Chapter 00050: Another Incident
# Another Incident?
Chapter 50
Novel: AFK Game: Portal to Another World
Chapter 50: Another Incident?
“Brother Li! I heard about it!”
Xue Wenshu came storming into the convenience store, speaking energetically to Li Chengxi, who was sitting behind the cashier counter staring at his computer screen.
“They said yesterday at the bank you stayed calm in the face of danger and beat down six armed robbers all by yourself?”
“That's nonsense. Nothing like that happened.”
Taking on six guys? Yesterday, Li Chengxi used every bit of strength he had just to grab a single man’s gun.
As for staying calm under pressure? That was even further from the truth.
After he got home yesterday, Li Chengxi specially went to the nearby deli and bought a smoked chicken along with half a pound of cooked beef.
He planned to treat himself to something nice to help calm his nerves.
Even so, he couldn’t sleep that night.
The moment he closed his eyes, all he could see was the dark muzzle of the gun waving in front of his face.
Unable to sleep, he got up in the middle of the night and ordered several alarms from an online shop, planning to install them on his windows and doors.
After all, he lived alone, and before this, nothing had ever happened in the neighborhood to make him feel unsafe.
It never occurred to him that he’d need alarms.
Now his sense of security was shaken to the core.
And you’re telling me I stayed calm?
“Huh? So it was all a rumor?”
“I’m really curious to know how the neighbors spread that one... actually, here’s what really happened.”
He gave a rough account of what happened to Xue Wenshu, who still looked excited.
“That’s still awesome. If it had been me, I’d have frozen up for sure.”
“I was scared out of my mind too. Even now when I think about it, I get chills on the back of my head.”
Xue Wenshu wandered over to the freezer to grab a popsicle, and just happened to spot a bunch of gift bags and boxes piled nearby.
“What’s all this? You bought this stuff, Brother Li?”
“Nope. Someone dropped it off this morning when I opened up.”
“Who?”
“The father of that kid I told you about earlier.”
While the police were giving Li Chengxi both praise and a lecture, the boy’s parents were full of nothing but gratitude for him.
As soon as he opened shop in the morning, the young couple came in carrying all those gift bags and boxes.
Li Chengxi thought, since they were neighbors living close by, some words of thanks were enough.
But they insisted on leaving the gifts, and he had no choice but to accept them.
“Come to think of it, the guy was wearing a full suit and all, looked pretty well-off.”
When he walked in, he handed over a business card out of habit, and placed it by the cashier.
Li Chengxi hadn’t looked at it in detail yet.
Xue Wenshu picked up the card and read out loud:
“General Manager of Rongcheng Real Estate Agency…”
“A realtor, huh? No wonder he came in wearing a suit.”
Li Chengxi casually took the card and stuffed it back next to the register, not giving it another thought.
With his income, things like buying a house weren’t even on his radar.
Seeing how giddy and fidgety Xue Wenshu looked, Li Chengxi told him:
“Hey, stop bouncing around like a flea, act a little more mature.”
“No way, I gotta run home and tell my dad all about this!”
And without another word, he spun around and dashed out the door.
Even though the neighbors all seemed to think highly of Li Chengxi after this, he himself didn’t feel it was anything worth boasting about.
He was just about to focus back on his computer screen when the bell above the door chimed again.
This time, the person who walked in was Lei Lei.
She smiled and greeted Li Chengxi, looking quite cheerful.
“Looking for daily necessities again today?”
“Nope, it’s way too hot. I’m here to get some popsicles and keep them in my freezer.”
“Plastic bags are over by the freezer.”
“Got it.”
Before the incident yesterday, Li Chengxi figured this girl was probably just stringing Xue Wenshu along, not taking him seriously at all.
But considering how she volunteered to soothe the crying child at the scene yesterday, it seemed she wasn’t some scheming type at all.
She really was beautiful and kind-hearted.
Most likely, it was just Xue Wenshu misreading the situation.
She really was a good girl.
In Li Chengxi’s mind, Lei Lei’s reputation had shot way up.
Kinda a shame that Xue Wenshu left so quickly.
If he’d stayed even a minute longer and the two of them bumped into each other, that would’ve been some drama worth watching.
