My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 84
by Little PandaOut of Contact
After going to the beach for several days straight, today everyone stayed in the villa to rest. It wasn’t that Mu Ning finally felt she had caught enough crystal cores—in Mu Ning’s view, for her to advance from mid-tier to high-tier, the cores she’d obtained these past few days were far from sufficient. But the reason everyone was resting at home today was simple: it was raining. A massive downpour!
The South was prone to torrential rains to begin with, and this was a coastal base on top of that. According to Chen Gu and the others, during summer, they even got typhoons mixed in with the rain!
The bucketing rain came down for four days straight. During those four days, basically no survivor at the base dared to venture out into the storm. Fortunately, most survivors had gathered plenty of seafood from the beach beforehand, giving them both food stores and enough crystal cores to pay for meals at the canteen. Compared to those water-system and lightning-system espers who used the opportunity to jack up their prices, the base canteen still had a conscience—whatever the prices were before, they stayed the same now.
But even with the canteen’s conscientious pricing, after several days of gourmet feasts, everyone in Ren Chenxi’s group had developed rather refined palates. They couldn’t really bring themselves to look at the canteen’s cheap food anymore.
Don’t tell them it was the apocalypse, that food was precious and they should learn to cherish and save it. Leaving everything else aside, just the fish Mu Ning had crazily caught these past few days—Ren Chenxi had dozens of enormous mutated fish stored in her inventory, each as wide as a bus! With enough seasonings on hand, Huo Keyu and Jian Dan had even used one mutated fish to make fish balls. Instead of setting up a stall in an open area, they simply sold fish balls right from the window on the first floor of their villa.
The fish balls came in large and small portions. A large bowl had twenty fish balls for ten Level 1 crystal cores; a small bowl had ten fish balls for five Level 1 crystal cores. The portions were generous, the fish balls were substantial, and the broth was deliciously seasoned. So even with the torrential rain, Huo Keyu and the others’ fish ball sales were excellent. In just four days, they’d earned over fifty thousand Level 1 crystal cores.
Since they were already making fish balls to sell, Huo Keyu and the others naturally wouldn’t neglect their own group’s appetites. These past few days, they’d been eating seafood prepared every which way—seafood porridge, seafood noodles, seafood rice, seafood soup, seafood hot pot, seafood platters, plus garlic seafood, roasted seafood, steamed seafood, stir-fried seafood, and so on and so forth. Every day brought something new, so even after four straight days of seafood, no one was getting tired of it.
On the fifth day, the sky finally cleared. Ren Chenxi wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she felt like after those four days of rain, the temperature had dropped quite a bit.
In fact, Ren Chenxi’s senses weren’t wrong. When everyone headed out that morning, Zhang Tongqi couldn’t help shivering, complaining about the dropping temperature while sighing that winter was coming.
Survivors who had lived through two years of the apocalypse were experienced. There would likely be more rain ahead, and every rainfall would bring the temperature down a few more degrees. Until finally, the cold of winter would descend.
With winter approaching, the survivors who’d been cooped up in the base for four days naturally wanted to make the most of their time to replenish their food stores. Some survivors headed straight for the beach, while others chose to go hunt mutated animals. Ren Chenxi had enough seafood in her inventory to last everyone through a winter—she wanted to stock up on some meat instead, but Mu Ning still wanted to go to the beach to fish for mid-tier crystal cores.
There was no helping it; they’d have to split up. The final arrangement was that Chen Gu would lead the others to hunt and gather wild mushrooms and vegetables, while Mu Ning and Ren Chenxi would go to the beach to fish and harvest seafood. It wasn’t that Ren Chenxi had volunteered to accompany Mu Ning to the beach—everyone agreed that the beach was still quite dangerous, and they weren’t comfortable letting Mu Ning go alone. So Chen Gu and the others had pleaded with Ren Chenxi to go with her.
