Chapter 22: Can’t Afford to Offend the High-Level Map
Editor: Atlas Studios
After crossing the river ditch and looking east, he could see the mountain covered in snow. However, that was a very mysterious place. Even the Feudal Lord avoided going that direction when he went hunting. Even the wolves came from the northeast direction too, and not from the direction of the mountain.
What was there, actually?
However, this wasn't something that Li Siwen needed to think about. He was only here to slack off from work for a while.
Actually, there were several trees to the east of the river ditch too, and it was even closer to the territory. However, the lumberyard wasn't set here.
The reason was very simple. Maybe it was because the trees here were too scarce, or because of their breed, the trees here were all very oddly shaped. The trunks were twisted in such a way they didn't look like trees anymore.
These types of trees were not only hard to cut, transporting them was an enormous hassle too. They were unlike the trees in the forest where the trunks were all very straight.
However, Li Siwen had his eyes on the trees here.
Building a hut was just an excuse. There was only one reason. Trees weirdly shaped like the ones here and occupying such a vast space by themselves would probably provide more vitality than others. Also, he didn't need to travel too far away.
After picking an unknown tree with a twisted trunk, dense branches, a huge crown, and required at least three people to hug it and occupied half an acre of land, Li Siwen immediately started hacking at it.
His 11 points of Strength was already formidable now. Therefore, he was very confident of himself.
Yet, when he landed his first hit, it shook his arm and hand numb from the impact. The trunk of this tree was unexpectedly hard, the sharp blade of the ax only went in four to five centimeters.
"What the heck, what tree is this?"
It shocked Li Siwen. He couldn't believe his eyes.
"No wonder those lumberjacks didn't come here, it's because they cannot cut the trees here. Also, this ax is too light for cutting such a tree like this one."
Helpless, he could only give up and try the other trees. As expected, these ugly-looking trees were very hard. There was one tree that only gave off sparks of ember when he tried to cut it. What the heck, was he in a high-level map and fitting creatures that were above his level?
He could not afford to offend them.
Therefore, crestfallen, Li Siwen went back to the first tree. This was the only tree here that he had a chance of cutting down.
"It's all or nothing, I have Old Zhao to back me up as a last resort."
Li Siwen didn't have any other options. There wasn't any easy to cut trees near the wheat field. He could go to the lumberyard in the south, but he would surely alarm Song Hu if he did that and in turn alarm Sun Tieshi.
The lumberyard wasn't comparable to this place, only tens of meters away from the river ditch, and only hundreds of meters away from the wheat field. It would be convenient for him to both retreat and advance.
Thus, he adjusted the amount of force he used on each swing and started hacking away all the way until noon. A total of 14 points of Stamina Points were used up before he cut the tree down.
Instantly, a large green light was absorbed into the green orb. Li Siwen hurriedly gathered his focus to check. On it, 4/15 was cleared, labeled.
This means to say that this tree alone provided him with four Vitality Points.
At the same time, it also proved that the maximum limit the green orb could hold was 15 points.
"It's still a bit of a loss. If I was at the lumberyard, putting various factors like weather aside, 14 points of stamina could at least let me cut down 12 big trees, which means six Vitality Points. Of course, even so, it's still better than weeding grass."
Thinking of this, Li Siwen quickly added two points to Strength and two points to Stamina, making them 13 and 17 points, respectively. For now, this was the point adding method most suitable for the current situation.
What was worth mentioning was that he still had 14 Spirit Points in the yellow orb that he hadn't used yet.
Next, Li Siwen prepared to cut some branches. After all, he had to bring back some stuff. If not, Old Zhao would really fight with him to death.
This twisted tree was just tens of meters tall, but its branches were very huge. There were seven or eight of it that were as thick as a bucket, and 50 as thick as a human's thigh. If he cut all of it down, he would have about enough wood to use for building a small hut.
But this time, when Li Siwen hacked at them, the ax directly cut tens of centimeters into the originally very hard tree. With just a few hacks, a bucket-thick branch was cut apart from the truck.
"What the heck, are 13 points of strength actually so strong?"
He was shocked, but instantly realized that this was impossible! Even if he had 15 points in strength, he also couldn't achieve such a feat.
"Could it be because I had extracted the vitality in the tree?"
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him. When he was cutting the trees at the lumberyard, he only cared about cutting the tree down and not removing the branches, so he didn't notice this yet. Also, the trees there weren't as hard as the ones here too, not much different from normal trees. Therefore, even after he extracted the Vitality Points, he also couldn't notice anything different.
But the trees here were too hard. The difference after extracting the Vitality Points was massive.
"Thinking about it, it's actually very scary! The Feudal hunts wild beasts and cut down trees to sacrifice to the statue in exchange for power. As for me, I used the green orb to extract the Vitality Points from the trees. From a sense, isn't it a kind of sacrifice too?"
"If there was another power behind the statue manipulating it, who's the one behind these three small orbs manipulating them?"
"Wait, the nature between these two is probably different." Li Siwen quickly thought, "The sacrifice to the statue is more like an exchange, a trade. It's using an equal amount of resources to trade for something different. Even humans can be exchanged through it. There must definitely be a trading platform behind it. It required the high-level puppet, the Feudal Lord, to hunt for wild beasts and cut down wood first before the exchange could be started."
"As for these three small orbs of mine, it's more like a simple energy conversion device. It allows me to capture the core substance of things in an instance when I am cutting down wood, weeding grass, killing wild beasts, or even humans. This core substance is Vitality Points and Spirit Points."
"Also, it might be that even the attribute bar is unique to me alone."
"Forget it, why should I care so much. I just want to survive, not to get to the truth behind everything. Not like truth can feed my stomach!"
After muttering this, Li Siwen threw this matter aside entirely. He quickly cut down all the branches that were usable and carried a few back.
Yup, he also realized that he could still move very quickly even when carrying a weight of about 100 to 150 kilograms.
Therefore, halfway back, he dropped most of the branches so that he was only carrying two now. Details, he must mind the details!
After returning to where the farmers were resting, Old Zhao was anxiously scratching himself. He thought that Li Siwen had run away in fear of punishment.
"Say nothing useless, think of a way to build the hut yourself, I am only responsible for carrying the wood back. Looking at the weather, we may even have a rainstorm coming this afternoon. The sooner you build the hut, the more of these unlucky farmers that may survive."
Before Old Zhao could roar his anger at him, Li Siwen sealed Old Zhao's mouth with these words.
-- Gift
received