WEF - Chapter 4
Chapter 4: I Eat Beef Three Meals a Day
The RV switched into auto-follow mode, keeping a moderate distance behind the off-road vehicle.
They were in the wilderness, with no other cars and no road. The ground was flat and almost free of obstacles, and they were traveling at only forty kilometers per hour.
Ning Dali was idly playing with her smart device.
She casually spun a couple of lies to Zhuang Yuezhen, discovered that this raised her shield value as well, then made up an excuse and ended the call.
After hanging up, she downloaded a social media app, added Wang You as a friend, and sent Zhuang Yuezhen a message.
Two seconds later, her shield value rose a little.
"Deceiving someone through a network counts too... interesting."
Ning Dali raised an eyebrow, and countless shameless ideas flooded her mind.
One Zhuang Yuezhen could no longer satisfy her. She was going to seek broader horizons.
Ning Dali searched the app store for a professional livestreaming program but found nothing.
The wasteland's insistence that everyone make livestreams was indeed a little harsh.
She switched targets and downloaded Douyan, the public social media app with the most downloads.
She registered an account and searched for the user with the most followers on Douyan.
The most-followed user was Yuan, with two million followers.
The runner-up was Ying, with one million eight hundred thousand.
Below them, the follower counts dropped sharply, to only a few hundred thousand.
Internet celebrities in her former world routinely amassed hundreds of millions of followers. Here, the highest anyone had was two million. The gap was far greater than Ning Dali had expected.
Perhaps the difference was not that the influencers here were not popular enough, but that there were not enough people here.
Two million would have to do. Hopefully, many of those followers were active.
As she prayed, Ning Dali opened Yuan's homepage and found that she had not posted anything new in six months.
She opened the comments beneath the last upload from six months earlier. They were full of candle icons.
Judging by the number of candles, she had plenty of active followers.
Sadly, the content creator was dead.
Ning Dali: "..."
May the departed rest in peace. She lit a candle in sympathy.
She reluctantly opened Ying's homepage.
This one was probably a food blogger. There were many posts on the page, and every day she updated with her lunch at exactly noon.
Ning Dali checked the time.
11:50
Ten minutes remained before Ying posted.
In other words, Ning Dali had ten minutes to ride the wave of attention.
Ten minutes was enough for the Old Liar to earn its keep.
Ning Dali rose from the driver's seat and surveyed the cramped interior of the RV.
She pulled a pure white sheet from a drawer to serve as a backdrop and took a photo of herself.
Not her face.
Her arm.
Ning Dali rarely took photos. She adjusted the angle several times before perfectly showing off her muscular arm.
After taking the picture, she saw she still had time, so she downloaded a photo editing app and enhanced the muscles in her arm.
Her muscles had been built from carrying cement. Her arms were firm, but they did not have the exaggerated look of muscles developed in a gym.
The editing app made up for that. Once she was done, her arm looked as thick as her head.
With the image ready, Ning Dali opened her memo and imitated the account-building copy she had seen before, adapting it to the actual circumstances of this world.
I eat beef three meals a day, but my arm is only this thick. Isn't that a little abnormal...
My teammate and I went hungry for three days and three nights. I woke in the middle of the night and saw her drooling at my arm...
After editing the text, Ning Dali cautiously searched to make sure that people in this world had eaten beef before.
11:59
Ning Dali had everything ready.
12:00
The famous food blogger updated her video on time.
Now!
Ning Dali did not even look at what Ying had posted. She opened the comments, copied and pasted her prepared text, and added the image.
Send.
One second. Two seconds.
Ning Dali's smart device began buzzing continuously. She had plainly succeeded in starting the account.
At the same time, the layer of light on her body, visible only to her, blazed brighter with every passing moment, and her shield value skyrocketed.
This time, Ning Dali truly felt safe.
Thank you to our netizens for their support and help!
Ning Dali opened the backend of her Douyan account to check the results. In less than a minute, she had already received 99+ replies.
She calmly opened the replies and added a few of her own, stoking the firestorm. The shield around her shone like the sun.
"This is too good. Technology really changes life." Ning Dali could not help but marvel at it, then followed Ying, planning to return every day at noon to ride the wave of attention.
[Follow failed.]
[You have been blocked by the creator.]
Two lines appeared on the smart device, and the smile vanished from Ning Dali's face at lightning speed.
She refreshed.
Her two popular comments had been deleted.
"They noticed too quickly." Ning Dali gave a slight shake of her head, but she was not disappointed.
Although Ying had deleted her comments, screenshots were already spreading online. The blogger's deletion only made the netizens more enthusiastic. They began making memes and saying they would call the police to arrest her.
Her shield value was still rising, even faster than before.
Success.
For the Old Liar, it was a breeze.
Ning Dali hummed softly, then deleted her Douyan account and registered a new one.
This time, she was not registering it to grow the account, but to gather intelligence.
She searched online for information about the Countdown, but found no one in the same situation as her.
People in this world ate without any interference from the Countdown. She was a special case.
When the Countdown reached zero, she would gain an ability. But what would happen if she ate before then? Would the Countdown strike her down?
Ning Dali did not know the answer, but with her dazzling shield protecting her, she felt she could try.
