Li Zheng had no idea what was happening over at Phoenix Mountain, nor did he want to know.
"But this Treasure Chest critical hit was truly unexpected. I didn't think it was possible to get a Gold-Level item from a Bronze Treasure Chest."
Li Zheng's emotions were still surging.
Although this time it only yielded a material-type item,
no one knows if a Treasure Chest critical hit might yield a blueprint one day.
"I wonder what level of item could be obtained from a Gold-Level Chest critical hit."
Li Zheng daydreamed with a look of longing in his eyes.
After all, with the daily chance to extract from a Treasure Chest, as long as he survived diligently in the Matrix Realm, there would come a day he would witness an advanced Treasure Chest critical hit.
"Hey, that's far off. Dreaming about it now seems a bit premature."
Li Zheng felt he might be getting ahead of himself, grinned self-deprecatingly, calmed his surging emotions, and tried hard to remain composed.
"The main focus now is to make the Gravity Shoes first, then start today's exploration."
Li Zheng casually took out the Gravity Shoes blueprint, invoked the crafting page, and began to forge.
"Though I have plenty of food, my water supply has never kept up. The two bottles of water from the initial supplies have been down to one by now."
While waiting for the equipment to be crafted, Li Zheng also pondered the focus of today's exploration.
"With 500ml of water, if I ration it, I can indeed get through today. But if there's a chance, it's better to procure more during subsequent explorations as a precaution."
"Behind the metal door above is a room with food. Now that the Gravity Shoes are crafted, I'll start from there."
With this in mind, the system displayed that the blueprint had been crafted.
A pair of metallic shoes appeared before Li Zheng.
The shoes were entirely metallic white, seeming like just plain metal shoes, and appeared somewhat hefty.
Trying them on, Li Zheng was surprised to find they fit perfectly and, though made of metal, were much softer than he had imagined, like wearing only a thin layer of iron sheet.
The heels of the two shoes each had a hidden compartment—the Power Core compartment—since there were two Power Cores among the crafting materials, unlike the water purifier, they could be used directly.
"Let's test the effect."
Reverse!
As Li Zheng silently thought, he suddenly felt his head heavy and feet light, and he instantly fell toward the ceiling.
"Oh crap, I screwed up! I forgot to change direction!"
Seeing his forehead about to hit the ceiling, Li Zheng quickly thought of reversing again, returning the gravity to normal.
Bam!
He landed heavily.
In less than two seconds, Li Zheng had gone back and forth from a height of three meters.
This time falling from three meters high, luckily, he had mentally prepared all his muscles. Otherwise, carelessness could have caused fractures.
"This isn't how these shoes should be used."
Li Zheng, still shaken, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
After some careful thinking, he moved to a corner of the room, pressing himself against the wall.
"Turn!"
He turned only ninety degrees this time, changing the direction of gravity, landing on the wall horizontally.
Standing up from the wall, he walked, ran, and jumped.
Every movement felt like he was walking on flat ground.
"I see now!"
Li Zheng looked impressively upright standing on the wall, even more exaggerated than the rooftop stunts from martial arts novels.
"Let's try the ceiling next."
Arriving at the wall-ceiling corner, he repeated the same trick.
This time, Li Zheng successfully reached the ceiling, hanging upside down like a resting bat.
Since the Gravity Shoes altered the gravitational direction around him, even while hanging upside down, he didn't experience blood rushing to his head.
After a few more tries, Li Zheng familiarized himself with the operations, already able to switch gravity without pausing.
From ground to wall, as long as he stepped one foot up, gravity would change seamlessly.
After walking a complete lap along the walls and ceiling, Li Zheng returned to the capsule residence and called out Sakura.
"Sakura, let's go."
"Yay, yay."
Sakura obediently flew up and climbed into Li Zheng's shirt pocket, sticking out its little head.
Throwing his shoes into the capsule residence and then shrinking it down, Li Zheng skillfully used the Gravity Shoes to quickly open the metallic door above.
"Yay?"
