"Apocalypse Sunshine Camp" is located at the foot of the snow-capped mountains south of City T. According to longitude and latitude, this area should be warmer than the "Get Rich Overnight Camp" to the north. However, after the apocalypse system arrived, the game apparently didn't follow its rules and gave you a snowy mountain map just because it said so!

Shao Leilei, the owner of the Apocalyptic Sunshine Camp, chose this location precisely for its snow-capped mountains. Before the apocalypse, she was an amateur figure skater. After the apocalypse, she was classified as a mage by the system, and coincidentally, she acquired two ice-based skills.

One of the skills, [Ice Blade Pursuit], uses a magic wand to shoot out ice blades to attack the enemy. The ice blades have a tracking effect within a certain range and are difficult to dodge.

This skill deals decent damage, but requires Ice Elemental to fill the wand. This snowy mountain is undoubtedly the easiest place to obtain Ice Elemental around T City, so when Shao Leilei received the [Shelter Construction Permit], she immediately chose this location.

As the time approached 22:00, everyone in the camp fell asleep.

In the apocalypse, there is no need to stay up late to work overtime, and there is no nightlife for entertainment. In addition, people have to go out to kill monsters and collect materials during the day, so everyone has spontaneously developed a good schedule of going to bed early and getting up early.

So when the earth-shaking footsteps of the Frost Giants began to approach, the people who were still sleeping were still asleep.

As they got closer, the shaking intensified, even the bed in the house began to shake. Then, the Frost Giant, now within striking distance of the barrier, raised his massive fist and slammed it down on the barrier's light shield!

"Ah... there's a monster!!!" The member of the house who was closest to the gate opened his eyes and saw the huge figure outside through the window. He crawled out of the thatched hut, screaming heartbreakingly.

The members were finally awakened. The three huge black figures standing outside the protective shield scared everyone's scalp numb. Some were frightened directly, while others lifted the quilt and staggered out to see what was going on.

"Roar--" The frost giant saw humans, but was blocked by the protective shield and let out an angry roar.

"Bang!" The huge fist angrily smashed into the protective shield, causing the earth and mountains around it to shake.

The people in the camp were terrified, screaming in fear. However, someone soon discovered that the barrier stone had not collapsed. After that seemingly terrifying punch, a [-1] appeared on the barrier.

In other words, even if three Frost Giants attack at the same time, the damage is only [-3].

The barrier stone has 10,000 health points.

Seeing this, the people couldn't help but feel a little relieved. A warrior who had already raised his shield and was ready to fight looked up at the huge shadow in front of him and said hesitantly, "With the barrier stone protecting us, do we not have to be afraid?"

This sentence immediately caused a lot of discussion.

"That's right... Each attack only takes 1 HP. How long will it take to break through?"

"Right, right, right. And it's just a wild monster, not an enemy. It's impossible for them to target us and attack us. I guess they'll leave after a while if they find they can't break through. We can then repair the barrier stone."

"...Speaking of which, how do we repair the barrier stone?"

"I don't know. I've never been attacked before."

…

The next morning, the sun shone on the earth, and the members of the Get Rich Overnight Camp got up one after another and went about their own business as usual.

The breakfast provided by the camp today was soy milk, fried dough sticks and boiled eggs. Ren Guoqing still bought the maximum amount according to the purchase limit. He ate some of it himself and put the rest into his backpack and took it out to sell.

In addition to this breakfast, his backpack also contained bread, jam, and equipment that Zhang Xu had forged.

The bread and jam were prepared by the foraging trio, who gathered the raw materials, and the cooking trio, who prepared the finished products. He had originally come up with the idea, but initially he was unsure, fearing it wouldn't sell, and was prepared to pay six workers at a loss. However, on the first day, he realized he'd overestimated the price of these things.

As for equipment, it's even easier to sell. Although Zhang Xu's forging level is only 28, and he can probably only forge blue equipment, he can still easily find buyers. On the one hand, the higher-quality purple equipment is hard to come by, so few people would dislike the properties of blue equipment. On the other hand, blue equipment only has 100 durability. Many players grind monsters to upgrade and stockpile resources. 100 durability can be used up in a few days, so stocking up on more equipment is a necessity.

