Chapter 281: Planting

"The first effect can knock enemies back and deal double damage when they hit a wall—perfect for defensive counterattacks."

Li Cheng picked up a spear from the conveyor belt, spun it in his hand—it was heavy, its hardness no less than a rusted machete.

"As for the second effect, it can clear negative effects over a wide area for an extended duration—just this one feature alone qualifies it as a perfect-grade item."

The battlefield defines 'negative effects' very broadly: gu sorcery, hexes, curses, poisoning, silence, and hallucinations all count.

Bleeding, blindness, and dizziness count too.

Even diarrhea, hunger, low SAN values, and psychological stress are included.

When entering a horror-themed scenario, just plant the flag spear at a grave, cemetery, or asylum—and no ghost dares come back.

"Major guilds and some shops in the Slums offer services to forge equipment and create skill scroll recipes."

But these services require exotic materials and charge exorbitant fees—only slightly cheaper than buying directly from the Shangcheng."

The Toy Factory, however, only consumes artifacts with symbolic meaning—even modern-day objects suffice, drastically reducing costs.

Crucially, it allows custom orders—by arranging and combining concepts, you control the final product's effects.

"There's no risk of unsold inventory."

Li Cheng thought: "At that point, a perfect-grade item costing five or six thousand to make, I sell for twelve thousand—and customers will still thank me."

He rapidly constructed a complete roadmap for industrial development in his mind.

Acquire artifacts, sell products, recoup funds, open a shop in the Slums, expand sourcing channels, reinvest, collect anomaly points to upgrade the Toy Factory, and create a positive feedback loop.

Leaving the Toy Factory, Li Cheng returned to the 3D warehouse in the real world and discussed it with Hui Yu.

Hui Yu, still holding a watermelon, asked in confusion: "Why open a shop in the Slums? Isn't the black market on the forum just as good for trading?"

"Online small-scale artifact acquisition works fine, but for large-scale offline sourcing, you need a temporary warehouse and an official address."

Li Cheng said: "Besides, there are only so many high-entropy artifacts in the real world—many things can't be bought at all, or cost far too much for poor value."

"Opening a shop in the Slums lets us bulk-buy special items other players bring back from scenario worlds."

The Toy Factory accepts everything—it doesn't require artifacts from Earth; artifacts from scenario worlds work too.

Players in scenario worlds are like runaway dogs—if you pay enough, they'll get you anything.

Zheng He's treasure ships, moon landing rockets, the Declaration of Independence, the Peking Man skull.

"Some scenario worlds are set in near-future timelines, meaning ordinary objects from our current era become important artifacts in their future."

Like a water purifier in a wasteland world. Root servers in the Punk World.

"The range of selectable items expands dramatically."

Li Cheng casually said: "We'll seize the precious opportunity the battlefield grants lightweight individuals, deeply integrate internal resources, align with customer granularity, focus on vertical domains, break through the underlying logic, achieve a closed-loop matrix, benchmark against major guilds, and incubate commercial IPs."

This torrent of internet corporate jargon nearly fried Hui Yu's CPU—he quickly pulled out his tablet, launched the AI bot, and only understood after translation.

In short: make money, make money, and damn it, make more money.

"Won't this draw too much attention?"

Hui Yu asked: "Won't it provoke retaliation from Gouchen's older brother? Or will we make so much money he gets jealous and exposes our possession of the Hidden Key, drawing the envy of other factions?"

"So we need a two-pronged approach."

Li Cheng nodded: "First, accumulate initial capital, upgrade the Refining Chamber to Level One, then reactivate the Toy Factory's defense system."

Once the defense system is active and we have self-protection, we open the shop anonymously to reduce exposure risk."

Once the defense system reaches Level Three or Four, we can outright kill Level 30+ players—then we won't need to hold back anymore."

Without delay, over the next few days, Li Cheng spent all seven thousand game coins—his five thousand in inventory plus the two thousand-plus from selling the 'Suicide Notes' paper.

He used them to bulk-buy precious artifacts on the forum's black market—and actually acquired quite a few good items.

The heaviest among them was a unique item a player obtained from a scenario mission set during the American Civil War.

Including the original manuscript of the Emancipation Proclamation, the pistol that killed U. S. President Abraham Lincoln, and the skeletal remains of Confederate General Robert Lee.

From these items, he extracted seventeen thousand anomaly points—used ten thousand to upgrade the Refining Chamber, boosting future 'mining' efficiency.

The remaining seven thousand were combined with concepts: B-class Civil War, A-class Racial Discrimination, B-class Plantation, A-class Slavery, C-class Skin Color, B-class Assassination, C-class Cotton.

And forged into a strangely peculiar skill scroll.

【Skill Scroll Name: Summoning Art · Plantation Guard】

【Attribute: Consumable (limited to three uses)】

【Type: Psychic】

【Usage: Active】

【Quality: Perfect】

【Effect: Hū Shén Hù Wèi. Summon a projection of a plantation guard. The projection is immune to all external attacks, obeys the summoner's commands, and whips hostile targets with a long lash. The whipping causes no physical damage, only immense psychological and soul-level agony. Projection lasts up to 15 seconds.】

【Cost: 200 Spirit Power】

【Cooldown: 7 days】

【Requirement: In the ITA° Skin Color Classification, angle must not be less than 27°】

【Note: One hand revolver, one hand whip—I'm the king of the plantation.】

【Note: Idle for 500 pulls! Even non-luckies can pull till they're satisfied.】

【Note: Garden Rope, activate!】

Holy shit, I straight-up hong zhihu holy shit.

Even though Li Cheng was no longer a battlefield newbie and had seen plenty, he still felt his balls tighten and his ass clench at the sight of this skill scroll, unable to resist venting.

"If the ITA° skin color classification angle must be no less than 27°, just say outright: black skin can't use it."

"Most skill scrolls have one or two notes—why does this thing have three? You've finally found a chance to tell a hell joke, and you're gonna milk it for all it's worth, aren't you?"

Li Cheng grumbled a couple more times, but still calmly picked up the skill scroll from the Reforging Chamber's conveyor belt and stashed it in his backpack slot.

Regardless of everything else, the effect of inflicting immense soul-level agony on enemies could be decisive in critical moments.