After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH10

Chapter 10

Eight o’clock in the evening was the perfect time for dinner.

After a full day of running around, Xie Xingchen didn’t feel like cooking—nor did he want the robots making him any weird, experimental dishes—so in the end he grabbed one tube of premium nutrient solution for dinner.

After so many years of development, nutrient solution didn’t taste awful anymore. Premium nutrient solution was even easier to drink—though maybe because too many ingredients were added, it still couldn’t really be praised as “tasting good.”

To Xie Xingchen, it felt more like a medicinal concoction. Drinking it was like downing a cold remedy tonic: the texture was similar, and even the flavor was eerily similar. Treating it as a meal made him feel… kind of strange.

Even stranger, the size and shape of these nutrient tubes really did resemble the little medicine tonics he’d had back on Earth—small, flat-bottomed, test-tube-like bottles.

Xie Xingchen suddenly said, “So this is what they mean by ‘eating medicine as food,’ huh?”

After saying that, he cracked himself up.

He finished it in one gulp and put the empty tube into a dedicated recycling box to save up.

All 400 tubes of premium nutrient solution Xie Xingchen bought were currently stored in his space button. But he wanted to move part of it elsewhere. No matter how convenient the space button was, it was still an item—and if it was an item, it could be lost!

Right now he hadn’t found any safe, reliable food sources. In that case, he had to plan ahead and stash the most hunger-proof option—nutrient solution—in multiple places.

After thinking it through, Xie Xingchen took out 50 tubes of premium nutrient solution and put them in the refrigerator’s chilled compartment. Then he took out another 50 and put them into a desk drawer in his bedroom.

In the end, he still didn’t feel those two spots were safe enough. So he went to the safest place on the cruiser—the cockpit—and hid 50 more tubes in a concealed location.

Coming out of the cockpit, Xie Xingchen happened to see the housekeeping robot diligently cleaning. He paused, then suddenly called the three robots over.

He opened his mouth, wanting to address them, but then realized he still hadn’t given them names.

It didn’t feel great to keep calling them by their serial numbers, did it?

After a moment of thought, he pointed at the housekeeping robot that was busy cleaning and said, “88750, you’re so hardworking—you’re definitely going to get rich someday. So why don’t you just be called Get-Rich from now on.”

After saying that, Xie Xingchen nodded firmly, feeling his naming skills were incredible!

That affirmation made him point at the maintenance robot passing by. “js6987, you’ve got a technical skill. I think you’re definitely destined for wealth and status. How about you be called Prosperity?”

Finally, he waved the medical robot over to watch the fun. Thinking for a moment, his eyes suddenly lit up. “You’re in medicine… then you’ll be Long-Life.”

Get-Rich, Prosperity, Long-Life: “……”

After naming them, Xie Xingchen nodded in satisfaction, clapped his hands, and said, “Get-Rich, Prosperity, Long-Life—come with me.”

He led the three robots into the storage room that had basically become a mini supermarket.

From the innermost storage crate, Xie Xingchen took out fifteen bottles of premium energy fluid for robots. Then he took fifteen tubes of premium nutrient solution out of his space button and split everything evenly into three portions.

He handed the nutrient tubes and energy bottles over. “Get-Rich, Prosperity, Long-Life—stash these little things inside your bodies.”

Xie Xingchen admitted he’d gotten the idea purely because he’d seen Nier put the signed form into his body.

But who cared where the idea came from? If it worked, it worked!

At the owner’s command, the three robots obediently opened a section of their casing. Each took five bottles of energy fluid and five tubes of premium nutrient solution from Xie Xingchen and stored them inside.

There was a clear difference between energy fluid and nutrient solution. Nutrient solution for biological life was thin—like medicine tonic, about 10 ml per tube. But energy fluid for robots (and mechanical lifeforms) was much thicker, about 30 ml per bottle.

Even so, both were relatively small. After placing them into their internal storage compartments, the robots still had plenty of empty space left.

Without thinking, Xie Xingchen said, “Since there’s still room, go ahead and pick some things you need—or like—from here and fill it up.”

Then he walked off, leaving the three robots standing there with their programs in disarray.

Pick… by yourselves.
Choose.
Like.
Fill it up.

Xie Xingchen had always known Get-Rich’s housekeeping abilities were insanely strong (the ads and sales reps had shown plenty). But it wasn’t until now that he realized Get-Rich, as a housekeeping robot, actually had a sense of aesthetics!

The room Xie Xingchen chose was large, but there wasn’t much in it, and he hadn’t brought many things suitable for decoration. Yet Get-Rich used those few small items to make the room feel warm—some corners even looked refined and artful.

For example, that bundle of dried flowers—something like baby’s breath—that the old butler had forced on him. By the time Xie Xingchen took it out, it was already half ruined, and the tiny blossoms had fallen everywhere.

