Chapter 144: Home Court Advantage

"Yearning to return, hard to return, falling back, samsara; the moon fills a river of water, chase not the past life..." Feng Xue hummed a tune as he skinned and gutted a wild rabbit. This was already his twelfth day in the world of Don't Starve.

Ever since he learned the truth of this world, Feng Xue's mood had been consistently good.

Although the real world could not replicate the game where one could casually gather a few chunks of ore and concoct various tools, it was not the slightest problem for Feng Xue.

The world of Don't Starve was shrouded in nightmare energy, but to Feng Xue—who likewise possessed a nightmare halo—it posed no significant pressure, not to mention that his nightmare halo even had the effect of absorbing sanity values!

Therefore, in Feng Xue's eyes, the Don't Starve world had always presented a peaceful and serene appearance.

This allowed Feng Xue's quality of survival to surpass that of other transmigrators by more than a notch!

While other transmigrators were restricted to digging wild vegetables and foraging for mushrooms, Feng Xue was already able to enjoy cooked meals. For this, he had to thank not only the canteen-style water bottle reminiscent of Bear Grylls, but also the Quincy's soul technique—Reishi manipulation.

Although Quincies had always used Reishi manipulation to craft bows and arrows, judging from weapons like sniper rifles, javelins, and pistols, manufacturing other things was hardly out of the question.

And Feng Xue used the soul particles generated by his own absolute territory field (AT Field) to condense all kinds of cookware, enabling him to feast upon exquisite banquets while other transmigrators were still subsisting on raw meat and blood.

After eating a meal of spicy rabbit meat, Feng Xue stretched out in satisfaction. Because the nights in the Don't Starve world harbored unspeakable dangers, Feng Xue had begun adjusting his jet lag ten days ago, and had finally established a biological clock of sleeping during the day and operating at night.

Although moving about at night required a torch, having an adequate amount of sleep already placed Feng Xue far ahead of the other transmigrators.

The Don't Starve world now resembled a dark forest. Every transmigrator was a hunter carrying a gun, lurking like a ghost among the trees, gently parting the branches blocking the way, striving not to let their footsteps make the slightest sound, and having to be cautious even with their breathing: they had to be careful, because the forest was filled with hunters lurking just like them. If they discovered another living being, there was only one thing they could do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, other people were hell, an eternal threat; any life that exposed its own existence would soon be wiped out. Such was the portrait of the Don't Starve world at this moment.

That's right, this was the Dark Forest theory!

If the Dark Forest theory was somewhat inadequate when applied to collisions between cosmic civilizations, it fit the situation here without the slightest flaw!

How fitting it was!

Holding a torch, Feng Xue used imaginary power to draw in the shadows, compressing the light source to a radius of within ten centimeters around his body. Only in this way would the light source fail to attract other creatures.

As for Feng Xue, he did not rely on this light source to find his way at all. He only needed to take a gentle breath, and a large volume of air carrying surrounding information would brush across the tip of his tongue, then be directly converted by specialized sensory cells spread across the tongue tip into comprehensible 3D images recognized by Feng Xue.

Had it not been for the fact that a total lack of a light source might attract certain unspeakable entities, Feng Xue wouldn't even have carried a torch.

In twelve days, Feng Xue had passed through forests, grasslands, and deserts, yet he had found neither mining areas nor swamps.

These two terrains could respectively provide the crucially important water sources and mineral deposits.

This inevitably made Feng Xue feel somewhat anxious. Although spring frequently yielded rainwater, relying entirely on the whims of the weather was after all not a long-term plan, and in the absence of stone materials, even if Feng Xue wanted to dig a reservoir himself, it would only turn into a muddy pond.

And although there was a vast expanse of seawater alongside the land of the Don't Starve world, while this seawater might suffice for steaming out some salt, attempting to produce fresh water without equipment like a condenser tube was sheer wishful thinking.

Had he not failed to find suitable pottery clay, Feng Xue would have even considered firing a kiln to make a steam pot (a steam pot could distill seawater into fresh water, but it would have excessive chloride levels and required settling, much like how tap water cannot be used directly to raise fish).

It must be mentioned here that, fortunately, Feng Xue had his food inventory. Although it could not store liquids, it was equivalent to carrying over two hundred kilograms of high-energy food with him. It was precisely by relying on these reserves that Feng Xue had been able to safely traverse the desert region.

As time went on, Feng Xue grew increasingly certain of the rarity of swamps and mining areas. However, he instead grew calm and began walking back.

That's right, walking back, because the day before yesterday, he had discovered a grassland landscape very suitable for use as a campsite. Although there were no metal mineral deposits, there were quite a few large cobblestones, so extracting stone materials should at least be feasible.

Moreover, the surrounding area had beefalo and rabbits, and the traces of bees could be found in the woods. Aside from lacking a pond, it could be considered a top-tier campsite.

Since water sources were so scarce and mineral deposits virtually non-existent, a swamp that might appear somewhere would inevitably become the target of most transmigrators.

Feng Xue clearly remembered the words his instructor had spoken before transmigrating.

The topic of this preliminary trial is survival.

In other words, as long as one could stay alive, eating cow dung for every meal still counted as winning.

...

Two more days passed, and Feng Xue finally returned to the grassland he had set his sights on. If one followed the rules of the game, after finding a suitable campsite, one should begin climbing the technology tree.

However, reality was different from games, and Feng Xue was not a pseudo-scientist who mastered black technology. He had no way to take a piece of gold and gather some materials to assemble some inexplicable Tier-1 technology, and what's more, he didn't have any gold.

Condensing the shape of a shovel in his hand using Reishi, Feng Xue began to dig.

That's right, he didn't build a campfire, nor did he gather food; instead, he started by digging a hole.

There was no help for it. In the absence of a pond, should it fail to rain for several consecutive days, Feng Xue might well keel over. A reservoir was a necessity, even if it were only a murky mud pond without a stone-paved bottom.

Before possessing sufficient self-preservation capability, he would rather drink muddy water than rely on hunting animals to obtain fluids, because he clearly remembered that in the game, a certain kind of monster would appear after killing a certain number of neutral creatures, and that monster could practically kill any character in three moves.

Although he didn't know how strong that demon-like monster truly was, Feng Xue knew it was an opponent of an unbeatable caliber.

One had to know that a few days ago, he had once laid eyes on a Pigman. Although it had a pig's head and a human body, and even a hunchback, this most common neutral creature in the game possessed physical strength equivalent to the extraordinary tier!

By comparison, the spider he had taken down earlier only possessed mundane tier standards, yet it wielded a formidable weapon like the nightmare halo; a typical extraordinary tier combatant might not necessarily win against it in a war of attrition.

Yet these two types of monsters were merely ubiquitous mooks in the original game, winning entirely through sheer numbers!

If even mooks had extraordinary tier standards, just how strong would the bosses be?

Feng Xue's estimate regarding this was not optimistic. Leaving aside bosses, monsters like the Spider Queen, tentacles, and tallbirds from the original work were already at least hero-tier entities, right?