Chapter 58 The Food Problem

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[Damn it! What the hell is wrong with this damned, lousy company? It's bad enough we have to work the "007" overtime schedule every single day, but now eating the employee cafeteria food lands you in the hospital!]

[Brother above, I went to the shop downstairs today and slurped a bowl of cold tossed long hair, and that gave me problems too... It was completely fine when I ate it yesterday. The female shop owner insisted she had washed her hair carefully the past few days, claiming there’s no way it could cause health issues, and instead turned around to accuse me of trying to blackmail her.]

[Our cafeteria suddenly closed today. Instead of the usual catered employee meals, they switched to delivering raw ingredients. But those ingredients looked just like chunks of air-dried, rotting flesh, and the meat was coated in something resembling black ink. After some questioning, we found out those meats shouldn't be eaten directly at all.]

[A lot of snack shops nearby have shut down, with only a few still open. But I've heard from many posts that those shops are all problematic—step inside and you're stepping straight to your grave...]

[What is going on here? Why did they suddenly pull a stunt like this? Can we still enjoy playing this game properly or not?]

[Is there anywhere left with a safe food supply? Begging the senior players to enlighten me!]

[It seems only food traded with players is relatively safe, especially from players who have unlocked the chef class. I heard a top-ranked player's stir-fried chestnuts with sugar are quite delicious, but they are a bit pricey. I think his name is "Chen Ye"?]

[Forget whether it's expensive right now, let's just focus on surviving first...]

Ding-ding-ding!

Transaction requests kept popping up continuously within Chen Ye's notification list.

Unexpectedly, due to the recent food issues, Chen Ye's sugar-stir-fried chestnuts had gained a minor wave of popularity on the forum.

Many players came in admiration, sending out trade invitations.

"To think something like this would happen..."

Now, Chen Ye finally understood why there were suddenly so many more customers. It turned out that the food sources in this world had suddenly become much less safe.

The newly descended players could basically adapt to their current identities and survive by relying on the role-playing method.

They had stable jobs, and some players even started with built-in social connections, allowing them to acquire basic survival supplies through currency transactions or welfare systems.

Those with better luck could experience the feeling of being a privileged second-generation heir living off their parents, or perhaps being pampered by a wealthy sugar mommy.

Of course, whether the wealthy mommies of this world were something ordinary players could safely enjoy was anyone's guess...

Now, the problem arose!

The previously stable food sources had suddenly encountered problems.

In severe cases, people had even been hospitalized. And this was the Era of Weirdness!

Heaven knows what kind of entities the doctors in the hospital actually are, what kind of fellow patients you might encounter by your bed when hospitalized, what things might emerge in an unknown environment, and what kind of treatments you will have to face...

"So, these players are all rushing to trade with me because food problems have been occurring frequently lately?"

Chen Ye had a sudden flash of insight, finally understanding why his aura of fortune was intertwined with shades of mysterious yellow and ink black.

Mysterious yellow signified wealth and prosperity.
Ink black signified calamity and disaster.

Lately, this city was likely going to suffer a calamity related to food. For some time in the future, the value of safe and healthy food would continue to rise steadily.

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And since he possessed the [Chef] class, he was capable of producing sugar-stir-fried chestnuts.

Therefore, the intertwining of "mysterious yellow" and "ink black" did not mean seeking wealth in danger; rather, it carried a hint of making a fortune off a disaster.

However...

Among the three-colored rings, there was still a "blue" implication that remained unsolved.

Combining the above information, could the source of the pollution originate from the lower reaches of the West River?

Faced with the trading messages constantly popping up in his list, Chen Ye did not rush to make transactions blindly.

He calmly analyzed: "Currently, pollution issues have broken out across the entire city in the Era of Weirdness. It might not necessarily be the ingredients themselves; perhaps the source comes from the outside..."

According to a poster on the forum, he had been visiting "Luo's Hair Noodle Shop" downstairs over the past few days to taste the shop's signature dish, cold tossed long hair.

