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The missing sheep weighed heavily on his mind, but for now, he could only focus on herding the other twenty back to the farm. Once Youyou finished picking tomatoes, she would help him search for the lost one.
...
Youyou fumed silently, her mood darkening everything in her sight. Without her boyfriend around to pamper her, her temper flared at the slightest provocation.
Zuo Chengan, on the other hand, simply shrugged and glanced at the bamboo basket filled with ripening tomatoes without a word.
He'd considered using the chance to strike up some goodwill, but since she wasn't interested, there was no point in forcing it.
The area around the warehouse was notorious for rat infestations.
Not far away, two large, gray-furred rats peered cautiously from a crack in the wall, their beady eyes fixed on the freshly placed tomatoes.
Their bulky bodies remained hidden in the shadows, but with his night-vision goggles still in place, Zuo Chengan could easily make out the scene.
Quietly, he maneuvered to an upwind position. Then, with a swift lunge, he drove his hayfork down!
"Squeak! Squeak!"
[Eliminated Steel-Toothed Rat x1. Obtained item: Swift Rat Dagger.]
[Eliminated Steel-Toothed Rat x1.]
When Zuo Chengan drew back the hayfork, it was skewering both rodents. To his surprise, the first Steel-Toothed Rat dropped a dagger—a rare loot item.
Could it be that the first kill in every instance guaranteed an item drop?
Suppressing his speculation, Zuo Chengan checked the weapon's stats. The system presented the following:
[Swift Rat Dagger (White)]
Type: Weapon
Effect: Attack +1
Description: Getting stabbed by this feels like being bitten by a rat. Painful!
...
The dagger's stats were almost negligible; its attack power hardly better than air, and its range nowhere near that of his trusty hayfork.
The dagger's only redeeming feature was that it could be stored in his inventory and taken out of the dungeon, unlike the hayfork.
Still, the prospect of losing his hayfork was bitter.
...
With his first bit of loot in hand, Zuo Chengan felt reinvigorated and resumed hunting down unlucky Steel-Toothed Rats.
Killing two rats had already updated his quest tracker from [0/100] to [2/100], confirming that the game acknowledged the kills.
Even if he couldn't lug around a pile of corpses, the dreaded Red-Eye wouldn't have grounds to penalize him. This realization brought a breath of relief—he wouldn't need to carry heaps of dead rats around after all.
Meanwhile, his curiosity about other players' progress lingered. That was where the live-feed bullet comments came in handy.
...
[One, two, three, four... eighteen, nineteen, twenty. No matter how I count, there are only twenty sheep.]
[Seriously! I swear it's twenty for me too!]
[Maybe the rabbit's screwing with them? What if there was never a twenty-first sheep to begin with? Was he the guy who ticked off the rabbit? Makes sense that he got set up for failure.]
[Impossible. All player missions are technically solvable. If Red-Eye says there are twenty-one sheep, there must be 21 sheep.]
[Then where's the last one hiding?]
...
Missing a sheep?
Zuo Chengan thought of Wang Guangfei, the boyfriend of the couple he'd seen earlier. The guy had been assigned the task of herding sheep back to the pen, which initially seemed simple and low-risk until now.
The trap wasn't in the danger—it was in the impossibility of finding the last sheep.
If Wang Guangfei failed to locate it before nightfall... well, he'd effectively planted both feet on the expressway to disaster. A swift, pitiful end would await him.
As the bullet comments speculated, Zuo Chengan skewered another Steel-Toothed Rat scurrying out of the granary.
With the local rodent population sufficiently terrified, Zuo Chengan slung his hayfork over his shoulder and made his way toward the cowshed.
When Red-Eye had given them the tour earlier, he'd caught a glimpse of the cows' feed trough outside.
Just like the sheep's trough, it bore traces of bloodied meat. Where there's food, there are rats.
...
The live commentary rarely mentioned the cowshed, so Zuo Chengan braced himself for the unpleasant reality that awaited him.
As anticipated, the cowshed was revolting. Even from the outside, it screamed neglect, with the walls caked in filth. Inside, the sight was even worse, as if someone had detonated a toilet.
"How many years has it been since this place was last cleaned?" he muttered in disbelief.
The task of tidying up the shed in a single day seemed absurd, a cruel challenge befitting the Tower of Ascension's notorious difficulty.
The direction might be bizarre, but the level of effort required was undeniably on point.
The responsibility for this thankless job had fallen to Fu You, the younger of the two sisters.
Draped in a makeshift cloak crafted from one of her items and wearing modified gloves, she grimly pushed cart after cart of waste out of the farmyard.
Through the Eye of Truth, Zuo Chengan could see only a handful of live-feed cameras following Fu You's painstaking labor.
Most of the viewers had gravitated elsewhere—to admire Youyou's tomato-picking grace, join Wang Guangfei in his real-life hide-and-seek mission for the missing sheep, or observe Fu Yu gathering eggs.
After all, while the audience's tastes leaned toward the morbid, even they drew the line at watching someone shovel cow dung.
Fu You's sour mood was as evident as the filth she was hauling, and Zuo Chengan knew better than to provoke her. Instead, he kept to the shed's perimeter, dispatching a few stray Steel-Toothed Rats before retreating.
Outside the cowshed, beneath a pile of discarded junk, he discovered a large doghouse.
Just as he was leaving, something caught his eye beneath a pile of discarded junk outside the shed—a doghouse.
Its size indicated it was meant for a large shepherd dog, and though dust now coated its every surface, traces of care were still visible. The wood had once been painted, and a small nameplate hinted at a former owner's affection.
But now, it was just another piece of clutter.
The sight solved a lingering mystery for Zuo Chengan.
No wonder there were no dogs on the farm. The farmer had likely kept one in the past, only to lose it to some tragedy, after which the farmer chose never to replace it.
...
Time flew by, and the sun in the game world climbed to its zenith.
Every player was engrossed in their tasks, working faster with each passing moment. No one exchanged words, yet there was an unspoken urgency in their movements.
A commotion broke out near the tomato warehouse, disrupting the relative calm.
Having hunted more than eighty Steel-Toothed Rats, Zuo Chengan was close to completing his quest. He couldn't help but eavesdrop.
"Wang Guangfei! Why are you still dragging your feet? That sheep didn't just vanish into thin air! Can't you at least help me fill the warehouse first?"
"I've told you a hundred times—this warehouse is huge! The warehouse is too big to finish quickly. If we don't find that sheep now, it'll be gone for good. Come help me search, and once it's back, I'll help you finish your task!"
Youyou countered with logic, "Finding the sheep depends on luck. If you're unlucky, you might not find it all day. My task doesn't need luck—if we work quickly, we'll be done in no time!"
But Wang Guangfei fired back, "Exactly! You admit it yourself—finding the sheep depends on luck. What if I'm unlucky and can't find it before dark? That's why I need to make every second count!"
…
As Zuo Chengan listened, he found himself agreeing with both sides.
The bullet comments mirrored his thoughts, splitting into factions that fiercely debated the merits of each argument.
The growing drama drew more floating veiny-eyeballs, which swarmed around the couple like flies to honey, eager to capture every moment of their escalating spat.