Magic Farm 95

Chapter 95: Territory Expansion

“A treehouse?” Dan Xingyu pictured it from Qi Yu’s description and sincerely marveled, “That must be beautiful.”

Qi Yu suddenly remembered, “Wait a second, I think the survival panel has a photo function—I’ll send you a picture.”

He’d seen others use this feature in the regional channel and the 01 Survival Squad, but he’d never needed it himself, so he hadn’t looked into it.

Fortunately, the survival panel was easy to operate. He stepped back a bit and took a full picture.

[I Love Survival Games: Here, take a look—my new house.]

Dan Xingyu had high expectations as he opened the image, but when he saw the photo, he realized his imagination had been far too limited.

The photo’s backdrop was night.

A deep, dark night, cold pouring rain, and that lush, magnificent tree holding up a vast canopy. The exquisite treehouse was perfectly embedded within it, the two fused as one, as if the house had grown from the very branches and leaves.

The glowing tree, together with the treehouse it supported, was at this moment nothing short of the center of the world.

It looked just like a poster for some epic fantasy film.

“It’s truly beautiful,” he breathed. “It’s like looking at a scene from a movie.”

“A movie?” Qi Yu recalled Dan Xingyu mentioning them before. He was satisfied. “I’ve never seen a movie, but if you say my territory looks like one, it’s as good as if I have.”

“It’s especially good-looking, isn’t it?”

“Good-looking doesn’t even begin to cover it.” Dan Xingyu’s voice was tinged with envy. “I keep saying, compared to you folks in District 01, we in District 88 are basically left to fend for ourselves.”

Who wouldn’t want to live in a fairy-tale treehouse like this? Did he roll around in the sand every day because he liked it?

He wondered what his own shelter would look like after upgrading.

Getting this affirmation, Qi Yu felt completely content.

He said joyfully, “Don’t worry, I’ve learned how to engrave magic circles onto objects. Once I succeed, I’ll send you one.”

He thought aloud, “Once your territory has a constant-temperature magic circle, I wonder if you’ll be able to grow flowers?”

Dan Xingyu shook his head. “Forget it, let them live where they like.”

Qi Yu, hearing this, comforted him, “It’s all right. If you like flowers, I can send you some.”

He added, “I haven’t even toured my new territory yet. I’ll end the call for now and talk to you later.”

Dan Xingyu couldn’t help but laugh. “All right, all right, great lord of the territory, we’ll talk later.”

He’d wanted to ask if the lord had eaten yet, but seeing Qi Yu like this, he was probably still riding the high of excitement.

Anyway, they were all professionals now—skipping a meal wouldn’t hurt. He’d wait until Qi Yu’s excitement wore off, then call him for a late-night snack.

After ending the call, Qi Yu finally noticed the information on his panel.

Level-Three Shelter: Elven Treehouse. Durability 2000/2000.

Shelter (including territory) area: 20,000 square meters.

[Upgrade bonus building: Garden, Livestock Farm, Winery. Choose one of three.]

[Garden: Beautiful flowers to soothe body and mind. Effect: Spiritual recovery speed +10%.]

[Livestock Farm: Shelter building. Can capture wild mutated creatures and has a chance to domesticate them.]

[Winery: Comes with a full set of brewing equipment. Effect: Wine brewed here sells for 10% more.]

Elven treehouse? Is this the kind of house elves live in?

Qi Yu couldn’t help but think: No wonder they once ruled the world—even their houses are so special.

And the level-three shelter upgrade even let him choose a bonus building.

Qi Yu looked at the three options and, without much hesitation, chose the garden.

He had no interest in raising animals—when he saw a living mutant creature, all he could think of was how it might taste.

As for the winery, he’d never drunk alcohol and wasn’t short on money.

[Obtained: Exquisite Garden x1. Click to place.]

Qi Yu didn’t place it right away.

He opened his territory module.

Where once the growing number of residents had made things feel cramped, now the territory was suddenly vast and empty.

Twenty thousand square meters—he couldn’t even fill a corner.

He saw in the territory module that his treehouse was at the very center, and all other buildings, farmland, residents, and so on could be rearranged freely.

The biggest change was the advanced magic energy tower.

Before, it had hovered above the shelter like a powerful guardian, intimidating all intruders.

Now, it seemed to have been absorbed into the elven treehouse, which had a second floor Qi Yu hadn’t yet explored.

Opening the territory module, the first thing he saw was the demon vine fence.

Because it was symbiotic with the fence, the demon vine seemed to have become part of the territory.

With this upgrade, it had leveled up along with the house and furniture.

