Summer of the first year, 19th-21st
On the 19th of summer, you turn on the TV and see the golden triangular pyramid that symbolizes good luck, and you breathe a sigh of relief.
Hmm, today is not a good day for grinding monsters. Let's wander around, chop down some trees and give gifts. It's Friday, after all!
Before that, you went to the blacksmith shop and broke open the 64 crystal balls in your backpack.
You contributed eight new items to the museum this time, and there's a new reward, but those things aren't very appealing to you. In short, you're still far from having a complete collection.
As you leave the museum, you encounter Megumi Fushiguro. This seemingly aloof and cool boy greets you as you pass by and thanks you for fixing the bus; his green eyes, similar to his father's, are full of genuine kindness.
You can't help but marvel at how good bamboo shoots can come from bad ones, and casually open the live stream interface to see how popular it is, and whether you should actively trigger someone's heart event.
Unexpectedly, upon checking, I discovered a pleasant surprise: your third-ranked sister on the leaderboard has come online!
This "older sister" isn't just a respectful term; she really is your sister, even if she's not your biological sister, you're still related by blood.
Your heart suddenly races, and you want to say something, but you feel like you're being choked and can't make a sound. You can only try to run to the ranch counter, repeatedly open and close the encyclopedia three times, and finally stop on the encyclopedia screen.
Will she understand? Will she help?
You're starting to regret that you've been so focused on playing games that you haven't been connecting with her outside of the live stream. You might not have that same chemistry with her in these situations...
Time seemed to slow down incredibly slowly, and you were almost drowning in the hopeless wait until a string of numbers appeared in the live stream.
【542, 552, 558】
[Haven't played in a while...Is it a maximum of 3 characters? Is there enough space in the chicken coop?]
"We have enough space, and if we don't have enough chicken coops, we have livestock sheds!" you quickly said. "We only need a few minerals, but we're mainly missing antiques. Please help!"
You quickly open the animal purchase interface, buy a cow, and enter [542][552][558]. The mineral encyclopedia lights up along with the faintly repeating sound of the calf's name.
【Hey, what? You want to provide the code? I'll help too!】
【559573578!】
Although it's not exactly a good thing to do, it's to save real-world time...
[Your mineral collection is full, why are you just standing there and switching to the encyclopedia?!]
Encouraged by the third-ranked streamer, netizens eagerly shared their codes. It wasn't entirely out of curiosity; the main reason was that the streamer was too lazy to look up the codes and simply showered the live stream with gifts, creating a meteor shower effect. Although it was only 1-5 tokens per person to experience the richness of the streamer, everyone was quick to follow suit and started looking for the codes.
You quickly and accurately entered the code, filling your backpack to the brim and even building a wooden crate on the spot to store the antiques so as not to waste time. But you still couldn't outrun time. After putting things into the crate for the second time, you looked up and saw that Miss Ming had already decisively left work and ignored you, this cunning code-following player.
It was exactly 4 p.m., a time when even elementary school students in the Flower Garden might not be out of school yet, but in Stardew Valley, it wasn't the earliest time to leave work!
Sigh, what can we do?
You put the less useful or easily replaceable items from your backpack into the wooden crate before taking all the antiques from the crate at once—it's an experience that makes you feel like a clown.
You're just two lines away from completing the artifact encyclopedia, and you have this urge to go back to sleep now and then continue coding the next day to see if the complete encyclopedia can pave a way for you to return to reality.
[An abnormal increase in code sending has been detected; the live stream has been closed.]
You realize that you probably can't find out the subsequent code using this method anymore, but...
"125, 126, 127," you murmured, "consecutive numbers... I can give it a try."
So you continue with your previous plan, drink a triple espresso and move on quickly, to find traveling merchants, chop hardwood, donate your collection and gifts to the bar, and finally return to the farm, go into the barn and stroke the newly purchased code cows one by one, and think about the pattern in their names.
After figuring out what to do tomorrow, you returned to your room, still feeling anxious and restless. You paced back and forth, packing your things, until everything went black and you collapsed to the ground.
On the morning of the 20th of summer, you received a sewer key from Moth Lord... The method was certainly unscrupulous, but the result was the same. The curator of Moth Lord handed you the rusty key without saying anything special, seemingly uninterested in the specific process of collecting the artifacts.
You eagerly head to the barn, sell most of the cattle to secure enough space, and then anxiously wait for the ranch store to open while husking corn.
This batch yielded 3 golden corn, the same number as last time, enough to complete a high-quality crop collection pack.
You were doing farm work absentmindedly until almost 9 o'clock when you gulped down a large glass of triple concentrate—this stuff tasted so bitter at first that you wanted to vomit, but it tasted strangely good after a while, but hopefully this was the last time you would drink it.
I rushed to the ranch, scouted it out, pounced on the counter, and bought a cow!
The Stardew Valley code isn't entirely random; items with similar properties are grouped together in the code. For example, yesterday's artifacts were numbered from 10X to 12X. Following this logic, the last two rows of artifacts should be numbered from 12X to 13X, but don't forget that some artifacts have different properties. You can tell from their shapes that the last few are bones and specimens, not adjacent to the earlier items that resemble relics of an ancient civilization.
Sure enough, when you enter the last three characters after yesterday's last code, you find that none of them come up correctly.
