After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH4

Chapter 4

Could it be that he’d slept too little and was hallucinating?

The clacking, mechanical sound only rang out a few times before stopping.

But after a while, a few more machine noises appeared.

Xie Xingchen’s expression turned strange. He was certain he wasn’t hallucinating.

However, the Planet Transaction Center was not a good place to unravel mysteries. The moment he realized there was a secret, he hurriedly left.

Inside the bedroom

Xie Xingchen had just drawn the curtains when that familiar mechanical voice sounded again. Different from last time—along with the mechanical voice, a minimalist, elegant game interface in macaron colors slowly appeared before his eyes, and on it was a line of information he recognized.

[Ding-dong, system activated… Infrastructure Maniac System welcomes you. Detected that the planet you purchased, M215 (Earth), has been delivered. Please bind your territory within one week, and you may begin the game!]

It wasn’t a hallucination or a misunderstanding—there really was a system.

Xie Xingchen said in surprise, “Is this… my golden finger?”

But… what did he need a system for?
He’d already reached the peak of life.

And if there was a system, didn’t that mean there were tasks?
In his last life, he’d been busy from childhood all the way to adulthood. He felt he’d already lived more than tired enough. In this life, since he was so rich, he didn’t want to do tasks—he only wanted to lie flat and be a salted fish.

As if it detected Xie Xingchen’s dangerous thoughts, the system page—still in macaron colors—suddenly highlighted the words “Earth” in red and enlarged them.

He had to admit, the system’s move was wise. Those two words really did make Xie Xingchen hesitate.

Xie Xingchen was from Huaguo, and he was an Earthling. In this unfamiliar interstellar world, the appearance of “Earth” gave him an inexplicable sense of belonging. But… who could say the system’s words had to be true?

What if the system was just lying a little so the tasker would willingly do tasks—claiming it was Earth?

Sure, he’d seen the full-dive hologram of Planet M215 on the StarNet purchase page. Sure, Planet M215 really was a blue sphere that looked a lot like the planet his country used to be on.

But among the Alliance’s habitable planets, at least 5% looked similar to Earth. Some planets inhabited by merfolk were even bluer than Planet M215, and certain regions looked even more like the Earth-shaped landmasses he’d once seen in books.

And even if the system was telling the truth, why did he have to “start a game” on Earth? Whether that game would be good or bad for the planet—no one could say.

Countless reasons flashed through Xie Xingchen’s mind.

Unfortunately, no matter how many excuses he made, the two words “Earth” alone were enough to make his heart stir.

Opening the planetary-lord-exclusive section, Xie Xingchen pulled up the holographic image of Planet M215.

The deep-Earth rotated slowly before him. The blue ocean and the golden-yellow continental plates, under his careful scrutiny, gradually overlapped with the Earth in his memory.

There were differences, but it was precisely because he noticed those differences that Xie Xingchen felt more at ease.

Anyone who’d been to school knew continental plates moved. From the modern era to the interstellar era, no one knew how many years had passed, so changes in plate positions were normal. If it were completely unchanged, Xie Xingchen would instead suspect the system had fabricated a fake “Earth” to trick him into doing tasks.

[Ding-dong]

[System Notice: Please bind your territory as soon as possible to start the game. If you do not bind your territory within one week, the system will initiate a self-destruction program.]

Xie Xingchen didn’t understand. “Why would you initiate a self-destruction program?”

[System Notice: Insufficient game energy, insufficient game energy, insufficient game energy… Please start the game as soon as possible to recharge energy. Please start the game as soon as possible to recharge energy.]

As if trying to prove it wasn’t lying, after repeating “insufficient game energy,” the system suddenly vanished. No matter how Xie Xingchen questioned it, it didn’t answer again, and the game interface returned to the initial screen—except now it displayed player information.

Player: Xie Xingchen (pending bind)

Race: Star Alliance — Human Civilization
erritory: M215 Wasteland Planet (Earth) (pending bind)

Game Progress: Not started

Codex Progress: Not started

Infrastructure Progress: Not started

Task Reward: Earth Revival

Bind territory to start game: [Yes][No]

Countdown to start: 6 days 22 hours 48 minutes 32 seconds

Because Xie Xingchen hadn’t bound his player identity yet, there wasn’t much information.

But even so, from this page alone he could guess it was a collection-type game? And the final reward of this game was—Earth Revival?
Xie Xingchen frowned. He had a bad feeling.

Unable to resist, he projected the planet hologram again. This time, he noticed something abnormal about the continents.

The continental plates used to be yellow too, but parts of them had once contained large swaths of green. Now those big greens had become scattered. To the naked eye, there was no longer a single continuous stretch of green.

This was almost falling below the standard for a habitable planet—the vegetation coverage was obviously clinging right at the threshold.

Not to mention how much dark matter might be inside those plants—just the fact that a habitable wasteland planet with no pollution could have such low vegetation coverage… didn’t that make the planting difficulty a little too high?
Even worse was its location—so remote that only one public starship passed by per week.

Thinking of that, Xie Xingchen couldn’t help sighing again.

Developing a planet in a place like this—how could it be easy?

If you want to get rich, build roads first. With infrastructure this backward, even travel was a problem. Construction supplies would be hard to ship over; everything else didn’t even need mentioning.

Xie Xingchen had a splitting headache.

That account balance that once felt unimaginably huge suddenly turned into a poor kid’s bank card—at risk of running dry at any moment.

Xie Xingchen said in frustration, “Forget it. I won’t deal with all those properties anymore. I’ll just keep them as a backup plan. As for the money in this account—let it die if it dies.” 

Whether he’d regret it, Xie Xingchen didn’t know. But he did know one thing: if he didn’t try, he would definitely regret it.

