Chapter 45: No shortage of iron ore

After a moment of silence, Xu Xin spoke, "Anyway, what we need to consider now should be the next beast tide outbreak. It's too early to think about these things now."

"Yes, actually what I wanted to say is, if possible, try to help others without harming our own interests. All the survivors may be a source of strength in the future."

"Then why didn't you tell those survivors this time that collecting other supplies also counts towards the resource ranking?"

"You mean this time? Fifty people have to die anyway, so why help them? Having the 50 dumbest die is the best outcome."

Xu Xin rather liked Ji Chaoyang's personality.

Although he seemed somewhat cold-blooded, he could always make the most correct choices for the collective interest. Perhaps this was what a born leader was like.

After exchanging some more information, the two ended the video call.

From Ji Chaoyang, Xu Xin learned that the survivors ranked second to tenth in this leaderboard also received a watch, but their watches were not as fully functional as Xu Xin's. They could only communicate, make calls, video chat, and view information, but couldn't craft items or even trade resources through the watch.

After all, Xu Xin had obtained a purple-level watch, while theirs were blue-level. However, even the blue-level ones were very convenient. Once an organization was established, all members within the organization would be able to communicate anytime, anywhere.

The organizational matters were left to Ji Chaoyang to handle. Xu Xin could help by asking Li Wenxi about it.

Looking at his private messages, Xu Xin's head was about to explode. He couldn't keep up with the thousands of messages, most of which were useless attempts to curry favor or beg for resources. There were even moral blackmail attempts, and some people were trying to initiate voice and video calls with him.

He quickly set his settings to only allow Li Wenxi and Ji Chaoyang to send him voice and video calls.

Among the pile of private messages, he found Li Wenxi's. She still hadn't replied to the iron ore trade matter Xu Xin had sent her earlier.

Coco was still curled up on the bed, dozing.

Xu Xin leisurely sat down by the grill, threw some wood into the fireplace, and comfortably enjoyed a sumptuous dinner of bear meat with lotus root.

"Let's go down and plant those two types of trees," Xu Xin decided to do something after eating and drinking his fill.

Xu Xin took some fertilizer and two bags of seeds, went down from the treehouse, and arrived at the plot of land he had cleared earlier.

There were many seeds in the bag, Xu Xin wasn't sure exactly how many, just like no one knows how many seeds are in a bag of sunflower seeds.

Anyway, it was enough.

"Let's try out the effect of the fertilizer first." Xu Xin buried a birch seed in the soil, and a few seconds later, a small seedling slowly emerged from the soil. This was the normal growth speed of the seed, taking ten days to grow into a big tree.

He looked at the fertilizer in his hand.

[Natural Organic Fertilizer (Green): A fertilizer that can transform barren soil (White) into normal soil (Green), when sprinkled on normal soil (Green) it can accelerate plant growth, 50 portions remaining.]

This bag of fertilizer only had 50 portions. Xu Xin carefully sprinkled it slowly on the small seedling.

[Fertilization successful, birch tree growth time reduced to 10 hours.]

Reduced by so much?!

Xu Xin was pleasantly surprised. He thought it would be good if the time could be halved, but he didn't expect it to change directly from ten days to ten hours.

It wasn't even seven o'clock in the evening now, which meant he could harvest new materials first thing in the morning.

"This fertilizer is really good stuff. I wonder if anyone is selling this kind of thing." Xu Xin immediately opened his watch and started searching for information on the trading platform.

Unfortunately, no one had put fertilizer up for sale yet, but the wolf meat he had listed earlier had a bunch of people wanting to trade green resources for it. Xu Xin picked some stone materials and a few scattered green iron ores to complete the trades.

"The automatic weapons for the treehouse need fine wood, while the defense facilities need round wood,

so let's do half and half for now." Xu Xin planted thirty birch trees and thirty pine trees in that empty space, then sprinkled fertilizer.

Including the previous one, Xu Xin used twenty portions of fertilizer on ten birch trees and ten pine trees.

"Calculating based on poplar trees, each tree should produce five fine wood or round wood. With ten trees each, that's fifty new materials each, which can be harvested tomorrow morning. That's definitely enough for my own use, so let's save the fertilizer for now."

After making a simple wooden fence to enclose these saplings, Xu Xin looked at the fruits of his labor before him and nodded with satisfaction.

Suddenly, Xu Xin's watch vibrated. He looked down and saw it was a video call from Li Wenxi.

"Wow! Xu Xin, you're really a big shot! You're actually first in the entire area! First! You're even stronger than that Ji Chaoyang!" In the small screen projected from the watch, Li Wenxi looked travel-worn, with some dust on her ear-length short hair, her expression very excited.

As expected, just as Xu Xin had predicted, she called him as soon as she came back and saw the rankings.

"Aren't you fourth? I didn't expect you to be so strong too," Xu Xin replied with a smile.

"Oh, that's because… I was lucky!" Li Wenxi scratched her head embarrassedly, "Not like you real big shots who can even find golden treasure chests."

"Did you just get back?"

"Yes, I was quite excited after finding the silver treasure chest, so I continued looking for the golden one, but couldn't find it until the activity ended. I just rushed back." Excitement was written all over Li Wenxi's pretty face, "Then when I came back, I saw that I was fourth! And you were first! This is too amazing!"

"Haha, congratulations. By the way, do you still have a lot of iron blocks?"

"Of course I do. I don't have many wood and plant resources, but I have plenty of minerals. Let me tell you, during this activity's exploration, I found two more ore caves, and there weren't even any beasts inside!" The pretty girl put her hands on her hips and raised her head, with an expression that said 'come on, praise me'.

"Impressive, impressive!" Xu Xin was genuinely envious. This pretty girl really did have mines at home, especially now when iron armor and weapons crafting had been unlocked and iron ore was scarce, the strategic value of ore caves was very high.

"Hehe, how much iron ore do you want? I'll give it to you!"

Xu Xin remembered Ji Chaoyang's organization, so he told Li Wenxi about the previous matters.

"Join an organization full of big shots? Of course I'll join! You, the number one, have joined, why wouldn't I!" Li Wenxi was easily persuaded, "By the way, you just said that you and that Ji Chaoyang can already craft iron weapons and armor?"

"That's right."

"Hmm… How about this, I'll provide you with materials for two sets of iron armor. Instead of exchanging resources, could you make a set for me too?" Li Wenxi asked tentatively.

"You?" Xu Xin sized up Li Wenxi, "Are you sure you can move in iron armor?"

"Are you kidding? I'm very strong, okay!" Li Wenxi made a muscle-flexing gesture. Although no bulging muscles could be seen, she, who worked out regularly, indeed had a kind of strength beauty, "Besides, my body has been enhanced once by the contract."

"Alright, but don't blame me if you can't wear it."

"I won't, I won't. If I can't wear it, I'll just sell it to the other people in the organization you mentioned. I have plenty of ore anyway, it's not a big deal!"

Well, the troublesome issue of mineral sources was directly solved by Li Wenxi.

After ending the video call, Xu Xin had just returned to the treehouse when Li Wenxi quickly initiated a trade with him. To his surprise, what he received wasn't iron ore, but already smelted iron blocks (green), and she even generously gave him eight iron blocks (blue).

Eight blue resources? This was too generous, no wonder she ranked above all but one of those who only obtained silver treasure chests.

She also sent him a message: "I'm giving you iron blocks directly. My room is too small to store iron ore, the smelter hasn't stopped running, and I have a ton of iron blocks! A set of iron armor has four pieces, four for you and four for me, eight in total! The four blue iron blocks I gave you can count as repayment for those two oranges, they were a big help to me!"