Chapter 8: New Structure — Exchange Center

The next day, as soon as the players logged on, they sensed that the game seemed to have undergone a small update.

First, the dizziness upon logging in was gone.
Second, on the empty ground to the right of the fountain, a small hut had suddenly appeared.
The three words [Exchange Post] were clearly written on it, leaving no room for misunderstanding its function.

‘A new building?’

“Brothers, a new exchange post has been added to the game. I’ll take you to have a look.”
Hua Yibing opened his stream room, pointed his hand at the hut, and proudly swam towards it, flicking his tail.

He was the cub who had learned to swim the fastest among all the merfolk after receiving the new quest yesterday!

To show off his swimming posture, Hua Yibing even deliberately adjusted the camera to focus on his pale gold fishtail.

[O-pening-cri-tical-hit!]

[Hello? Is something wrong with you?]

[Says he’s taking us to see the new building, but is secretly showing off that he already knows how to swim.]

[You know, Huahua seems to be quite talented in this aspect. Look at him swim, he’s so much like a fish!]

“Of course,” he bragged enough and then adjusted the camera back.
“A natural reserve merman, you understand?”

After speaking, Hua Yibing had already swum into the small, semi-open-air hut.

The outside of the hut looked a bit crude, as if it had been hastily built with mud boards.
But unexpectedly, the inside was completely different.
The moment he entered, he was nearly blinded by the golden light that filled the room.

“Holy cr*p!”
Young Hua’s mouth formed an ‘O’ shape, looking like he’d never seen the world before.

But this time, the bullet comments didn’t seize the opportunity to laugh at him.

[Holy cr*p, am I still dreaming?]

[I think so too…]

[Huahua, are you sure this is an exchange post? Not some kind of museum or something??]

But Hua Yibing had no time to pay attention to the bullet comments.
His eyes were glued to the shiny things in the display cabinet, completely unable to look away.
“Ah… I think my roommate has led me astray…”

His eyes were vacant, and one hand was pawing at a jewel the size of an ostrich egg, trying to get his face close to it for a snuggle.
But he received a timely warning from the system—[Items in the exchange post must be exchanged for with reputation points. All acts of theft are prohibited.]

This warning brought Young Hua back to his senses in time.
He reluctantly let go of the item in his hand and inquired of the red-haired little sprite standing at the counter, “Dear little miss, what are reputation points?”

The red-haired, red-eyed loli sprite turned to look at him.
Her exquisite, figurine-like appearance made many of the otaku in the stream room howl.

“Reputation points are rewards obtained from players’ daily quests and can be used as a general currency to purchase needed items at the exchange post,” it answered in a prim and proper manner.

[I can’t take it anymore, the loli is so cute!!]

[Even if I die and am nailed in a coffin, I must, in this grave, use this decaying vocal cord to shout—Three-no loli is the best!!]

[Holding down the coffin lid of the person above, you’d better not come out (doge head).]

The bullet comments were still howling or playing with memes, while Hua Yibing had already used this opportunity to scroll through the exchange list from top to bottom.
He now had only one suspicion—could the game world of Sea Realm be a setting where you could dig up gold just by digging up a random stone?

Look at this cup, its function description says it’s for drinking water! It’s actually encrusted with a whole circle of rubies and sapphires!

Look at that hair tie over there, it actually has a pigeon-egg-sized pearl as a decoration!

He swallowed hard and turned his gaze to the tools section, thinking that it couldn’t be that exaggerated this time.
It couldn’t be that even a hoe for digging the ground would…

Hua Yibing: “…”

He stared dumbfoundedly at the shiny golden hoe with flamboyant patterns carved on its handle.

He seemed to finally understand what the legendary golden hoe used by the emperor looked like.

Holy cr*p!

At this moment, a sneer came from behind him.
“Put away that foolish look of yours.”

Hearing the familiar mocking voice, Young Hua subconsciously bristled and jumped up to retort, “Yan Er’mao¹, you’re the foolish one, you… “
Then he swallowed the rest of his words.

He saw his roommate, whom he saw every day in reality but had not yet met in the game, now standing with a dark, sturdy fishtail, looking down at him with his arms crossed.

‘It’s one thing for that guy to be taller than me in reality, but why is his tail even longer than mine in the game??’
Realizing this, Hua Yibing suddenly became disheartened.

“What do you mean, a foolish look,” he muttered.
“How can you be so calm? Aren’t you the one who likes these shiny things the most?”

Yan Shuangwen ignored him and swam straight to the exchange counter.
Only then did Hua Yibing realize that the other guy seemed to swim even more smoothly than him.
Damn it!!

But the joys and sorrows of people are not interconnected, just as the bullet comments could not empathize with Hua Yibing.

[Holy cr*p, is this person Huahua’s roommate?]

[Ahhhhhh, Mr. Roommate is so handsome? That black tail, I’m dead, I’m fine, I’m dead again.]

[Wait, I remember your ID. Weren’t you just shouting ‘loli is the best’ a moment ago?]

[You’re making a fuss over nothing. As long as they’re good-looking, I love them all!]

[To be honest, me too… hehehe.]

By the time the black-tailed fish surnamed Yan returned to Hua Yibing, he was already holding a gold and jade-inlaid pickaxe.
There was no fluctuation on his scholarly-scoundrel face.
If it weren’t for the hand holding the gold constantly caressing it, you wouldn’t be able to tell this person’s true fetish at all!