With these things, Ren Guoqing's small business is booming. He moved from the thatched hut to the wooden house last night, and the previous thatched hut is used as a warehouse to store things.

If he didn't want to save money, he could actually afford to buy the stone house.

In the brand new thatched cottage, Xin Lu was packing her backpack when Zhang Xiangqian returned from buying breakfast. Xin Lu glanced over and saw that the breakfast included soy milk, fried dough sticks, boiled eggs, and two loaves of bread. She frowned, "Another waste of money! How easy is it for us to save some money?"

Zhang Xiangqian smiled and said, "This is very cheap, and look at the quality!"

【Item: Butter Bread】

【Quality: Blue】

[Description: After consumption, it can effectively relieve hunger and restore physical strength. When the physical strength is below 70%, an additional effect will be triggered: 15% of the maximum physical strength will be restored every hour, lasting for 3 hours.]

No one knows how this crappy game will develop in the future, but at this stage, physical strength is a basic need for everyone.

Whether it is killing monsters, gathering or doing business, you need sufficient physical strength. Without physical strength, not only can you not do anything, but you can't even run when you encounter wild monsters, and you may even get sick.

Xin Lu's expression softened upon seeing this, and she became curious: "How much?"

"25 gold coins each. I bargained down to 45 for two." Zhang Xiangqian said as he puffed out his chest, obviously very satisfied with his bargaining skills.

Xin Lu stared in astonishment: "Can this price be bargained down?!"

They had seen food of the same quality and similar properties before. Depending on the seller's idea, each piece would be sold for about 50-100 gold, without bargaining.

Zhang Xiangqian chuckled, put one piece of bread into his backpack, and stuffed the other one into Xin Lu's pocket. "Let's have breakfast first. We can take this bread with us when we run out of energy. Then we won't have to rest all the time, and we can save time to kill more monsters."

In the square, He Kailai, the super chef who became rich overnight, looked at the two large plates of butter bread in front of him, and felt as satisfied as if he had a house full of children and grandchildren!

The butter bread was dropped by another member while killing monsters. Since he didn't have the cooking skill, he gave it to him without asking for money. He Kailai then learned the skill and built an old-fashioned bread oven with bricks based on his memory.

As a result... Although his construction skills were only level 8, he worked very slowly and the products didn't look good. It took him several days to build a bread kiln, but it was still usable. The bread was baked early this morning!

To express his gratitude, He Kailai found the member who had given him the skill card before, and told her that as long as he did this in the future, he would provide her with ten loaves of bread for free. He also gave two loaves each to Hu Haomiaolin, who had always been his partner, and NPC Sister Jin, and left one loaf for Ye Miao who was still sleeping, before officially setting up the stall.

The two items Zhang Xiangqian bought were his first order. He was just trying to set the price, thinking that it would be fine as long as he could make some profit. However, Zhang Xiangqian's bargaining gave him a new idea.

He Kailai re-determined the price in his mind, then found a slate and wrote on it with white marks:

【Butter bread for sale】

【25 gold/piece】

【45 gold/2 pieces】

【100 gold/pack (5 pieces)】

【Buy three packs and get one pack free】

After writing, He Kailai shouted at the top of his voice: "Butter bread, blue quality! Sustained stamina replenishment! Buy more, get more free, hurry up!"

The slogan "Continuously replenish physical strength" hits the user's pain point. As soon as the words were spoken, a small team came running over to watch. After seeing the attributes and the quantity, they made an immediate decision: "I want three guarantees!"

He Kailai: "300 gold."

"Here!" The captain paid immediately. He Kailai handed over 20 loaves of bread. There were originally only two iron plates of bread, and in an instant only one and a half plates were left.

At the door of the stone house, Ye Miao sat on the stone steps in a leisurely manner, eating a wrap made by NPC Sister Jin.

