After the incident with Zhang Yunyun, Zhong Suwen felt even more despair than the woman herself.

While the Cloud Sea Group remained silent, Zhang Yunyun’s manager grew frantic and called him over a hundred times, demanding crisis management.

But the live stream had already been broadcast; there were too many witnesses. They couldn’t possibly ask the company to erase everyone’s memories, and besides, they couldn’t afford to offend the people Zhang Yunyun had insulted, not even with their own UOL.

Speaking of which, Zhang Yunyun herself was quite the fool. If only they had been stricter in their selection process, they wouldn’t have let a dimwit like her slip through.

And then there were the celebrities, among whom Shen Xin and Jing Yan stood out as particularly difficult to handle.

Zhong Suwen felt that his hair was falling out from stress, all for this project.

“Director, your coffee.” Xiao Zhou placed the cup on the director’s desk, catching a glimpse of the document.

Shen Xin, Jing Yan.

Xiao Zhou’s heart skipped a beat upon seeing these names, and he found himself glancing at the document again, growing more alarmed.

Apparently, the higher-ups in the company didn’t want these two celebrities stealing the show, so they devised a plan to divert attention during the livestream and encouraged them to build up a malicious image.

The company planned on using Zhang Yunyun’s incident to their advantage.

Xiao Zhou was enraged by this, feeling like he needed to curse out loud.

What a shitty company! So damn ruthless! If the player they hired isn’t good enough, they’ll just maliciously drag down the exceptional ones! A shitty company like this should just close up shop as soon as possible!

Wait, no, he couldn’t say that. He was an employee of this company, after all—he couldn’t wish for it to close up shop and leave him with nothing to eat.

So, instead of cursing the company, he decided to curse the leadership instead. “Which shitty leader came up with this garbage plan?!”

“Ahem.” Zhong Suwen choked on his coffee. “Xiao Zhou, maybe a little less sugar next time.”

“Oh? Uh, sorry.” Xiao Zhou pulled himself back from his daydream, remembering that he had added quite a bit of sugar to his coffee earlier.

He’d been snacking on too much sugar lately, so he hadn’t held back…

Zhong Suwen frowned and waved him out of the office. Xiao Zhou felt a weight lifted off his shoulders as he left, only to hear the director speaking to someone else over the phone, arranging work tasks.

“Find someone to negotiate with Shen Xin and Jing Yan’s stream managers…”

Xiao Zhou’s heart raced.

Shen Xin’s stream manager… Wasn’t that him?

Thanks to his early activity and spending in Shen Xin’s live stream, Xiao Zhou had no trouble obtaining the title of stream moderator.

Oh god, if the company found out that their employee was slacking off during work hours to support a rival company, I’d probably be fired on the spot and never allowed to work in this industry again.

Thankfully, he’d been using a burner account with no personal information.

Xiao Zhou sighed in relief at this thought. Now this was a pickle. Not only did he have to help the big shot hide his identity, but he also had to maintain his own anonymity.

He returned to his desk, exhausted, and turned on his computer. After working for a bit, he took a short break and entered Shen Xin’s livestream, where he banned a few unruly accounts that were spewing vulgarities, and then opened his own messages.

“Ah, so amazing! I love you, big shot!”

Xiao Zhou replied with a cute emoji.

“【Ignore this】“

Xiao Zhou reported and blocked the account.

“Hello, this is UOL. We’d like to get in contact with you…”

Xiao Zhou deleted the message.

“Yayyy, you’re finally online!”

“Xiuuuuuu! Come back, come back!”

Less than ten minutes after logging on, a string of private messages bombarded him. Xiao Zhou opened the chat window, torn between laughter and tears.

Xiuuuuuu: I’m coming, I’m coming!

Xiao Zhou chuckled helplessly.

He’d known this male viewer, who went by the ID “Xiao Xin’s Favorite Man,” for a few days already. Despite the cringe-worthy ID, Xiao Zhou found that, upon chatting, this man was quite a good person, not the sleazy type he’d expected based on his profile.

Xiuuuuuu: My boss called me away to help.

“Oh, I see,” Xiao Zhou responded.

Xiao Xin’s Favorite Man: “I wanted to ask, how’s the stream’s viewership lately? It feels like there are a lot fewer people watching nowadays.”

Shen Xin had two hundred thousand followers, but the number of online viewers per day hardly reached ten thousand. Many had reported not receiving notifications for the stream, assuming it was a system glitch. Xiao Zhou knew very well that it was the company targeting the stream of their biggest shareholder.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. Taking advantage of his anonymity online, Xiao Zhou began to quietly complain.

Xiaoxiao: I noticed too, something’s off with the data—the live stream has been restricted.

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Why?

To make money, of course!

There are celebrities among the contestants, right? They attract more viewers with their star power.

The organizers want these kinds of people to play more of the game so they can boost sales.

Ah, the evils of capitalism!

It’s really just an issue of insufficient fame. If Shen the Big Shot was a little more famous, they wouldn’t have excluded and targeted him like this…

After venting, Xiao Zhou felt much better, but he soon noticed that the private messages page was filled with only his own messages. The other party hadn’t responded for a long time.

Xiaoxiao:?

Xiaoxiao: Are you still there?

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Yes.

The break was almost over, so Xiao Zhou planned to log off after saying goodbye, but the message from the other party popped up first.