That shop owner, who used hair as an ingredient, shared similarities with Miss Squirrel Fish—
She herself was the ingredient.

Generally, anyone who could run a shop with this kind of ability would not have problems with their ingredients.

So where did the pollution come from?

The answer was simple: Water!

Even though cold tossing was used as a preparation method, many culinary techniques required adding water.

Thus, this provided the possibility of contamination.

This happened to align with the hypothesis that the lower reaches of the West River served as the source of pollution, connecting everything to water.

Only...

What puzzled Chen Ye was that just yesterday, the Sea God's progeny had expressed such confidence regarding this pollution, and up in the upper reaches on the other side of the dam, no signs of pollution had been observed. So where had the pollution seeped in from?

Continuing to browse the posts, Chen Ye discovered that the spread of this pollution had a certain range. Some players reported that the food they consumed was still quite normal, with no adverse reactions.

Chen Ye carefully noted down those trouble-free players. Sometimes, by analyzing the records of posts they regularly made, he could deduce that their locations were mostly distributed near the West River.

On the contrary, players living deeper in the city, further away from the West River, were more prone to food issues.

This really made people scratch their heads in confusion!

Clearly, the West River was the source of the infection, so why were the ones getting hit harder actually located further away from it?

The clue seemed to have hit a dead end here...

"Don't rush to make transactions yet."

Chen Ye temporarily chose not to exchange his sugar-stir-fried chestnuts for copper coins with all the players in a hurry.

This indeed presented an opportunity to get rich.

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But the problem was that even if money was earned, safe ingredients might not necessarily be available for purchase.

If a food disaster were to strike this city next, even if normal ingredients still existed, the difficulty of acquiring them would skyrocket!

The large bag of "pinecones" he had traded from Miss Squirrel Fish was already one-third used.

Faced with so many players...
The inventory in his hands might not be sufficient.

Furthermore, once he realized that a catastrophic food problem might occur in the future, he definitely needed to reserve more ingredients for himself to prepare for a rainy day.

The method of making sugar-stir-fried chestnuts involved stir-frying at high temperatures over a roaring furnace fire, requiring basically no added water.

If the source of pollution truly originated from water, it would have no impact on the sugar-stir-fried chestnuts made by Chen Ye.

Therefore, pinecones were currently the most suitable ingredient, capable of producing A-grade cuisine: sugar-stir-fried chestnuts. Just a single piece could keep one full for a day and also possessed the ability to rapidly restore bodily vitality.

Thinking of this,
Chen Ye walked quickly toward the east gate of Xining Alley, managing to arrive at Miss Squirrel Fish's shopfront just before dark.

Warm yellow light shone out from the side window, and faintly, the sound of "crunch, crunch" chewing could be heard from inside, resembling something gnawing on animal bones.

Chen Ye arrived at the door and politely knocked three times: "Miss Squirrel Fish, are you in?"

Creak!

The window opened, and Miss Squirrel Fish's face suddenly pressed up against the window frame. That bloated, tumor-like face almost filled the entire opening.

"I'd like to buy ten catties of pinecones. How much is it per catty?" Chen Ye felt the copper coins in his pocket.

Miss Squirrel Fish hesitated for a moment, her back shuddered, and five pinecones dropped down.

"Is it five copper coins per catty?" Chen Ye asked again uncertainly to be sure.

It wasn't until Miss Squirrel Fish struggled to squeeze out a bit of space with her bulky neck and nodded that Chen Ye counted out fifty copper coins and handed them over, exchanging them for ten catties of pinecones.

At this moment, Chen Ye's personal assets were left with "575" copper coins.

"With this, I shouldn't have to worry about supplies for a while."

Carrying the large, heavy bag of pinecones and maintaining his vagrant posture, he returned to his place of refuge.

Just at that moment, the Erhu-playing old man finally returned to this spot.

Suddenly,
Chen Ye noticed that behind the Erhu-playing old man, a dozen buckets of water had been placed, lined up side by side along the low tile wall, all filled to the brim.

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