Ren Chenxi didn’t really have a choice. After all, she’d taken ten Level 6 crystal cores from them, and she knew how dangerous the ocean could be. If Mu Ning went to the beach alone without anyone watching, and something happened…
Honestly, Ren Chenxi didn’t want to see Mu Ning come to harm. It wasn’t that she cared about her personally, but Mu Ning was the backbone of their team. If something happened to her, Ren Chenxi could practically predict how devastated Chen Gu, Zhang Tongqi, and the others would be.
Well, to keep this excellent team from falling apart just because they lost their backbone, Ren Chenxi figured she could suffer through it and tag along with Mu Ning to the beach.
With just the two of them going to the beach, Ren Chenxi felt she should prepare a bit. The sixty Level 6 crystal cores had all been exchanged for six million crystal stones. Now carrying a fortune, Ren Chenxi didn’t hesitate to spend one million crystal stones on two hundred ten-draw pulls, obtaining fifty-four R-rank Explosion Cards, forty-nine R-rank Acceleration Cards, forty-six R-rank Critical Hit Cards, twenty-five Illusion Cards, twenty-six Displacement Cards, five SR-rank Explosion Cards, three SR-rank Recovery Cards, four SR-rank Invisibility Cards, and six SR-rank Shield Cards. Plus, one SSR-rank Storm Card.
This was the first time Ren Chenxi had pulled an SSR card directly from a draw.
The SSR Storm Card could summon a small storm with wind speeds of three hundred meters per second. The destructive power of this storm was basically equivalent to a super tornado, though the storm’s diameter was far smaller than a tornado’s—only about five hundred meters across. The storm’s range of movement could be designated by where Ren Chenxi threw the card. After the Storm Card was thrown, it needed sixty seconds to form. If Ren Chenxi actually wanted to use the Storm Card, she’d have to run at least two hundred fifty meters away from the card within those sixty seconds. And to avoid getting caught in the storm’s edge, it would be safer to run even farther.
The Storm Card was a large-area attack card, and if she wasn’t careful, it could hurt her own people. Ren Chenxi felt that such a precious card shouldn’t be used lightly unless absolutely necessary.
As for the other cards she’d drawn, although the beach mostly had mid-tier mutated seafood now, after the experience of a 7th-order mutated octopus evolving into an 8th-order one, Ren Chenxi remained cautious. She used fifty R-rank Explosion Cards to synthesize ten SR-rank Explosion Cards, which combined with the five SR-rank Explosion Cards she’d drawn directly to make three SSR-rank Explosion Cards. Then she used five hundred Greasy Cards and three hundred Costume Cards to synthesize fifty-one R-rank Explosion Cards, forty-six R-rank Critical Hit Cards, thirty-two R-rank Acceleration Cards, seventeen Illusion Cards, and fourteen Displacement Cards.
The resulting fifty-five R-rank Explosion Cards were all synthesized by Ren Chenxi into eleven SR-rank Explosion Cards, and ten of those SR cards were further synthesized into two SSR-rank Explosion Cards. Beyond that, Ren Chenxi also synthesized two SSR-rank Critical Hit Cards, two SSR-rank Acceleration Cards, and one SSR-rank Shield Card. After synthesizing the SSR cards, the remaining SR cards were: one Explosion Card, eight Recovery Cards, five Invisibility Cards, nine Critical Hit Cards, one Shield Card, and six Acceleration Cards.
With this many attack and support cards, Ren Chenxi was confident that even if she and Mu Ning were suddenly attacked by 9th-order mutated seafood at the beach, they could retreat safely.
Ren Chenxi had prepared thoroughly, but after accompanying Mu Ning to the beach twice, everything was peaceful with no incidents. They basically stopped encountering mid-tier mutated beasts on the beach, but in the ocean, Ren Chenxi was still catching 6th-order mutated fish one after another. The number of mutated seafood in the ocean was definitely beyond human imagination—who knew when the South Sea might evolve new high-tier mutated seafood. So no matter what, one should never let their guard down around this ocean.