There are some advantages to establishing your own territory. Although it's stressful, you can cook your own food. Sister Jin's burrito is very similar to the Mexican chicken burrito that K Mou C used to sell for many years. It tastes like childhood memories, which makes Ye Miao feel inexplicably good.

Seeing that He Kailai's business was booming, she felt even better.

—It's worthy of being her camp, cheap and well-run! It's well worth all the time and money she spent on this game!

Ye Miao had played the mobile game "Fantasy World" for several years. The game has a very high degree of freedom, and the territories built by the same players can be very different.

The difference seemed natural, but when she recalled it later, she understood what it meant that "everything depends on human effort."

Territories are built step by step, from the initial "sanctuary" to the final "city," with members growing from few to many, and relationships from simple to complex. If the founder is friendly from the outset and sets relatively low prices for the territory, once the system is operational, even subsequent waves of players will be forced to join the system, gradually establishing a well-functioning system.

If the founders, from the outset, wanted to keep resources in the hands of a few core members, while this was a viable development model, the atmosphere in the territory was destined to be hostile to ordinary players. She had seen camps where large teams monopolized various resources, with even the most basic steamed buns selling for hundreds of gold. How could small players afford to play?

These experiences alerted Ye Miao, which is why she set the prices of items sold by Sister Jin so low, and also made low-level equipment from Da Zhuang equally cheap. This way, ordinary players would have a "minimum living allowance"—even if they couldn't live well on these items, they wouldn't starve to death either. This also meant that when others wanted to sell their items, the prices couldn't be too outrageous.

Ye Miao finished breakfast just as He Kailai, who had a good sales record, was closing up shop. He had actually seen Ye Miao coming out earlier, but he was too busy selling bread to come along. Now that the stall was closed, he immediately grabbed the reserved bag of butter bread and ran over, handing it to Ye Miao with a smile on his face: "Boss, this is freshly baked, give it a try!"

Ye Miao was startled and a little embarrassed: "No, no, you can sell it!"

"Hey, don't be so polite!" He Kailai stuffed the bread into her hands. "Boss, you built our camp so well, I should make sure you have enough food and drink!"

He Kailai said this sincerely, he was really grateful to Ye Miao.

Before the establishment of the Get Rich Overnight Shelter, he also tried to join other territories, but he was just a cook with zero combat skills. Almost all shelters looked down on him, and those with a better attitude also rejected him.

Until he came to Ye Miao, Ye Miao not only agreed to let him join, but also paid him to prepare three meals a day in the camp. Now he has developed his own business and his life is getting better and better.

After delivering the bread to the boss, He Kailai returned to the thatched cottage to count the money. He found that he had earned 1,500 gold coins from the two iron plates of bread. It seemed like a lot, but excluding the bread oven, the cost of the ingredients added up to 1,200 gold coins, and the profit was only 300, which was not high.

But think about it the other way around...the stone house in the camp is only 800 gold coins!

He Kailai, who had always felt that the stone house was not cost-effective, suddenly started to get addicted. He felt that there was nothing wrong with changing to a stone house. After all, it would just be a matter of selling bread for two more days!

In an orchard not far from the camp, Tan Kening and Fang Yuming had been hunting wolves for the entire morning when they gradually realized something was amiss.

The physical energy consumption when killing monsters will be greater than usual. After three or four hours in the morning, he had already taken a physical energy potion once, but Fang Yuming was still as normal.

But this is unscientific! A melee mage's stamina should be much higher than an assassin's. When they fought monsters together before, wasn't Fang Yuming the first to complain of being tired?

Using a skill from the Withered Poison Staff to deflect a white wolf, Tan Kening panted and looked at Fang Yuming: "Why do I feel like your stamina has increased? Is it because of your equipment?"

"Well, the Wind Boots reduce physical strength consumption by 10%." Fang Yuming nodded, thought for a moment and said, "And the Stone House. The Stone House increases the upper limit of physical strength and reduces consumption at the same time. If we sit down to rest, our recovery speed will also increase."

