Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 199: Second Uncle's Inheritance

Listening to Liang Yuzhi's quiet, stifled crying, Li Wei found himself at a loss.

In reality, the rooftop could safely support no more than about a twentieth of a hectare of farmland — that was the safe maximum. And it would need to be divided into separate plots, like growing flowers in containers. Any way you looked at it, the math wasn't great.

And without killing that Mutant Rat King, anyone with half a brain knew farming outside was out of the question.

"Second Aunt, don't worry. I'll figure something out. We can also fire a few clay water jars — when it rains, we can collect rainwater. Between that and the dew collector, daily water shouldn't be a problem. Tomorrow we'll start hauling soil up to the rooftop. Whatever we can plant, we plant."

"Then tomorrow, with Little Yue too, we all work together?"

Liang Yuzhi said it suddenly, clearly intent on getting involved.

Li Wei hesitated briefly, then agreed. Given the current situation, they had to cooperate — even if it meant sharing some of the gains. And the Four-Star Mutant Rat King was a problem Li Wei couldn't handle alone.

After that, Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue went down to the fourth floor to sleep. Li Wei made his way to the third floor, found a corner near the large hole in the wall, and settled in. In theory, that was the most likely entry point for any mutated creature. Tonight had no moon, but in the faint starlight he could make out shapes two or three hundred meters away.

The night was calm. The open fields were silent. Beyond the sounds of mutated rats throwing a party somewhere beneath the ruins, there was nothing but the occasional call of a night bird.

A quiet and utterly mad world.Li Wei silently summoned the Pioneering Card. Sure enough, two Resource Cards had appeared on it, faint but visible — the "inheritance" of Li Guilin and Li Jiao.

'Second Uncle, Older Cousin — may your spirits in heaven bless me with something good!'

Li Wei prayed with genuine sincerity.

[You have selected Li Guilin's inheritance. You may now randomly draw one item from his Resource Card.]

With a thought, a faint light slowly rose — and one of the Resource Cards vanished.

Inheritance drawn successfully.

[You have drawn a Three-Star Refined Steel Tower Shield.]

[Description: This is a Refined Steel Tower Shield weighing fifty kilograms. It requires extraordinary strength to wield. On the battlefield, it is an iron fortress — a steel wall in a gap in the ramparts, an embodiment of unbreakable will that stands firm even against a heavy cavalry charge on open ground.]

[Quality: Three-Star.]

[Weight: 50 kg. Forged from one-star steel ingots.]

[Structure: Dual-grip design, curved face, internal ribbing, cross-reinforced steel rods, with a built-in support strut allowing it to stand upright at an 85-degree angle on flat ground.]

[Requirements: 30 Strength, 400 Stamina (Level 2 Awakening). That said, if you simply prop it against a gap in a wall as a piece of cover — fair enough.]

[Defensive Effect: Ignores any non-enchanted arrow or crossbow bolt volley; ignores a cavalry lance's direct charge; ignores a steel greataxe's cleave; ignores a war flail's heavy strike. All of this assumes you are the shield's master and can withstand the terrifying recoil.]

——

Well. Second Uncle Li Guilin was no joke.

Li Wei felt a deep pang of regret. He'd been too greedy. If they'd had a chance to face that Four-Star Rat King head-on — no ambushes, no underground attacks — their team of five might have been able to take it down without a single casualty.

What a shame. Li Guilin had died because the ground collapsed beneath him, trapping his lower body in rubble, and the Rat King had finished him off in one strike.

What was Second Uncle feeling right now, back at the main base?

Second Uncle, are you alright?

Li Wei himself couldn't use a Three-Star Tower Shield — nowhere near the requirements. But propped against the large gap on the third floor, it would make a perfect, almost purpose-built piece of cover.

Though hauling over a few chunks of reinforced concrete would probably work just as well. Maybe even better.

Even so, Li Wei found a spot and stood the tower shield upright. Just in case.

Then he turned to draw from Older Cousin Li Jiao's Resource Card. A faint light rose.

[You have successfully drawn ten kilograms of one-star wheat seeds.]

Oh?

That was excellent. A shame there was no suitable farmland to plant them in yet.

After that, Li Wei closed his eyes and rested — not quite sleeping, but not quite awake. Before long he actually drifted off. This wasn't recklessness; it was calculated. Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue upstairs were tossing and turning, unable to sleep. While they were awake and keeping watch without realizing it, he could exploit the gap and catch some rest. Technically a violation of the rules, but a reasonable use of the situation.

As long as no lives or property were lost to a mutated creature attack, there would be no penalty.

About an hour later, the two women upstairs finally fell asleep one after the other, their strong wills eventually giving out. Li Wei woke up at almost the same moment — the kind of precise control over falling asleep and waking up that most players could only dream of.

Just that one hour of sleep had restored most of his energy and stamina.

But the rest of the night passed without incident.

