novelraw Chapter 200: Family Fixed Assets
Chapter 200: Family Fixed Assets
By midday, Li Wei had hauled a total of fifteen tons of soil up to the rooftop, completing his small farming plot — roughly sixty square meters, just under a hundredth of a hectare.
That was the absolute limit. Future rainfall would add weight to the saturated soil, and then there was the weight of the growing wheat itself, and so on.
The good news was that the soil he'd brought up was already extraordinarily fertile. Combined with the moisture from the melting winter snow, the soil's water content was excellent and the conditions for planting were ideal. Thirty centimeters of depth was barely enough, but with soil this rich, it should compensate.
Without hesitation, Li Wei took out two and a half kilograms of one-star wheat seeds and began planting.
The process was effortless. When he finished sowing, a notification appeared.
[You have cleared a small farming plot on the rooftop and completed the sowing. You have made excellent use of the building's load-bearing zones. Farm stability: 100%. Soil fertility: one-star quality. Soil moisture: excellent. Estimated germination rate: 100%. You have obtained one One-Star Wheat Field and 100 Farming experience points. Do you wish to donate the farmland to the family?]
Li Wei chose to donate without hesitation. What he needed right now wasn't one-star wheat or private property — it was control over the family, to lay a solid foundation for pioneering the territory.
In a word: the big picture came first.
[You have donated a One-Star Wheat Field with a total area of 60 square meters to the family. Based on the family's current environment and overall situation, this is the family's first fixed asset. Your donation has received a 50% bonus. You receive 20 + 20×50% = 30 Contribution points. Your accumulated Contribution is 185 points. Because the family now possesses a small fixed asset, the total Contribution cap has been raised to 550 points.]
Not bad at all.Looking back at Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue, their progress was a bit slower. They definitely had one-star wheat seeds too, but they weren't Three-Star Farmers.
Liang Yuzhi, refusing to accept this, decided to plant her own plot anyway. Same soil, same location, same one-star wheat — she simply didn't believe it would make a difference. Was farming really that scientific?
Li Yue, on the other hand, made the smart call immediately. She sidled up to Li Wei, grabbed his arm with a playful pout, and slipped him 5 Gold Coins. A big brother couldn't forget his little sister.
So Li Wei went over and helped Li Yue complete her planting. By the time he was done, Liang Yuzhi had already finished donating hers.
[Family member Liang Yuzhi has donated a One-Star Farmland plot with a total area of 60 square meters to the family. Based on the family's current situation, this type of fixed asset donation receives a 50% bonus. She receives 10 + 10×50% = 15 Contribution points. Her accumulated Contribution is 62 points.]
Wait — same area, but half the reward?
[Family member Li Yue has donated a One-Star Wheat Field with a total area of 60 square meters to the family. Based on the family's current situation, this type of fixed asset donation receives a 50% bonus. She receives 20 + 20×50% = 30 Contribution points. Her accumulated Contribution is 91 points.]
[Congratulations — the family's fixed assets have increased. The total Contribution cap has been raised to 650 points.]
——
Li Wei walked over to Liang Yuzhi's plot, genuinely curious. Even if you just scattered seeds randomly, the germination rate shouldn't be that low. How could the difference be so large? And Liang Yuzhi had clearly been confident — she must have known what she was doing. So where had it gone wrong?
Li Yue followed along, equally curious. She watched as Li Wei pushed his hand into the soil, and the expression on her face gradually shifted to something strange. After a long moment, he pulled out a single wheat seed, examined it briefly, and sighed. "Second Aunt, that's not how you plant wheat. Your germination rate will be terrible this way."
She'd planted too deep. Simple as that.
[Family member Li Yue has donated 2.5 kilograms of one-star wheat to the family. Based on the family's current situation, she receives 5 Contribution points. Accumulated total: 96 points.]
A perfectly timed follow-up strike.
Li Wei and Li Yue had both donated One-Star Wheat Fields, while Liang Yuzhi had donated One-Star Farmland — one word of difference, worlds apart in value.
Li Wei immediately replanted the entire plot. Since it was now family property, he as the Three-Star Farmer had priority authority to manage it.
After that, nobody said a word. They kept their distance from each other. There was no lunch — each person took out their own food and water and ate just enough to get by.
Li Wei even took a half-hour nap. When he woke up, he found Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue both still there, motionless, waiting for him. Wow. Had they found the secret to a perfect run?
He had to admit — these two were genuinely impressive. And more importantly, smart.
Alright then.
"Second Aunt, Little Sister — this afternoon I'm planning to look through the ruins for some wooden boards to seal up the windows in this building. When you were digging through the rubble yesterday, were there many boards around?"
"Not many, and the ones we found were broken — unusable. But we could strip the car doors and panels off those vehicles, or just use concrete blocks to seal the windows."
Li Yue suggested it, and Liang Yuzhi nodded immediately. "I think that works. Also, with the first and second floor staircases blocked, getting in and out is really inconvenient. What if we strip some car doors and make a simple door on the second floor? Either way, we're going to need to build a perimeter wall around this building eventually."
