Hall also gave him some advice: “Carry a thousand bucks in cash with you. If someone tries to rob you, just give them the money. The security around Heruheluwei is good—once they get the money, they won’t kill you.”

What the hell do you mean by good security? Do you guys have a misunderstanding about the word ‘good’? Samuel Young really wanted to take them to China for a while so they could experience what real security is.

With cash and a dagger, he ran toward the Tree of Life.

It was already dark, but the sky was cloudless.

The Milky Way hung upside down in the sky, endless stars twinkling, flickering in and out, shining together.

They silently adorned the boundless night sky, covering the vast earth. Samuel Young looked up—they were right above his head.

When he ran to the Tree of Life with his flashlight, the beam flickered, and a green, ghostly face appeared hanging upside down from the tree.

Samuel Young sobered up instantly, his wrist trembling so much he almost flung the flashlight away.

“Lord Mayor, why are you only just back?” Nate asked, blinking his big eyes.

Maybe he thought he looked cute, but Samuel Young only felt a ghostly chill: “Scared me to death, scared me to death—no, do you realize you almost died? I nearly stabbed you with my dagger! What the hell are you doing hanging upside down in the tree?”

“Playing?”

“Play my ass. Get down. Have you been up there drinking all the Spring of Life?” Samuel Young asked.

Nate shook his head. “No, I didn’t drink it.”

Samuel Young breathed a sigh of relief.

Nate added, “I ate it with bananas.”

“Damn it, I’m going to eat you!”

Back under the Tree of Life, Samuel Young felt a peace of mind he hadn’t had in the past two days.

This was his territory now—a thousand acres, over six thousand mu of land, all his!

Peace of mind aside, there were a lot of mosquitoes in the grass, especially at night. Swarms of them attacked him like kamikaze idiots going after an American aircraft carrier, relentlessly swarming his outstretched hand.

Seeing things were getting out of hand, Samuel Young left a warning—‘If you touch the Spring of Life again, I’ll kill you’—for Nate and hurriedly ran off.

The next morning, waking up at the inn, the tree spirit panel popped up again: [Young Lord, aren’t you ashamed to sleep on the streets every day? Build a house! Protect the Tree of Life!]

Samuel Young was annoyed: “Who’s sleeping on the street? I’m living comfortably here, why should I build a house? And why do I feel like I’m not the master of the Tree of Life, but its bodyguard?”

[Young Lord, aren’t you ashamed to sleep outside the city every day? Build a house! Protect the Tree of Life! (There’s a reward)]

“I’ll start building a house today!”

Chapter 9: Time to Build a House

Money is hard to earn, shit is hard to eat. Words are easy, things are hard to do.

Samuel Young didn’t know who said that, but it made a lot of sense.

Building a house on a grassland—now that’s not easy.

Standing under the tree, gazing around, he felt a bit lost for a few seconds, then decisively climbed up the tree and did a clean sweep, licking up all the accumulated Spring of Life.

The emerald spring water was icy cold, with a unique taste, like the fresh scent of grass and trees.

As the spring water entered his stomach, a feeling of fullness surged through him, making him feel twice as strong and especially energetic. Also, when he closed his eyes, it was no longer just darkness—now, in the darkness, he saw a drop of emerald water.

His constitution began to change. This darkness was his mana pool, and that drop of green water was the magic he had absorbed.

That bit of magic was enough to cast a transformation spell.

He first familiarized himself with arcane knowledge, then pictured a dark-skinned version of Jay Chou in his mind, and cast a transformation spell on the jumpy Nate: Come out, my bro.

A bit of magic turned into green mist and vanished. When he opened his eyes and looked closely, wasn’t that a dark-skinned version of Tony Oki...

A dark-skinned Tony Oki was fine too, as long as the goblin looked human.

With the jumpy Tony Oki Nate in tow, he compared the printed satellite map and took a lap around his territory. Actually, even without the map, he wouldn’t have mistaken his land—the government had planted lots of wooden stakes on the grassland as boundary markers.

A thousand acres isn’t huge, but it’s not small either. One lap was about eight kilometers. After drinking from the Spring of Life, Lord Young was full of energy and finished the lap in just over an hour.

The Tree of Life had a strong survival instinct and was right in the center of the territory.

So Samuel Young had to build his house next to the Tree of Life. The simplest way was to buy a scrapped shipping container, cut two holes for a door and a window, install an air conditioner, and it’d be ready to use.

But he felt that was too half-hearted—after all, he was the lord of an elven city.

Another option was to build a prefab steel house, like the one he’d stayed in at the Cape Plant Reserve.

But he was really sick of those—they had terrible insulation, and once the sun hit, the inside turned into a steamer. At noon, you could wash a piece of steel on the roof and fry an egg right on it.

Take advice, eat well—Lord Young went to town to find Mason and asked if he had any suggestions.

Mason laughed, “You’ve come to the right guy, brother. When it comes to building houses, I really know my stuff. If I didn’t love food so much, I’d probably have become an engineer on a construction crew by now. Anyway, back to the point—when I was learning to make sadza in Zimbabwe, I saw the local mud-and-thatch houses. You know those, right?”