The experiment was not entirely without risk.
It was necessary, though.
Ning Dali did not know where her limit for hunger was, or whether she really had become perpetual motion, forever free from the need to eat.
When she had awakened in this world, the Countdown had been only three days.
Three days without food would not kill a person.
But now the Countdown was seven days. The time had stretched, and Ning Dali did not know how long the next Countdown would be after this one ended.
Ten days? Twenty?
Without food for that long, she might reach her limit at some moment and drop dead on the spot.
Setting that concern aside, Ning Dali still had to know what would happen if she ate... She was afraid that one day she might find herself in a situation where she had to eat.
Only by understanding her own condition well enough could she make the right choice.
Ning Dali took a deep breath and convinced herself.
She entered her password, opened the refrigerator, selected a frozen steak from the freezer compartment, melted some butter in a frying pan, and placed the steak inside it.
When she had just been released from prison, Ning Dali had been poor.
After hauling cement for years and then buying some firearms, she was even poorer.
She had bought the steak online, ordering a large box at a time and keeping it in her refrigerator to improve her meals from time to time.
The steak was of mediocre quality. Ning Dali had already eaten dozens of pieces and long since lost interest in them, but after going three days and three nights without a bite to eat, she had developed a renewed enthusiasm for this steak.
It smelled delicious.
Ning Dali stared at the steak, and her stomach growled.
She knew she was not physically hungry. It was craving, not hunger.
Patiently, she waited until the steak reached medium doneness, then removed it from the pan.
With a distinct sense of ceremony, Ning Dali found the knife and fork she used for steak and cut it into small pieces.
She speared a piece of pink beef and raised it to her lips, then paused.
[166:43:23]
The Countdown popped into view again, twitching and turning red as if it were having a seizure.
Ning Dali watched the Countdown thrash for a moment, then elegantly blew on the steak and stuffed it into her mouth.
The moment it entered her mouth, savory beef flavor flooded her senses.
The aroma of butter blended perfectly with the beef. The medium-cooked steak had a satisfying chew, and biting into it made the juices burst in her mouth.
Ning Dali sighed contentedly.
The Countdown, however, seemed to have crashed. The crimson numbers froze before her eyes, utterly still.
Two seconds later.
[167:59:59]
The Countdown began counting again.
Ning Dali: "..."
That was all? She had expected it to take at least a few points off her shield.
She speared a second piece of beef.
The Countdown, having lost a few seconds, flickered feebly.
Immediately.
[167:59:59]
"Hour, you're far more sensible than a dog." Ning Dali chewed the beef and approved of the Countdown's discretion.
Nothing else happened until she had eaten the entire piece.
The Countdown kept rebooting, like a silly dog chasing its own tail.
Only then did Ning Dali feel somewhat reassured.
She returned to the driver's seat, changed the car-following setting, increased the distance from the off-road vehicle ahead, and rolled down the window to let in some air.
Then she took out her smart device again.
She had no choice. There was far too much to do, and she could not stop for even a moment.
She still remembered the three days after she had first transmigrated, when she had not met a single person and had been so bored that she spent her time asleep in the RV.
After encountering the Airdrop, she had become like a novice player who had just entered a game, with a quest list stretching forever.
She had maxed out her shield, ensuring that no one could suddenly kill her.
She had also studied the Countdown, ensuring that she would not suddenly die of hunger.
With those two matters settled, Ning Dali could finally spare the time to learn something about the world as a whole.
She opened the map and checked her location, only then realizing why she had not encountered anyone during those three days.
The place she had transmigrated to was far too remote. Unless an Airdrop landed there, no one would ever go.
Even if one did, that did not mean anyone would come.
The fact that the second Airdrop she encountered had remained on the ground for two days without being fully looted was proof enough.
Likewise, the fact that Wang You and Zhuang Yuezhen had run all that way to loot an Airdrop said a great deal about their abilities.
The whole verdict came down to three words: They were no good.
Still, although the two women were not very capable, the vehicle they were driving was quite good.
Ning Dali searched online for the same model but found none.
People online said this sort of thing might have something to do with abilities... Ning Dali felt reassured.
That was because there was no matching model of her RV either.
People online said that anything incomprehensible could be explained by abilities.
Ning Dali committed the words to heart.
After researching the vehicle, she searched for the nearest base, which was also her destination.
The search result read: Fertile Base.
The moment Ning Dali finished typing the name, an unknown number appeared on her smart device.
Someone was requesting a call.
Ning Dali frowned. Only a few hours ago, this number had belonged to Zhuang Yuezhen.
Perhaps it was one of Zhuang Yuezhen's friends?
Ning Dali accepted the call and asked directly, "Are you looking for Xiao Zhuang?"
"No." A woman's stern voice came through the smart device.
"We are from Fertile Base. We need to ask you about something."
So they had found her?
How did they know the number had changed owners?
Alarm bells rang in Ning Dali's mind as she frantically searched her memory for the detail that had given her away, but she heard the woman on the other end ask in an eerie voice.
"We investigated the photo you posted. Your muscles were edited, but not by much."
"So where did your muscles come from? Do you really eat beef three meals a day? You know you have violated the Food Safety Management Law, don't you?"
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