Chapter 582

【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. Holy shit—it was over a hundred and thirty pages long, longer than some theses, detailing the function of every single item.

【Old 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 converts unknown meats, spoiled vegetables, expired food, and similar items into edible forms.

【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, dampened energy fluctuations, greatly enhanced perception and rapid recovery of physical and spiritual energy.

【Wool Blanket + Tattered Coat】—Defense gear. When worn, significantly boosts physical attributes 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, with extremely strict financial requirements for the user.

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

That was insane.

Li Cheng narrowed his eyes, thinking. The English word “hobo,” though translated as “vagrant,” was not the same as the homeless people lying under waterproof tarps on the streets of modern 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—harvesting crops, building fences, chopping wood—not true beggars by strict definition.

The latter’s vagrants came from countless 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 gear of American hobos from either era—it included equipment from vagrants across other countries and cultural contexts.

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

【Cell 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 better than six, and Swiss Army Knives had just 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 Only—Those Fated to Find It.”

The lower-left corner of the webpage spun for refresh; 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, classic attention-seeking nonsense. Typical 【Hearthstone DIY—I design, you rate】. Believe the OP and your life is sorted."

It was no wonder people doubted it—epic items were incredibly rare, let alone a set that auto-upgraded by half a tier. Some mid-tier guilds couldn’t even muster one among their entire membership.

But soon, a user below explained: “Don’t talk nonsense, guys. The black market barter section 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 here actually went to the police station to cancel their household registration.

Once Li Cheng uploaded the hundred-plus pages of the 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 moment of use, or even in the 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.

No one could mimic the scam of some unethical influencers: streaming vagrancy with a phone during the day, then sleeping in luxury hotels at night.

Players lived daily on the edge of death, their heads literally on 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 each year fighting for fewer than a thousand slots.

After all that grinding to reach high levels, now they had to give up all comforts and voluntarily become destitute, homeless wanderers?

This shit...

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

“No wonder, looking at the memory of the Shape-Shifting Demon, its prison cell was noticeably more dilapidated than others’—just to use the old cardboard box to refresh its 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 ordinary players’ curious inquiries (some oddly included requests for sponsorship), with only a handful of polite price inquiries from official accounts of medium or large guilds.

Li Cheng wasn’t short on money now, nor would he ever give up his toy factory—a fixed asset—as part of the HOBO set deal. He insisted on barter: an item of equal epic quality in exchange.

“The HOBO set is too unique—even medium or large guilds might not have an item of matching quality to trade. 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 and 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?”