Xingtie: My silly online friend is actually a raccoon!

50 patrol arrows.

This is all of Lu Ze's current assets.

He just found a job as a porter at the floating port terminal on the bulletin board outside the weigh station.

The bulletin board was a single floating jade screen, with a dense array of task items scrolling slowly across it, ranging from Starship cargo hold inventory clerks to temporary transcribers from the Tabushi, covering all sorts of tasks.

Lu Ze flipped through the list one by one and found that the dockworker position had the lowest entry requirements.

No professional skills or credit guarantees are required; the job description is so simple it can be summed up in a single line:

Simply load all the goods into the Starship.

The most important thing is that it's paid daily; you get paid as soon as you finish moving the goods.

He didn't know how much purchasing power 50 patrolmen had, but he wasn't in a position to be picky right now. He noted down the address and quickly headed toward the port.

More than an hour later, Lu Ze took the 50 patrol arrows from the dock supervisor, looked down at his already clean clothes, and saw that he hadn't even broken a sweat.

It was indeed quite easy. For ordinary people, those goods would be ridiculously heavy, but for a Foundation Establishment cultivator like him, carrying a few large boxes was no different from carrying a few bags of fruit.

He dusted off his trousers, took the pen he had brought into this world with him—his first real pot of gold—and walked out of the dock.

Lu Ze stopped as he passed a food stall.

The stall had a row of skewers that looked exactly like candied hawthorns, their glistening sugar shells gleaming in the sunlight.

He looked closer and discovered that the fruit had a fine texture on its surface.

When the shopkeeper saw him stop, he enthusiastically introduced the product as a "Qiongshi bird string," explaining that the fruit grows on the tail of the Qiongshi bird.

The idea of ​​plant fruits growing on animals is quite abstract, this otherworldly version of candied hawthorn.

"How much?"

Lu Ze wanted to try it, and since he was still hungry, having some skewers to tide him over wouldn't be bad.

"Two patrol coins or four hundred credits, young man, which payment method would you like to use?" the boss said with a smile.

Lu Ze took out the patrol arrows he had just received and hadn't even warmed up yet, took out two and bought a string of them, then took a big bite.

The sugar coating cracked open, and the sweet and sour fruit burst on the tongue, tasting exactly like the candied hawthorn I remembered.

He chewed as he took out his phone and sent a message to Xing.

[Jin Xing's son-in-law: By the way, is Qing Que still with you? Ask Fu Xuan what he likes; you can't ask for help empty-handed.]

He had to go back to the freight route that afternoon to wait for Fu Xuan. After all, Fu Xuan was a high-ranking official from the Imperial Divination Bureau, a civil servant who had helped him out of a predicament. It would be unreasonable for him to go to meet him empty-handed.

But you should always ask clearly what to send, lest you send the wrong thing and cause the opposite of what you want.

[Galaxy Baseball Man: What are you talking about?! We just decided to go to the teahouse for tea and breakfast, we've only just sat down, and we haven't even ordered yet! Do you think Qingque is still with me?]

Lu Ze paused for a moment as he bit the string of prawns.

He looked down at the bamboo skewer in his hand, then held his phone up to his eyes to confirm the message again.

He'd been moving goods for over an hour, while Xing had only just sat down?

[Jin Xing's son-in-law: Is it that far? We've been walking for almost two hours.]

[Galaxy Baseball Man: ?]

[Jin Xing's son-in-law: ?]

Lu Ze stared at the two question marks side by side on the screen.

When I type a question mark, it doesn't mean I have a problem; it means I think you have a problem.

He swallowed the fruit in his mouth and started typing rapidly.

[Jin Xing's son-in-law: What happened? How much time has passed on your end?]

[Galaxy Batman: About ten minutes...]

Lu Ze stared at that line of text for several seconds.

ten minutes.

More than an hour had passed for him, while only ten minutes had passed for Xing.

The time flow rates on both sides are completely different.

What's even stranger is that if the time flow on both sides is always out of sync, how do they manage to make a real-time call?

His finger hovered above the screen for a moment, then he sent the question.

[Jin Xing's son-in-law: Wait a minute, how can we communicate normally if our time flows differently?]

[Galaxy Baseball Man: Blue Sparrow speculates that the timelines might have already aligned when we made contact.]

Lu Ze looked down at the reply, his feelings complicated.

This chat software also has this intelligent adjustment function—it automatically synchronizes time flow when you are in contact, and goes its own way when you are not in contact.

Should he also praise this thing for being quite intelligent?

Lu Ze took the last bite of the kebab skewer and threw the bamboo skewer into the roadside trash can.