He didn’t need the wind-element ore for his own use—it was because many of his crafted items required large amounts of this material.
For example, the Wind Spirit Hoverboard.
It wasn’t particularly useful to him personally, but its greatest function was flight.
Moreover, its maximum speed could reach C-rank.
Once released, it would definitely be fought over by all the major safe zones—it was an item even more valuable than the mental power potion series!
Dark-element ore could be used to craft dark-attribute items or weapons, which would be perfect for equipping Xiao Jin’s undead army.
As for water-element ore, once refined, it might be usable for A Yuan, who was currently undergoing a transformation.
Its old snake skin had already shed, new scales were growing in, and its body size was increasing rapidly.
By the next time they met, it would likely be vastly different from before.
After Li Zhongjun disbanded the team, those people were finally able to truly relax, hurrying back to enjoy a proper bath, a good meal, and some rest.
Bai Qiu was also planning to return to Zone 2233 to continue working on other matters.
At that moment, Li Zhongjun quietly approached him and asked, “What are your plans going forward?”
Bai Qiu replied, “I want to find some people skilled in agriculture and plant the seeds obtained from those fixed secret realms myself.”
The secret realms refreshed at 5 a.m. every day, and countless people were watching them.
No matter how strong he was, he could only secure the resources from one secret realm per day—so why not just grow them himself?
He still had 18 mu of unused land, and the mansion blueprint he obtained from the Tower of Heaven could also come in handy.
Once his Sanctuary leveled up a bit more, he could simply provide the required materials and have the system build him a large house.
“No problem!” Li Zhongjun said.
Under Bai Qiu’s puzzled gaze, he fiddled with something, and soon an elderly man with a slightly hunched posture but full of energy quickly walked over.
Following behind him were two young people, a man and a woman.
The man wore glasses and looked refined and scholarly.
The woman, on the other hand, seemed bold and carefree, her sleeves rolled up to her arms, her wheat-colored skin looking healthy and strong.
“This is Professor Lin, a specialist in agricultural research. These two are his students. If you’re looking for talent, you might consider hiring the three of them,” Li Zhongjun introduced.
Bai Qiu nodded and left with the three of them through the teleportation device.
There was no need for him to introduce himself—his reputation was already something people talked about constantly.
After arriving in Zone 2233, Bai Qiu first marked out a section of land as his own territory.
He spent Sanctum coins to have the system surround his private land with a wooden fence.
Then he said to the three, “I’ll give each of you ten thousand Sanctum coins. Take today off. Tonight, go find a place to stay in the Black Tower.”
Before they could respond, he added on his own:
“Tomorrow, I’ll recruit a group of life-class players to assist you, and we’ll also build housing within the designated area. Any questions?”
“Uh… well, without soil, how are we supposed to farm?” the girl asked nervously, pointing at the perfectly flat, solid ground.
“That’s not a problem. I’ll figure something out,” Bai Qiu replied.
Seeing they had no further questions, he hurried back to his small house, took a quick shower, ate a few bites, and prepared for the next task.
Ever since Bai Qiu’s feat of consecutively breaking through over twenty zones and defeating the Hydra Serpent was broadcast live across fifty-one regions, a craze for “Everyone Becoming an Archer” had swept through the players.
Whether they used swords, spears, cavalry, or any other class, everyone started using their resources to craft a bow of their own and began practicing ranged attacks.
The logic was simple—whenever people saw something profitable in the market, they would all rush to imitate it, like milk tea shops or pharmacies…
As long as a business made money, it wouldn’t take long before every store on a street was of the same type—and then fierce internal competition would begin.
Nowadays, it’s the same situation.
Players saw that Bai Qiu, a Lancer-class fighter, enjoyed using a bow, so they began imitating him and practicing archery.
Since Bai Qiu used longbows with great range and power, they all started crafting longbows as well.
Even some Archer-class players who specialized in shortbows abandoned their light, agile weapons and switched to longbows…
As a result, a rather strange phenomenon began to appear outside the safe zones: players in all kinds of outfits were holding longbows, wildly shooting at monsters that had just emerged from the void passages.
There were heavily armored archers, lightly armored archers, robe-wearing archers, sneaky-looking archers, and even burly, scantily clad archers…
In short, for a time, every area outside the zones was filled with Archers farming monsters.
Of course, if you ask, “What if their aim is terrible and they miss, wouldn’t they get blown up when enemies get close?”—well, the greatsword on their back isn’t for decoration!
The players’ intense “involution” actually led to many monsters being shot into hedgehogs the moment they spawned, sent off to meet their ancestors before they could even move.
For a while, it even gave the impression that there were no monsters left to farm!
Because of this, Bai Qiu gave up the idea of leveling up with the two girls and instead focused on processing the raw ores he had brought back from the asteroid vein.
Thinking about it carefully, this trend was actually predictable.
After the wave ended, every surviving player had at least 1,000 wave points.