Since only Ren Chenxi was accompanying Mu Ning to the beach, to avoid raising suspicions among the other survivors at the base—mainly Qi Sheng and his people—Ren Chenxi swapped the off-road vehicle for Mu Ning’s original minivan. They’d spotted Qi Sheng a few times during this period. Qi Sheng was still 5th-order, and Mu Ning didn’t ask whether he’d obtained any Level 6 crystal cores. For espers advancing in rank, the higher they went, the harder it became. Even if Qi Sheng had really obtained a Level 6 crystal core and absorbed it, he wouldn’t so easily jump straight to 6th-order.
Just like Mu Ning—these past few days she’d absorbed all the Level 5 and Level 6 crystal cores, but still showed no sign of advancing.
When Ren Chenxi accompanied Mu Ning to the beach for the third time, they ran into Qi Sheng and his group right after leaving the base gates. They were talking with some people from the Fan family. The Fan family members were clearly agitated, and Qi Sheng had to soothe them for quite a while before finally persuading them to leave.
Once the Fan family left, some curious survivors nearby went over to ask what had happened. One of Qi Sheng’s subordinates said with a hint of schadenfreude, “Tch, what else? That Fan Juntian went to the neighboring Q Province nearly half a month ago and still hasn’t come back, and there’s been no news at all. The Fan family wanted to beg our Sheng-ge to take people to the neighboring province to help search for him~”
Hearing this, everyone suddenly realized—oh right! They’d been at the base for quite a while now and hadn’t seen Fan Juntian at all. No wonder; for the past half month, everyone’s attention had been mainly on gathering seafood from the beach. With Fan Juntian, who used to throw his weight around the most, absent from the base, no one had even noticed. Many people didn’t even know when Fan Juntian had left the base.
But it was precisely because Fan Juntian wasn’t there causing trouble and making his presence felt that everyone had completely ignored him. Some people even hoped they could continue ignoring this Fan Juntian.
“Hey! Sheng-ge didn’t agree to help search, did he?”
“I hope not! I feel like the base has been a lot more peaceful with Fan Juntian gone…”
“The Fan family has plenty of espers themselves! Why don’t they go? It’s because the neighboring Q Province has so many dead cities—it’s incredibly dangerous!”
“Yeah! Sheng-ge better be careful!”
Listening to the crowd’s discussion, another of Qi Sheng’s subordinates scoffed dismissively. “Cheh, the Fan family really knows how to calculate. They’ve got it figured out nicely! This time Fan Juntian went out to scavenge for supplies, and he supposedly took over twenty espers of 3rd-order or higher with him. If they really ran into trouble in Q Province, it would be a devastating loss for the Fan family. So naturally the Fan family hopes our Sheng-ge would take a group out and run into trouble too, weakening our strength. Their sinister intentions—our Sheng-ge sees right through them, of course he won’t fall for it!”
“I knew it! That’s why Sheng-ge is our base’s leader. Whatever schemes the Fan family is plotting, Sheng-ge sees it crystal clear!”
“But if Sheng-ge refused to help search, will the Fan family really just let it go?”
“Hah! If they’d just let it go that easily, they wouldn’t be the Fan family! When they couldn’t convince Sheng-ge to go out and search for that Fan Juntian, they started eyeing our engine, wanting our Sheng-ge to lend it to them…”
“What engine? The Fan family doesn’t lack engines, do they? Why would they need to borrow yours?”
“Uh… well, our Sheng-ge’s engine was modified by an expert, the performance is better, s-so that’s why the Fan family wanted to borrow it…”
Both Qi Sheng and the Fan family had kept the matter of the Crystal Core Engine hidden from the other survivors at the base. This subordinate realized he’d almost let it slip and hurriedly brushed it off with some random excuse before changing the subject.
The author has something to say:
Mutou: My wifey is so good, accompanying me to the beach for a date every day. We get to feel the sea breeze and watch the ocean together every day~ So romantic~
Xixi: No no no no, I’m just afraid that if you die, your little followers will be sad!
Honestly, the author herself doesn’t really like going to the beach. The sun is so harsh, the sea breeze is so strong, and when the wind picks up, you get sand and hair all over your face. And! When you go wading in the waves, you might accidentally kick your flip-flop off! Once, the author came home with one shoe on one foot and no shoe on the other!!!
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