Standing before the metallic door, Sakura grasped the pocket edge with its tiny pink claws, peering at the completely flipped world with curiosity in its eyes.
It didn't understand how Li Zheng had managed it.
"Yay, yay!"
It wanted to crawl out and try it itself, to see if it could stand upside down on the ceiling.
Li Zheng hurriedly held it down and cautioned, "Don't move."
Perhaps because Sakura was stuck in his inside pocket, the gravitational change also enveloped her.
If it were to dash out recklessly, given its muddled nature, it might easily crash to the ground and end up with a bumped head.
The metal door was on the ceiling. Li Zheng coming over upside down meant it was now at his feet.
Just like the door on the ground below that he dared not descend through usually, he now faced the challenge of this one above.
"I've got it!"
After pondering for a moment, Li Zheng sat by the door, first inserting his feet into the light curtain, lowering his body bit by bit with his hands on the door frame.
Once his waist passed through, Li Zheng twisted his body into a shrimp shape, maintaining the Gravity Shoes' current state while letting go with his hands.
Step!
The light curtain dispersed, and his feet landed—all of a sudden an upside-down room appeared before Li Zheng.
"It works!"
Seeing his method effective, Li Zheng stopped hesitating and descended along the wall.
Everything returned to a normal viewing angle, and Li Zheng headed straight to the resource storage tank in the middle of the room.
This room wasn't big and quite empty, only a solitary storage tank stood there.
Before he reached it, the detector displayed information.
[Resource Storage Tank, a piece of equipment used to store food in the Matrix. There might still be some items left inside.
Before leaving after taking everything, it is recommended to destroy it. It may yield some surprises.]
"Huh?"
Li Zheng was surprised, "It's much more functional after upgrading than I thought. At the Silver Level, it only gave hints up to the first section, similar to the Matrix's system info. Now it's suggesting that these devices can be destroyed?"
However, he had already discovered this by accident when exploring the first room yesterday, so this function was somewhat redundant for him.
"If only it could advise on how to dismantle them to preserve the essential materials as much as possible… But if it really has that function, its development must require further upgrades."
Li Zheng muttered as he opened the storage tank.
The 'fridge' door opened, and after a quick glance, Li Zheng paused slightly.
There was indeed plenty inside this 'fridge' this time, almost filled to the brim.
Unlike the latter two he disassembled yesterday, which were shockingly empty.
With a cursory glance, he couldn't spot any water bottles, leaving Li Zheng mildly disappointed.
He started removing the contents one by one.
Five Luoshen Flowers.
Two Honey Fruits.
One Pomegranate Melon.
...
"Dripping Spider Gland? What's this thing?"
Li Zheng took out a pale yellow object, similar to pig stomach, from the storage tank.
[Dripping Spider Gland, Silver Level, material.
Has a small chance of being obtained by decomposing Elite Level Dripping Spiders, can be used to craft certain items.]
[Dripping Spider Gland, Silver Level, material/special item.
Has a small chance of being obtained by decomposing Elite Level Dripping Spiders, can be used to craft certain items.
If consumed by Genetic Beasts, there's a 50% chance of gaining one ability of the Dripping Spider.]
Two pieces of information appeared before Li Zheng.
The first was from the Matrix Game System prompt.
The second was from the detector's feedback.
"The detector, even at Silver Level, could provide item information, but it was always the same as what the Matrix System gave."
Li Zheng rubbed his chin. "But after upgrading to Gold, it can now even mention some hidden uses for unfamiliar items?"
He noticed something when he sent the Snake Grass Needle info to Phoenix Mountain earlier.
If an item had unknown effects, the Matrix System wouldn't provide any hints.
Only after you tried it out would the system add the known effects to the item information.
Since Phoenix Mountain hadn't seen a Snake Grass Needle before, the system showed only the basic info when he looked at it.
Initially, Li Zheng saw the same content.
But after he defeated the Terror Bat and experimented with the Snake Grass Needle, the Matrix System began showing him different information.
However, with the Gold-Level detector, it indicates that with some unseen items, Li Zheng can skip the trial-and-error phase and know its use in advance!