When the first rays of dawn broke over the distant hills, two notifications appeared silently.

[You have completed night watch duty over the past night. Although the family currently has no Head of Household, this work remains indispensable, critically important, and mandatory. Per regulations, family member Liang Yuzhi and family member Li Yue will each pay you 10 Family Contribution points. Your current accumulated Family Contribution is 155 points.]

[Reminder: the rewards from routine night watch duty are objectively affected by external conditions. If the family's temporary camp acquires higher-level protective measures or traps, the Family Contribution earned from night watch will decrease proportionally. The reverse is also true.]

[Congratulations — you have successfully survived the first day in this unfamiliar world. The Pioneering Card has begun to attune to the surrounding environment.]

[Reminder: since the family is still living in a temporary camp, the total Family Contribution any member can accumulate is capped at 500 points. Unless fixed assets are established to raise the cap, no further Family Contribution can be earned.]

Excellent!

Li Wei's eyes lit up. That mandatory work assignment was perfect — essentially drawing a salary paid out of other people's Contribution.

And that last rule — was it new, or unique to Pioneering Missions?

It made a lot of sense, actually.

A family was essentially a small company. It couldn't operate under unlimited liability. Family Contribution couldn't be issued endlessly like worthless paper currency. After all, even real currency had to be backed by gold or oil. A family that hadn't even established fixed assets yet, and whose members had already racked up hundreds or thousands of Contribution points — that was inherently unreasonable.

What good was 1,000 Family Contribution points to a family on the verge of starving?

Fixed assets were essential. Meaningful work was essential. Supplies that benefited the family were essential — only then could Family Contribution be generated in a sustainable way.

Otherwise, if someone maxed out 1,000 Contribution points in the early stages while the family had no farmland and no shelter, wasn't that effectively stealing from the future members who would do the real work?

Li Wei did the math. He had 155 points, Liang Yuzhi had 47, Li Yue had 61 — a total of 263. If Li Guilin and Li Jiao hadn't died yesterday, the family would have hit the 500-point cap by last night.

While he was still thinking, he heard Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue getting up. They went straight to the fifth floor, then up to the rooftop, and came back down a short while later with less than five hundred milliliters of dew. For this season and this region — not particularly humid, with a large day-night temperature swing — that was actually decent.

This time, neither Liang Yuzhi nor Li Yue donated any food. The family had food — even if it was rat jerky — so donating now would yield poor returns.

Neither of them said a word to Li Wei. Each took food and water from their own Resource Cards and ate in silence. Cook a meal? What was that? With no Head of Household right now, cooking was optional — do it and earn the reward, skip it and lose nothing but that reward.

Even Li Yue had given up on trying to win Li Wei over. Ah, day one of missing Hathaway.

Fortunately, Li Wei had his own food and water, though not much. At this stage, eating your own supplies without donating them didn't violate the storyline logic.

He ate until he was about forty percent full, then headed downstairs. Today's task was digging and hauling soil — work that felt like moving a mountain one shovelful at a time, but was absolutely necessary.

Farmland counted as fixed assets.

Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue followed silently behind him. No conversation meant no plot triggers. Working together meant watching each other's backs — you do what I do, nobody falls behind, and everyone shares the Contribution.

Because it was almost certain that farming on the rooftop would carry far greater weight than clearing farmland at ground level. Once it was done, it wouldn't need to be donated — it would simply be family property. Or more precisely, the private property of the three of them.

That distinction mattered.

For digging, they had shovels. For carrying the soil, they needed bags — but those weren't hard to find. The few battered, filthy tents left behind in the underground parking lot made perfect containers.

Li Yue took out her tools and handled the cutting, shaping, and sewing in one go. Li Wei and Liang Yuzhi each paid her one Standard Gold Coin without a word, and the transaction was complete.

After that, wherever Li Wei dug, they followed. Whatever load he carried, they matched.

The coordination was almost unsettling.

The entire morning passed without incident — no mutated creatures came to disturb them. Li Wei chose to dig from the open lot to the west of the building, a round trip of no more than a hundred meters. In his assessment, the magical radiation had made the soil of this world extraordinarily fertile across the board.

Each trip covered a hundred meters. Each load was about fifty kilograms of soil. The concrete barriers on the first and second floor staircases were temporarily moved aside to allow passage all the way up to the rooftop.

On the rooftop, Li Wei claimed the western section, Liang Yuzhi took the northern side, and Li Yue took the southern side.

This wasn't just about dividing the farmland — it was also about positioning the plots directly above the load-bearing walls.

That arrangement, however, required some kind of border structure between the plots.

Fortunately, the ruined town was short on almost everything — except building materials. They hauled over some bricks and stacked them to a height of thirty centimeters, then filled the interior with soil. The total area would fall short of a twentieth of a hectare, but as long as wheat could be planted, it would count as a fixed asset.