When everyone heard about salt, their expressions changed.
Experienced players know that this means a big step forward for the game, while inexperienced players know that it means their meals will taste better from now on!
No more tasteless feeling or weird and incompatible taste with only spices!
Tao Zhenzhen listened to the news eagerly, and after a while she tugged at Si Lan's clothes again: "Sister, does this mean that we can add seasoning to our food from now on?"
"Um."
"How do you make salt? How do you refine it? What does it mean to refine it? Is it only found in the sea?"
Si Lan gave her a slightly helpless look. "There are salts in the sea, and in certain lakes. If conditions are right, we could even build salt wells, but we clearly don't have those conditions right now."
Tao Zhenzhen said "oh" with great benefit.
But suddenly, she realized what was happening and asked Si Lan, "Wait, sister, are you going to look for salt this time too?"
Si Lan: “Yeah.”
“…Are you going again?!”
"Why don't you let your police uncle go alone?"
Tao Zhenzhen looked at Fang Xun again: Okay, the police officer is also very important, and she doesn't want him to take the risk alone.
But if Sister Si Lan leaves again, when will the days of worrying at home every day that she won’t come back end?
Tao Zhenzhen pursed her lips, feeling conflicted.
After a while, she tentatively asked, "Can I go with you? I also want to see how sea salt is made..."
Si Lan didn't even think twice: "No, it's dangerous, I can't take care of you."
Tao Zhenzhen: "I will be a good boy..."
"It's not a question of being well behaved. Even if our goal isn't a dangerous operation, we can't rule out the possibility of encountering danger along the way. If we bring a child like you along, we might not be able to protect you, and you might even become a burden to us. It would be a very unwise choice as it would affect both of us. It's better for you to stay in the camp with everyone else."
The overly straightforward words hurt Tao Zhenzhen's heart so much that she stared at Si Lan with tears in her eyes.
Seeing this, Fang Xun quickly came over to smooth things over: "Oh, there's no need to be so strict with the child. It's okay, it's okay, just wait for us at home."
Si Lan: "How can this be considered strict? She made a request, so she has to face the reality. Besides, if she really wants to go everywhere with everyone, she has to be able to protect herself. Instead of shedding tears, why not start exercising more starting today?"
Tao Zhenzhen paused wiping her tears and looked at her stupidly: "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is, work hard at what you want to do. Have you learned anything these days? Have you acquired any new skills? Have you completed all the tasks assigned to you?"
"When you can answer my questions directly and in one breath, the time will come for you to go out with everyone. Come on, you have to fight for your own opportunities."
After she said that, she left Tao Zhenzhen without looking back, and was so strict that it was difficult to show any compassion.
The scene was very awkward for a while. After Si Lan walked away, Fang Xun looked at Tao Zhenzhen, who had forgotten to wipe away her tears, and comforted her again: "It's okay, your sister Si Lan also cares about you..."
Tao Zhenzhen was in a very complicated mood. Although Si Lan's words were harsh, she seemed to hear a sense of encouragement and guidance.
To say she encouraged and guided... that was too harsh, too ruthless, and too demanding!
Tao Zhenzhen stood there in a daze for a long time before coming to her senses.
Fang Xun hurriedly tried to comfort her again, and after much persuasion, he finally calmed down the little player.
After asking the nearby residents to take her back to the camp, Fang Xun stood up and wiped the sweat off his forehead as he watched Tao Zhenzhen leave.
Turning back to meet Pei Wen's gaze, he was stunned again. After a while, he asked in a low voice, "Are your neighbors usually... so strict?"
Pei Wen also glanced at Tao Zhenzhen. Although he still didn't quite understand the relationship between this child and Si Lan, thinking of what Si Lan had just said...
"To be honest, if you compare her to usual behavior, she is quite gentle today."
"ha?"
Pei Wen recalled the details of his time with her and couldn't help shaking his head as he left: "You haven't seen how she treats us."
Fang Xun: “…”
Finally, after everyone distributed the wild boars, Fang Xun instructed the camp residents on how to deal with the wild boar meat, and then adjusted the accompanying personnel for the next trip.
The team from the deep mountains who had just been rescued had suffered for a long time. Apart from Pei Wen and Qian Ming, who could show everyone the way and help them, Fang Xun had no intention of letting anyone else go with them.
In order to share the pressure on the camp, the team was split in half, with one part staying in Fangxun's camp and the other part settling in the neighboring camp with some residents of the neighboring camp.