Then you can only try the following code: 539-541 and 579-581. Hopefully, you can find what you need in these codes.
[579][580][581] Corresponding to the prehistoric scapula, tibia, and skull, we're lucky, let's continue.
After entering the information several times, I finally unlocked the entire encyclopedia. However, when I went to the museum, I found that there were still a few empty slots that had not been filled.
You're panicking, so you quickly open the encyclopedia to compare, but the more you compare, the more dizzy and disoriented you become. You're so nervous that you can't even see double, so you have to close the encyclopedia to calm down.
Okay, let's check it again. The antiquities are all there, so the problem lies with the minerals—it turns out that some of the most common gemstones were missed. You almost laughed out of anger and quickly ran back to the farm to retrieve them.
The road from the museum to the farm has never felt so long. By the time you finally return to the museum with the gems, it's already 3 p.m. And there's still a shortfall after this donation!
You checked again in despair, and lo and behold, there was a missing piece of jade. It must have been left in another wooden box and forgotten.
This time you finally remembered that you had repaired minecarts, and you didn't panic and run back through town again, but...
There was no jade in the wooden box.
It's not hard to explain. In your rudimentary Stardew Valley item classification concept, emeralds, which are not worth much money but can be exchanged for stairs, should be placed in the same chest as crystals, sacrificial items, and prismatic shards. However, at this level, you don't need to go through the trouble of timing your trip to the desert to exchange for stairs. You can just buy a few stacks of stones and make as many as you want. Therefore, excess emeralds will be casually thrown into the shipping chest...
You dejectedly took five golden corns to the community center for a sacrifice, then wandered around aimlessly for a long time before finally calming down and going back to your room to sleep.
It was postponed for another day.
When you woke up this morning, you felt like you'd let go of the past. But what's the point of being anxious? If you can go back, enjoy one last bit of the fantasy life in the game; if you can't, then there's no point in being anxious.
With this mindset, you no longer rush out the door, but instead want to grab a Golden Star strawberry from the refrigerator, since you can't get such a good strawberry in real life.
The phone suddenly rang, and you instinctively rushed to it, only to find it was Youyou on the other end.
He seemed to be there to interrogate you—"I heard you obtained a collection from your older sister that could fill most of a museum, is that right?"
Options pop up:
Option 1: I was wrong! Immediately transfer 3,000,000g to Miss Mingming's personal account!
Option 2: She didn't lose out! I also bought a lot of cattle to sell at a low price.
Option 3: That's not true...
Option 4: I know your secret, Worry.
Anyway, no matter what you choose, Youyou probably can't stop you from using the code to get the last collectible. And even if he could, jade isn't anything rare. So if you really want to try choosing option 4, well, you're just asking for trouble!
You don't really want to sneak into a lady's room to pick up a pair of underwear that's probably filthy, so it seems kind of funny to bring it up now.
However, when it came to making your choice, you still conservatively opted for the most serious option, number 2, which shows a lack of personal integrity.
Youyou wasn't entirely satisfied with your answer. She recited the original lines like a robot and hung up: "...Okay, I won't keep you from your work any longer. Goodbye!"
At 9 a.m., you appeared before the underworld on time and bought a cow named [70].
This code wasn't something you figured out by trial and error; it was purely from memory. After all, in one of your save files, you suddenly had the idea to name your cat this, and Jade Cat accompanied you for a long time.
In Stardew Valley, there are many memories that are unrelated to reality but bring you warmth.
This time you skipped coffee and leisurely strolled through Pelican Town to complete the last missing piece of your collection.
When you eat the Star Fruit, a reward for the "Complete Collection" achievement, it tastes like a freshly opened Timothy stalk, with a natural fragrance, as if you can see a rabbit standing up, eagerly sniffing it.
As the effect wears off, you're about to ask Moth of the Way what to do next, when you see the man standing behind the museum counter—the same blue-hatted, bearded uncle from the original story.
...
【You're back!】
[Hey—the streamer's secretly playing games without including us!]
Where is my noctuid moth? Where is such a large curator of noctuid moths?
Press the P key quickly to switch character portraits.
You stand there expressionless, your heart filled with mixed feelings. Finally, you sigh and have no choice but to accept the fact that your hopes have been dashed.
Oh well, at least I got the sewer key in advance, so I can buy Cheng's magic wand.
Having spent years in the sewers, Bloat looks even more gloomy than Rime, but in terms of conversational experience, he is much better, possessing the composure of an older brother and a world-weary detachment.
It makes one inexplicably feel that as long as he doesn't do things like giving Hisahito Itadori quartz and holly, or turning his child with Hisahito Itadori into a pigeon and flying away and then getting a divorce, he won't care.
From him, you received your second Star Fruit of the day. This time, the taste had a sewer-like quality, as if you had plunged into a rabbit toilet. The strong stench and the sensation of liquid sliding down your throat intertwined, and you could see the yellowed soles of rabbits in your mind's eye.
You forcefully resist the urge to vomit and buy the Return Wand, instantly teleporting yourself back to the farm. You hug a passing hen and sniff it—it's the warm, comforting scent of straw baked in the sun, incredibly soothing, without a trace of fishiness or stench. No wonder it's a free-range, anime-style chicken.
A slightly hesitant heart appeared on the hen's head.
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