"Chopping down trees also consumes stamina. Chopping down one tree consumes 12 stamina points, but only yields 8 pieces of wood. Is that reasonable?"

"What? You're cutting down trees? Instead of looking for treasure chests, you're here cutting down trees?"

"I was planning to start a fire and cook lunch."

"What did you use to cut down the tree? Did you chop it with your bare hands?"

"No way, I'm a carpenter, and I happen to have a saw on the cart."

In this unexpected discussion, the players, who were initially somewhat tired, were also ignited and began to recount their experiences.

The initial topic was gradually forgotten, but a new conversation started, causing ripples to spread across the once calm lake, making it impossible for everyone to remain silent.

"Wait a minute?" Xi Xi looked at the rapidly scrolling public chat and brushed a stray hair behind her ear in confusion. She had clearly calculated that cutting down a tree consumed 2 stamina points; she couldn't possibly have made a mistake in such elementary-level addition and subtraction.

Her brainwaves raced, and after a moment's deep thought, Xi Xi concluded there were only two possibilities: either the carpenter was lying, or...

Xi Xi subconsciously touched the light blade scythe tucked at her waist, and a sense of security welled up from the bottom of her heart.

Alternatively, weapons of different qualities may consume different amounts of stamina.

After all, her laser blade scythe is of the highest quality!

"Everyone, hold on a second. Why is that young man so quiet?"

"Hey, Luo Shi, are you still there?"

The chat was still scrolling, with everyone talking about their own things, showing no signs of stopping.

However, several minutes passed, and Luo Shi was still nowhere to be seen on the public screen. This subtle change attracted people's attention, and more and more people started calling out to Luo Shi from afar.

Suddenly, a message appeared on the public screen, breaking the deadlock: "Stop calling him. Didn't you guys notice? 777 (/) just changed to /."

In an instant, the rapidly scrolling chat area came to a standstill. The lively conversation came to an abrupt halt, as if an invisible hand had suddenly gripped the throat, and the whole world was gripped tightly by fear.

This wasn't the first person to die in the game, but it was the first time many people faced death directly.

The person who was speaking just a second ago is reduced to a number the next second, and is casually erased from this world.

Xi Xi felt her pulse become unusually clear at this moment. Almost anyone would feel suffocated by this heavy atmosphere, but Xi Xi was different. She was surprisingly calm at this moment.

In her past life, she had witnessed countless lives pass away, from initial panic and unease, fear and helplessness, to final calm and numbness, which eroded her sensitivity time and time again.

Therefore, even if a tiny bit of pity lingered in her heart at that moment, it quickly vanished. Xi Xi calmly closed the light screen, intending to do her own thing.

She looked around through the car window. The vast terrain did not have many large sandstone formations that obstructed the view, so at least most of the hidden dangers could be eliminated.

Since we can't continue driving and further deplete our stamina, resting and recuperating here tonight is a good decision.

Thinking this, Xi Xi opened the basic wooden box where the snake meat had just been stored, took out the tissue stained with snake blood, and to her disappointment, the blood on the tissue had already congealed.

This shows that the time inside the treasure chest does indeed flow at the same rate as real time.

Xi Xi originally thought that although the two bottles of chilled plum juice were inside the treasure chest, after being exposed to the sun for so long, theoretically they couldn't still be chilled when taken out of the treasure chest. Therefore, Xi Xi guessed that the treasure chest might have a time-stopping function.

However, it seems that it doesn't work at present; it appears to only affect the original items in the treasure chest.

After a brief moment of disappointment, Xi Xi cheered up again. Things often don't go as planned, and being able to exploit this treasure chest storage bug was already quite good in a sense.

After all, it can ignore the shape and size of objects.

Therefore, the snake meat cannot be stored any longer and must be cooked as soon as possible to prevent it from spoiling.

Xi Xi nimbly got out of the car and gathered some dead wood and dry shrubs to make a pile of wood. She then used the thicker dry branches to build a simple, somewhat unstable grill.

This was in the second year of the apocalypse, after she joined the supplies scavenging team, and she learned it from the team leader at the time. The team leader's name was Li Zhongmin, a down-to-earth and capable countryman.

Xi Xi believes this is a rare good person she has met in the apocalypse.

Unfortunately, life is unpredictable. During a riot caused by prolonged hunger, a traitor appeared in the team. Li Zhongmin's wife, Su Qing, was raped and killed by local thugs. Captain Li could not bear the blow and fell ill, eventually dying in depression.

From then on, their squad became suspicious of each other every day, and soon they went their separate ways.

Xi Xi felt that it was a tough but fulfilling period, because she learned a lot of survival skills through hard work and perseverance.

Every hardship in life seems to be a stepping stone to the future, accumulating little by little. Xi Xi knows deep down that without those experiences, she wouldn't have made it to the sixth year of the apocalypse...

"Let's just make do with it..." Xi Xi sighed, looking at the somewhat rough grill. Her skills were still a bit inferior to Li Zhongmin's.

Xi Xi rummaged through the snakeskin woven bag and found a windproof lighter that she had bought in advance from a convenience store. Using flammable shrub twigs as kindling, she quickly started a fire.

She picked up the gleaming scythe and cut the giant snake into three parts, skillfully peeling off its skin, removing its internal organs, and shaving off its bones. Then she began to boil water in a small iron pot.

Xi Xi simply blanched the snake spine bones in boiling water, then opened a bag of seafood instant noodles, setting the noodles aside and instead putting the seasoning packet and vegetable packet into the pot to simmer the snake bone soup.

Blanching not only sterilizes and disinfects, but also removes blood, grime, and unpleasant odors from snake bones. Xi Xi didn't waste the water used to blanch the snake bones; she set it aside to cool and reused it to clean the snake meat.

After finishing her work, Xi Xi straightened up and looked at the sunset in the distance. The light of the setting sun had softened considerably, losing its scorching heat.

In the distance, the orange-gold sunset glow intertwined with the radiance of the setting sun, casting a rosy hue over the desert. This magnificent scene was hard to reconcile with the extremely harsh heat of the daytime.

Xi Xi closed her eyes and briefly felt the warmth of the setting sun. If she had just experienced the apocalypse, she might still have some illusions about the world. But now, even if it wasn't the apocalypse but the world of a survival game, she wouldn't have any of those illusions.

Xi Xi thought for a moment without expression, then opened her eyes, walked to the other side of the car, lit another fire, and carefully skewered three portions of snake meat with dry branches and placed them on a makeshift grill.

She stretched out her right hand and placed it under the snake meat skewers to feel the temperature of the fire. After silently counting to five seconds, she nodded to herself and withdrew her hand.

"More or less," Xi Xi muttered to herself.

This was also the method Li Zhongmin taught his team members to judge whether the fire temperature was suitable for outdoor grilling. If you couldn't even hold your hand for five seconds, it meant the fire temperature was too high, and you needed to raise the grill to prevent the food from burning.