"City Lord, what are your orders?" one of the Farmers suddenly asked, bowing to Wu Jun with immense respect.
Seeing this, the other three Farmers also bowed to Wu Jun, their attitudes incredibly humble.
The worst hadn't happened. Wu Jun let out a long sigh of relief.
He took several deep breaths, and only then did his heart rate return to normal.
Pointing at the pile of sacks on the floor in the middle of his bedroom, Wu Jun tentatively gave an order. "Move these sacks to the side of the wall and stack them neatly."
"As you command, City Lord," the four men replied in unison and strode over to the sacks.
Wu Jun had assumed they would have to work in pairs to move the sacks, but what happened next stunned him.
The four Farmers were incredibly strong and didn't need to cooperate at all.
Each of them could effortlessly lift a large sack from the ground—and with only one hand!
In less than a minute, all 15 sacks were stacked!
After finishing the task Wu Jun had given them, the four men lined up again, standing in a single row.
Seeing that the four men held no hostility toward him, Wu Jun boldly stepped forward and touched one of them.
The Farmer Wu Jun touched blushed...
His wheat-colored skin turned the color of coffee, a dark, reddish-black, but he didn't have any extreme reaction.
Wu Jun felt a little awkward at this. He didn't mean anything by it; he just wanted to verify if they were real people and if they were any different from him.
There was one difference, though.
From years of minding the supermarket and a lack of exercise, his own flesh was rather soft. The other man's was firm; the muscles on his arm felt hard as a rock to the touch.
'No wonder they're so strong, carrying those sacks like it's child's play!'
His curiosity satisfied, Wu Jun took out his phone and tapped to recall the four Farmers.
SWISH, SWISH, SWISH, SWISH. Four streaks of green light flashed, and the four Farmers in the room vanished as if they had never been there.
On the game screen on his phone, the four men were back in the rice paddy, resuming their work.
"So dedicated..." Wu Jun sighed, putting his phone away.
Having witnessed the magical nature of the game Resource Tycoon, Wu Jun now regarded the phone that held it as more important than his own life.
'From now on, striking it rich will all depend on this!'
After the four Farmers moved the sacks, the collapsed bed underneath was revealed.
The cheap wooden bed frame underneath the mattress had probably been crushed to splinters. Wu Jun couldn't be bothered to try and salvage it.
Fortunately, the thick mattress on top hadn't been punctured. He lay down to test it and found it wasn't uncomfortably lumpy. It was getting late, so he didn't bother cleaning up and just lay down, making a makeshift bed on the floor.
Lying on his makeshift bed, Wu Jun was too excited to sleep, his mind racing with ideas.
First, he needed a place to sell the rice.
Wu Jun thought about it and dismissed the idea of selling the supermarket. He might as well keep running it himself; it would save him the trouble of finding another place.
Now, even if that scoundrel Wang Hongliang came to him with 100,000 yuan, he wouldn't sell the supermarket to him.
The small supermarket had a steady stream of customers, most of whom were regulars. There was no better place to promote his rice in the beginning.
Just from the income from the rice, if he sold it well, he could probably gather the 80,000 yuan needed for the surgery in less than a week.
With the help of the game Resource Tycoon, Wu Jun was more confident than ever about paying off the huge debt he had incurred for his father's medical treatment.
Filled with wonderful hopes for the future, Wu Jun drifted off to sleep.
「The next morning at 6:00 a.m.」
Wu Jun got up and washed, ready to start a brand new day.
He pushed open his bedroom window and felt the gloom that had been weighing on his heart completely vanish. Even the air seemed fresher. He was full of energy!
He had originally planned to go out for breakfast, but then he remembered the rice he had taken from the game last night and changed his mind.
He should try the rice himself first to see how it tasted. That would give him a better idea of how to price it.
He rinsed the rice, put it in the rice cooker, and added water, all in one smooth motion.
Having lived on his own for the past few years, Wu Jun couldn't make complex dishes, but simple things like cooking porridge, boiling noodles, or making a few home-style dishes were no trouble for him.
After putting the rice in the cooker, Wu Jun opened the shop for business.
He casually tore down the "For Sale" sign he had posted on the door yesterday.
Quite a few customers came in that morning. Many office workers stopped by to buy bread, ham, and other things. After seeing a few customers out, a delicate fragrance wafted into Wu Jun's nose.
He sniffed the air and recognized it as the unique aroma of rice.
However, this fragrance was unlike any he had ever smelled before.
Just smelling the aroma of the rice made him hungry, and his stomach let out a few GRUMBLES.
"Oh! Wu Jun, are you making porridge? I could smell the fragrance all the way upstairs. So it was coming from your place."
A customer had come in. It was Auntie Liu from the 13th floor. Wu Jun greeted her and asked if she had eaten.
Auntie Liu had run out of salt halfway through making breakfast and had come down to buy some. Wu Jun took one yuan and handed her a bag of salt.
'She could smell the rice all the way up on the 13th floor?'
'Auntie Liu must be joking. Is her nose really that sensitive?'
Although Wu Jun found it fragrant too, he felt that smelling the rice from the 1st floor all the way up on the 13th was a bit of an exaggeration. He didn't think much of it.
"Wu Jun, get me a pack of cigarettes, Rose Diamond. I'm scanning the code now." The customer was Brother Wang, Wang Qidong, the small truck driver who lived on the 15th floor. Every morning before heading out, he would come down to the supermarket to buy a pack of Rose Diamonds, like clockwork.
Wu Jun took a pack of Rose Diamonds from behind the counter and handed it to Wang Qidong. "Have you had breakfast, Brother Wang?"
After scanning the code to pay, Wang Qidong smiled and said, "I wasn't planning on eating today. I felt a wave of nausea while brushing my teeth and had no appetite at all. But then I suddenly smelled the fragrance of cooking rice, and it completely stoked my appetite. I ended up eating two fried dough sticks and a bowl of porridge."
Wang Qidong suddenly sniffed the air and teased, "So it was you cooking something so fragrant! If I'd known, I would have come to you for a free meal. Alright, see you later, I'm heading out."
'Even Brother Wang from the 15th floor smelled the rice?'
'This is too ridiculous!'
Wu Jun turned to glance at the small kitchen, his curiosity about the rice from the game piqued even further.
'What kind of ridiculously overpowered thing is this?!'
Even the famous Wuchang Duck-Paddy Rice, which sells for over 20 yuan a pound online, isn't this incredible!
The wait for the rice cooker to finish became sheer torture for Wu Jun.
After Brother Wang from upstairs left, another four or five waves of customers came in. Without exception, they all complimented the wonderful smell the moment they walked through the door.
DING! Hearing the rice cooker click off, Wu Jun couldn't wait another second and hurried toward the small kitchen.
He took a small ceramic bowl from the cabinet and released the steam from the rice cooker.
The white steam that shot from the vent on top of the cooker carried an even richer fragrance than before, hissing as it escaped.
Like an addict, Wu Jun took a few deep, hard sniffs.
'It smells good. So good. It smells absolutely incredible!'
Once the steam was released, Wu Jun eagerly opened the lid and scooped out a bowlful with the rice paddle.