Chen Xi stood at the courtyard gate, peeking in with a curious look.
"How can you be so happy just plowing the land by yourself? Is farming really that fun?"
"Yeah," Xu Zhi replied simply, "Farming makes me happy."
Chen Xi snorted in disbelief. "Really now?"
She glanced at Xu Zhi—and then froze, her expression turning into wide-eyed astonishment.
"Wait… what happened to you?"
She stared at him, dumbfounded, as if seeing a completely different person.
Xu Zhi's heart skipped a beat. Did she notice something strange? He had already reverted to his usual appearance, after all.
"What's wrong?" he asked, keeping his tone even.
"It's like… your aura changed," she said slowly. "You look so refined now, like a movie star or a comic book hero. Did you get some cheat ability or something? I knew it—Xu Zhi, I've seen right through you!"
Xu Zhi burst out laughing.
After spending enough time with this quirky girl, he'd realized she had a talent for jumping to the most ridiculous conclusions.
Though his appearance had returned to normal, the subtle change in his demeanor—his newfound confidence, the weight of a world in his eyes—was harder to mask.
He reached out and flicked her forehead.
"My dear girl, you're hallucinating. Don't let your imagination run wild."
Chen Xi blinked, momentarily thrown off. Was she really imagining things?
Still, she quickly bounced back and changed the subject:
"Anyway, aren't you bored? Want to hang out with me sometimes? Go on a date or something?"
Xu Zhi raised a brow. "A date? Are you being serious right now?"
"Of course!" Chen Xi nodded, trying to act nonchalant, though a hint of pride crept into her voice.
"What happened to your ex? The really pretty one."
"We broke up. We were coworkers. I had to quit because of my illness, and we went our separate ways."
Chen Xi's smile faltered. She looked thoughtful for a moment.
"That's really sad… You got a terminal disease at the peak of your life, lost your job and your girlfriend, and came back here to wait out the end all alone."
She paused, then said firmly:
"How about this—I'll be your girlfriend. I'll keep you company during your final days."
Xu Zhi blinked.
"Wait, are you pitying me?"
He had pitied himself once. Back then, he'd felt like the world had gone gray, like everything he'd worked for had crumbled. But things were different now. Even if he was dying, he had hope. With the sandbox world, a few months of real time equaled thousands of years. That was enough time to change everything.
"I do feel sorry for you," Chen Xi admitted. "But that's not all."
She took a deep breath and said, with surprising sincerity:
"I'm also fulfilling a childhood dream. You were always my idol, you know? Now that I don't have to be embarrassed about it, I can finally say it. I just want to make your final days a little warmer."
She raised her hand, ticking her fingers off one by one:
"I can cook, go shopping with you, chat, keep you company. I'll make sure you're not lonely."
Xu Zhi stared at her, half amused, half baffled.
"My final days, huh? Are you seriously offering to take on the responsibilities of a girlfriend?"
Chen Xi took a quick step back, clutching her chest in mock alarm.
"What are you thinking?! It'll be a pure relationship, okay? Are you seriously trying to take my first time just because you're dying?"
Xu Zhi: "..."
So that's what all those meals were about. Scheming girls these days really had no shame.
She added matter-of-factly, "It's just a casual thing, right? Then we can be casual boyfriend and girlfriend. A brief, beautiful romance. If you don't say no, I'll take it as a yes."
Xu Zhi shrugged.
"Fine."
He wasn't particularly interested in her that way. Maybe because she felt too familiar, too much like home. His heart didn't race around her. But she was earnest and weird and cooked decent food, so he didn't mind going along with it.
Chen Xi clapped her hands together.
"Great! Then come with me to my high school reunion in a few days?"
She played with her fingers, looking shyly excited.
"You're so handsome now, girls will definitely stare. If I show up with you, my friends will be so jealous."
Xu Zhi: "???"
So looks were all that mattered?
"Let's go shopping!" she declared. "We'll buy some nice, expensive clothes and I'll show off like crazy. You've been farming this whole time, so I'm sure you've still got plenty of money saved up. Might as well spend it all on me before you die!"
…Where was her conscience?
Xu Zhi realized with a blank expression that he'd been thoroughly scammed. All she wanted was a fashion model and a shopping sponsor.
Xu Zhi ended up riding pillion on her scooter as they zipped into town.
After careful budgeting, they each bought a stylish outfit—300 yuan apiece. By the time they'd walked the shopping district and burned through their energy, they were both exhausted.
They hopped back on the scooter and headed home.
Xu Zhi leaned back and let out a quiet laugh.
"So I have a casual girlfriend now…"
Maybe it was better to think of her as a caretaker. Despite her chaotic energy, she was consistent with her meals and didn't let him eat out.
And with stomach cancer, nutrition mattered. Takeout was too greasy and unsanitary anyway.
Back home, he returned to his courtyard sandbox. He'd been studying the Evil Eye species, which still lingered despite the player being killed.
They were about to go extinct.
And rightfully so—their oversized eyeballs consumed most of their nutrients. All that for slightly better vision. No wonder natural selection was taking them out.
"Still…" Xu Zhi mused, "could they become a supernatural species?"
The Mother Hive responded:
"Yes. Despite their deformities, they possess abnormally high mental energy due to the size of their eyes."
That made Xu Zhi pause.
Left alone, these fragile creatures would surely die out. But perhaps, like the Bugapes, they could become powerful if nurtured through their early stages.
He considered transferring them to the large sandbox.
It would require new terrain though—the big sandbox was too uniform. No deserts, no swamps. Time to diversify.
He decided to add a swamp roughly ten square meters wide.
To ant-sized creatures, this was a sprawling marsh the size of a mountain range.
"And how would that terrain form?" Xu Zhi muttered.
"After the Great Flood, stagnant seawater collecting into muddy wetlands makes perfect sense. And with all the silt, it'd be insanely fertile."
He'd need fertilizer.
Farmyard fertilizer.
The thought of using his own waste made his stomach churn. He imagined future intelligent species exploring the dark swamp… unaware that they were traipsing through a giant toilet.
No thanks.
Instead, he paid a visit to Chen Xi's house next door and asked Mrs. Li for animal manure—chicken or cow dung, anything but human waste.
Armed with a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of organic material, he got to work on terraforming a ten-square-meter swamp.
The sandbox was about to get a whole lot messier.