"You mean, the stone house can provide attribute blessings?!" Tan Kening was stunned. Fang Yuming: "Yeah."

"Hiss..." Tan Kening couldn't help but be attracted by the stone house.

He previously thought that a 40㎡ wooden house selling for 300 gold and a 50㎡ stone house selling for 800 gold were not worth it no matter how you calculated it, but if the stone house could provide attribute blessings, then it should indeed be priced differently!

"Silver wand, blue quality, a must-have for ranged mages! 300 gold coins! Only 300 gold coins!"

"Vine Staff, blue quality, perfect for melee mages! 300 gold coins, only 300 gold coins!"

"Excellent longbow, blue quality, ideal for archers! 300 gold coins! Only 300 gold coins!"

In a small alley in T City, Ren Guoqing set up a stall and sold things, and his business was good.

In the Get Rich Overnight Camp, NPC Sister Jin sells food at low prices; but the cost of NPC Xiao Shuai's OEM equipment is relatively high, which makes the blacksmiths among the camp members look cheap in contrast.

Ren Guoqing is a businessman. The moment he saw the price, he understood what Ye Miao was planning.

Food is a necessity, especially ordinary food to fill the stomach, which everyone needs. So in order to keep her members alive, she had to lower the price of ordinary food so that everyone could afford it.

Compared with food, equipment is not so urgently needed. On the other hand, as time goes by, players' demand for high-level equipment will increase, and the price will inevitably rise. In addition, as the resources in the hands of players increase, the prices that seem high now will soon become not worth mentioning.

According to this logic, the price Ye Miao set for the NPC Xiao Shuai wasn't actually a floor, but an upper limit. If a player with the Blacksmithing skill offered a higher price than the NPC, it would be difficult to sell. After all, it wasn't like they would starve to death if they didn't have the equipment, so players could just go to the NPC and wait in line.

Things that can wait and things that cannot wait often mean two completely different ways of thinking.

...Of course, Ren Guoqing knew he wasn't a sly shrewd person, and he couldn't guarantee his guess was correct. Logically, if equipment prices increased, Ye Miao would likely raise Xiao Shuai's prices as well. However, given Ye Miao's usual style, Ren Guoqing didn't think she would do that.

"Hey, besides selling equipment, do you also sell food here?" A girl in her early twenties walked up to Ren Guoqing's stall and her eyes lit up.

She was an archer and originally wanted to see the fine longbow, but when she got closer she found that there was food for sale.

Ren Guoqing nodded. "Whole wheat bread is white quality, 20 gold each. Jam is blue quality, 100 gold per can. Each can can be used three times. Eating it with bread restores both stamina and mana. There are also fried dough sticks, soy milk, and boiled eggs, all white quality, 20 gold each."

"It's not expensive." The archer said to himself.

Ren Guoqing held his tongue and didn't smile. This was the sentence he heard most often when he set up a stall recently. But in fact, white-quality items like fried dough sticks, soy milk, and boiled eggs only sold for one or two gold coins in the Overnight Rich Camp, and blue-quality food was only worth thirty or forty gold coins.

Then the archer asked, "How many do you have left? I want them all, okay?"

Ren Guoqing was stunned. "What do you want? Soy milk and fried dough sticks?"

"All the food," said the archer.

"...Why buy so much?" Ren Guoqing kindly reminded, "It's not expensive, but it's hard to sell it at a higher price. It also adds weight to your backpack. I urge you to spend wisely."

"Thank you." The archer smiled bitterly, "But I'm here to deal with the Frost Giants."

"?" Ren Guoqing was confused. "What?"

"Haven't you heard about the Frost Giants?" the archer asked. "They seem to have come down from the snowy mountains. Last night, they raided the Doomsday Sunshine Camp at the foot of the mountain and wiped it out. Not a single member survived."

Ren Guoqing was stunned: "It's already been upgraded to a camp, but there's no barrier stone?"

"Yes," the archer said. "At first, they wanted to wait for the Frost Giants to give up, but they seemed incredibly patient. They fought relentlessly for over two hours, finally tearing down the barrier. The players went out to fight them, but they couldn't defeat them. Within fifteen minutes of the barrier stone being shattered, they were wiped out!"

