Ten minutes.
For Jiang Ye, these ten minutes were nothing less than a prelude to drowning.
She had already prepared herself to die.
Floating on the vast sea, all she could see was the undulating blue. Jiang Ye hadn’t dived very deep. Within two hundred meters of the surface, sunlight could penetrate the water, casting refracted beams that danced with the waves, transforming the light into something dreamlike.
Swarms of krill migrated in front of her, pulling out a long belt of light. Though the glow of these tiny creatures was faint—utterly unremarkable compared to the sunlight—when gathered together they allowed Jiang Ye to clearly make out their delicate shimmer, like a dazzling strand of neon.
Jiang Ye couldn’t remember the last time she had watched the ocean so peacefully.
Since her oceanographer parents died at sea, and her younger sister Jiang Li was left paralyzed after an accident in the water, Jiang Ye had developed a deep aversion to the ocean.
She’d taken Jiang Li and moved away from the coast, into the interior.
From then on, every time she saw the sea, Jiang Ye would be struck by an uncontrollable fear.
The beautiful ocean seen through others’ eyes was, for her, an unfathomable, shadow-filled abyss.
Now that she had fallen into this abyss, however, pain never came.
The passive skill "Like a Fish in Water" adjusted her physiological responses, even easing the psychological pressure inside her.
Ten minutes.
Jiang Ye silently counted in her mind, staying where she was. She had no desire to explore this radiant ocean world.
Splash.
A school of tuna swam toward her.
Jiang Ye moved aside to make way, only for one particularly oblivious tuna to swim too fast and crash right into her forehead.
Bang.
It was like hitting an iron door.
Jiang Ye watched with wide eyes as a row of tiny red numbers floated up from the tuna’s head [–20], then its status changed to Dizzy, with a little tornado icon swirling above its head.
[System: Congratulations, player, for using Iron Head Technique to capture a marine creature. Please correctly fill in the name of this species.]
Jiang Ye, who’d just become a fisherman by default:
She really didn’t want to enter the species name, afraid that doing so would trigger something new and ruin her chance to die.
But if she didn’t fill it in, the series of blank boxes above the dazed fish’s head just hovered there, constantly floating in front of her.
Almost beckoning to her.
Jiang Ye didn’t consider herself obsessive, but she simply couldn’t leave those blanks unfilled.
Gritting her teeth, she used her fingertip to trace the species name.
[Tuna]
The instant her fingertip stopped, the tuna was instantly restored to full health and swam beside Jiang Ye, as if recognizing her as its master.
[System: Congratulations, player, for unlocking the marine species Tuna. Please continue updating this marine compendium.]
Before Jiang Ye, a handbook titled "Marine Collector" opened slowly. Each page was filled with square slots.
In the first slot sat a coconut.
When Jiang Ye tapped it, the coconut rolled and a line of small text popped up.
[Juicy, sweet, delicious—a must-have for quenching thirst on a tropical island. Suitable for consumption.]
[Coconut water can be automatically generated and stored, with a limit of 9 servings. Skill cooldown is 30 minutes.]
Next to the coconut was a dizzy-looking tuna.
Jiang Ye tapped it and the tuna swam agilely around, doing a happy little spin.
[Tuna, also known as XX, belongs to the XX family. Its highest swimming speed can reach XX km/h. The universally recognized best edible part of this fish is XX.]
[Answer time: 1 minute. Countdown begins.]
Another fill-in-the-blank question!!
Jiang Ye couldn’t take it anymore and quickly filled them all in.
Normally, most people couldn’t answer this, and you couldn’t switch out of the game to look up answers.
But Jiang Ye was no ordinary person.
She’d grown up surrounded by her oceanographer parents. With her photographic memory, she was practically a walking marine encyclopedia.
A common species like tuna was no challenge at all.
[Tuna, also known as Thunnus, belongs to the Scombridae family. Its highest swimming speed can reach 160 km/h. The universally recognized best edible part of this fish is the belly (toro).]
