Apocalypse Mode: My Cheat Code Virtual Boyfriend - Chapter 25

Lu Jiaoshuang said, “I just poured half a bucket of fish in, pressed the start button, it beeped twice and then jammed.”

Bai Xun also patted the fuel maker and pressed the start button again, it really didn’t respond at all.

“I’ll go find a screwdriver; let’s open it up and see what’s wrong.” He glanced at the feed inlet but couldn’t spot anything.

After rummaging through the back storage room for two screwdrivers, Bai Xun began dismantling the outer casing of the fuel maker.

Removing the metal casing revealed the internal mechanical structure. He continued disassembling, and after moving aside the temporary storage tank for kitchen waste, he discovered a diamond-shaped crystal cone at the connection point between the conversion chamber and the oil outlet pipe.

“So it’s this, it’s blocking the oil outlet, which is why the machine isn’t working.” Bai Xun opened his palm to show them the crystal cone resting on it.

“At least it’s not broken; that saves us the trouble of repairing it,” Lu Jiaoshuang said.

“Brother, do you know how to put it back together?” Bai Yu pointed to the pile of scattered parts nearby.

Bai Xun was still delighted about acquiring another crystal cone, but Bai Yu’s words felt like a bucket of cold water poured over him.

He stiffly withdrew his hand. “Haha, you got me there. I really don’t know. Should I give it a try?”

Bai Yu sighed. “Maybe I should go ask Brother Cheng Wei if he knows how, and the two of you can figure it out together.”

She really didn’t have much confidence in her brother’s technical skills.

Bai Xun said, “That’s fine, go call him. Leave the fish here; we can make the fuel after we finish reassembling it. You and Jiaoshuang go to the storage room and bring out all the resource cubes. We need wooden planks to repair the deck.”

Bai Yu nodded. “Okay.”

She went upstairs while Lu Jiaoshuang headed to the storage room, leaving Bai Xun alone to tinker with the disassembled fuel maker.

Bai Xun’s plumbing repair skills were indeed insufficient to reassemble such a precise machine, especially with one of his index fingers less agile than usual.

Cheng Wei followed Bai Yu downstairs and walked straight over, taking the screwdriver from Bai Xun’s hand.

“Do you know how to assemble it? I’m having a bit of trouble,” Bai Xun said, somewhat embarrassed.

“I can try,” Cheng Wei replied without giving a definite answer.

Well, it was worth a shot. At worst, they could just build a new one.

Cheng Wei crouched down, picked up the parts from the floor, compared them briefly, and carefully began assembling them one by one.

Based on a terrifying childhood experience of dismantling a radio only to find two extra screws when trying to reassemble it, Bai Xun had drawn a conclusion:

Not being able to put something back together wasn’t scary, but if you managed to reassemble it and ended up with leftover parts, you’d never know when the seemingly functional machine might suddenly break down.

Fortunately, Cheng Wei managed to fit all the parts back into place.

His already impressive stature grew even more admirable in Bai Xun’s eyes.

Meanwhile, the ten-draw group lived up to expectations: out of 200 resource cubes, they obtained 94 wooden planks, enough to fully repair the ark in one go.

After handling everything, Bai Xun felt an unprecedented wave of exhaustion. All he wanted was to lie down in the sunroom, pet the cats, and gaze at the distant sea to relax.

Wait, the sunroom!

Bai Xun slapped his forehead. He knew how to protect the planting boxes now!

Exhaustion could go to hell, he was now filled with determination!

Returning to the cockpit, he reopened the control panel and selected the building construction mode, where there was an option to build glass structures.

Constructing one glass wall required 1 wooden plank and 2 bottles of resin, while a glass roof needed 2 wooden planks and 4 bottles of resin.

Bai Xun calculated that to cover all the planting boxes, they would need 52 wooden planks and 100 bottles of resin.

Clearly, their inventory of materials was once again insufficient.

The materials consumed by infrastructure projects were simply too much. If it weren’t for the fact that the Ark sailed hundreds of kilometers every day, he would be worried about whether they might exhaust all the underwater debris in the same stretch of sea.

They were supposed to be a post-apocalyptic survival group, not an environmental protection squad!

On such a cold day, he had to dive into the sea again.

Bai Xun sighed, his fighting spirit temporarily extinguished as he decided to be a couch potato for the next 10 minutes.

After spacing out for 10 minutes in the cockpit’s recliner, he pulled up the Star game system panel to see if there were any games that could help them solve their current predicament.

The three unlocked games on the panel glowed with a colorful halo. Currently, he had 4 crystal cones, enough to unlock any one of the remaining games.

Bai Xun flipped through the grayed-out pages and quickly locked onto a target.

“Property Tycoon” seemed like a perfect fit. When he had played it on the computer before, it was a game about building and decorating houses. If he used it to construct a small glass house for their planting boxes, it could save a lot of materials.

But there was a problem: what was this specific unlock condition (0/1)? For the “Ocean Ark,” the specific unlock condition was reaching the sea. What was it for “Property Tycoon”?

He felt utterly lost, like a swordsman looking around in confusion.

Bai Xun racked his brain, trying to recall the details of “Property Tycoon.” It was a construction-type game, fixing up dilapidated houses, building walls, and the like, nothing particularly special.

Could it be…? Ah, right! The key was decoration!

Bai Xun looked around. This was the interior of the cockpit, which couldn’t really be considered part of a house.

The only thing that could be called property was the two-and-a-half-story cottage with an attic upstairs.

