Ye Shu lingered beneath the warmth of her quilt, refusing to part from its cozy embrace. It wasn’t laziness for its own sake—the cold had settled in, and with it, her chronic reluctance to leave the bed had returned.
Listless and bored, she opened up the chat interface and, to her surprise, discovered that Fu Jingchuan and Fu Shiyi had started a business selling braziers.
Curiously, she clicked on 'Taotie'’s trading tab.
All braziers: sold out.
All in all, they’d managed to sell nearly 400 braziers.
But why hadn’t they sold more?
Ye Shu figured the bottleneck must be the basic blueprint—they could only craft a few hundred each day. Otherwise, knowing Fu Jingchuan’s ambition, that number wouldn’t begin to satisfy him.
[Requesting one brazier, 20 pieces of steel, 10 coal.]
[At a price that low, who’d sell to you? The Ottoman family’s braziers are pretty good, sure, but they’ve let it be known—400 sold per day, no more. With so many players watching the listings like hawks... I never manage to snag one. No chance, I’ll just go hit up Sang Biao instead!]
[Buying ordinary brazier, 30 steel, 20 coal. PM me if interested.]
[SpongeBob: Looking for a low-grade brazier! Please, not an ordinary one! My sailboat is being harassed by a school of fish! I’m offering 50 steel—help me!]
The chat was awash with desperate players and outlandish bidding, which even made Ye Shu’s heart race with temptation.
Fifty steel—what an outrageous price.
She couldn’t help but recall her earlier 'good deeds': pricing her braziers at just three pieces of steel.
Absolutely foolish!
Ye Shu tagged SpongeBob in the chat.
[I Am Your Dad: Kid, want to trade? I’ve got a low-grade brazier. Fifty steel sound fair?]
When she caught sight of 'I Am Your Dad,' her mind went momentarily blank, but she replied at breakneck speed.
[SpongeBob: Are you for real?! You’re a big shot! Really, really? I need it—right now! My ship can’t hold out much longer!]
Ye Shu raised an eyebrow—clearly, desperation and fifty steel meant a fortune for a rookie player.
She threw on a coat, hurried to the workshop, and set to work with a flurry of skilled movements.
[Low-grade Brazier: Burns for 36 hours. Effectively repels predatory fish.]
Moved by SpongeBob’s earnest pleading, Ye Shu optimized one of the braziers and teleported it over.
Shen Xingchen received the brazier, didn’t even glance at it before lighting it up.
A snap, and flowers of flame unfurled—a surge of warmth dispelling the chill in an instant. The fish below the sailboat that had been circling hungrily now scattered to the ocean depths, as if in terror of some unseen threat.
Shen Xingchen’s heart surged with relief.
This was the real deal!
No wonder the top survivor in the game—her braziers far outstripped the competition.
It wasn’t the first time Shen Xingchen had gotten her hands on a low-grade brazier, but those bought elsewhere—at inflated prices—couldn’t hold a candle to this one.
When she read the brazier’s description, her delight only deepened.
Thirty-six hours! The best she’d ever bought from Sang Biao only lasted sixteen hours at most, spewed out thick smoke, and was nothing but cheap junk.
With tears glistening in her eyes, Shen Xingchen messaged Ye Shu again.
[SpongeBob: Senior, is there any chance I could buy another? It’s urgent, I’m waiting online—please reply! Thank you!!]
Ye Shu replied promptly.
Of course she could.
But this time, she didn’t ask for another fifty steel.
Instead, she listed 100 ordinary braziers (10 steel and 5 coal apiece), and 50 low-grade braziers (fifty steel, ten coal). Having learned her lesson, she automatically set the rule: Once sold, no returns for quality issues.
She gave SpongeBob a helpful reminder—purchase directly from the trading platform.
Naturally, the limit was one per person per day.
With lightning speed, Shen Xingchen snagged herself another low-grade brazier.
Two braziers now—enough to last three days. For the next three days at least, there’d be no fear of freezing to death.
Ye Shu had always thought of herself as invisible, a nobody.
She was still hesitating over whether to announce the new listings using a horn item in the chat.
She needn’t have worried—the moment the braziers hit the shelves, they were frantically snatched up and gone within a minute.
[Ahhh! That boss has restocked braziers again! Ordinary ones for ten steel, low-grade for fifty! And I still didn’t manage to get a single one—absolutely devastated.]
[Hot damn! Big shot items are always top quality—not a whiff of smoke. Even with this freezing ocean wind, I’m cozy! Just grilled up a couple fish—sick of eating them raw these past few days!]
[Low-grade brazier? What’s that? Never heard of it!]
[Ignorant, aren’t you? Even don’t know this? Low-grade braziers scare off those deep-sea monsters. Don’t ask how I know—I just grabbed one, ha ha ha!]
[Tsk, I had my steel ready and waiting, and boom—hard limits.]
[Gotta say, this fire is amazing. The wind’s howling, but the flames don’t even flicker!]
[Any chance for another restock? I’m in desperate need! Please!]
[I managed to get one, but my family missed out! My folks are getting old, and we’re down to just one. Can’t you consider selling a few more?]
“Heroine, eat well!”
Breakfast that morning was meat buns and fresh soy milk, specially prepared by Pang Pangzi.
Ye Shu noticed his anxious gaze flickering, and asked, “Pangzi, why are you staring at me?”
She scrolled through the chat, where pleas to craft more braziers were now stickied at the top, with some players even using horn items to broadcast their requests directly at her.
Pang Pangzi hesitated, debating whether he ought to reveal Fu Jingchuan’s premonition to Ye Shu.
“Miss Ye... Mr. Fu’s esp ability... He saw... In the future, almost all D-Star people die in this sea—total extinction...”
Ye Shu sipped her soy milk, tossing a clove of garlic into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
Glancing at the chat, she noticed numerous older players—so, everyone on D-Star was trapped in this absurd ocean survival game.
If these NPCs were indeed real people and not just code, then the game was far more twisted than any real-life survival challenge.
Watching Ye Shu’s impassive expression, Pang Pangzi hesitated again.
She was always so cool, so indifferent... never one to meddle...
“Go on,” she said.
Ye Shu tossed the garlic into the brazier to roast, fished it out, and ate it.
“He said... the future, the temperature will drop to absolute zero... less than one in a hundred survive... This game, which looks like a peaceful farming sim, is far tougher than any horror dungeon... He saw our ships overturning... but the details were unclear to him.”
Nervous, Pang Pangzi took a sip of soy milk.
This new anxiety stole his appetite entirely.
“Mm.”
And what of it?
“Got it.”
Pang Tong appeared thoroughly bewildered, sitting across from her like a bashful bride.
What exactly did Miss Ye understand? He couldn’t make sense of it.
“The treasure chests are your job now. If Fu Jingchuan and Fu Shiyi are willing, their materials can be processed in my control room—but there’s a fee.”
Synthesizing blueprints and running the workshop aren’t free, after all!