Hua Yibing thought bitterly, who would have known that a guy who looked so serious and proper actually had a special liking for shiny, vulgar decorations?
The moment you opened the door to his room, it could blind you.
Even the toilet in the bathroom was gold!!

Hua Yibing asked, “Where did you get so many contribution points?”

Yan Shuangwen’s hand, caressing the pickaxe, paused for a moment.
“Isn’t there a bulletin board at the entrance? Clearing all the daily quests is enough to buy one tool.”

He seemed to want to send Hua Yibing away and added a friendly reminder, “Aren’t you going to hurry? I see that the quantity of each tool in the exchange post is limited. If you’re late, someone might…”

Then, Yan Shuangwen watched with satisfaction as the foolish fish instantly disappeared from his sight.

As a doctoral student in the Marine Biology Protection department, Yan Shuangwen had always been the bookworm type who only stayed in the lab in everyone’s impression.
He had always looked down on his roommate who was always immersed in a holographic cabin doing game live streams, thinking it was a pure waste of life.

But he never thought that one day he would be so fascinated by a game—when his roommate excitedly recommended Sea Realm‘s official website CG to him, he had planned to just glance at it perfunctorily, but he was attracted by one of the creatures in it, unable to look away—

It was a strangely shaped jellyfish-like creature, but it had two bell-shaped caps on top.
Such a thing that contradicted common sense should have made people feel it was ugly, but Yan Shuangwen only found it exceptionally charming.

He had chosen this unpopular major because he loved these things so deeply.
In this aspect, Yan Shuangwen could even say without any modesty that he was as familiar with all known marine creatures as if he were counting his family treasures.

It was also for this reason that when Hua Yibing live-streamed other marine-themed games on the market and encountered species he didn’t recognize, he would always come to consult him.
And he could always accurately state the names and habits of various undersea creatures.

Even for fictional fantasy creatures, he could point out their reference prototypes and even design flaws in their living habits with reason and evidence.

But in the CG released by Sea Realm, among the hundreds of marine creatures… he actually didn’t recognize a single one!

So he asked Hua Yibing for help and went to great lengths to collect the full set of CG, printing them out to observe them by category.
He discovered that their ways of life actually had a complete logical chain!

Such a huge amount of calculation! Such a complete design project! Would a company really be so meticulous in such details?

He had a bold guess about this—could it be that they were real creatures that just hadn’t been discovered yet?

Yan Shuangwen even specially took them to ask his old professor, but was mercilessly kicked out by the professor, who said, “Why are you, a serious person, also coming to tease your teacher?”—this was clearly something fictional.
Given Earth’s conditions, no sea area could support their survival!

So when he received the closed beta slot, he went out of his way to order a holographic game cabin and entered the game on time on the day the server opened.
He wanted to see what a marine world with so many fictional creatures was really like.

While all the players were struggling to complete the first novice quest, Yan Shuangwen had already left the spawn point and was swimming towards farther places.

Although he wasn’t very good at swinging his fishtail at first, he had dissected or studied so many fish, after all.
His theoretical knowledge quickly turned into practice—in fact, Yan Shuangwen was the first player in the true sense to swim smoothly.

But Yan Shuangwen himself didn’t care much about this.

After swimming a few hundred meters out of the novice village, he discovered the first unfamiliar marine creature—a crimson big-headed fish, about ten centimeters long, but with a head more than twenty centimeters wide, looking particularly comical and interesting.
This fish’s swimming method was also different from ordinary fish.
It sucked in seawater through its mouth, then spat it out forcefully, propelling its body backwards with this force.

This strange-looking fish instantly caught the attention of the marine biology doctor.
Seeing its slow movement, Yan Shuangwen even had the thought of catching it to study.

Unexpectedly, this big-headed fish usually looked like it was slowly inhaling and exhaling, swimming very leisurely.
But when it really encountered danger, its gills moved extremely violently, huffing and puffing backwards like a small jet engine.
This added considerable difficulty to Yan Shuangwen’s capture attempt.

Just like that, the two unconventional fish, one retreating and one pursuing, chased each other for a long distance.
In the end, the fish actually led Yan Shuangwen to the back of a quarry, near a strange cave.
This was also the reason he chose to exchange for a pickaxe—the cave was blocked by a huge rock, and he couldn’t move it no matter how hard he tried, so he could only return empty-handed.

And today, after the exchange post opened, he did indeed find the pickaxe option.
With the reputation reward for being the first to learn to swim, he directly exchanged for a golden pickaxe that was exceptionally in line with his own aesthetic.

Yan Shuangwen took his freshly obtained tool and returned to the previous cave.

The black-haired, black-tailed merman picked up the long, shiny golden pickaxe, raised it high above his head, and then smashed it down hard on the large rock.

Clang!

The contact between the rock and the pickaxe made a sound of metal striking stone, and a long, thin crack appeared on the surface.

Yan Shuangwen’s eyes lit up—

‘There’s a chance!’

Footnotes:

1. 二毛 (èr máo), literally “second hair,” is a playful/derogatory nickname. It’s unclear why he calls him this, but it could be a reference to something personal between them.