Chapter 2: A Simple Home  

The upper half of the tree, now missing its base, just floated in midair. Seeing it in real life felt bizarre. Yang Tao reached out and gave it a push, but it didn't budge an inch. *Good thing Newton isn't around to see this. If he were, not even welding his coffin shut with iron plates could keep him inside.* 

Yang Tao walked toward the fallen block, and the moment he got close, it zipped straight into his body. 

Achievement Unlocked: [Get Wood] 

He opened his inventory and saw the wooden block resting in the first slot. He picked it up and placed it in the crafting grid, and the interface showed he could turn it into four wooden planks. 

"Same as the game. That makes things simple. No need to overthink—just chop down more trees. Let's also see how long a day lasts here." 

In the game, a full day cycle lasted about 20 minutes—10 minutes of daylight and 7 minutes of night. But after standing here for a while, Yang Tao noticed that the square sun hadn't moved much. He wasn't sure if time worked like in the real world, where a day was 24 hours, and without a clock, he could only guess. 

He crafted the wooden planks into a crafting table. 

Achievement Unlocked: [Benchmarking] 

After chopping down the rest of the tree, the leaves began to disappear, dropping a few saplings. 

"Cutting trees means planting trees, or I'll have to travel too far for wood later." 

Yang Tao planted a sapling where the tree had been. Then, he used the collected wood to craft a set of wooden tools. If this were the game, he wouldn't have bothered—he would've just made a wooden pickaxe, mined some stone, and upgraded straight to stone tools. Stronger, faster, better! 

Achievement Unlocked: [Time to Mine!] 

Achievement Unlocked: [Time to Strike!] 

Achievement Unlocked: [Time to Farm!] 

Three achievements in a row. He grabbed his newly made wooden axe and ran toward another tree. Now that he had an axe, chopping wood was much faster. 

After gathering two stacks of logs, he stopped. 

"This should be enough for now. Time to find a mining spot and live underground. Staying on the surface is too risky." 

He looked around, picked an open area, and pulled out a shovel. Digging straight down was dangerous, so he dug at a 45-degree angle. Just like the trees, every dirt block he broke dropped neatly onto the ground. After about seven or eight blocks, the color of the blocks changed—he had hit stone. Switching to his pickaxe, he continued digging. 

Yang Tao noticed that if an item was in his quick bar, he could switch to it just by thinking about it. But if the item was in his main inventory, he had to physically move it to the quick bar to use it. 

Soon, he had dug out a space 10 blocks wide and 14 blocks tall. But inside, it was pitch black—even with an open entrance to the outside. He wondered if actual caves would be so dark that he wouldn't be able to see anything at all. 

He placed his crafting table against a wall, then took some cobblestone and crafted a furnace. 

Achievement Unlocked: [Hot Topic] 

He placed the furnace next to the crafting table. While digging out the space, he hadn't found any coal, so he had no choice but to burn wood to make charcoal for torches. Without torches, exploring underground would be impossible. 

His hunger bar had already dropped by one and a half points. He needed food. 

 "What should I eat? Wheat takes too long to grow. Let's see if there are any animals nearby." 

He pulled out a wooden sword and stepped onto the surface. Not far away, a group of cows was lazily wandering around, completely unaware of the danger heading their way.