Well, it wasn’t just coincidence—Lei Lei had intentionally waited until after Xue Wenshu left to come in.
Still, even though they shared a moment of danger together, Lei Lei didn’t act overly familiar.
That would’ve been too much.
Besides, she had already found her opening.
She could take her time, get familiar first, then slowly draw closer.
Unaware of the little plans forming in her mind, Li Chengxi even gave Lei Lei a small discount, and cheerfully walked her out the door.
Turning his attention back to the computer screen, things in the game felt much more plain compared to the storm of drama in real life over the past two days.
Since Count Leon was, quite literally, hanging on the city walls now, the Leon Territory had fallen completely under Viola’s rule.
Whatever she wanted to do, no one would stand in her way now.
That meant bigger plans could start to take shape.
For example, when Li Chengxi moved the in-game camera north of the Leon Fortress, he could see a group of people working busily on the hillside farmland, digging foundations and unloading wood and stone.
They were building windmills.
The Leon Territory was remote and so poor that they didn’t even have windmills or waterwheels.
All grain milling was done by hand or with donkey-pulled grinding stones.
The windmill being built now was based on blueprints Li Chengxi gave them.
Over the past few days, Li Chengxi had already read the Tao Te Ching to Viola, and even talked about other topics.
Things like how to make Roman cement, basic fermentation processes for fertilizer, papermaking, movable type printing, the three-field rotation system, blueprints for windmills and waterwheels—and he replaced their old grinding stone designs with modern ones.
The principle of a windmill is fairly simple: using wind to produce vertical rotation, then transferring that motion through gears to spin a grinding stone.
And it wasn’t just for removing grain husks.
Windmills could also grind flour—like later on, when potatoes are harvested in large quantities, they can be sliced, dried, and ground into powder to dramatically extend shelf life.
Since the Leon Territory is located in a high latitude coastal area, it has abundant wind resources—perfect for windmills.
As for waterwheels, since this territory has little in the way of water sources with just two rivers, it’s more practical to let windmills handle milling.
Waterwheels instead can be used for forging.
Specifically, water-powered hammers.
That way weapons and armor could be made for Viola’s army, and farm tools could be forged for the farmers.
Seeing that the locals were still using wooden plows, Li Chengxi casually looked up blueprints for a modern plow and printed them out for Viola.
Once the waterwheels are up, they can mass-produce them.
Of course, progress comes a step at a time.
Viola didn’t rush into massive construction, but advanced cautiously and steadily.
Before, Li Chengxi thought the game didn’t even have a main character.
Now he realized how wrong he’d been.
The main character’s clearly Viola, and he’s her golden cheat-code finger...
And since Count Leon got strung up on the city wall, now there’s nobody left to get in the way of spreading the Church of the Demon God.
The number of followers and amount of Faith Points was growing rapidly, changing every day.
But the same old problem remained—Li Chengxi knew Faith Points were the most valuable resource in the game, but didn’t have any good ideas for how to use them.
Other than directly reaching out and granting divine arts, there had to be other uses for this resource.
After all, players play as gods.
What kind of god just pokes people with his finger for divine punishment?
A god ought to be able to perform miracles at the very least.
So Li Chengxi figured there must be features still locked.
As for how to unlock them...
He immediately thought of the Ring of the Demon King.
That ring said that collecting more of the same rings would unlock new abilities.
According to the game’s lore, the Demon God once had ten identical rings.
So maybe—just maybe—the more Rings of the Demon King he collected, the more features he could unlock.
But for now, there was no way to verify this idea.
If this were an RPG, no doubt Li Chengxi would check every inch of the game world, lift every rock and peek behind every bush.
But this was an idle-style game.
Whether or not he could find clues about the Ring of the Demon King—well, that would depend on fate.
Li Chengxi wasn’t in a rush anyway.
After checking on the progress of the windmill construction, he moved the camera to the city gate, wanting to see how the newly planted potatoes and radishes were doing.
And right at that moment, he spotted a chibi-style little person on horseback racing toward Leon Fortress, shouting things like “Make way! Urgent news!” so that people in the street would get out of the way.
Judging by the outfit, it looked like a scout.
Could something have happened again?
(End of Chapter)