'A poor, backward, ancient mountain village. Isolated, with villagers who are perennially starving and have no martial strength…'
Wang Yi silently summarized, then beckoned to Man Datou and asked for half a roasted chicken.
The chicken's skin was golden-brown and looked tempting, and its aroma was fragrant. Zhang Xiaohu, who was kneeling on the ground, felt his stomach rumble instantly.
Wang Yi pulled Zhang Xiaohu to his feet, showed him the roasted chicken, and said, "Kid, want a bite?"
The child's eyes were already fixated on it. His throat bobbed as he swallowed his saliva nonstop.
"I'll treat you to some chicken if you do something for me!"
Wang Yi tore off a fragrant chicken leg and held it out to Zhang Xiaohu.
Zhang Xiaohu desperately wanted to snatch the chicken leg and swallow it in one bite, but he didn't dare. He just stared at it intently, constantly wiping away his drool.
'Is this the legendary chicken leg?'
He had never eaten one before.
Not only had he never eaten one, but neither had his parents.
In all of Stone Village, only the village chief's family raised two chickens. He had heard the chief's grandson, Yang Xiaobao, say that chicken legs were very fragrant and delicious!
Now a big chicken leg was right before his eyes. It was just as fragrant as they said. 'Eating this will surely grant immortality!'
Wang Yi stuffed the chicken leg directly into Zhang Xiaohu's mouth and said, "Go on, eat it. No need to be polite. I'm a good person!"
Zhang Xiaohu could no longer hold back. The delicious food made him overcome his fear of Man Datou. He held the large chicken leg with both hands and began to devour it, his mouth glistening with grease, too busy to speak.
The chicken leg was quickly finished. Zhang Xiaohu was clearly not full yet. He stared hopefully at the remaining half of the roasted chicken, but he didn't dare say anything.
Wang Yi laughed heartily and said to Zhang Xiaohu, "See? I'm a good person, right?"
"Mhm!"
Zhang Xiaohu nodded repeatedly.
"This half of the Golden Roasted Chicken is yours!" Wang Yi said. "I am a great Lord, and this is my territory. I'm hiring temporary workers right now. Go back to your village, find some relatives and friends to come work for me, and if they do a good job, they get to eat chicken!"
"Really?"
Zhang Xiaohu's eyes lit up.
"Of course it's real!"
Hearing this, Zhang Xiaohu immediately grabbed the half chicken and took off running.
...
「Three li away, Stone Village.」
Narrow, rugged paths wound between shabby houses. Most of these houses were built from mud and thatch. The earthen walls were mottled with cracks, looking as if they could collapse at any moment, and the thatch on the roofs was so sparse it seemed a single gust of wind could blow it all away.
The road was pitted and uneven, covered with stones of various sizes. A few villagers squatted by a wall, basking in the sun. They wore coarse cloth garments covered in patches, their faces etched with the vicissitudes of time and the hardships of life, speaking listlessly.
"So hungry... I want to eat."
"Didn't you just eat yesterday? How are you hungry again?"
"Sigh, there's no rice left to cook at home. What are we going to do?"
"What can we do? The whole village is like this, never knowing where the next meal will come from. My family's no exception."
"I dug up some wild vegetables on the mountain a few days ago. Ate them mixed with other things, but it's no use. My stomach's still empty."
"How can wild vegetables fill you up? My kid cries about being hungry every day. It breaks my heart to see."
"Isn't that the truth. We used to be able to eat sweet potatoes and stuff, but now even those are hard to find."
"I heard some people in the next village were so hungry they started digging up grass roots to eat."
"Can you even eat grass roots? Don't get sick from it."
"Can't worry about that now. When you're starving, you'll try anything."
"Who knows when we'll have grain to eat again. This life is too hard."
The villagers sighed and groaned.
Suddenly, a fragrant aroma wafted into their nostrils.
Zhang Xiaohu came running over. He had the half-eaten roasted chicken wrapped in his clothes. He shouted to the group of sunbathing villagers, "Dad, Mom, Second Grandpa, Third Uncle, Second Aunt, Sister Cuihua, Xiaomao, Yang Xiaobao, come with me! An Immortal has come to the river valley! I'll take you to eat roasted chicken!"
"Has this kid gone silly from hunger? Still thinking about roasted chicken. This old man has lived for fifty years and I've never even seen what a roasted chicken looks like!"
"Go on, go on, go play somewhere else!"
"Hu Zi, there are no Immortals in this world!"
"Eat chicken? Where would we find such a good thing? I don't believe it!"
"Why don't you believe me? Fine, I'll open your eyes!"
As Zhang Xiaohu spoke, he pulled the half roasted chicken from his clothes and proudly held it over his head.
Even though the roasted chicken had gone cold, its unique fragrance still drifted out, causing the group of sunbathing villagers' eyes to go wide.
"What is that!"
"Is that... a roasted chicken?"
"Here, give it to me to eat!"
"One bite each! Finders keepers, let's share!"
"Hu Zi, good boy, show your respect to your Second Grandpa first!"
"That's my kid's roasted chicken, don't even think about snatching it! Hu Zi's father, hurry and protect Hu Zi!"
"That's right! What do you bastards think you're doing? That roasted chicken is ours! I'll fight to the death with anyone who tries to take it!"
...
Wang Yi tossed a fist-sized stone into his ten-meter-radius territory. The number "0.0025" suddenly appeared above the stone.
In the distance, Man Datou was hoisting a millstone-sized boulder, his knotted back muscles gleaming with a bronze luster in the sunlight.
"My Lord, the people from Stone Village... can they be trusted?"
Man Datou spoke up suddenly, a look of worry actually appearing on the face of this ever-loyal guard.
"We need labor, and hungry people are the easiest to tame."
Wang Yi continued tossing stones into his territory.
Stones were stone material. As long as they were sent into the territory, the system would recognize them as a resource material and display a count above them. One cubic meter made a single unit.
The same was true for wood.
Building the Chaos Warehouse required 1 wood and 10 stone, which meant 1 cubic meter of wood and 10 cubic meters of stone.
This was the result of Wang Yi's research over the past ten-odd minutes.
While moving stones, Wang Yi chatted with Man Datou. "Big Head, you're a big, tall guy. If you were to fight people, say, people like me, how many could you take on?"
"If none of us used weapons, I could take on a hundred!"
"Mad, am I that pathetic?!"
When Wang Yi heard this, his confidence swelled. He thought to himself, 'Man Datou is now the security captain of my territory, our muscle. With him here, Suppression of that Stone Village shouldn't be a problem.'
'Starting a new venture requires a workforce. Before the second wave of the chaos invasion begins, I should mobilize the villagers from Stone Village and get the Chaos Warehouse built first…'
Just as Wang Yi was making these calculations, he suddenly saw a group of people running toward them from a distance. There were men and women, old and young, most of them sallow and emaciated. Zhang Xiaohu was leading them with a joyful expression, but the people following him were mostly carrying clubs and looked nervous.
"Heavens, there really... there really is a giant!"
"Look, what's that on the ground? It really is roasted chicken! Good heavens, how is this possible?"
"Let's go together and snatch their roasted chicken!"
"Are you looking to die? Or has hunger made you stupid? That giant could kill us all!"
The ones who had followed Zhang Xiaohu were, of course, residents of Stone Village. Not all of them, just a small portion—thirteen people in total. They stared nervously at Man Datou, not daring to get any closer.