[System: Congratulations, player, for completing the tuna entry in the marine compendium. EXP +2333, level +1, island area increased by 4 square meters! Current collection progress: 2/100. Keep it up!]
[Tuna belly can be automatically generated and stored, up to 9 servings. Skill cooldown is 30 minutes.]
[System: A fresh and succulent piece of tuna belly has been placed in your backpack.]
Jiang Ye stared at this last line.
She’d survived over a month on a trash planet, living entirely on terrible nutrient solution. She could barely remember what real food tasted like.
But now! A freshly cut, fatty piece of tuna belly was right before her!
Jiang Ye swallowed hard.
Ten minutes were almost up—she’d be meeting death soon. Eating a bite of tuna before dying didn’t seem unreasonable, right?
She reached for the piece of tuna belly in her backpack. As soon as her fingertip touched it, a prompt popped up on the screen.
[System: Please note, players may only consume food on land. Would you like to return to land?]
The prompt flashed by so fast that Jiang Ye accidentally tapped “Yes.”
By the time she realized it, she had already been transported back to the island, dripping wet, cradling a piece of tuna belly in her hands.
Normally, you’d slice tuna belly into sashimi for easy eating.
But Jiang Ye didn’t care about any of that.
She felt like the system was toying with her.
So Jiang Ye, irritated, lowered her head and tore into the tuna belly, venting her frustration.
This game spared nothing in the player experience.
The moment she bit down, her mouth was full of tender, juicy tuna. The meat and fat balanced each other, pure and rich, with a subtle aftertaste.
A hint of saltiness, not greasy at all, and compared to ordinary fish, the tuna belly was more like creamy jelly: it melted in the mouth in just a bite or two, and as she swallowed, the craving for another mouthful only intensified.
Jiang Ye finished the whole piece on her own. As she ate, her clothes and hair dried.
She burped.
[System: The nutritious, healthy tuna belly you consumed has increased your stamina via DHA absorption. Stamina +2.]
Jiang Ye was numb.
She got it now—whatever she did, this damned game would find a way to pull her further away from suicide.
Jiang Ye sat down beneath a newly spawned coconut tree—one that appeared thanks to the island upgrade. She had another helping of coconut water and was feeling a bit full. Planning to rest a little before jumping into the sea again, she idly opened the game’s live stream channels to see what other players were up to.
You needed to reach level five to unlock streaming, apply to become a streamer, and share your game life with others.
On the leaderboard, the highest player was only level six, so there weren't many streamers; only a few floating windows appeared on the stream list.
Jiang Ye randomly tapped into the video of a top-three streamer on the rankings.
The streamer was helping the village blacksmith fetch ores.
Jiang Ye watched for a bit and realized that this full-dive game's early stages operated a lot like the games she'd played on Blue Star.
One fetch quest after another: you dug for ores, hunted down moles—like a game version of buying a fine horse in the east market, a saddle in the west.
Basically, players were just errand-runners.
Bearing the title of savior, but doing nothing but chores.
Jiang Ye got bored, about to close the stream, when she suddenly paused as the streamer passed through a wild field.
She thought she saw someone behind the streamer—being surrounded by three others—who looked a lot like A-Xing. Although the in-game model was taller and a good deal more handsome, with bright golden hair, the facial features were exactly the same as A-Xing’s, recognizable at a glance to anyone who knew him.
Was A-Xing in trouble?
A Leaf Boat: [Streamer, streamer, can you please go take a look and see what’s going on over there?]
[You think the streamer will just do what you ask? That would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?]
The streamer saw the message and paused, then awkwardly changed his tune: “Send a gift and I’ll check it out for you.”
Game currency: zero. Star coins: also zero. Jiang Ye was dead broke.
She glanced over at the gift option and saw there were choices to send a streamer tuna or coconut water.
Apparently, in stream mode, players could gift items from their own backpacks.
