Chapter 2423: Beautiful Tomorrow Station
After several days of preparation, Xu Huo had basically gathered everything he needed. The instruments and combat robots promised by Xin Rong had also been delivered, along with various potions—evolution agents, nutrient supplements, healing potions, everything imaginable. Finally, he spotted two Platinum Eye return tickets at the bottom of the box.
Return tickets were rewards for clearing instances, also tickets, but they allowed one to bypass the train and return directly to one's own district. Thus, this ticket also served as a lifesaving item for players facing emergencies.
Of course, return tickets were bought and sold, but due to their rarity, any offered for sale came at a high price. Moreover, most people trading return tickets didn't use White Notes; they could only be exchanged for items like props or instruments. And in such transactions, as long as someone posted on the Under Dimension, the ticket would be bought up quickly.
Throughout the entire game, return tickets were always in short supply.
Only players like Xu Huo, who often didn't return to their own district after clearing instances, might have surplus return tickets.
But for him, the difference between a return ticket and an ordinary ticket wasn't significant. When he truly needed to use a ticket to evade a powerful enemy's pursuit, his first choice would also be a ticket to avoid bringing trouble back to District 014.
With everything prepared, Xu Huo took the Painting Woman and boarded the train.
This time, he was heading to District 020 under the C31 wormhole point. Before using the ticket, he had searched the Under Dimension for a general overview of this district. Although it ranked low, the district had developed quite well. However, at the beginning of evolution, the mutation and evolution rate of plants and animals far exceeded that of humans, causing most of the district to be occupied by flora and fauna. Humans could only carve out some safe zones as strongholds. After years of development, the two sides reached a balance—humans could explore undeveloped areas on a small scale, while mutated plants and animals couldn't enter the safe zones.
Daily small-scale conflicts occurred, but they were within controllable limits. There hadn't been any large-scale incursions of mutated plants and animals into cities in the past decade.
However, although the area occupied by humans wasn't large, the "Beautiful Tomorrow Station" Xu Huo was heading to still had over twenty instances. Most of these were non-enclosed field instances that overlapped, making it difficult to determine which instance the ticket would lead to. Buying all the instance guides in advance to read was impractical; he could only buy them after arriving and knowing the instance name.
Due to regional differences, the train he was on rarely sold potions or specialty fun props. Instead, there was more trading of plant seeds and small animal specimens.
In Xu Huo's carriage, a man and a woman were respectively selling seeds and specimens.
"These specimens I'm selling are all freshly made," the red-haired female player said, displaying a crawling insect specimen in her hand. "Everyone, look—only pink bugs killed and made on the spot can have this luster. Under sunlight, they reflect a fine, gem-like shimmer. They're timeless as decorations, and these pink bugs look adorably naive and cute, perfect as gifts for kids or friends."
"You can also eat them. The food list of this pink bug includes a special rock called Crane Rock, which originally contains some radioactive elements. But through the bug's digestion and absorption, those radioactive elements are perfectly removed, leaving only the most valuable effects..."
She paused deliberately before continuing: "It enhances virility!"
This indeed caught many people's attention. Someone asked, "What's the difference between this and a potion?"
The questioner was also a female player. She smiled and said, "Potions are safe with no side effects. Why would I eat this thing?"
"Natural products are always better than synthetic ones." The red-haired female player winked. "Medicine works once per dose, but this fundamentally improves your constitution—a one-time fix!"
Whether the questioner believed it or not, the woman chuckled and bought two.
"Besides this, I have other specimens." Seeing that others weren't very interested, the red-haired female player switched to another specimen—a fist-sized thing soaked in a glass jar. "This is the embryo of a man-eating beast. It's highly toxic. Whether you're making poison or buying it for research, it's excellent—good quality and cheap!"
Two people asked about the price, but most showed no interest.
Players encountered alien species too often, so things like alien species embryos held little value for most. Instead, plant seeds were more appealing.
Xu Huo was also looking at plant seeds.
He had encountered mutated plants before, most of which were within human understanding—either evolving better fruits or better defensive abilities. Plants like the Goddess, which could evolve human-like intelligence, were extremely rare. He had heard of some districts where plants could affect players' mental strength, but such cases were seldom seen in daily life.
The seeds on display were diverse. Some were purely ornamental, while others doubled as guard plants—their stems not only thorny and toxic but also capable of automatic predation like man-eating flowers. More peculiarly, some plants were specifically cultivated for hunting, targeting not insects like mosquitoes but small to medium-sized animals—in other words, an automatic trap.
Additionally, there were plants that grew into fixed humanoid or beast shapes, plants that glowed, plants that released natural aphrodisiacs, plants that liked to burrow and dig holes, plants with musical sense that could produce sounds to accompany music, and plants that mimicked humans to play hide-and-seek... In short, the variety was vast, permeating every aspect of human life.
"There's also this Star Grass," the selling player enthusiastically recommended. "Plant the seeds, use a bit of potion, and it grows in three days. Though its mature form is small, it's very sensitive to large animals."
Seeing Xu Huo's interest, the player pulled out a communicator and played a video of the Star Grass in its adult state. "Normally, its fruit is contracted, looking like a six-pointed star. But if it senses an animal's presence, it puffs up the fruit into a hollow six-pointed star."
Xu Huo watched the small grass in the video turning to follow a hunting dog. As the dog moved, the grass moved too. Its stem looked slender and fragile, but its reaction was very fast.
"Can it distinguish multiple targets?" he asked.
"Of course," the selling player said. "Look at the edges of its star points—see the cracks? It splits into layers based on the number of targets it senses, until it exceeds its limit. At that point, it automatically withers and dies."
"Sounds a bit useless, but many districts have birds and beasts skilled at concealment. They're not as easy to distinguish as humans, so this grass is quite practical."
"How much?" Xu Huo asked.
"Easy—one thousand White Notes per bag. Ten seeds per bag, no individual sales." The selling player happily took out a bag. "Money and goods exchanged, transaction complete!"