With 629 yuan, Ma Lu placed another order on Pinduoduo for 10,000 plastic bags, totaling 59 yuan and 40 cents. This boils down to an average cost of less than 0.6 cents per bag.
He then spent another 115 yuan to rent a gas cylinder, with a deposit of 100 yuan. As for the rest, he needed to decide what to sell before he could make further purchases.
More precisely, it depended on what ingredients Ma Lu could acquire from the other side.
Regarding this, Ma Lu already had some preliminary targets and later consulted Old Wang about some matters related to Bug Eggs and traversing dimensions.
Old Wang had lost a large amount of data due to sector damage, but even so, he still provided some useful information.
Ma Lu got some paper and a pen and summarized the information into seven rules.
1. Bug Eggs require charging and have a cooldown period, they can only be used once a week.
2. Once a dimension has been visited, it can be visited repeatedly, essentially establishing a flight path. Currently, the Bug Egg can only open one such path.
3. The maximum duration of each stay in a Different Dimension is 12 hours and will not exceed that. A fatal injury may end the visit prematurely.
4. In principle, users cannot carry items from their own dimension to a Different Dimension and vice versa, but the four items provided by Old Wang are not subject to this restriction.
5. Ingredients stored in the [Collection Bag] can be brought back to the original dimension. The [Collection Bag] can only store ingredients and if the user dies, ingredients in the [Collection Bag] cannot be brought back.
6. Death does not result in the loss of the four items provided by Old Wang.
7. Maintain a good mood.
After writing this, Ma Lu looked at the paper again and felt that the conclusions were quite clear.
This was a typical time management game. In simple terms, it was a type of game that involved allocating limited time efficiently to maximize output.
The college entrance examination is an example of this. In this game, each examinee needs to make decisions, allocating three years to different subjects, aiming to achieve the best results in the final exam.
Ma Lu actually quite liked time management games, although he used to get sleepy as soon as he hit the books and only attended an ordinary university after graduating high school.
However, he had his strong points: good at socializing, excellent reflexes and adaptability to environments, and flexible in dealing with situations. Especially the last point was evident from his bold decision to bring Old Wang home.
So, in a sense, he was indeed quite suited for the job of ingredient collection.
After summarizing, Ma Lu noticed that the Bug Egg on the other side had also completed charging.
But he didn't rush to set out. He first ordered takeout to fill his stomach and then slept for two hours to ensure that both his body and mind were in their best state. Only then did he sit cross-legged on the sofa under Old Wang's guidance.
He closed his eyes and placed the white egg above his head, trying to enter a focused state of meditation.
"Eggs span the universe, free flow of eggs!"
As Ma Lu discarded all distractions and uttered this phrase, he felt the egg above his head seemed to throb, as if responding to him.
In his mind, which had been empty, suddenly thousands of eggs appeared—chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, as well as snake eggs, ostrich eggs, dinosaur eggs...
Besides these eggs, which Ma Lu could name, there were many he had never seen before, such as transparent eggs, glowing eggs, and giant eggs floating in space like planets.
These familiar and unfamiliar eggs gathered together, forming a magnificent tapestry of eggs that began to slowly rotate around the white chicken egg above his head.
However, before Ma Lu could truly appreciate it, one of the connecting lines lit up.
The next instant, Ma Lu felt light as if something was pulling him, whisking him rapidly towards the other end of the light path until he collided head-on with a scaly egg.
Immediately, a wave of heat hit him in the face. Opening his eyes, Ma Lu realized he was now sitting in a desert.
Wherever he looked, there was gravel, reminiscent of a vast, dim sea of yellow, with the undulating dunes like the waves of the sea.
After making sure there were no dangers nearby, Ma Lu looked down to check his body.
Although according to the rules, he couldn't bring anything other than the four pieces of equipment provided by Old Wang to this dimension, the Bug Egg had left him with a bit of dignity, bestowing him with the most ordinary set of clothes so that he wasn't bare-bottomed.
This outfit looked even more basic than Uniqlo's simplest design, with no patterns or designs, one color from head to toe.
That would have been fine, but the clothing was black, which is excellent at absorbing heat, and wearing it made Ma Lu feel like he was in an oven.
When he looked up, to his surprise, there were two suns hanging in the sky.
The red and yellow suns seemed to remind Ma Lu that he was no longer on Earth.
At the same time, a countdown appeared on the orange bracelet on his right wrist.
As Ma Lu's gaze shifted to the bracelet, the numbers jumped from 11:59 to 11:58, and he knew that when the countdown reached zero, his journey in this different dimension would also come to an end.
In reality, the [Traveler's Bracelet] had more uses than just this one; it also had built-in functions like a translator, thermometer, spirit level, among various other odd features, and Old Wang had pre-stored the entire "Multiverse Ingredients Compendium" in it.
After initiating the detection mode, the [Traveler's Bracelet] could scan a circular area with a radius of twenty meters to locate potential ingredients.
Thinking of this, Ma Lu casually scanned the area, but the bracelet displayed [No Target Object Found].
Ma Lu wasn't surprised by this result, as this place looked barren except for sand—no plants, no water sources, filled with monotony and deathly silence.
It was hard to imagine that such a harsh natural environment could nurture any decent ingredients.
Off to a bad start, Ma Lu scratched his head.
Beyond the difficulty of finding ingredients, the survival issues he now faced were also severe.
The two suns above were no joke; the [Traveler's Bracelet] showed that the environmental temperature around him had reached 46.5°C, and within just a few minutes, Ma Lu's exposed skin was already prickling.
If he didn't quickly find a place to take shelter from the heat, Ma Lu reckoned he wouldn't last until the countdown finished.
However, as he looked around, all he could see were sand dunes extending in every direction, and the hot wind continuously blew sand into his nose and mouth.
What he initially thought would be a sightseeing trip to an alternate world had turned into a wilderness survival challenge, leaving Ma Lu somewhat helpless. Although dying wouldn't be a loss, he wouldn't be able to use the Bug Egg again for six days, and being dehydrated by two suns certainly wasn't on his wish list.
Ma Lu decided to climb the nearby dune to get a better view, hoping he might see something that wasn't visible from below.
But before he could even begin to move, he made a new discovery: a dune in the distance seemed to be moving.