Perhaps he could consider tearing down the house to unlock “Property Tycoon.”

But if the unlock condition wasn’t a dilapidated house, he would lose 1 crystal cone and end up with a rundown house with broken furniture and drafts blowing through every crack. Upon closer thought, the cost seemed far too high.

Even if he unlocked “Property Tycoon” this way, they would still need to repair the damaged house. It felt like a case of winning the battle but losing the war.

Not worth it.

He decided to set aside unlocking “Property Tycoon” for now. Diving into the sea to salvage debris seemed more reliable.

Closing the Star game control panel, Bai Xun switched to the Ark’s control panel.

Before the glass house could be built, the vegetables would have to make do in the first-floor workshop for a couple of days. He remembered that the workbench could craft solar-powered grow lights to meet players’ needs for indoor farming.

He had always planted on the deck before and had never made these solar grow lights. He vaguely recalled that the reason he hadn’t used them was because they consumed too much electricity.

Bai Xun got up from the cockpit seat and went to the workbench to look for the blueprint for the solar grow lights.

Crafting one solar grow light required 1 gold ingot, 1 silver ingot, and 1 copper ingot. To illuminate all the planting boxes, he would need 10 solar grow lights.

Their inventory materials were enough to make ten lamps. These ten lamps together consumed four bottles of fuel every twelve hours, meaning the Ark’s daily fuel consumption reached as high as ten bottles.

Adding the fuel they had just made today using flying fish, they now had a total of 164 bottles left, barely enough for sixteen and a half days.

So, it was still best to salvage enough seabed garbage as soon as possible to build a glass greenhouse and cover all the planting boxes. Their fuel couldn’t withstand such consumption.

After finishing the sunlight lamps, Bai Xun held a lamp, stepped onto the planting boxes, and installed the lamps one by one on the ceiling.

He hoped these seedlings, which had been ravaged by the flying fish, would work hard tomorrow and revive on their own. Otherwise, all this effort would be in vain.

Returning from the deck’s lower level to upstairs, Bai Xun opened his memo to record today’s unexpected disaster and calculated how many days they had left before reaching land.

They had set off on the thirtieth day of the apocalypse, and now it was the thirty-eighth day. The control panel showed that sailing straight would take twenty days to reach land.

But in reality, they would dock for several hours while salvaging garbage from the sea. Factoring that in, it would actually take about twenty-two days to reach land.

Bai Xun made a heavy circle on the calendar, it marked the forty-seventh day of the apocalypse, eleven days from now, when a major earthquake would occur.

Estimating the timing, they would likely still be at sea by then. They should be concerned about the tsunami the earthquake might trigger.

During a tsunami, the most dangerous areas are near the coast. Ships should not return to port or stay close to shore but should sail toward deeper waters instead.

The earthquake-triggered tsunami would occur four days before they were due to reach land. Bai Xun thought they could slow down their progress a bit, wait for the tsunami to pass, and then approach the land.

The sleeping couch placed in front of the fireplace in the living room had been moved back to the third floor by Cheng Wei. After Yu Feibai could get out of bed and move around, he was no longer willing to sleep in the living room as the “hall master.” While it had been convenient before, now he needed a bit of personal privacy.

The sunroom on the third floor had two walls made of transparent floor-to-ceiling glass. To convert it into a temporary bedroom, they needed to install curtains on both walls.

Fabric was the least scarce resource they had on hand. Using six pieces of fabric, they installed curtains in the sunroom, moved the flowerpots away, and the temporary bedroom was set up.

Everyone was exhausted after a busy day, so dinner consisted of instant food. Celery and beef dumplings served as the main course, with steamed chicken feet and black pepper beef ribs as side dishes. They also fished a bowl of pickled vegetables from the pickle jar to round out the meal.

Instant food was quick to prepare, and in less than half an hour, everything was on the table. They brought out five pairs of chopsticks and two forks, and dinner officially began.

The forks, of course, were for the two injured individuals whose right hands were unfortunately out of commission. While they couldn’t handle chopsticks well, they didn’t need to be fed either. Using forks in their left hands, they managed to finish the meal.

The taste of instant food was monotonous, not so bad as to be inedible, but still not as good as homemade dishes.

After dinner, Bai Xun randomly picked a book from the bookshelf in the bedroom and started reading. The Star game system had filled in the logical gaps quite well. When he played the game before, he only knew the titles of the books. Now, the system had generated the entire content of the books based on their titles.

It was quite interesting.

For example, the book he was holding, The Mermaid and the Pirate Ship, sounded like a story about a sea siren and sailors. In reality, it was about a mermaid riding a pirate ship ride at an amusement park.

Bai Xun couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The Star Game System really knew how to fill in the gaps, what kind of mermaid would get seasick on a pirate ship and vomit clams and sardines overboard?

It was just too absurd!

He decided to spend the next few nights reading through all these books.

The vegetables that had been moved to the basement floor regained their vitality the next day. As long as their roots remained in the soil, they would regrow and thrive.

The following day, when Bai Xun went downstairs to turn on the sunlight lamps, the vegetables that had been severed by the flying fish had grown to about the size they would have been after seven days, defying natural laws, as if they had jumped back to a previous save point in time.

The task of collecting trash was assigned to Lu Jiaoshuang and Bai Yu, mainly because Yu Feibai and his pet, Xiao Hei, were still on the ship. Since they hadn’t spent much time together yet, trust between them was still limited.

With only three usable laborers left on the ship, it made the most sense for the two of them to go.