Ren Guoqing broke out in a cold sweat.

The archer continued, "Our camp isn't far from the snowy mountains, so our fighting capacity is decent. Today, we've urgently discussed countermeasures. If a frost giant attacks us, we'll have those with higher agility charge out and try to lure the monster away. But this thing is so patient, I'm afraid it'll take a long time to chase it, so I plan to buy some more food to replenish my energy."

Then he asked Ren Guoqing: "Don't you have a camp? Why haven't you heard about this?"

Ren Guoqing hurriedly came back to his senses, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and said, "Our camp is in the north."

"Oh, that should be fine. It's far away." The archer nodded. "Please help me calculate the price. And I want that longbow too."

"Okay..." Ren Guoqing said seriously, calculating carefully, "The fine longbow is 300 gold, and there are 12 cans of jam left. I'll give you the price for 10 cans, a total of 1300. The white ones are all 20 gold, adding up to 440, a total of 1740. Just give me 1700."

The archer, who didn't think anything was expensive in the first place, didn't feel at all that Ren Guoqing was making a huge profit by reselling the items. He was even worried that Ren Guoqing would lose money. He said with a touched face, "Thank you!"

"You're welcome. Can I ask you for a favor?" Ren Guoqing said.

Archer: "You say."

Ren Guoqing: "Let's add each other as friends. If you have any more news about the Frost Giants, please tell me. Is that convenient?"

"Of course it's convenient." The archer smiled. "My name is Zhang Tingting. Just search for me. That's me from the Star Camp."

The name had an unusually high duplication rate. Ren Guoqing searched for her and found her by filtering by camp. The two added each other as friends, and Ren Guoqing said in a complicated tone, "Then I'll wait for your news. I wish you safety and survival."

"Thank you." Zhang Tingting nodded, put the things she bought into her backpack one by one, and left with big strides.

Ren Guoqing watched her leave. He suddenly shuddered at the thought of the camp losing the protection of the barrier stone and having to face the frost giants. He had no intention of selling the remaining equipment, so he hurriedly packed his backpack and turned back.

"The Frost Giants destroyed the camp?" Ye Miao heard the news from Ren Guoqing as soon as he returned to the camp in the evening, and he felt terrible.

She had fought against the Frost Giant before, but in the original game, this creature would not actively attack the camp. Instead, it would sleep on the snow-capped mountains and become one with them. It would only wake up and attack when a player approached.

If it attacks now...

Ye Miao pondered and said, "The Frost Giant has high attack and defense, and good physical strength. He will attack patiently for a long time..."

Ren Guoqing was slightly surprised: "Boss, you knew that?!"

"I've heard of it before." Ye Miao said casually.

"Is that so?" Ren Guoqing didn't think much of it, thinking it wasn't wrong for high-level players to know this. He added, "I added a player as a friend today. She said her camp is also near the snowy mountains. If she has more news about the Frost Giants, she'll let me know."

"Okay, thank you." Ye Miao sincerely expressed his gratitude to the members for their kindness.

0:30.

Normally, by this time, all the camps would have turned off the lights and gone to sleep. But today, the campfire at Starry Sky Camp was still lit, with two members standing guard around it, watching the night with vigilance.

Their location is the same as the Doomsday Sunshine Camp, at the foot of the snow-capped mountains, but a little further east than the Doomsday Sunshine Camp, and there is a Green Light Shelter between the two.

So, today, the members of the Star Camp were praying unkindly: if the ice giants were to come down the mountain and attack humans again, then they should go to the Green Light Shelter and not come after them!

As the saying goes, a friend's death is not the end of me.

However, perhaps because of Murphy's Law, sometimes what you fear will come true.

At 0:57, the on-duty personnel, already beginning to drift off, were jolted awake by the faint sound of heavy footsteps. They subconsciously held their breath and looked up. In the vast night, they could vaguely see birds fluttering in the distant woods, as if startled by something.

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