The soldiers from the camp next door were still traveling with Fang Xun and the others. He was accompanied by three people from their camp. The others carried the wild boar back to the camp and, by the way, told everyone that they had discovered the sea and were going to extract sea salt.
Fang Xun and the soldiers did a final check of their tools before setting off.
At this moment, Fan Wenqing came over again and asked them softly, "Can I go with you?"
Fang Xun asked her why.
Fan Wenqing shrugged: "Go and broaden your horizons."
"In the past, we found salt by either extracting it from seawater in small jars, or by refining it ourselves."
"I don't think this game can be automatically refined by the game, nor is it suitable for small jars to make, so I want to see what batch refining is like."
Fang Xun heard this and looked at Si Lan hesitantly: "But Tao Zhenzhen..."
Si Lan thought of Fan Wenqing's ability to make tools. Seeing that her little sister hadn't come along, Si Lan asked her, "Want to go by yourself?"
"Well, they didn't want to go. They said they'd rather stay and help everyone make tools and farm."
Si Lan asked again: "Then can we leave Tao Zhenzhen to them to take care of her?"
"No problem, aren't the girls sleeping with us these days? I've already talked to them about it."
Si Lan nodded and had no more objections: "That's fine. Anyway, we'll need a lot of tools when we get there, so you can make some according to the situation."
"Okay, that's no problem."
The few of them hit it off immediately and soon set off again under the gaze of the residents.
On the way, they passed several wastelands covered with weeds. The sharp-eyed Si Lan spotted several non-venomous snakes. After capturing them together with Fang Xun and Xu Changfeng's soldiers, they set up a large clay pot and cooked them at dinner time in the evening.
Snake meat is a valuable food in this game.
When Si Lan captured them, she saw on their information page that their hunger saturation was high. A single small snake could replenish 2,000 hunger points, enough for a meal for two people, and maybe even some left over.
At this moment, Si Lan suddenly discovered that her personal information page seemed to have changed.
At the beginning of this game, there will be a numerical chart of various attribute data on the player's personal information page.
There are several major categories of data above, including "intelligence", "force", "communication", "creativity" and "management".
When she first entered the game, she studied this numerical table with Tao Zhenzhen, Fan Wenqing and others.
She found that everyone's value was "100", which was the same. She guessed that this was the initial data and it would take some time for it to change, so she put it aside and ignored it.
Later, she was busy with various things and completely forgot about it.
Now, when she accidentally saw it, she realized that her data was different from before.
Except for the social and business aspects, which did not change much, the other values skyrocketed. The military strength data even reached 500 directly, far ahead of the others.
At this time, she found several major categories that she could click on, and within "Management" there were a series of sub-items such as "Cooking", "Weaving", "Gathering", "Planting", "Trading", etc.
"Creation" is divided into detailed categories from tools to technological inventions, and seems to be the most core part of this game.
After noticing this change, Si Lan directly asked her companions, "Have your player attribute data charts changed?"
After hearing this, several people checked their personal panels at the same time, and finally discovered that their character attributes were different from before.
"Oh, my social and business attributes are really high." Fang Xun looked at the "social" attribute that had suddenly emerged and said in surprise.
Fan Wenqing immediately replied, "Officer, you organized and led us all the way. Your abilities must be much higher than ours, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do it."
As she spoke, she saw her own information and raised an eyebrow again. "Sure enough, I'm high in the Creation category. Hmm? Can I click on this? ...Wow, I've been making stone tools every day in the camp, and now my tool stats are out of this world. I even lit up a lot of tool icons."
Xu Changfeng looked at his own information: his development was much more balanced than Fang Xun and Fan Wenqing. He didn't have any particularly outstanding projects, but each one could be considered excellent.
The remaining residents' values just broke 100. One resident was tall and strong but not very sociable, and his sociability data was negative, already below 100.
Everyone was discussing this and discovered that these numbers should be the scores summarized and determined by the game system based on their performance in the game.
Amidst the heated discussion, Si Lan turned her head and asked Pei Wen, "Is your intelligence off the charts, Professor?"
Pei Wen looked at her in confusion: "Are you praising me or mocking me?"
"None. Let me take a look?"
In theory, this is private data. Although people discussed it, they did not directly disclose their personal dashboards to the public.
But when Pei Wen heard that it was her request, he switched the private status to public without thinking, so that everyone could see his information screen.
Her intelligence is the same as Si Lan's, exactly 500, no more and no less.
Everyone was stunned.
