"The leaves are withering, the temperature drops, and an unprecedented crisis is approaching."
"This winter will be harsher than previous years, and it will come earlier... There is not much time left for us to prepare."
"From now on, we must seize every minute, even every second! Before the situation worsens, we must prepare for the cold wave!"
"The mission panel has been updated, with a list of necessities, facilities to be completed, and corresponding rewards."
"Remember, only by unity can we overcome difficulties together!"
"Winter is coming."
"This is the test of fate for all of us!"
In the resident hall of the shelter, inspiring voices echoed.
In response to the high spirits of the players, Chu Guang delivered an impassioned speech and officially opened the prologue of the first expansion since the game's closed beta—"Winter is Coming".
With the opening of a new chapter, the atmosphere of the shelter was starting to change, similar to the mood in the game's official website.
It was not just the players.
Even Chu Guang himself could feel the slightest sense of urgency in the gradually cooling air.
The material reserves at the outposts were originally not enough, but the population soared from 6 to 30, a full five-fold increase!
Although the surge in population had brought more labor, it had also doubled the supply pressure on outposts.
In order to feed 30 people, Chu Guang also worked very hard for the past two days. Almost every day from morning to night, he went out hunting with Night Ten with the perception type genetic sequence, just to stock up more food.
For a while, the entire Linghu Wetland Park was disturbed by them.
But the results were quite gratifying.
In three days, Chu Guang had killed more than ten mutant hyenas alone, and the hares and squirrels caught by traps were countless.
Although they were all mutants, they were edible.
In addition, Night Ten, who was responsible for alerting and scouting the enemy, also successfully advanced from LV0 to LV1, and Chu Guang also faintly felt that he was close to the edge of a breakthrough.
However, the administrator's genetic sequence was too special.
Chu Guang hadn't figured out the knack for leveling up yet, so he could only use the medical examination equipment to confirm that the development progress of his genetic sequence did have a very small increase.
On the other hand, the performance of other players was also quite outstanding, and could even be described as utilizing their talents to the fullest extent.
Old White and Ample Time used charcoal as a reducing agent. Through calcination, a small amount of iron slag was recovered from rusty steel bars, auto parts and other iron-containing wastes, and these iron slags were added to the cement kiln and mixed with crushed limestone and clay to make a more reliable cement clinker.
This was a physical job.
Whether it was manually operating the blower or using a repaired two-wheeled trolley to transport stones, it would take a lot of effort.
However, because of this, Old White of the strength type levelled up again, the genetic sequence levelling up from LV1 to LV2, and the strength attribute also increased by one point.
As for Ample Time, who worked with him in shifts, he finally broke the boundaries and advanced from LV0 to LV1.
However, his growth attribute was not strength, but agility.
It seemed that although the development of the genetic sequence fit the law of "use and disuse", the growth of attributes was another matter.
In addition, when it came to leveling, Gale's situation seemed to be the saddest.
Up to now, among the four closed beta players, he was probably the only one with a genetic sequence level of 0.
These days, he had used the improved trap to catch a lot of fish, but he seemed to be always still a little bit short of "experience" from LV1.
The "experience" gained by trapping mutants didn't seem to be as much as the experience he could get from killing mutants in frontal combat.
Gale also wondered about this.
But helplessly, there seemed to be no good solution so far.
Except for the four chat group administrators who were the first to experience the game, the two newly joined players were also very motivated, and they had not been idle for a moment in the past few days.
For example, "WC_really_has_mosquitoes".
This guy was not in a hurry to level up, he was still doing carpentry work, occasionally helping Old White and Ample Time, or helping Gale fix damaged traps.
In addition to these tasks, he was busy with his own affairs.According to Mosquito's own account, it seemed that he intended to build a simple wooden cabin to serve as his chemical laboratory and warehouse.
These days, while helping to carry the stones from the construction site, he picked up a lot of bottles and jars and put them next to the cabin.
Although Chu Guang doubted the safety of this kind of log cabin, seeing how this guy enjoyed it, he felt that it was better not to interfere too much with the players' choices.
Compared with the leisurely life of Brother Mosquito, "Tomato_scrambled_eggs" was probably a model among all the players.
As a chef at the outpost, he was not only responsible for cooking, but also for helping the administrator handle the game.
This includes bleeding, peeling, deboning, cutting meat, and most importantly, smoking.
Since the salt at the outpost was not luxurious enough to be used for smoked meat, Brother Scrambled Egg used the most primitive method of smoking.
That was adding nothing.
He hung the cut meat directly on the steel frame, stuffed it into the cave made of clay and adobe, smoked it with charcoal smoke, slowly roasted in a low fire, dried the moisture in the meat, and sealed the hole with pine branches and leaves.
The preserved meat made by this method was actually more like air-dried meat. It could be stored for a period of time even without salt, and there was no need to use tobacco leaves to coat the surface.
By the beginning or middle of next month, it would almost be time for winter.
When the time came, they could wrap these jerky in plastic bags or bark, and throw them directly in the snow to bury them. It shouldn't be a big problem to eat them until the beginning of spring next year.
However, the taste and flavor of the meat made by this method wasn't great.
In addition, Scrambled Eggs did not waste the skins peeled from the mutant hyenas, but collected them to make leather.
In fact, tanning was a very complicated and tedious process, far more troublesome than making jerky.
However, what the shelter currently needed was not smooth high-end fur, but only warm materials that could keep out the cold, and there was no requirement for quality.
Therefore, many unnecessary processes could be omitted.
When Old White burned wooden ash before, the filtered potash water was stored in the plastic bucket that they had picked up.
Scrambled Eggs used all of this potash water as a tanning liquid for tanning leather, which was used to soak the raw hides that had been peeled from the game.
After waiting until the leather and tanning liquid were fully combined, he would then hang them on a simple tanning rack to dry, so that the good quality leather could be obtained.
"... Dear administrator, I must report to you that I am really busy on my side. I really need help, even if it is just one person!"
Taking the game that had just been shot from Chu Guang's hands, Scrambled Egg's sight floated to Night Ten's body unconsciously.
He always felt that this guy seemed to be very idle, and besides helping the administrator take games, he didn't seem to see this guy doing anything else.
He might as well...
Help him...
Night Ten could tell what this guy was thinking at a glance. He waved his hand quickly.
"Don't look at me, I'm very busy."
‘You must be joking. Where else would I be able to find a chance to follow the NPC to level up?'
He didn't want to learn how to cook with this guy!
Seeing the resistance of Night Ten, Scrambled Egg couldn't help but roll his eyes and complained in his heart.
‘Busy my a**!'
Looking at Scrambled Egg complaining to him, Chu Guang pacified him.
"Night Ten needs to help me search for prey, and his perception of danger is also very important, so I can't let him stay to help you. But I promise you that your problem will be solved soon. Our reinforcements are already on the way, they will soon reach the surface."
"Fine then, thank you... If that's the case, I will wait."
Scrambled Egg sighed, paused for a moment, and continued.
"There is another thing. Although I tried tanning, I can only do some simple treatments. As for how to make them into clothes... I really can't help it."
Chu Guang said with a smile.
"Don't worry about this. There are talents who are good at this in the upcoming reinforcements. I will leave the work of tanning and making warm clothes to that person."
Not just a tailor.
Among the 24 new close beta players he selected, there were talents from all walks of life.
Although they were not necessarily experts in the industry, and some were even students, they could still be used to some extent with their abilities.
Besides, there was still the internet.
Chu Guang had full confidence in these energetic players. As long as they worked hard enough, one day they would be able to move into a big house.
There was no doubt about that!
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