Chapter 990: Virtual Cuisine
Lin Xue lay down in the Matrix game pod, and after a moment, she opened her eyes, waking up inside the Matrix game pod.
The restraints on her body released, the pod door opened, and Lin Xue climbed out.
She looked at her own body and the surrounding environment. Yep, no mistake, this was indeed the beachfront mansion.
Ever since the system update, entering the virtual world through the Matrix game pod meant waking up in an identical Matrix game pod in the beachfront mansion. This gave Lin Xue a strange illusion; she often felt a bit dazed, wondering whether she was in the real world or the virtual world.
Whenever this happened, she had to look at the surrounding scenery, distinguishing the materials in the game from those in reality, to be sure.
This time, Lin Xue logged on mainly to check out the updated "Matrix Shopping Center," because she’d heard that there, she could spend very little money to eat a lot of delicious food and also buy many items that weren’t available in the beachfront mansion.
Actually, spending money wasn’t the main point. The key was that in the game pod, you could eat as much as you wanted without getting fat!
For most players who could afford a Matrix game pod, "eating" had long since moved beyond mere physiological needs. It wasn’t about nutritional value at all; it was purely for sensory enjoyment—eating because it tasted good.
But tasty things often make you gain weight.
Things commonly eaten in daily life, like pizza, fried chicken, cola, crawfish, ice cream, desserts, or less common treats like high-end hotpot, high-end barbecue, roast duck, and various elaborate traditional Chinese dishes—almost none of them are low in calories.
Most delicious foods are inseparable from fat, oil, salt, and sugar, and these are the main culprits behind weight gain.
If you wanted to eat healthily, it would be chicken breast, vegetable salad, fruit, whole wheat bread… Eating too much of that makes you feel like a cow or sheep. Vegetable salad in your mouth feels like bundles of hay, and chicken breast tastes like roots and bark, leading to the ultimate question: "Why am I torturing myself like this?"
For the vast majority of people, this is a contradiction. The biggest problem with gourmet food isn’t that it’s too expensive to afford, but that the consequences of gaining weight are too severe, and losing weight is nothing short of torture.
For Lin Xue, the reason she was so looking forward to the food in the Matrix game pod wasn’t because it was cheap, but because no matter how much she ate, she wouldn’t get fat!
All those high-calorie things she usually dared not eat could now be devoured freely. After all, it was all just tricking her brain, like feasting in a dream. When she woke up, she wouldn’t gain weight, and there wouldn’t be any guilt.
Happy fat-guy cola, first three bottles, ice cold!
Happy fat-guy wings, first two buckets, freshly fried!
What about the eight major cuisines, giant cakes, Japanese food, Korean food, Western food—bring it all up! Since it wouldn’t actually go into her stomach, everyone could be a big eater.
Just thinking about it made Lin Xue’s mouth water.
Of course, she wasn’t sure how much the taste of food in the game would differ from real life. But if the game’s food could be even 70% as delicious as reality, it would be worth it, given how cheap it was and how there was no burden at all.
Before heading out, Lin Xue specifically asked Nuan Nuan if she wanted to come along. Nuan Nuan said she had things to do and declined.
Lin Xue knew this was probably a system setting, temporarily preventing Nuan Nuan from following the player to the Matrix Shopping Center. After all, there would be a large number of players there. If everyone brought a Nuan Nuan, it would be very strange. Moreover, Nuan Nuan’s combat power was now different from before; she was a weapon of mass destruction and shouldn’t appear in crowded places.
Lin Xue went out, hailed a taxi, and the taxi automatically drove her toward the Matrix Shopping Center.
Currently, in *Oasis*, players hadn’t been granted the ability to buy or drive cars yet, which was a bit of a pity.
A few minutes later, Lin Xue arrived.
From inside the taxi, she had already seen the full view of the Matrix Shopping Center.
To her slight surprise, the Matrix Shopping Center wasn’t flashy or ostentatious. Logically, in a virtual world, Chen Mo could have made this shopping center a towering skyscraper or an unscientific structure floating in midair. But overall, the current shopping center retained many realistic elements, though it added plenty of tech-inspired designs to its shape.
The Matrix Shopping Center was an irregular cube, with many irregular lines on its outer layer, giving it a sense of both design and technology. On the building’s exterior walls were some massive screens displaying various giant advertisements—for clothing, food, cosmetics, and so on—all shown using virtual images. For instance, on the screen directly facing Lin Xue was a blonde, blue-eyed young woman, her red lips luscious and tempting, next to a lipstick whose exact shade a straight man could never guess.
There was also a sizable square around it, with other shops and features like fountains scattered around. Many players were strolling in groups of three or five across the square, probably having just feasted in the shopping center and habitually coming out for a walk to digest, even though they didn’t feel full.
For the first trial version, it was normal for the Matrix Shopping Center’s architecture to be relatively conservative. A building too detached from reality might weaken the players’ sense of immersion. Besides, the virtual world was different from the real one. If they later decided the shopping center wasn’t suitable, they could just rebuild it from scratch, unlike in reality where they’d have to demolish and reconstruct, which was a huge hassle.
The moment Lin Xue stepped into the Matrix Shopping Center, she had an illusion, feeling as if she had arrived at a real, large mall!
In terms of floor area, the Matrix Shopping Center was larger than most large malls in first- and second-tier cities in China, but it couldn’t compare to some world-class malls, like the 550,000-square-meter Dubai Mall.
But obviously, this floor area had been carefully considered. Since the virtual world’s inventory of goods was currently limited, making it too large might cause waste or lead to many duplicate stores, so it was built a bit smaller. Even so, it still accommodated a huge number of players, making it very lively.
The number of people in the entire Matrix Shopping Center was strictly controlled within a certain range, ensuring it was neither crowded nor deserted.
Lin Xue first took a general look at the mall’s layout near the entrance.
Basically, it was similar to most shopping centers: various clothing stores, food outlets, a cinema, shops, and so on—everything was available. However, some special stores were absent; anything not useful or barely useful in the virtual world wasn’t sold here.