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: You’re at the company, right?

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Actually, there’s something I didn’t tell you.

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Prepare yourself!

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Do you know “Mommy and Daddy Won’t Let Me Play Games”?

Xiaoxiao’s favorite man: Shen Xin is her.

Day 23 of spring: Thirty units of flowers bloomed.

In three days, they would harvest the honey, and that pile of passion fruit in the storage would finally be put to use.

Shen Xin swiftly harvested the crops in the field.

There were many crops stored in the warehouse now. Shen Xin counted them all, including the fruits, and found that they had harvested over a thousand units of spring produce, more than enough to last until the end of the game.

However, there were too few types of crops, so Shen Xin planned on selling some to both NPCs and players.

At a high price, of course.

The wild greens outside had disappeared. Many people, like Yun Yuwei, were sick of eating fish, but Shen Xin had cornered the market on fresh produce, so fresh vegetables were scarcer than drinking water in the desert at this time.

Shen Xin set the prices as he harvested.

Obtained [Common Green Beans x 7], [High-Grade Green Beans x 4], [Common Spring Wheat x 3], [Spring Wheat Seeds x 1]

Shen Xin’s motions paused. Spring wheat…seeds?

She incredulously flipped through her backpack, then scratched her head in confusion after confirming the seed lay inside.

Where was the promised sterile seed? Had Old He sold her a fake?

Damn, why hadn’t he sold her more of these fakes?!

Shen Xin looked down carefully at the soil beneath her feet and realized she had wrongly accused Old He.

The seeds purchased from the shop were all planted in bulk, but the area around her was filled with a hodgepodge of various crops. If Shen Xin remembered correctly, the seeds planted here had all been analyzed by the device.

Random seeds were drop items from monsters, so they couldn’t have come from the same supply chain as Old He’s usual inventory. Analyzed crops could produce seeds… That was perfectly reasonable!

Shen Xin felt like she’d won the lottery.

If this crop could produce seeds, she would never again need to timidly hoard food!

She promptly changed her sales strategy, no longer hesitating to sell her crops. She brought quite a few things to the town.

【 Our tests show that you haven’t eaten vegetables for 15 days, leading to insufficient vitamin intake. You have contracted the “Vitamin Deficiency” status, causing all actions to consume twice the normal amount of stamina. 】

Upon waking, Zhuang Jia discovered he had contracted a negative status.

He was baffled for a while, then let out a stream of curses.

“Piece-of-shit game! It’s bad enough having to deal with monsters and food shortages, but now we have to worry about our health too?!”

Every day upon waking, Zhuang Jia would curse the game before weakly accepting its mechanics.

At first, Zhuang Jia didn’t think much of this status.

It just meant that his stamina would be spent double as fast, so he’d need to craft more food to replenish it.

Nowadays, players fall into two distinct categories.

One type sought fortune and glory, venturing outside the town’s extremely dangerous surroundings to fish at the beach with their teams.

The other type refused to risk their lives, preferring to complete missions at the Notice Board for food or barter their resources with those who had gone fishing.

Zhuang Jia was a blacksmith, but he rarely received blacksmithing requests.

NPCs would occasionally come to repair their tools or furniture, but players usually didn’t bother with such things. Not many people could get their hands on metal, and when their tools wore out, they simply crafted new ones rather than spend money on repairs.

That was why Zhuang Jia was especially envious of the carpenter, Xiao Feng.

Carpenters could fix houses and build kitchens, and Zhuang Jia had heard that Xiao Feng had gotten acquainted with the town’s farmer. Sometimes, after a day of work, Xiao Feng’s dinner was taken care of. What a lucky fellow.

Even luckier was Bibi, the owner of the barbershop. His haircutting skills were subpar, but somehow, he still received regular meals from the farmer.

Zhuang Jia grumbled as he finished making two fish sandwiches and carried them over to the notice board to see if there were any missions today that caught his eye.

Players had two favorite types of missions.

One was missions with particularly lucrative rewards, such as helping out with a small task and earning a hefty sum of money.

The other type offered food rewards, especially those given out by the town’s aunties and grandmas. They often gave out small snacks as rewards, which were quite tasty; however, these missions were not common and players had to rely on luck to stumble upon them.

Zhuang Jia’s luck wasn’t great.

He scanned the missions and picked the two that paid the most.

One was from the mayor, to clean up the town square; it paid 2 silver coins.

The other was from a carpenter, requesting 150 pieces of timber; it paid 3 silver coins.

Negative status effects were not just for show. Normally, Zhuang Jia could easily complete both missions in one go, but after cleaning up the town square, he was already exhausted. He quickly took out the fish meat he brought with him and shoved it into his mouth.

However, after finishing his meal, Zhuang Jia felt something was off; his stomach was still grumbling. He opened his player handbook and saw that his stamina had only returned to 65 points.

Normally, a single meal would restore his stamina to full!

Clearly, the negative status effect not only doubled his stamina consumption but also halved the effectiveness of food!

“Oh, please, game developers, do something!”

At this rate, doing missions wouldn’t be worth it! He had to get rid of this vitamin deficiency status effect.

Easier said than done—how exactly was he supposed to do that?

Zhuang Jia paid a visit to the clinic and spent some money on a checkup, but the doctor NPC could only shrug helplessly.

“You need to eat more vegetables during this time, or your condition will worsen…”