The fence still encircled the full 20,000 square meters of the shelter—but the demon vine, which had only just managed to cover two-thirds of the territory, had shrunk and now covered only a small section.

Clearly, only the fence had expanded, not the entire demon vine.

Still, when Qi Yu used Nature’s Whispers to sense it, the demon vine wasn’t upset at all. In fact, it was thrilled to have suddenly “grown” so much.

During the shelter upgrade, it seemed to be a “safe period”—no swiftlet attacks.

So Qi Yu had no idea that, as his points remained unchanged for so long, the District 01 regional channel had nearly exploded.

There were all kinds of wild guesses—some wondered if something had happened to the game master, others speculated he’d failed while farming swiftlets, and some guessed he’d encountered a stroke of fortune.

People like My Fate Is Mine, Not Heaven’s, who fancied themselves his rivals, naturally hoped something had gone wrong.

But while his points were stagnant, his name still topped the leaderboards, not grayed out in the slightest.

The 01 Survival Squad also speculated in their group chat, but didn’t think Qi Yu would run into trouble, so they didn’t DM him—meaning he didn’t see their messages right away.

Then, the players saw the server-wide announcement.

And the channel exploded again:

[Cockroach Flavor Is Weird: Level-three shelter… I’m honestly not even surprised.]

[Reaching for the Moon in the Ninth Heaven: Not surprised +1. The moment I saw his points, I knew this day would come.]

[Grind King: So that long pause was the shelter upgrade? Level-three upgrades take that long?]

[Jiangnan Rain Guest: The resources required for a level-three shelter are way higher than before. We guessed there might be a qualitative change at level three.]

[Roadside Stray: Too bad the game master is so aloof. I wish he’d enable paid-friend features so we could all pay to see what a level-three shelter looks like.]

[Brother Civil Engineer: That’s a bit much. Anyone who’s upgraded to level two knows that level-three shelters are probably related to the owner’s profession, so it’s a privacy thing.]

…

Qi Yu was still examining the territory module.

The module had an auxiliary planning function, which was very handy.

He opened the preview.

It was still divided into four major areas, only now it didn’t feel cramped at all.

A large area in front of his treehouse shelter was designated as residential and leisure space.

Qi Yu placed the garden here, then set the statue of the Goddess of Nature in the garden.

He thought, with a flower crown on her head and the golden apple tree as her sacred tree, the goddess must love flowers and plants.

That was part of why he chose the garden.

He was no longer a clueless player in this world.

Having read so many books, Qi Yu now understood that the Goddess of Nature was the very “Supreme Mage” and “Master of All Nature and Magical Elements” President Sean spoke of.

In short, both his mage and farm owner professions fell under the goddess’s glory.

He hoped the goddess statue would be happy living in his territory.

It was just a pity that the golden apple sapling had to be planted in the farmland—otherwise, he’d have put it right by the goddess’s side.

The beautiful little lake was right next to the garden, and the two looked surprisingly harmonious together.

The farmland was temporarily placed at the left rear of the shelter, with the emerald peach grove and red maple woods at the right rear.

Even so, the whole territory still felt empty.

The territory module suggested he plant lots of flowers and plants to divide and decorate the land.

Qi Yu thought for a moment, then placed the black tree together with the farmland at the left front of the shelter.

[Your territory is under attack.]

Qi Yu saw a few swiftlets.

Looks like the “safe period” was over.

He didn’t hesitate, setting aside territory arrangements for now and immediately began crafting energy towers.

All the wood dropped by the red maple woods these days was stored in his backpack.

And the emerald peaches had been selling steadily—each morning, he’d send them to Dan Xingyu, and at night, Dan Xingyu would send back green-quality materials.

If he was busy, they might only trade every other day.

In any case, emerald peaches always sold well in District 88, and as time went on, players had more and more resources, so they’d only sell better.

One emerald peach could be traded for twenty units of green-quality resources. A day’s peach yield was enough for him to craft twenty energy towers.

Qi Yu was never short on materials for energy towers.

What had limited him before was territory size and magic crystal stones.

Now the territory was bigger, and he’d gathered enough magic crystal stones from resource zones.

So—full firepower, commence!

Because the area was so vast and empty, Qi Yu ignored the module’s planning and simply crafted 200 energy towers at once, placing them around the outermost edge.

Instant peace of mind.

He burned through 2,000 tier-one magic crystal stones in a single breath.

All you could say was, aside from burning money, energy towers had no downside.

Qi Yu let out a long breath, and just then, the panel gave him a prompt.

The screaming lily-of-the-valley had finished evolving.