Chapter 47 The Extinct Banana

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Black Iron Warrior Cannibals?

When Ye Da saw the hint about the cave and realized that it coincided exactly with the location on the goblin map, it dawned on him—this was actually the same place!

Ha!

Ye Da had long wanted to pay a visit to the cannibals’ lair. Now, with the goblin treasure hidden there as well, he could kill two birds with one stone!

And since his backpack had just been upgraded, it was the perfect time to haul things away. While daylight still lingered, he set off!

After all, as the lyric goes: Come with me, we’ll set out at dawn!

Click!

After twisting open the wooden door, Ye Da took the precaution of checking the situation at the threshold before stepping out, making sure he wouldn’t step into thin air the moment he crossed the doorway.

He was careful not to end up like that prankster in Stephen Chow’s office, who nearly met his end just by opening the door!

“What a marvelous door!”

However...

The outside was not, as Ye Da had imagined, suspended in mid-air, but was solid ground—real, firm earth beneath his feet.

Ye Da stretched out a foot and stamped twice on the ground. It was solid earth!

He stepped outside and looked up. The towering trees still soared into the clouds, their tops lost from sight. He couldn’t even see the window of his treehouse, fifty meters up, for the dense canopy above blocked everything from view!

“Yiai!”

Not believing it, Ye Da went back inside and walked to the window to look out. The world beyond was still bathed in sunlight, but outside the door it was deeply shaded.

Not only was the canopy too thick for sunlight to penetrate, but there was a heavy mist lingering among the trees.

Sunlight could not pierce the fog to reach the ground, lending the day a gloomy, overcast air.

Ye Da gazed out the window, still awestruck by the scene.

The misty world stretched away like a sea of clouds. Looking into the distance, it was as if he were adrift in a boundless ocean of fog. Aside from a stony mountain far away, there was nothing else to see.

Yet as he looked out, a thought struck him.

If he could upgrade his treehouse to level thirty, he could stand atop the highest point and take in the whole mist-shrouded world.

Ye Da wanted to know—what kind of place was this, really?

If this was a game...

Anyone who has played games knows they have boundaries. The world can’t extend infinitely, so there is always an edge, the end of the data.

If he could find the edge, Ye Da could confirm that this was just a virtual game world.

Then he’d have to look for a bug in the game, or a way to exit.

But if this was a boundless world...

Then it must be real. Ye Da would have to figure out where it came from, and what connection it had to Earth.

Was he on an island somewhere on Earth?

Or in some parallel dimension, or perhaps on another planet entirely?

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He had to solve these mysteries to find the way home!

...

First, Ye Da went to the riverbank to retrieve the crocodile meat and eggs. By the time he arrived, the glowing orb had already vanished.

So even in this world, private property protections had a time limit.

If a player killed a monster and didn’t come to claim the loot in time, it would eventually become fair game for others.

Which was fair enough—otherwise, unwanted loot would just float around in those glowing spheres forever. How odd would that be?

Now...

The sphere that had protected the crocodile meat and eggs was gone, leaving only the meat bricks wrapped in crocodile skin and a pile of crocodile eggs neatly stacked by the river.

A number of unknown insects were wandering near the meat, and some bold black ants had already crawled into the less tightly wrapped pieces.

Ye Da glanced at them and marked the contaminated pieces with mud from the riverbank.

He planned to sell those to players as food when he returned in the evening.

Ha—shady, perhaps, but since this world had no food safety regulations, he could play the outlaw and no one would come for him!

After tossing the ingredients back in the treehouse...

Ye Da set out with his two wolf pups, heading west.

After a 1,500-meter walk, he finally reached the edge of the misty sea to the west.

It was also the edge of the forest—a series of rolling, gray-brown stone mountains seemed to enclose the entire misty forest.

Who knew how far the range extended?

At least...

As far as Ye Da’s eye could see, there was nothing but gray-brown mountains and stone outcrops.

These gray mountains were indeed stone ore, but mining would require proper tools.

[Stone: Requires specialized mining equipment. The hardness here is too high for extraction.]

Seeing this through his analysis glasses, Ye Da immediately gave up.

If the system tells you the stone isn’t suitable for mining, you’d have to be foolish or idle to insist.

Ye Da was clearly neither, so he decided to move on.

The cave was to the west.

If his map was correct, all he had to do was follow the setting sun along the gray stone range, and he’d reach the cannibals’ cave.

“Roar~”

“Roar roar~”

He hadn’t yet seen the cave, but he could hear monkeys chattering in the distance.

Curious, Ye Da looked toward the direction of the calls. Monkeys were fruit-eaters; where there were monkeys, there would usually be fruit.

He’d been eating meat for days, with only agave leaves and similar plants as vegetables.

But who wouldn’t want fruit!

So...

Ye Da spent a minute analyzing the area where the monkeys were.

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[Rice Seven Banana Grove: Home to a rowdy troop of monkeys. If you want to pick bananas, beware of their attacks!]

“Rice Seven?!”

The moment Ye Da saw the name, his eyes lit up!

This banana was none other than the legendary, now-extinct variety!

It was said...

This kind of banana was fragrant, soft, and incredibly sweet.

It was the very banana he’d enjoyed as a child, the flavor truly exceptional. After growing up, he never tasted another quite so delicious.

He’d long wondered why bananas tasted worse as he got older—even banana essence didn’t smell as good as it did in his childhood!

He’d even looked it up online.

That’s when he learned that this “Rice Seven” banana had been wiped out by a fungal disease called Panama Disease.

He’d puzzled over how a single disease could destroy all the world’s bananas.

Further research revealed the truth: bananas can’t reproduce sexually, only by cloning themselves, so every banana came from the same parent plant.

The inevitable result was that “Rice Seven” had no resistance to the fungus.

Panama Disease swept across the globe like a plague, leading to the extinction of the Rice Seven banana!

But now...

Ye Da had found that cherished childhood flavor again, and of course he wanted to savor it, to relive those memories!

He was sure other players would want fruit too.

If he could get some bananas to sell...

The materials he’d get in exchange would probably rival what he could earn from selling lunchboxes, but without the work of cooking—bananas just needed to be hung up for sale.

The difference in effort was obvious!

As for the monkeys...

“Little Grey, Little White—go!”

With Ye Da’s command, the two wolf pups barked and charged into the banana grove.

Ye Da hurried after them and soon arrived at the grove.

To his amazement, there were dozens of banana trees packed densely together.

Most of the bananas were still green, but a few trees bore ripe, yellow fruit, though the monkeys had spoiled many.

Perhaps bananas were so easy to come by, Ye Da noticed many lying on the ground, some with just a single bite taken, others half-eaten and abandoned.

Countless fruit flies buzzed around the rotting bananas, laying eggs and multiplying.

Ha!

Woof woof woof!

Facing the sudden arrival of two predators, the monkey troop scattered up the trees, baring their teeth and screeching down at the wolf pups.

Little Grey and Little White were Ye Da’s loyal followers and refused to be intimidated by monkeys.

But they couldn’t climb, so they could only bark up from below.