Chapter 5
There wasn’t a lot that Xie Xingchen lacked, but it wasn’t little either. In clothing, food, housing, and transportation, he already had the clothing, but if you really got serious, the gaps in food, housing, and transportation were huge.
Earth had animals and plants. Xie Xingchen believed that among them there must be varieties that were edible (without dark matter). Still, just in case, he needed to buy some nutrient solution to keep as backup.
Because of dark matter, after the Star Alliance was established, it had always devoted itself to developing related research.
Only a few years after green matter was discovered, experts and scholars developed something called nutrient solution.
They used certain extracted substances mixed with a small amount of green matter to make a solvent, then added that solvent into nutrient solution extracted from animals, plants, and minerals, finally producing nutrient solution that contained only a small amount of dark matter.
Back then, consuming this nutrient solution was far better for the body than simply eating food. And a single small tube could keep you full for an entire day, so once nutrient solution appeared, it immediately swept across the whole galaxy.
As time and technology advanced, nutrient solution gradually became an important food source for everyone. The booming nutrient solution market made its development even faster. In order to compete for customers, merchants either lowered prices or pushed new flavors.
By now, nutrient solution had become people’s staple food. And with tens of thousands of flavors, it effectively met everyone’s needs, with prices that were also very reasonable.
Nutrient solution was divided into high-grade, mid-grade, and low-grade based on how much dark matter it contained.
The higher the grade, the less dark matter it contained—and the more expensive it was. High-grade nutrient solution generally sold for 1,000 star-coins, mid-grade for 100 star-coins, while low-grade cost only 10 star-coins.
Above high-grade nutrient solution, there was no “special grade”—only food that contained green matter. Those foods were extremely expensive. A casual meal would cost at least more than half a month’s wages for an ordinary person, and could go up without limit—luxury among luxuries.
For bodily safety, Xie Xingchen naturally wanted to buy food more than drink nutrient solution. But food was delicate. And now that Earth didn’t even have interstellar express delivery, there was no way he could carry too much fresh food over at once.
Besides, Earth was so big—it couldn’t possibly have zero edible animals or plants. So Xie Xingchen only planned to buy about a week’s worth of fresh vegetables. Everything else would be nutrient solution.
The StarNet Mall event was far friendlier than those Double Eleven and Double Twelve sales he’d participated in before. Sure, there were mall coupons, store threshold discounts, and brand coupons, but not only were there fewer types—the “spend X get Y off” was calculated based on the original price. And there wasn’t any of that weird stuff like cross-store stacking, presale deductions, livestream red envelopes, game red envelopes, VIP member vouchers… and other bizarre nonsense.
Because nutrient solution took up little space, Xie Xingchen planned to stock up roughly a year’s worth. Since the mall was running a spending event—spend 1,000 get 100 off—and he also had a coupon that could be used as long as it hit the original price, [Spend 300,000 get 10,000 off], Xie Xingchen directly snapped up 400 tubes of high-grade nutrient solution.
Four hundred tubes at full price would be 400,000. After the event discount it was 360,000. Then with the 10,000-off-300,000 coupon, plus a 98% loyal-customer store coupon he claimed from the shop, in the end Xie Xingchen only needed to pay 343,000 star-coins.
Hehehe, so nice—he saved more than fifty thousand!
Back in the day, that fifty thousand was four months of his salary!
Putting the 400 tubes of nutrient solution into his cart, Xie Xingchen continued browsing.
According to the event rules, you could only use one mall coupon per store. Right now, one of his three coupons was already reserved for the nutrient solution. Of the remaining coupons, Xie Xingchen planned to use the [20% off coupon] to buy machines, and the [Spend 50,000 get 2,000 off coupon] on medicine. As for daily necessities and small odds and ends like needles and thread, he’d buy those separately.
Maybe because there really were a lot of interstellar adventurers and pioneers, many shops not only sold pioneer kits, but also first-aid kits.
And the medicines inside those kits covered nearly everything you might need in most situations. There were even plenty of bandages and sprays. Most importantly, the price was reasonable: a cheap kit cost only a few thousand, and even the expensive ones didn’t exceed fifty thousand.
After comparing product details and reading buyer reviews, Xie Xingchen ultimately bought a 20,000-star-coin medical kit, and additionally bought a whole box of bandages, hemostatic spray, and antidotes. In the end, when he calculated it, he was still three thousand short of reaching fifty thousand. He thought for a moment, then added a discounted mini medical kit—the kind the medics used to wear crossbody at their waists in the old days. Only this time there wasn’t a store coupon. After the spend-1,000-get-100 discount stacked with spend-50,000-get-2,000, he still had to pay 43,000 star-coins.
After Xie Xingchen finished calculating the price for this order, it was exactly midnight.
He quickly placed both orders, then moved on to the various daily necessities shops.
These shops were basically online supermarkets. Generally speaking, anything that counted as a daily necessity could be bought here.
Xie Xingchen planned to selectively bring what he could use from the villa, but consumables like toiletries, cleaning supplies, and tissues still had to be stocked up.
When he was buying the little bits and pieces, it didn’t feel like much. Only after he paid did Xie Xingchen realize he’d bought quite a lot—he’d spent nearly 150,000 star-coins, and he had to scroll down for a while just to get through the deduction records!
Xie Xingchen: “……”
Xie Xingchen: 55 As expected, money really doesn’t last—but spending money is so happy!
After comfortably spending the small money, Xie Xingchen took a breath, a bit heart-sore, and opened a shop he’d bookmarked long ago—Mechanical Trading House.
This was a machine specialty shop opened by Mechanical Civilization, and it was also recognized by everyone on StarNet as the best mechanical shop.