"That's fine. Second Aunt, we need to think long-term. So this afternoon I'll handle hauling concrete blocks to seal the windows?" Li Yue glanced at Li Wei and spoke quickly. They'd all seen the notifications, so upgrading the temporary camp to a Level 1 Scavenger Camp as quickly as possible was clearly the top priority right now.
"Then I'll handle making the door and everything that goes with it." Liang Yuzhi smiled slightly, and a massive multi-function wrench appeared in her hand.
This was a modern technological world — wrenches were common. Anyone with a Craftsman Profession Card would definitely have tools like this stocked. It seemed one of her professions was Craftsman.
Those abandoned vehicles were a considerable treasure trove for her.
"Alright. Be careful — try not to make too much noise. I'll go explore the outskirts of the town again this afternoon." Li Wei said it seriously. 'Go ahead and try to follow me, you two.'
"Be careful, big brother."
Liang Yuzhi and Li Yue slipped out quietly to get to work. Li Wei, however, didn't rush off immediately. Instead, he went up to the rooftop, scanned the surroundings for a moment, then swapped to the Tracker title and activated the Two-Star Blood Crow. With the crow's vision, he could observe the ground below in a blurry, rough way.
"Whoosh—"
The Blood Crow shot into the sky and swept over the town, hovering for a moment over the ruins — especially the town center, where it peered down into the massive collapsed pit. Nothing moved inside.
Then Li Wei guided the crow further out, but after about two kilometers, he could feel the strain. The maximum effective scouting range was roughly a two-kilometer radius.
That would have to do. The resolution was terrible, but the efficiency was high — especially now, with clear skies and bright sunlight. Fill in the gaps with a little imagination and it was workable enough.
In under ten minutes, Li Wei recalled the Two-Star Blood Crow. The process didn't require the crow to fly back — one mental command and it simply vanished.
Of course, details like that would need to be kept in mind going forward.
By now, Li Wei was absolutely starving.
Activating the Blood Crow had no time limit, but the Stamina drain was enormous — especially while wearing the Tracker title with its +1 Perception bonus.
And this was after the enhancement that had already cut the consumption by fifty percent.
A short while later, Li Wei had replenished his Stamina. He grabbed the bag made from the tent material and headed downstairs, making straight for the northeast.
There had been a road there once, but something had torn it apart from underground in several places. One section in particular looked as though an earthquake had split it open — a massive crack running through the asphalt.
He'd focused the Blood Crow's attention on this spot earlier, but the image had been too blurry to make anything out. He needed to see it for himself.
The Four-Star Mutant Rat King was one thing — burrowing was what rats did, and a large underground tunnel was within the realm of reason. But this road? It looked like a hundred-meter earthworm had evolved into something the size of a hundred freight trains and bored straight through.
Walking along the flat road, with a warm spring breeze at his back and dense green grass on either side dotted with small wildflowers he couldn't name, Li Wei felt a moment of unreality. He'd been away from modern society for so long that even the sight of asphalt felt strangely familiar and comforting.
Nothing unusual along the way. When Li Wei reached the cracked section, his first instinct was earthquake — the fractures extended far in both directions. But it didn't quite fit that pattern either.
His knowledge in this area was close to nonexistent, so he didn't dwell on it. The reason he'd come was to check for suitable clay.
As for why he didn't dig near the temporary camp — was he joking?
Did he think the Four-Star Mutant Rat King was just decoration?
Dig holes on its turf, and you might as well declare war.
Li Wei had no desire to provoke the Rat King right now. He'd rather walk two kilometers to this ravine to dig clay.
Because he wanted to build a brick kiln. Not only could it be used to fire firebricks for a small blast furnace, but also to make basic pottery — bowls, pots, and especially large jars for collecting rainwater during the wet season.
These were skills he wasn't an expert in, but he genuinely knew how. He'd learned them in the Rookie Mission world.
If the focus back then had been grinding experience, raising Destiny Grid, and farming Contribution, now the priority had to be the big picture — giving the family a camp where they could actually live: reasonably safe, enough food, no water problems, and all the basic infrastructure in place.
Yes. Li Wei now had a very clear sense of direction.
The big picture was everything. He couldn't just say 'there's a Four-Star Rat King boss over there, let's go kill it — it'll drop a pile of loot, maybe a maid summon card, a strategist summon card, a champion summon card, a village charter, a city charter.'
Impossible.
At this stage, the family's Contribution cap was locked at 650 points. Kill the Four-Star Rat King boss, and the Contribution reward would just overflow anyway.
After confirming there was nothing dangerous in the ravine, he found a spot and jumped down. A quick look around confirmed it: about ten meters below the surface, there was a layer of high-quality clay.
He took out his shovel and got to work.
Once he'd filled a full bag of clay, Li Wei climbed back up and shouldered the load — nearly a hundred kilograms — and started the walk back. Not too heavy, but a wheelbarrow would have been nice.
Come to think of it, all the tires on the cars in the parking lot were flat. That meant at least three or four years had passed since the collapse — maybe longer.
But if Second Aunt could actually strip off an intact wheel hub and put together a makeshift cart, he'd be genuinely grateful.
And if that didn't work out, he could always build a wooden wheelbarrow.
Yes — that was something Li Wei now knew how to do as well.