Chapter 167: Interlude - Trivial Matters

"What is this?" Feng Xue opened his eyes, only to find himself standing inside the World-Crossing Gate Hall. Before he could even speak, a voice rang in his ear:
"I say little Xue, I understand you might have had a rough time, but since you're back, hurry up and put on some clothes!"
Was that voice not Xia Mi, whom he hadn't seen in a long time?
"I've said it how many times, don't call me..." Halfway through his sentence, Feng Xue suddenly realized what Xia Mi had just said. Looking down, he saw that his trench coat, woven entirely from magic, had indeed vanished.
After all, it was merely a temporarily woven garment; once he lost consciousness, it naturally dissipated. Feng Xue's face flushed bright red like a monkey's backside. With a firm stomp of his foot, a black Lelouch-style trench coat materialized on his body.
Only then did Feng Xue have the bandwidth to look around. He saw a dozen or so male traversers sprawled haphazardly on the floor, which finally explained why the system required gender segregation upon entry—the vast majority of the traversers lying on the ground right now were stark naked, and of the remaining small fraction, more than half wore only grass skirts.
Yet, upon second thought, it made sense. The Don't Starve world offered virtually no materials for making clothes. Relying solely on the single layer of garments worn upon entry to survive for nearly half a year was clearly unrealistic.
"You'll pay for this! Next time won't be so easy!" At that moment, a voice suddenly echoed from behind Feng Xue. It belonged to a young man about two meters tall and in his early twenties. Although his words were immensely arrogant, his appearance was remarkably low-key—well... much like those ubiquitous background characters in anime.
"Who are you?" Feng Xue wasn't pretending; he genuinely couldn't remember who the guy opposite him was!
"You bastard! How about this?" The man's body suddenly inflated like a balloon, expanding all the way to a full three meters before finally stopping. Only then did Feng Xue recognize him. Wasn't this the boorish fellow who had shamelessly tried to snatch Chi Xiaobai's "Red Giant"?
"How did you manage to tick this guy off?" Xia Mi appeared by Feng Xue's side out of nowhere, whispering in his ear.
"A man's grudges, what else could it be besides a woman?" The giant shrank back to his muscular physique, laughing with a hearty swagger, but Feng Xue's expression remained completely blank.
"I'll remember this. You can leave now," Feng Xue said indifferently, as if he couldn't even be bothered to waste an extra word.
"Humph!" The burly man let out a scornful snort. "Pretty boy, I hope next time we meet, you won't hide behind a woman!"
With that, the burly man turned and walked away.
"What on earth is going on? A guy like you actually got into a fight with someone over a woman? Wait, wasn't the last world Don't Starve? Are there even women in that world? Orcs or Murlocs? You people have bizarre tastes!"
"Get lost!" Feng Xue flicked Xia Mi on the forehead and snapped, "That guy is a psychopath. His sanity must have plummeted too much in the Don't Starve world; he's lost his mind!"
"Now that you mention it, fair enough. But speaking of which, that halo of yours was actually..."
Before he could finish, Feng Xue clapped a hand over his mouth. "Look around and see where we are. We'll talk when there's time!"
Only then did Xia Mi realize that the sprawled traversers around them were continually waking up, scrambling with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance to cover their exposed parts before shuffling toward the exit.
"Looks like you're all awake?" Walking in through the entrance was a male instructor whom Feng Xue didn't recognize. Behind him trailed a blushing maid holding a storage pouch, which evidently contained quite a few items.
"I am very pleased. You are all elites who survived to the very end, talents who will soon represent the Eastern Human Race in the grand games! Now, you have one week to adjust your states and replenish whatever you lack. During this period, you may submit any reasonable requests to the academy, and the expenses can be temporarily deferred. If you manage to place in the top ten of the exchange tournament, the academy will foot the bill for you. But if you get eliminated early, you'd better prepare to pay off your debts!" With a wave of the instructor's hand, the maid—who was clearly still an intern—produced a roster and announced, "Everyone, please come forward according to the list to claim your deposited belongings."
Feng Xue hadn't stored anything. After retrieving his shoes, he headed toward the doors.
"Feng Xue!" The moment he stepped outside, a familiar voice rang out.
"Xiaobai?" Feng Xue turned his head to see none other than the foodie girl Chi Xiaobai.
"Waiting for me?"
"Yeah! Xiaobai even brought Feng Xue's beer keg!"
"Care to be a guest at my place, and by the way, help me get the breeding space set up?" Feng Xue invited with a smile.
"Sure! Oh, and Xiaobai wants to eat koalaphant trunks!"
"How are you still hung up on that? Fine, I'll go post a bounty for koalaphants right now, raise a whole herd in the breeding space, and you can come over whenever you want to eat them!" Feng Xue's face twitched twice. Urged on by the foodie girl, before he even had time to return to his dorm, he headed straight to the academy's mission hall to issue the bounty.
Right, live koalaphants, both male and female, the more the better.
Feng Xue wasn't worried that no one would take the job. The Don't Starve world was a plotless realm, and the missions assigned by student IDs mostly involved hunting a certain creature; once enough were slain, one could return. Although that world offered nothing particularly worthwhile (aside from culinary treats), the reward Feng Xue offered was enough to make even Fantasy-tier students' hearts flutter.
One had to admit that wealth moves the hearts of men. By evening, nearly twenty pairs of koalaphants had been delivered to Feng Xue's dormitory (and that was only because some students hadn't crossed paths with the Don't Starve world), by which time Feng Xue's breeding space had just been activated.
The breeding space did not come in a standardized template; much like a management simulation game, students had to configure it themselves, and the more features it included, the more funds it required.
Feng Xue currently had only three projects—Devil's Flowers, Nightmare Mead, and Koalaphants.
Breeding koalaphants was remarkably simple. One only needed to demarcate a pasture, then set the feed and breeding tendencies (for instance, the rearing methods for Kobe beef cattle and breeding stock differed), and specialized homunculi within the breeding space would naturally assist with the operations.
They would raise koalaphants according to demands and automatically harvest them once the animals reached maturity. Homunculi equipped with Grandmaster-tier gathering skills could easily dismantle every useful component and store them in storage spaces locked in a state of suspended animation. (Much like QQ Ranch with an auto-harvest cheat.)
Devil's Flowers were comparatively more troublesome. It required assigning homunculi to continuously plant ordinary flowers around the perimeter of the flowerbed. As long as the proportions were right, those ordinary flowers would slowly mutate into Devil's Flowers under the radiation of the Devil's Flowers.
That wasn't all; homunculi had to be assigned to collect floral nectar and tend to bees, an endeavor whose cost was roughly five times that of raising koalaphants.
As for the most troublesome of all, it was naturally Nightmare Mead. This concoction was an entirely novel creation with no precedents to follow whatsoever. Feng Xue could only brew it according to standard mead recipes, then experiment with varying ratios of Devil's Flower petals to observe their impact on the brew. All of this was beyond the capability of ordinary homunculi (or rather, homunculi capable of such tasks were too expensive for Feng Xue to afford on long-term retainer). They could only brew different batches of wine based on Feng Xue's specifications, then store them away, waiting for Feng Xue to taste-test...