After reading it, Si Lan pondered for a few seconds and also made her own panel public.
Then everyone was convinced that these values could actually reach as high as 500!
Fang Xun's social skills and Fan Wenqing's creativity both reached 200, which they thought was already very high, but they didn't expect...
Not even half of what these two have.
But Si Lan and Pei Wen had no intention of showing off. They just stared at the screen with a mysterious look on their faces.
After a long while, Si Lan broke the silence first: "Do you think there is an upper limit to them?"
Pei Wen: "Do you think this has something to do with the game progress?"
The two were stunned, looked at each other, and finally there was affirmation in their eyes.
Si Lan said solemnly, "Although the game stipulates that 'you can only leave after building an empire', we've been here for so long and there's still no progress reflected or indicated on this 'empire'. Logically, this isn't normal, is it?"
Pei Wen: "So you think progress can only be seen in individuals, or in other words, sufficient individual data is needed to support and achieve breakthroughs in order to activate the true progress of the empire?"
“That’s a guess.”
"I don't think so."
Si Lan gave her a look that said, "I'd like to hear more about this." Pei Wen then asked, "Do you still remember what my research area is?"
Si Lan: "Are you asking nonsense?"
Pei Wen smiled barely perceptibly, then said, "I've actually been paying attention to this new chip in recent years."
"From what I understand, the technical inspiration for this chip actually comes from..."
Having said this, he glanced at Fang Xun and Xu Changfeng first, but then thought that this game had already harmed the public to such an extent that there was no so-called "commercial secret", so he spoke again:
"It comes from the principle of hallucinogenic JI."
Fang Xun and the others opened their eyes wide when they heard this: "Hallucinogenic JI?"
"Yes." Pei Wen picked up a branch and drew the simplest possible diagram on the ground.
"In the past, people knew that hallucinogens could cause considerable stimulation to the human body and, through a series of reactions, cause varying degrees of dizziness and hallucinations."
"The more potent the hallucinogen, the more severe the hallucinations. And quite a few hallucinogens, like certain poisonous mushrooms, can actually produce vivid, dreamlike hallucinations with plot developments, like seeing a group of Smurfs carrying the hallucinating person away."
"But at that time, people didn't know how these toxic ingredients stimulated the cells and nerves of the human body, until this chip company made a breakthrough in this direction."
"This holographic chip simulates exactly that kind of stimulation, using electrical current to replace the chemical stimulation caused by toxic substances in the human body. With precise manipulation down to every detail, it creates such a vast game background within the human brain."
"This technology is very bold and great. In some ways, it is a milestone in technological development."
"Unfortunately, as I expected, this attempt, while bold, also had extremely low security. When we discovered the underlying principle and were preparing to gather evidence and call a complete halt, the chips had already crashed, leading to the current situation."
Pei Wen said this, pointing to the area behind his ear - that's where people usually implant chips. It's not visible on the characters in the game, but everyone can tell at a glance.
Fang Xun was baffled after hearing this: "If that's the case, can't we remove the chip's control by eliminating the hallucinogenic reaction? How could there be cases of death after the chip was removed?"
Pei Wen: "Just like an overdose of hallucinogens can lead to death, if these chips go out of control, the electrical currents stimulating the body will also go out of control. According to the information conveyed by the 'Infrastructure Group', this is probably the typical consequence of overstimulation. If they can't control the intensity of the chip's stimulation, no matter how carefully they remove it, it will be ineffective."
Fang Xun sighed, "What should I do? I don't know if the country knows about this, and if they have any response plan."
Pei Wen: "We probably don't know everything at the moment. The chip company has kept this technology secret and it's a foreign company. Our country has no right to access their secrets."
Si Lan suddenly asked, "You're not the only one who knows about this discovery, are you? Did you investigate alone?"
Pei Wen: "...Don't you know the real reason why I left the research institute?"
"Not starting a company?"
“Are you serious???”
Si Lan looked at him again for a long while before she raised her eyebrows: "I see."
Pei Wen: "Sure enough, you never listen to me."
"You talk too much, I really can't listen to you all."
"I guarantee you're the only one in the world who thinks I talk too much."
Si Lan tactfully stopped talking and looked down at his sketch.
The sudden silence gradually changed the atmosphere. Fan Wenqing looked at her, then at Pei Wen, and suddenly muttered, "My intuition tells me that you two are not simple - what is your relationship?"
Si Lan: "Neighbor."
Pei Wen: "Childhood sweethearts."
As soon as the words fell, both of them were stunned again.
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