Mechanical Civilization was currently the most technologically advanced civilization in the Alliance. Unlike the others, Mechanical Civilization was born out of Human Civilization yet independent from it. So even though they were one of the five major civilizations, in many humans’ minds they were simply higher-level intelligent robots.
But even so, humans were afraid of being stabbed in the back by the Mechanical people. So over the years—aside from certain high-risk jobs—Human Civilization used as few robots as possible. If they had to use them, they would only purchase low-intelligence robots, and no longer dared to buy high-level robots.
Xie Xingchen only knew that Mechanical Civilization’s citizens were originally formed from advanced robots that awakened within Human Civilization. He didn’t know there were so many twists and turns between Mechanical Civilization and Human Civilization.
So after hearing netizens say that Mechanical Trading House was the biggest shop with the best goods in the entire Alliance mall, he decisively chose it.
He had to admit—the netizens’ rating was right. The Mechanical shop was probably the largest and most complete mechanical specialty store in the entire Alliance mall.
Anything related to machinery could be bought here!
From huge items like various starships, star cruisers, aircraft, pioneer machinery, planting machinery, testing instruments, vintage trains, vintage rail cars… to small things like peelers, craft knives, pickaxes, shovels, and saws. There were even clocks, mechanical dolls, gears, and other mechanical crafts.
The thousands upon thousands of products made Xie Xingchen’s eyes spin.
Looking at these price tags, Xie Xingchen’s jealous tears almost slid from the corner of his mouth.
Before, he’d thought he was rich. But after entering here, he realized he might actually just be poor! A decent private small starship cost at least tens of billions. If it was custom-made, the price could reach two or three hundred billion! Star cruisers were slightly cheaper, but overall still sat in the hundred-millions range, and some even soared into the hundred-billions range.
Other pioneer machines didn’t look too expensive, but if you bought a full set, the price would still climb into the hundred-millions.
Glancing at his account balance, the smile on Xie Xingchen’s face disappeared.
He suddenly thought of the phrase “dying before achieving anything,” and he seriously doubted what kind of splash his two hundred billion could make if he went pioneering? What should he buy? Which should he buy? How should he choose and sacrifice? When in doubt, ask customer service.
Anyway, the Mechanical people definitely understood machines better than he did. Rather than stare at things here and end up spending money blindly, it was better to ask customer service and figure out what he should actually buy for his situation.
After all, expensive wasn’t always correct. When your money was limited, choosing lower-end options often produced better results.
The more Xie Xingchen thought about it, the more he felt contacting customer service was the best way to solve the problem. So without another word, he began—poking customer service.
[Xie Xingchen: Is customer service there? I want to ask a question.]
After sending the question, Xie Xingchen suddenly remembered that when he used to shop on Taobao and contact customer service, most of the time you could only reach a preset intelligent bot. Out of habit, he sent four more words: [Human agent].
After those four words were sent, something strange happened.
Customers browsing the full-dive Mechanical Trading House suddenly heard a loud air-raid siren ring through the shop.
“What’s going on?”
“What happened?”
“My god—could it be an alien beast invasion?!”
The guests panicked. The piercing sound scared them into running around with their heads down. Some guests with weak mental power were frightened into mental shock and logged off on the spot.
The Mechanical shop’s staff were startled too. Even though they were calm mechanical lifeforms, they had never encountered anything like this.
Before long, flustered employees received a message from shop leadership: “Make the guests log off immediately.”
They needed to eliminate danger.
But just as the employees were about to carry out the order, the shop broadcast sounded.
[Please do not panic. This alarm is a system default notification sound. Mechanical Trading House is not in any danger.]
The calm broadcast repeated three times, leaving everyone half-believing, half-doubting.
They didn’t know what had happened, but at least there was an explanation. People who’d been about to run stopped running, and instead started gossiping with those around them.
“Does the system really have a notification sound like that?”
“I’ve lived for so many years and I’ve never heard something like that.”
“……”
“Wait—I just checked. It seems there really is?”
“I checked my light-brain too. It says that’s the mall shop notification sound… and it seems it happens because a customer is shopping in the web mall and requested the shop’s human agent?”
“Huh? Really?”
“Probably? Otherwise would my light-brain lie to me?”
Everyone was shocked. For the first time in their lives, they discovered that the web version of the mall actually had such a function.
This customer who triggered human customer service was way too incredible!
Those who found out were extremely amazed. Even the shop owner, Ludwig, was slightly surprised.
He happened to be shopping today, and he didn’t expect to run into such a strange incident.
Even as boring as Ludwig was, he couldn’t help feeling a little curious about this customer, so he decided to personally receive him.
[Xie Xingchen: Is customer service there? I want to ask a question.]
[Xie Xingchen: Human agent]
[Customer Service 001: Yes. Ask.]
The concise, to-the-point reply made Xie Xingchen freeze for a moment, then he suddenly understood.
They were from Mechanical Civilization. Robots, after all—naturally brief and cold~
Xie Xingchen didn’t mind the customer service’s coldness. Once he saw the human agent was here, he was so happy that he typed out his question. He even considered that the other party was a Mechanical Civilization customer-service rep and might have OCD (?), so he deliberately checked his message once to make sure there were no typos before sending it.
Expecting the other party to solve his problem well, Xie Xingchen had no idea that he’d just used a form of address that was common on the streets in the 21st century—but that no one used on others now.
[Xie Xingchen: Hey handsome, I’m going to pioneer on a wasteland planet with an average environment and inconvenient transport. What kind of machinery do you think I should buy?]
Handsome?
That slightly intimate form of address made Ludwig feel faintly uncomfortable.
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