[Resource Tycoon]
Bound User: Wu Jun, Male, 27 years old.
Current Main City Level: 1.
Current Population Capacity: 100 people.
Current Resources: 3 mu of paddy fields.
Current Product: Rice.
Current Production Capacity: 3 tons of rice/day.
Current Population: 3 Farmers. (Summonable)
Account Balance: 200 Gold Coins (Newbie Binding Bonus).
Inventory: 3 tons of rice. (Withdrawable).
Upgrade Conditions: Recruit 100 Farmers, purchase 100 mu of paddy fields, sell 10,000 tons of game-produced rice.
(After upgrading the Main City, you can unlock new resources, increase the population capacity to 200, and bind to Brain Wave VR, freeing you from the limitations of your phone.)
The screen flashed, and three lush green paddy fields appeared.
Three Farmers wearing conical hats were hard at work in the fields.
Next to the fields was a small thatched hut with the characters for "Main City" floating above it.
'So, Resource Tycoon is a game!'
The art style of this game, Resource Tycoon, was very similar to "Age of Empires," which Wu Jun had played over a decade ago, but with one small difference.
Wu Jun was the only player in the game. There were no enemy forces, no allies—it looked like a simple farming simulator.
After studying the game for a while, Wu Jun found one of the upgrade conditions very confusing.
'Sell 10,000 tons of game-produced rice?'
The game had no market, no NPCs to sell to, and not even any other online players.
'Where am I supposed to sell these 10,000 tons of rice?!'
Seeing that the three tons of rice in the game's inventory were marked as withdrawable, Wu Jun grew a little curious.
'Withdraw them to where?'
Wu Jun tapped the "Withdraw" button.
The game screen vanished, and the phone's rear camera automatically turned on.
A virtual finger appeared on the screen, prompting Wu Jun to tap the corresponding location where he wanted to withdraw the items.
'This is getting interesting. Could I actually withdraw in-game resources into the real world?'
'No way!'
'I'll die before I believe that!'
Skeptical, Wu Jun aimed the camera at his bed and tapped "Withdraw" without hesitation.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
More than ten burlap sacks appeared out of thin air on his bed.
CRACK.
The bed collapsed!
"Holy crap! It actually worked!" Wu Jun was stunned by the scene before him, his jaw dropping so wide you could fit a fist in it.
Staring at the fifteen or so sacks that had materialized in his room, Wu Jun stood dumbfounded for several minutes.
The impact of this extraordinary event was so great that the worldview he had built over the past 27 years completely crumbled.
'Resources from a mobile game can actually be withdrawn into the real world!'
'If I told anyone about this, they'd send me straight to the Shimen City psychiatric hospital to get treated.'
'A scene straight out of a sci-fi movie was happening right before my eyes!'
After coming to his senses, Wu Jun reached out a trembling right hand and untied the rope sealing one of the sacks.
SHHHH, streams of white rice poured onto the floor.
Wu Jun hurriedly clenched the mouth of the sack shut and tied it with the rope again.
He bent down and grabbed a handful of rice from the floor. It was cool and fine to the touch, no different from ordinary rice.
He brought it closer to his eyes to inspect it carefully.
Wu Jun discovered that the rice produced in the game was crystalline and translucent. Moreover, every single grain, whether in shape or size, looked like a perfect copy of the others.
If you put two grains side by side, you couldn't tell them apart at all.
'This can't be prop rice, can it? Fake rice?' With this doubt in mind, Wu Jun carried some rice to the kitchen, crushed a few grains with the back of a knife, and performed an "autopsy."
He then grabbed a handful of ordinary rice sold at the local convenience store, crushed it for comparison, and found no difference between the two.
He put the crushed rice fragments in his mouth and chewed. It was real rice—as real as it gets!
After verifying the authenticity of the rice, an excited expression spread across Wu Jun's face!
The game, Resource Tycoon, was still in its initial phase.
The resources were three mu of farmland and three Farmers, and the daily output was already three tons of rice!
Three tons of rice is equivalent to 6,000 jin.
Based on the market price for the most common rice, at 3 yuan per jin, a single day's output could sell for 18,000 yuan!
In one month, that's 540,000 yuan!
And for this rice, he didn't have to buy stock or invest any capital. All the money from sales would be pure profit...
'This is just the initial stage. With a little development, earning a million a month won't be a dream!'
Wu Jun suddenly recalled Wang Hongliang, the man who had visited his shop during the day. He owned a rice processing plant, making him a small-time private boss. 'What a coincidence,' Wu Jun thought.
'Earlier today, I was thinking, 'He just sells rice, what's so impressive about that?' And now, not even a full day has passed, and I've jumped into the same industry!'
Pushing thoughts of Wang Hongliang aside, Wu Jun continued to study the Resource Tycoon game on his phone.
He discovered that the game started with 200 Gold Coins, and the exchange rate between RMB and Gold Coins was 100:1.
That meant the 200 Gold Coins were equivalent to a free 20,000 yuan.
Unfortunately, it was a one-way exchange. You could only convert RMB into Game Coins, not the other way around.
Recruiting one Farmer cost 100 Gold Coins, which, according to the exchange rate, was equivalent to 10,000 yuan.
Purchasing one mu of paddy field also cost 100 Gold Coins—another 10,000 yuan.
'Does that mean if I want to upgrade the game and unlock new resources, I'll have to spend at least two million yuan?'
'This is such a money pit!'
As for the last condition—selling 10,000 tons of rice—Wu Jun was even more speechless.
'Ten thousand tons of rice?'
'Even if every man, woman, and child in all of Shimen City ate rice for three meals a day, stuffing themselves silly, they wouldn't be able to finish that much in a day!'
'Oh well, I'll take it one step at a time. You can't get fat from one bite.'
After familiarizing himself with the game, Wu Jun used the 200 starting Gold Coins to purchase one more plot of farmland and recruit one more Farmer.
The game's production capacity reached four tons of rice per day. His ideal daily income increased by another 6,000 yuan.
He put away the phone bound to Resource Tycoon as if it were a precious treasure.
Wu Jun was about to start moving the sacks himself when he suddenly remembered that the Farmers in the game were listed as "summonable."
'Could it be... like the rice, they can be summoned into the real world?'
'With free labor like that available, why would I need to do this manual labor myself?'
Wu Jun took out his phone again, opened the Resource Tycoon game interface, and tapped Summon Farmer.
The phone's rear camera activated, and the screen once again prompted him to select a summon location.
Wu Jun aimed his phone at the space near the wall and tapped "Summon."
SHING! SHING! SHING!
Four Farmers, each over two meters tall with wheat-colored skin, conical hats, and coarse cloth clothes, appeared in the bedroom.
The small bedroom wasn't large to begin with. First came the fifteen large burlap sacks, and now four huge men had appeared, making the room feel incredibly crowded.
Wu Jun stared warily at the four Farmers he had summoned, his heart pounding like a drum—THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—and his palms breaking out in a cold sweat.
He was one meter eighty-two, which was usually considered tall on the streets, but he looked so petite in front of them.
'My thighs aren't even as thick as their arms!'
Wu Jun felt a pang of fear.
He felt he had been too reckless.
'If these four Farmers suddenly went berserk and pinned me to the floor for a beatdown, I wouldn't be able to fight back at all!'
'With physiques like these, just add one more and you'd have an NBA starting lineup!'