frequent encounters with Aliens, so such Alien embryos are not valuable to most people; in contrast, the plant seeds are more enticing.
Xu Huo was also looking at the plant seeds.
He had encountered mutant plants before; most were understandable, evolving better fruits or defensive abilities. Plants like Goddess, which evolve human-like thinking, are rare. He had heard of plants with abilities to affect players’ spiritual power in some zones, but they were rarely seen in daily life.
The seeds displayed for sale varied widely. Some were purely ornamental, some functioned as home defenders, with spikes and toxins, or could automatically capture prey like man-eating flowers. Strangely, some plants were specially bred for hunting, targeting not mosquitoes or insects, but medium and small-sized animals—in other words, acting as automatic traps.
There were also plants that would grow into humanoid or beast-like shapes, luminescent ones, those releasing natural aphrodisiacs, one that liked burrowing, those that had a sense of music and would produce sound to match music, and those that imitated humans to play Hide and Seek... In total, a wide variety, penetrating into every facet of human life.
"And there’s this Star Grass." The selling player strongly recommended, "Sow the seeds, use some potion, and it’ll grow within three days. Although the mature plant isn’t large, it’s very sensitive to large animals."
Seeing Xu Huo’s interest, the person took out a communicator to display the adult state of Star Grass, "Usually, the fruit is retracted, resembling a hexagonal star, but if it senses animal presence, it’ll bulge its fruit into a hollow hexagonal star."
Xu Huo watched the video of the grass rotating with the hunting dog; when the dog moved, it moved as well, its stem appearing thin and weak but had quick responses.
"Can it differentiate if there are multiple targets?" he asked.
"Of course it can." The selling player answered, "Look at the star corner’s edge, see the split marks. It splits into layers based on sensing the number of targets until it surpasses the limit. However, by then it’ll wilt and die automatically."
"Sounds like a niche use, but many zones have birds and beasts adept at hiding, unlike humans who are easier to spot. So this grass is quite practical."
"What’s the price?" Xu Huo inquired.
"It’s fair, one thousand White Notes per bag, ten seeds per bag, not sold individually." The selling player happily took out a bag, "Cash and goods settle, transaction complete!"