Already planning to leave the central planet as soon as possible, Xie Xingchen moved even faster after deciding to head to Planet M215.

Considering there weren’t many flights to the Virgo Supercluster—and if he missed one, he’d have to transfer routes—Xie Xingchen decided the first thing he’d do after going to Earth was open StarNet’s ticket-booking page.

But he didn’t expect he was still too late. This week’s flight to the Virgo Supercluster had already departed; the next departure would be next week.

Xie Xingchen: life is hard, kitty sigh.jpg
With only seven days left, he couldn’t afford to wait. He could only book a flight for the day after tomorrow to the Gamma Supercluster, the closest route to the Virgo Supercluster, planning to transfer from there.

After booking the flight, Xie Xingchen rushed to the Planet Transaction Center to change “M215 Wasteland Planet” to “Earth,” then began preparing supplies for opening up the wasteland.

Opening up wasteland was difficult work. And since Earth’s location was remote and it didn’t have a wormhole receiver for interstellar express delivery, Xie Xingchen had to bring as much as possible of what he might need. Otherwise he’d be stuck buying things with outrageous shipping fees.

But here was the problem—what wouldn’t you need on a wasteland planet?

Xie Xingchen: “I’m really having it hard.”

He only had a 100-cubic-meter spatial button.

Xie Xingchen somewhat missed the original owner’s parents’ 200-cubic-meter spatial buttons.

Unfortunately, those precious spatial items had already been taken by star pirates.

Xie Xingchen looked at the scattered, messy items inside the original owner’s spatial button and immediately decided to spend money to hire a professional organizer.

His spatial button had 100 cubic meters of space—equivalent to a 50-square-meter studio apartment with a 2-meter ceiling height. To someone who knew how to organize, that was huge and could fit a lot. But Xie Xingchen didn’t have that skill.

Leaving aside how fast or slow he’d be, if he really did it himself, he might end up wasting space the way the original owner had.

He wouldn’t necessarily place things here and there like the original owner, but with limited space, the more he could pack in, the better.

Hiring an organizer on the central planet was a bit expensive, but no matter how expensive, it would top out at thirty or fifty thousand star-coins. That was nothing compared to the cost of realizing, once he reached the planet, that he’d forgotten something and had to buy it again.

After all, there was nothing there. Even buying a small item, the shipping fee alone would probably cost three to five hundred thousand!
Xie Xingchen didn’t want to pay astronomical shipping, so he decided to leave professional work to professionals.

He did it the moment he thought of it. Xie Xingchen immediately placed an order on his light-brain for a home organizing service, checked “urgent,” and booked the earliest time slot for tomorrow.

Pots and pans, clothes and bedding—the villa had spares, so he could just take them. But weapons, wilderness survival tools, food, drinking water, all kinds of testing instruments… those had to be complete.

Every year, plenty of people in the Alliance became pioneers and adventurers, so many stores sold wilderness survival kits (pioneer kits). The contents were even more comprehensive than Xie Xingchen had imagined. After comparing several options, Xie Xingchen directly bought the three highest-rated kit types.

[Beep-beep]

[StarNet Mall: Dear Mr. “Xie Xingchen,” after detection, you purchased three items in the mall today and have received three lottery chances from the merchants. Possible prizes: coupons. Coupon use date: the day the event opens (tap the screen or enter the lottery center to start the draw).]

Event? Xie Xingchen caught something instantly and immediately found customer service.

Xie Xingchen: “Does the mall have an event recently?”

Event = discounts = saving money.

This equation had already been etched deep into Xie Xingchen’s DNA.

[Mall Customer Service: Yes, dear—it’s the mall’s Shopping Festival event. The event starts tomorrow at midnight. As a respected SVIP user, please don’t miss it if you need to shop~ Here is the event details link: XXXXXX]

Xie Xingchen didn’t understand. “Then why didn’t I receive any notice earlier?”

If a mall held an event, shouldn’t it be advertised everywhere?
Why had he been browsing StarNet and the mall every day without seeing a single related announcement?

[Mall Customer Service: The event is only promoted on the holographic commercial street. If you’re interested, you can log in to the full-dive StarNet Mall to view it.]

Xie Xingchen: “……”

If he could log into the full-dive mall, he would’ve done it long ago!
The original owner’s mental power had been damaged from stress. He still needed a few more days to recover—he’d have to be suicidal to use his mental power to log into the mall.

This StarNet Mall was way too scammy!
They only promoted discount events in the full-dive mall?

So customers who had damaged mental power and couldn’t log into the full-dive mall weren’t customers anymore?

Xie Xingchen couldn’t help switching to the mall user center. Fuming, he found the suggestion box and submitted feedback to synchronize event information, then switched back to the lottery page.

He was angry, but he had gotten three lottery chances. According to the event details, this counted as preheating—tomorrow, buying things wouldn’t give lottery chances anymore.

Doing the math, it didn’t seem like he’d been scammed after all.

Xie Xingchen: “Start drawing.”

The wheel began to spin.

Xie Xingchen: “Stop.”

An envelope flew from the wheel into the center of the screen.

Xie Xingchen didn’t open the envelope, and continued drawing prizes.

After using all three chances, three envelopes were neatly lined up before him.

He tapped open the envelopes, and the rewards were as follows.

[Beep-beep, congratulations on receiving [Spend 50,000 get 2,000 off coupon]*1. Congratulations on receiving [No-minimum 20% off item coupon]*1. Congratulations on receiving [Spend 300,000 get 10,000 off coupon]*1]

He’d thought it would be small rewards, but they were actually pretty good! Especially that 20%-off coupon—this time he was going to make a killing.

Just thinking about how much money that 20%-off coupon could save, Xie Xingchen’s smile instantly became brighter than the sun in the sky.