But Get-Rich carefully trimmed the dried stems, then slowly arranged them into a wide-mouthed vase. It even picked up the fallen bits of dried petals, disinfected them, and scattered them around the base of the bouquet as if casually—creating the impression of natural “fallen blossoms.” Then Get-Rich even found an unused transparent square storage box and covered the bouquet with it, forming a natural protective cover.

Such a delicate, creative handmade display—forget robots, even humans sometimes wouldn’t think of that!

So Xie Xingchen had no doubt that, given time, Get-Rich would one day become a citizen of the Mechanical Civilization.

After admiring Get-Rich’s work, Xie Xingchen turned on the cruiser’s protection system and took a long, relaxing bath.

By the time he finished, it was completely dark.

He stared for a while at the moon, which seemed to glow quietly with a soft, steady light no matter what.

Only after a long moment did he climb into bed.

He lit the sleep-aid aromatherapy on the nightstand and fell into a deep sleep.

Early the next morning, Xie Xingchen was woken by the system’s nonstop ding-dong notifications. 

[Ding-dong, upgrade complete! Loading player information. Loading in progress, please wait.]

[Ding-dong, player information loaded. Game panel officially opening. Opening countdown 00:00:59]

[Ding-dong, player panel officially opened. Please begin the game as soon as possible.]

[Ding-dong, Infrastructure Maniac System friendly reminder: Welcome to the Earth Management Game. Please work hard to unlock the codex and complete tasks!]

Four messages bombarded him in a row.

He had to admit: this “Infrastructure Maniac System” really was a serious, ritual-obsessed system.

Look at that—so detailed, so earnest!

Xie Xingchen sighed in amazement and opened the game panel.

The macaron-colored game interface was full of fantasy elements.

The main interface had two parts: Player Info and the Game Codex.

The player info was nearly the same as before:

[Player Info Panel]

Name: Xie Xingchen
Race: Human

Territory: Earth

Level: LV0
EXP: 0/100
Mental Power Rank: B
Game Progress: 0%
Codex Progress: 0%
Infrastructure Progress: 0%
Accepted Tasks: None

Closing the player panel, Xie Xingchen tapped into the codex.

On the codex page, a thick tome covered in mysterious symbols glowed faintly.

Flipping it open, Xie Xingchen found that every page was filled with gray cards bound in black chains.

Scrolling the progress bar all the way down, there were 200 pages in total. Each page had the same standard layout: five rows and five columns, for 25 chained gray cards per page.

Multiplying the number of cards per page by the number of pages, Xie Xingchen concluded the codex contained five thousand locked gray cards.

At the bottom of each page there was also an Achievement section, with a black card marked with a “?” symbol.

Xie Xingchen poked the “?” card.

[System Prompt: Light up all cards on the page to unlock the achievement card.]

Xie Xingchen clicked his tongue. “Achievement cards?”

As everyone knows: Codex + Achievements = the gacha abyss.
If you’re a completionist, then congratulations—welcome to “grind and pay” hell.

Two hundred pages, five thousand cards, plus two hundred achievement cards?

Xie Xingchen couldn’t help taking a deep breath.

If this were just a game—even a full-dive game—he wouldn’t find it hard, because spending money could solve everything!
But this wasn’t a game. This was happening for real—so would spending money even help? And could he even afford it?

Thinking about how he’d already spent five billion just on preparations (including building the starport), his vision went dark with an ominous feeling.

When he tapped a gray card, that ominous feeling was immediately confirmed. He felt like he’d opened hell mode!

[Earth Management Game Codex 01 Page 01]

Name: Jasmine

Status: Locked · Unlit
Unlock Method: Discover one jasmine plant

Light Method: Sell 10,000 jasmine plants

Xie Xingchen: ?

Discover jasmine, sell 10,000 jasmine plants?
Where was he supposed to discover it, and where was he supposed to sell it?

When he realized the system wasn’t even giving him a location hint, Xie Xingchen went numb.

Was this codex made purely to mess with him?

If lighting a single card required requirements like that, did that mean he was supposed to become some kind of interstellar Shennong?

The more he thought about it, the worse he felt.

But soon, he discovered he could feel even worse.

[Ding-dong, System Prompt: Game progress is calculated as follows—Light up achievement cards. Each achievement card lit grants 0.5% game progress. Light all 200 achievement cards to reach 100% game progress and obtain the final reward—Earth Revival.]

Heh. Lighting one achievement card gave 0.5% progress?
It sounded easy, but wasn’t it basically forcing him to complete the entire codex?

And it was even more infuriating than that!
At minimum, completing the codex would just mean lighting all the gray cards. But now, progress only counted lit achievement cards. That meant he had to light not only the normal gray cards in the codex, but also every achievement card at the bottom of each page.

If they were “achievement cards,” would their completion difficulty be low?
Xie Xingchen: heh. I totally believe you. You lousy system—liar to the bone.

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