Chapter 61: The Target

After roasting the pork belly, she wrapped it in the fresh vegetable leaves she had gathered today and ate it. The taste was excellent, and it cut through the greasiness perfectly. Most of her meat was just ordinary pork; within half an hour, she had turned all the rations stored in her system backpack for Liuliu into grilled dishes.

What troubled Yun Qing was that Liuliu refused to eat the grilled meat. Even the last piece of lamb had been fed to Liuliu half a day ago.

Her own ration problem was solved for now, but she still needed to find time to prepare more dog food.

Yun Qing spent nearly an entire night busy in the blacksmith’s shop, pausing only to lie on the bed in her cave dwelling for three hours to restore her energy. She managed to forge a few long knives, axes, and pickaxe heads. According to Master Li, these were the best-selling items lately, and she didn’t even use up half of the materials she had scavenged from Wheat Field Village.

After a night’s labor and the experience gained from producing charcoal with the basic crafting machine, her crafting level reached 26.

Of course, she didn’t forget to enter her cave dwelling to harvest wild strawberries and trees, as well as to prepare materials for expanding her wooden house.

To her surprise, a single seed yielded twenty wild strawberries, each one of excellent quality. They tasted sweet and tart, far better than modern strawberries, and each one increased her hunger meter by five.

Seeds costing two taels of silver could fill her up, which was a pretty good deal.

Blacksmithing was exhausting, and after experiencing purification and gourmet cooking, Yun Qing felt that if not for achievements and skill points, she truly wouldn’t want to do this job.

At dawn, Master Li arrived at the blacksmith’s shop to inspect Yun Qing’s work. Seeing the weapon rack piled high with “silver,” Master Li’s eyes crinkled in a smile, and Yun Qing received a notification that his affection for her had increased.

Yun Qing smiled and said, “Master Li, today I promised to help a few grandmas in the village harvest vegetables. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Could you help sell these finished products for me?”

Everyone has elders in their family, or will one day grow old themselves. Yun Qing’s willingness to help elderly villagers harvest vegetables at low prices earned Master Li’s admiration. He nodded and said, “No problem. Go on, don’t keep the grandmas waiting.”

“Yes!”

During the day, Yun Qing helped villagers harvest vegetables for a small fee. Even though she had a storage pouch, she didn’t keep anything for herself. Many elderly villagers who struggled to get around entrusted her with their homegrown herbs as well.

They might have liked Yun Qing, but unfortunately, they weren’t martial artists nor key characters, so the system didn’t show any affection levels for them.

At night, Yun Qing only rested briefly before returning to her work in the blacksmith’s shop.

Master Li’s affection for her had reached “friendly.”

Master Li wasn’t someone desperate for silver, nor did he intend to take over Yun Qing’s work. The division remained at eighty-twenty.

On the third day, villagers no longer sought her help with harvesting vegetables and herbs. Everything she had scavenged from Wheat Field Village had been reforged and sold, though she kept a full set of pots and pans for herself, as well as plenty of arrows and a long knife.

To upgrade her gathering skill, she found a new method. She couldn’t afford to spend real money, so she resolved to grind.

Clenching her fist, Yun Qing murmured to herself, “My goal is to become a grind master.”

Her first step toward that goal was to gather the wild grass found everywhere.

Each wild grass provided only one point of gathering experience, but harvesting thousands could still level her up.

Grinding for a whole day, she could harvest ten thousand plants.

Yun Qing simply pulled up wild grass by hand, which almost never failed. Using the gathering skill consumed more energy, though.

She crouched for so long that standing up suddenly made her dizzy. Despite her youth, her back hurt—a consequence, she believed, of sleeping on a wooden board.

When villagers asked her why she was gathering weeds, she explained that after drying, they could be used as firewood. To prove it, she specially displayed the branches and weeds she had gathered and set them out to dry.

After harvesting ten thousand weeds, she was lucky enough to earn the “Weeding Expert” achievement.

After two days of gathering wild grass, Yun Qing’s gathering level rose to 30, her character level to 29, and her crafting to 31. Only her combat experience lagged behind, still stuck at the level it was when Ye Xiaolang left—29.

Once her crafting reached level 30, making charcoal no longer gave experience points. Reaching 31 was purely because she had built a “villa.”

But once her gathering reached 30, Yun Qing discovered to her dismay that gathering weeds and vegetables no longer provided experience.

Liuliu told her that leveling from 30 to 31 was a major hurdle, and she should work hard to overcome it.

This confirmed for Yun Qing that level 31 marked the Postnatal Realm.

Upgrading to level 31 required ten thousand experience points—not hard for her.

At level 30, she could gather polluted items, though more than half would fail; successful attempts granted over a hundred experience points.

However, she had to collect by hand to gain experience.

During her days in the village, she spent a lot of silver but earned even more. Now she had two hundred taels of silver both in her system and on her person. Her system backpack contained a month’s worth of rations for herself and Liuliu, though most had no special attributes.

She had squandered her affection points on lucky draws, originally intending to save them for better prizes in the future.

When she expanded all possible foundations and calculated the size for a new house, she realized that even if she built another, it would only be twenty more square meters—barely enough space, meaning she’d soon have to rebuild.

She wasn’t someone who’d only ever lived in flats; she was a modern person used to apartment buildings.

She wanted to build a high-rise. Liuliu informed her that at her current level, she could only build a two-story cottage.

Fine, two stories it was. Yun Qing decided to build a small villa. Then Liuliu told her that to build a two-story wooden house, she needed the staircase blueprint—jumping up wouldn’t do.

Yun Qing had no choice but to grit her teeth and use up her affection points for another lucky draw. Whether her luck was good or bad, she finally obtained the staircase blueprint after spending all her affection points.

As she wished, she built a two-story villa in her cave dwelling. The villa was filled with simple wooden cabinets, each packed with charcoal—the wood she had gathered from Wheat Field Village had all been turned to charcoal. The cabinets themselves were made from wood she chopped herself.

However, the villa’s quality wasn’t great; she felt that should monsters besiege her cave, even a small sheep could topple her villa.

During her days helping in the village, Yun Qing didn’t leave empty-handed in terms of enmity. A person named Xia Yu developed a hatred value of ten toward her, with a status of suspicion. After some investigation, Yun Qing learned that Xia Yu was Ye Qiu Yue’s mother.

Her current tasks were: planting trees and building fences; mining and reinforcing primary buildings; fighting, gathering herbs, leveling up; earning silver, upgrading skills, buying martial arts manuals for Postnatal Realm, and seeking ways to cultivate immortality…

Just as Yun Qing prepared to venture out of the village alone, Ye Xiaolang returned after helping Ye Wenjing with her affairs.

She had said she’d wait a few days for him; now he was back and ready to team up with her. With the powerful Ye Xiaolang by her side, she felt much safer. Yun Qing exclaimed happily, “Xiaolang, you’re back! When are you free to team up and go look for resources together?”

Ye Xiaolang looked at the outsider he had picked up outside the village. In this short time, she had made remarkable progress. Her clothes, her storage pouch, and the fading black spots on her face all hinted at mystery.

“Probably not. I plan to leave Ye Family Village.”

Yun Qing was startled. “You’re leaving too?”

Ye Xiaolang nodded in confirmation.