Jiang Ye immediately sent the streamer a serving of coconut water.
In the live broadcast window, the streamer suddenly had a freshly opened coconut water in his hand.
The streamer looked baffled. “What’s this?”
Yi Ye Zhou: [Coconut water. Try taking a sip.]
Still skeptical, the streamer took a careful sip. He froze for a moment, then began to chug, almost burying his entire face in the coconut.
Delicious! Absolutely delicious!
This fresh sweetness! This rejuvenating feeling!
After just one sip, all of his fatigue vanished!
Even his HP increased!!
A little angel floated out behind the streamer—a special effect that appears in-game when a character feels blissful. It’s built into the system by default, though players can DIY or disable it.
Seeing this, the viewers all chimed in:
[What’s this angel thing?! Aaaah, that coconut water looks so good! Now I’m craving some!]
[What is coconut water??]
[We have this on our planet! It’s coconut! Super expensive in real life. Wait, does the game have coconut water too? How come I’ve never seen it?! Is it in the starter village??]
A Leaf Boat: [Streamer, can you check things out over there now?]
Never bite the hand that feeds you.
The streamer pretended to casually stroll over to A-Xing and his attackers, bending down as if looking for herbs.
These guys didn’t bother with private chat; they were talking right there in the open, so as the streamer got close, everyone could hear their conversation.
The leader—a big, scar-faced man—glared at A-Xing, who was held between a skinny and a fat lackey, and sneered, “Run? Think you can run? Don’t think I can’t recognize you just because you turned on beauty mode! Bet you didn’t expect I’d catch you here, even in-game."
A-Xing tried to look innocent. “Tiger Bro, you play this game too?”
Scarface threw a punch right into Axing’s stomach. “Don’t try that shit with me. You think I don’t know what you’re up to? Planning to make money through games and leave the planet? Dream on!"
Scarface’s huge hand gripped Axing’s jaw tight. Grinning viciously, he said, “From now on, I’m going to make sure you can’t play anymore."
“Just wait. Even if I have to dig up every corner of this wasteland, I’ll find you in the real world—and make you and your little sidekick wish you were dead!”
Jiang Ye thought this kind of behavior would make the viewers angry, but instead, similar comments flooded the stream.
[Forget it, ignore them. They’re from the wasteland. Who cares.]
[No idea what law they broke to get exiled. Just ignore their drama. Streamer, don’t get involved, just go. You’ll get yourself in trouble. Those wasteland folks are crazy anyway.]
[How are wastelanders allowed in this game? Isn’t the equipment only sold in the five major star zones??]
[For real, I don’t want these people ruining the game. Can the wastelanders just get out!?]
At that moment, Jiang Ye felt a chill all over.
She had never encountered the galaxy’s class system so directly before.
Gripping her teeth, she quickly typed into the chat.
A Leaf Boat: [So wastelanders aren’t human, is that it?]
[But seriously, aren’t wastelanders usually have bad genes and a criminal record? No point in letting inferior genes waste resources. Been feeling like the star systems’ resources keep getting scarcer these past years.]
[They’re all criminals, aren’t they? Serves them right. Why defend them? What, are you a bleeding heart?]
Jiang Ye saw these comments and laughed coldly.
Let it all burn. There’s no saving this rotten galaxy.
The streamer said nothing.
In the stream, A-Xing had already been taken away, and Scar Tiger and his underlings kept talking.
“Keep a close eye on this brat later—I’ve got to go hunt wild rabbits. Damn things are near impossible to kill, like they’ve grown brains. And I have to get fifteen just to trade for seafood at the village chief’s? Shit, what a pain!”
Seafood—?
A plan sparked in Jiang Ye’s mind!
She closed the stream and, using the game’s feature to add real-world friends, sent a friend request to A-Xing.
After a long while, Axing accepted.
[Private Chat • Young Master With Money: Xiao Jiang???]