Chapter 562: Set

【Item Name: HOBO Survival Set】

【Type: Universal】

【Quality: Epic】

【Effect: Path of Survival. After binding to a player, activates items based on the player's current living conditions. The lower the player's financial status and quality of life compared to the average of their living environment and social group, the more items are activated. For details, refer to the appendix.】

【Consumption: Depends on specific item】

【Cooldown: Depends on specific item】

【Usage Restriction: Income at or below the subsistence line of the living environment】

【Note: Time to eat again! Guys!】

"It's a set?"

Li Cheng rubbed his chin in surprise; it was common knowledge that in online games, sets always outperformed individual pieces.

A complete purple set's bonuses would not be inferior to those of golden individual items.

The same applied to Battlefields—set quality automatically increased by half a tier or a full tier.

He used his mind to open the appendix; damn, it was over a hundred and thirty pages long—longer than some theses—and detailed the function of every single item.

【Newspaper】—Refreshes every 12 hours with local news. An invaluable tool for gathering intelligence in scenario worlds. Also keeps you warm when stuffed inside clothing.

【Handcart】—A space item capable of storing large quantities of daily necessities, including small live animals like cats and dogs.

【Aluminum Can】—A cooking tool that filters water and renders unknown meats, spoiled vegetables, expired food, and similar items edible.

【Waterproof Tarp + Old Tent】—High-end version of a Mage Tower; standing within three meters of the tent automatically grants a series of buffs.

Including reduced visibility, weakened energy fluctuations, greatly enhanced perception and rapid recovery of physical and spiritual energy.

【Wool Blanket + Tattered Coat】—Defense gear; when worn, greatly increases constitution and maximum stamina, enhancing resistance to blunt force. The cost: a foul odor and frequent shedding of insect eggs after walking a few steps.

Each item had its own consumption and cooldown settings, and imposed strict financial criteria on the user.

Only players with no money and unable to secure stable food, clothing, shelter, or transportation through labor could unlock and use it.

This was insane.

Li Cheng narrowed his eyes and pondered; the English word "hobo," though translated as "homeless," was not the same as today's homeless people lying under waterproof tarps on the streets of major American cities.

The former hobo specifically referred to unemployed workers during the Great Depression of the 1930s who wandered along railway and highway networks after losing their jobs.

They survived on odd jobs like harvesting crops, fencing farms, and chopping wood—not strict beggars.

The latter homeless came from diverse sources: illegal immigrants driven out by ICE, middle-class people bankrupted by illness, gambling, divorce, or insurance companies' cruelty, addicts, the mentally ill, disabled veterans.

These factors often overlapped.

This 【HOBO Survival Set】 was not limited to the equipment of American hobos from either era—it also included gear from homeless people in other countries and cultural contexts.

【Cardboard Box】—A signature item of Japanese hobos. One item with three effects: hiding inside grants defense superior to the 【Solid Rock Rooting Technique】, refreshes your status, and seals evil spirits.

【Mobile Phone】—A signature item of China's Sanhe gods. Enables ultra-long-range teleportation and activates the buff 【One Day, Play Three Days】, fully restoring all sanity points.

Nanfu Power Rings were only one battery stronger than six, and Swiss Army Knives only had over twenty tools.

This single 【HOBO Survival Set】 met all needs—survival, recovery, combat, mobility, logistics—truly essential for home and travel.

Li Cheng's expression twisted as he opened the player forum on his computer, created a new account, and posted the full details of the 【HOBO Survival Set】 under the title: 【Barter: For the Right Person】.

The webpage's bottom-left corner spun for a moment; after ten seconds, a flood of replies suddenly appeared.

"Holy shit, am I seeing things?"

"Epic item! And it's a set! Who the hell are you, OP?!"

"Haha, attention-seeking nonsense. Classic 【Hearthstone DIY, I Design, You Rate】. Believe the OP and your life is set."

It was no wonder some doubted it—epic items were incredibly rare, let alone a set that auto-upgraded by half a tier. Even some mid-sized guilds couldn't muster one among all their members.

But soon, a user below explained: "Don't talk nonsense, guys. The black market barter board has a memetic-level user agreement—users cannot post false information that doesn't exist subjectively."

This wasn't some e-commerce platform where a customer opened a package meant to contain a graphics card and found only two stones—players who got scammed would literally go to the police station and get their household registration canceled.

After Li Cheng uploaded the full hundred-plus-page appendix, all skepticism vanished, replaced by a string of stunned emoji reactions.

"Holy shit, the note clause is this brutal?!"

"No wonder—if the usage conditions were relaxed even a little, the OP wouldn't dare put this up for sale."

"This thing? Only players above Lv30 can afford it—but how many Lv30+ players can even tolerate the side effects?"

Correct. The 【HOBO Survival Set】 required the bound user's financial status and quality of life to be far below the average of the general environment.

Not just at the time of use, not just 24 hours before use—but for their entire life.

No more than $400 in savings, no significant real estate, no residence with running water, electricity, heating, air conditioning, or intact windows and doors, no consumption of any elaborately prepared food, no prolonged stay in any single living environment...

The rules were so complex and thorough they closed every loophole.

Impossible to mimic the way some unethical influencers livestreamed scavenging by day and slept in luxury hotels by night.

Players lived daily on the edge of death, risking their heads like knives at their belts, their internal competition far exceeding China's gaokao, their rivalry as brutal as India's civil service exams—1.45 billion Indians competing for only 7,000 positions, over a million young people every year fighting for fewer than a thousand slots.

After all that grueling effort to reach high-level status, now they had to abandon all comforts and deliberately reduce themselves to destitution, living as vagrants?

This shit...

After a brief silence, the commenters quickly reached a consensus—the Battlefield was still as cruel as ever.

"No wonder, from what I saw in the Memory of the Shapechanger, its cell was noticeably more dilapidated than others—it was just to use the 【Cardboard Box】 to refresh status and the cheap phone to restore sanity."

Li Cheng released the mouse, muttering to himself; his small account's backend popped up a stream of chat notifications—mostly from ordinary players asking curious questions (some oddly included requests for sponsorship), with only a handful of polite inquiries from official accounts of medium and large guilds.

Li Cheng wasn't short on money now, and he would never give up his toy factory—a fixed asset—as part of the HOBO set. So he insisted on barter: exchange for an item of equal epic quality.

"The HOBO set is too unique—even medium and large guilds might not have an item of matching quality to trade with me. No rush for now."

Li Cheng switched to his main forum account; the Global Supernatural Alliance's official account sent him a 10GB product list—every item G0C had hoarded over the years that was never sold publicly—Michael's promise still stood; he could choose any one.

"The Holy Grail from the Last Supper, bricks from the Tower of Babel smuggled from another world, the Secret Manual of Great Wilderness's Prisoning Finger... holy shit, even the authentic Nine-Toothed Rake and Ginseng Fruit?"