After upgrading and crafting their desired equipment, they began working on things within the safe zones, such as upgrading their Sanctuary or challenging the Tower of Heaven.
Or they competed for the fixed secret realms that refreshed daily… but over time, once all these things were done, players with nothing left to do began researching new ways to play.
And so, across the 51 major regions from 2200 to 2250, the era of—“Everyone Becoming an Archer”—had arrived.
In the blink of an eye, the first week after the wave had passed.
As expected, Bai Qiu claimed first place across six different rankings.
Excluding the wave points ranking, which offered no rewards, Bai Qiu received three random attribute points—all of which the system assigned to his Spirit stat.
As for the C-rank raw ore and extraordinary raw ore from the equipment, weapon, and level rankings, Bai Qiu already had those, so there was no need to elaborate.
For ranking first in the beast companion leaderboard, he received one designated attribute point for a beast companion, ten bloodline enhancement potions, one construction enhancement blueprint, and one extraordinary attribute designation blueprint.
Bai Qiu planned to save all of these for A Yuan.
As for the small Black Iron Worm, he figured he’d just dig a nest for it and feed it some darksteel every day.
It had little combat power and wasn’t really worth cultivating.
Although Bai Qiu still firmly held first place, the second position on the Tower of Heaven leaderboard had been taken by Li Qingshan.
This made Zhang Shiyao very dissatisfied—she had been nowhere to be seen lately, seemingly even busier than Bai Qiu.
As expected, Li Qingshan was stuck at the 50th floor.
However, this time, no players chose to challenge the Tower of Heaven on the first day.
Everyone planned to make their push on the final day—climbing even one extra floor would make a difference.
….
A Yuan had yet to awaken.
In Zhang Shiyao’s courtyard, Bai Qiu dug a half-meter-deep pit and dumped a large pile of darksteel raw ore into it, stacking it into a small hill.
He then tossed the small Black Iron Worm—still asleep and hanging from his cloak—into the pit.
Feng Yuling, who was cleaning nearby, saw this and screamed in fright.
“Don’t be afraid. This little guy is quite cute—its personality is kind of like a doggy,” Bai Qiu reassured her.
Feng Yuling collapsed onto the ground, staring at the small Black Iron Worm burrowing through the pile of stones like an oversized centipede.
No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t associate it with anything “cute.”
Bai Qiu made it a food bowl out of mithril and tossed in over a dozen small darksteel ores.
Smelling the food, the little worm immediately burrowed out of the pile and hurried over, pawing eagerly at the ores in the bowl.
“This little guy is actually pretty smart,” Bai Qiu said.
“When you have time, help me feed it. Don’t worry—it doesn’t bite.”
As he spoke, Bai Qiu casually stroked the Black Iron Worm.
The creature, completely focused on eating, paid him no attention and let him do as he pleased.
He then grabbed it in his hand, wanting to test whether it was protective of its food.
The little worm obediently lay on his arm, letting out a soft, aggrieved cry toward him.
“Ya…”
Not caring whether it could understand, Bai Qiu said, “Take a good look at this person. When I’m not around, she’ll be responsible for feeding you. No biting, got it?”
“Ya!” the small Black Iron Worm cried out and nodded vigorously.
Afterward, under Bai Qiu’s guidance and Feng Yuling’s fearful gaze, it slowly nudged against Feng Yuling’s hand.
It neither attacked her nor hissed.
It seemed its intelligence was even higher than Bai Qiu had expected.
Once released, it happily scurried back to the food bowl and continued munching on the ores.
Bai Qiu then left.
After finishing her cleaning, Feng Yuling felt like something was missing.
She took a small bowl, filled it with clean water, and placed it beside the worm’s food bowl.
Wang Shiyun, who was responsible for indoor tasks, also saw the Black Iron Worm.
Her reaction was similar to Feng Yuling’s—she was too frightened to get close.
“Ya!”
“Ah!”
Suddenly, the small Black Iron Worm popped out of the stone pile with a cry, startling Feng Yuling so badly that she fell to the ground, tears almost spilling from her eyes.
However, it showed no intention of attacking her.
Instead, it crawled straight to the bowl of water and began gulping it down.
Gradually, Feng Yuling calmed down.
After finishing the water, the worm looked up at her, then climbed onto the mithril food bowl.
“Ya!” it cried.
“What?” Feng Yuling was momentarily confused—she couldn’t understand.
“Ya!” it called again.
“Are you hungry?” she guessed, asking cautiously.
“Ya!” The worm nodded.
Only then did Feng Yuling take out the darksteel ores Bai Qiu had given her from her storage card and place them into the bowl.
The small Black Iron Worm waited quietly until she finished putting in the food.
Only after Feng Yuling stood up did it lower its head into the bowl and begin feasting heartily.
— The end of the Chapter–
TL note : Join Patreon to support the translation and to read up ahead of the release :
https://www.patreon.com/DeCakraWnloverz
