After finishing breakfast, Mason headed out to the plains a short distance from the house.
He set up a simple temporary workstation. A few moments later, the Crafting Table spat out an Iron Shovel.
He weighed it in his hand.
As usual, he couldn't feel the weight of a cubic meter of solid iron ore. It felt no heavier than a standard gardening hoe.
Whether this was because Minecraft's physics engine was fundamentally incomplete, or because he himself had been physically assimilated into the superhuman "Steve" physique, it was impossible to tell without a proper frame of reference.
He put the thought aside and focused on the task at hand.
In the world of Minecraft, water was a magical substance.
If you dug a 2x2 hole and placed a bucket of water in two opposite diagonal corners, the small pool would generate an endless, self-replenishing supply of water.
Players simply called it an "Infinite Water Source."
"So that's how it works. That is incredibly strange," Keqing murmured, marveling at the unique physics of the Minecraft world as Mason explained the concept.
The Iron Shovel dug fast.
In less than half an hour, Mason had excavated a 9x9 pool, one to two blocks deep.
In theory, a simple 2x2 hole was all he needed for farming.
But since they were living in a realistic Minecraft world, a tiny 2x2 puddle felt far too stingy. Plus, water in Minecraft essentially never got dirty. After a long day of farming, he and Keqing could use this as an outdoor pool for a shared bath—a perfect way to relax.
However, Mason soon paid the price for his grand ambitions.
"How many buckets has it been? Why isn't it full yet?"
He stared at the pool, which was still full of flowing water currents rather than settling into a flat, still surface. He was thoroughly confused.
He had made dozens of trips. Logically, even a 9x9 pool should have been full by now.
If he hadn't used the nesting-doll method—building a small 2x2 infinite water source right next to the big pool to draw from—the sheer distance of running back and forth to the river would have exhausted him.
"Sigh. I did this to myself. Keep going."
Resigned to his fate, Mason obediently kept dumping water into the pool.
Several dozen buckets later, the water level finally leveled out, settling into the perfectly flat, still surface of a massive infinite water pool.
"Games are games, and reality is reality. So far, there are just too many ways this world deviates from the original game."
Mason sighed. He realized he could no longer treat this world purely with a gamer's mindset. He needed to treat nature with the respect it deserved.
He took out some Dirt blocks, filled in the hardworking little 2x2 water source to destroy it, and then filled his three Iron Buckets from the new grand pool.
The wasteland reclamation operation had officially begun!
...
Farming was an instinct coded into the DNA of the Chinese people.
And in the world of Minecraft, farming was the indispensable logistical backbone that supported all adventuring.
In this blocky world, farming wasn't nearly as complicated as reality.
A single block of water could irrigate a 9x9 square around it, perfectly sustaining eighty blocks of farmland.
You planted the seeds, ignored them for a few days, harvested them when they matured, and then replanted.
No need to worry about pests. No need to worry about fertilizer. It was the ultimate lazy man's agriculture.
Speaking of which, the Dragon's Adventure modpack includes the Farmer's Delight mod.
Halfway through tilling the soil, Mason realized his variety of seeds was pitifully small. If they couldn't grow their own daily fruits and vegetables, constantly buying them from the General Store was going to be a massive drain on their finances.
The non-vanilla items in the store were sold in stingy batches of twelve. It was a complete rip-off.
But after some thought, Mason decided against recklessly loading the modpack just for a little convenience.
It wasn't that he wanted to keep it hidden.
Dragon's Adventure was a massive kitchen-sink modpack that blended survival, adventure, farming, and magic. It contained nearly two hundred mods, and it was the pack Mason had played the most in his past life.
And precisely because he had played it so much, he knew exactly how complicated things could get.
You couldn't selectively unpack a modpack. Loading it was like unzipping a massive compressed file all at once.
If he activated it, one or two hundred mods would inject themselves into the world simultaneously. The impact on their current reality would be catastrophic.
For all he knew, a Dragon Roost could spawn right next to the Forest Cottage, or a massive subterranean dungeon could generate directly beneath their basement.
God only knew if the mutated Peaceful Mode of this realistic Minecraft world would be enough to suppress the wrath of a spawning dragon.
He had absolutely no desire to die alongside his newly-acquired wife because they got caught in an unidentified dragon's AoE attack.
Better to play it safe. The General Store is open now anyway. I'll wait until we grind out two sets of Diamond Armor before I even think about messing with supernatural creatures.
Pushing the intrusive thoughts out of his mind, Mason went back to swinging his Iron Hoe.
The results were gratifying.
In the single hour left of the morning, he tilled three plots of land. With eighty usable blocks per plot, he had 240 blocks ready for planting.
In the afternoon, Keqing, unable to sit idle, came out to join him.
Working together, they plowed another seventeen plots. Along the way, they cleared out a massive swath of tall grass, gathering enough Wheat Seeds to plant across the entire expanse of tilled soil.
That night, a full moon hung high in the sky.
Mason and Keqing sat in the temporary outdoor workstation, each holding a skewer of grilled fish for dinner.
"Finally done. Now we just wait for the harvest."
Mason ran the numbers in his head.
They had plowed a total of 1,600 blocks of farmland. It sounded massive, but in reality, it was less than half an acre.
Due to the differences between reality and the game, each block currently yielded between one and three units of Wheat, with each unit weighing about 500 grams.
Subtracting the food he and Keqing consumed daily, every 100 blocks of land would yield about 200 units of sellable Wheat. A single growth cycle across all their land would produce 3,200 units of Wheat, which converted to roughly 2,500 World Coins.
That came out to an earning efficiency of 500 coins per day.
It was infinitely faster than fishing up nothing but garbage and pufferfish!
...
Day 8 in the Minecraft World.
Completed: Phase 1 Farmland Reclamation. Expected Wheat yield: 3,200 units/cycle. Exchange value: 2,500 World Coins.
World Coin Balance: Keqing (400), Mason (650).
Next Objective: Phase 2 Underground Mine Expansion. Locate and mine Diamonds.
...
Exhausted from a full day of manual labor, neither Mason nor Keqing had any energy left to explore the mysteries of life that night.
Mason sat at the desk, using pen and paper bought from the General Store to log the day's progress and map out future plans.
Behind him, Keqing wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her chin on the top of his head.
"Are you worried about going down into the mines tomorrow?"
Mason reached up and gently held the soft hands resting against his neck. The tension between his brows eased slightly.
"Yeah. This world is too big, far more realistic than the game. We don't have a depth meter or a coordinate system. Trying to dig down and hit diamonds is basically going to be a massive gamble of time and luck."
"Maybe we should save up and buy a Vision first?" Keqing suggested. "I can feel that my abilities aren't heavily restricted in this world. If you could awaken a Geo Vision, the elemental resonance should make excavating and locating ore veins much easier, right?"
Having grown up in a world defined by supernatural abilities, Keqing's approach to problem-solving naturally drifted toward Teyvat's elemental systems—specifically, the earth-shaping powers of Geo Vision holders.
"Huh?" Mason blinked. "I don't know the exact mechanics of how that would translate here, but it actually sounds entirely plausible."
"The only problem is the lore," he added. "A person can't choose their Vision's element. The odds of me perfectly rolling a Geo Vision are exactly one in seven."
"That's still much better odds than digging blindly through the entire world looking for diamonds, isn't it?"
Mason nodded slowly.
He picked up his pen, scratched out the immediate mining operation, and inserted a new short-term goal right above it.
Expand farmland. Accumulate funds. Purchase a Vision!