Jing Shu's head gave a sharp boom, a sudden pressure as if something had locked into place deep within her mind, and then she blacked out completely, her body slumping to the floor beside her bed.
That was right. To activate this portable space, there was no need for blood sacrifice, no need for chanting spells or ancient rituals. All it took was solving the scrambled Cube within the time limit, proving a specific mastery over its form. Once completed, it would take root in her spiritual world, a permanent fixture in her consciousness, and recognize her as its master, forging a bond she could feel as a steady, humming presence.
Who could ever imagine that a simple toy Cube, a plastic puzzle bought in a mall, could contain an entire dimension, a pocket universe bound by its own logic? Other people's spaces, in the stories that had trickled through the apocalypse, were always housed in rings, bracelets, necklaces, or, at the most bizarre, directly in their minds as a psychic ability, a gift from the chaos.
But Jing Shu's Cube space came with such harsh activation conditions. Without her rebirth, without the knowledge and the desperate, practiced speed born of a decade of boredom and despair, there was no way anyone could ever discover it. It would have remained a forgotten toy, its secret dying with her.
No matter what, fate had shifted at last. The weight of that truth settled over her, a tangible relief.
When Jing Shu woke again, it was to the shrill, insistent ringing of her phone. The sound felt like a death knell from another life, blaring endlessly until she staggered up from the floor, her limbs stiff. She set down the Cube that had now transformed from a four-layer to a five-layer form, its complexity increased, a silent marker of her success. Then she picked up her phone. The caller ID lit up: Zhu Zhengqi.
Her mind drifted back, and memories from ten years ago, fuzzy at the edges, gradually resurfaced with a cold clarity as she pressed the answer button.
"Hello? Why didn't you pick up? I've got great news for you!" Zhu Zhengqi's voice boomed with artificial excitement, too loud in her quiet room. "I found 'StarDream Entertainment' to sign you! They'll handle everything: promotion, marketing team, public persona, packaging, the whole package! It's pricey, sure, but all the hottest idols right now? They were pushed out by this company. Sister, you're finally going to blow up!"
Jing Shu's memory stirred. As a child, her dream had always been to become a star, to stand under bright lights. Later, she entered a third-tier art academy in Wu City, only to realize that being an actress or a celebrity wasn't so simple. You needed either a powerful father, a sugar daddy, or a soul so unique that it dazzled others. She had none of those.
Because beautiful faces were everywhere, a common currency, but a truly fascinating soul was one in ten thousand, a rare flame.
Aside from her looks, Jing Shu had nothing else of note, or so she had believed back then. So she lowered her expectations. After graduation, she tried to livestream from home, sitting before a cheap camera, hoping to become a popular streamer. Unfortunately, no one watched, the viewer count a stubborn zero. Desperate, she asked for help from her father's colleague's son, Zhu Zhengqi, who found her a marketing team. Their initial plan was to use fake popularity, buying bot followers, spamming comments, showering her stream with fake tips, inflating her numbers to create an illusion of success.
In short, it was all smoke and mirrors. They pretended she was already popular to lure in real fans, to create a bandwagon for others to jump onto.
"The electronic contract is already in your inbox. Go print it out, sign it, press your fingerprint, then wire over a three hundred thousand deposit. The clock's ticking, this offer won't last.
Hello? Jing Shu? Say something, will you?"
Jing Shu narrowed her eyes, sifting through her memories, the details now sharp as broken glass. In her previous life, when she got this call from Zhu Zhengqi, she had been overjoyed, her heart soaring. Her parents supported her dream, scraping together money by selling their car and even their small shop to fund her attempt at becoming an influencer. Through fabricated personas, endless marketing hype, and chat rooms filled with tens of thousands of water army trolls stirring fake engagement, she did manage to become popular, for a fleeting moment.
But just as advertising deals started rolling in, the apocalypse came, crashing over the world like a black wave. Her brief fame was snuffed out instantly, meaningless. It had been nothing but bitter misfortune, a costly detour.
In this life, Jing Shu had no interest in becoming a celebrity or a livestream star. Such dreams were ghosts from a dead world.
"Zhu Zhengqi, thank you for everything. You've done a lot for me these past weeks." Her voice was calm, flat, devoid of its old eager warmth. "But I've suddenly decided, I don't want to be an influencer anymore. I'll explain things to my father and Uncle myself."
Zhu Zhengqi's tone spiked with urgency, a salesman sensing a sale slipping away. "What? Suddenly you don't want to? This has been your lifelong dream! You can't just, you can't back out now, we've come so far!" His voice trailed into muttered curses and frantic protests.
Jing Shu suddenly remembered the real reason Zhu Zhengqi had been so enthusiastic in her past life. He had secretly skimmed fifty thousand yuan off the top, padding the costs. Later, Father Jing, ever grateful, had even given him another generous red packet out of kindness. Worst of all, the actual price with the company wasn't that high at all. By going through Zhu Zhengqi, the cost had ballooned to nearly double. It was the kind of betrayal only a so-called friend, someone you trusted, would dare pull.
"I just don't want it anymore." Her words were final.
Thinking about the Cube space, her real priority now, Jing Shu abruptly hung up, cutting off his sputtering. She closed her eyes, letting the quiet of the room settle around her, and whispered in her heart: "Cube Space."
The world around her instantly shifted. Her spirit body was drawn inside, her physical form remaining seated on the bed as her awareness plunged inward.
Darkness engulfed her, a void that was not empty, broken only by a gigantic glowing Cube suspended before her, radiating a soft, steady white light. Each block had its own boundary lines, and Jing Shu found she could zoom in or out, her perspective shifting, peering over the entire structure like a god watching from above, understanding its layout instinctively.
The rules of the Cube space were clear, imprinted on her mind. Anything could be stored here, except humans or other intelligent beings. Even Jing Shu herself could not physically enter, only her spiritual body could observe and control it. Fortunately, her authority over this space was absolute. Her will was its law.
At the beginning, the Cube space measured only sixty-four cubic meters in total. But it could be upgraded endlessly, its capacity growing, though she did not yet know how.
At its core was a single cubic meter of Spirit Spring. It bubbled ceaselessly, a tiny, perfect well of clear water, feeding six adjacent cubic meters of dark, rich soil fields surrounding it.
The Spirit Spring produced twenty drops of liquid every day, about one gram in total. If the six fields were left unplanted, the spring produced six extra drops. The spring was unimaginably precious, and its output was pitifully small, each drop a treasure.
So the Cube space equaled: one cubic meter of Spirit Spring plus six cubic meters of farmland plus fifty seven cubic meters of free space.
Think of it this way: one spring, six soil blocks. Each of the six soil surfaces could be planted. Crops would root in the soil and then grow upward into the open air of the space. The remaining fifty seven cubic meters could be freely arranged like pieces of Tetris, forming any kind of structure she wanted, shelves, compartments, rooms.
As long as the roots were in the soil, no matter how tall the plant grew, it could grow without restriction, reaching up into the allocated volume.
Finally, time flowed normally in the soil plots. Each drop of spring water doubled a crop's growth speed and increased its yield, a miraculous effect.
But in the storage areas, time froze completely as long as only food or objects were stored. If animals or living creatures were placed inside, time flowed normally for them.
That meant the Cube space could function as a permanent storage vault, a farmland, and even a breeding ground. Those fifty seven modular spaces could be arranged however she pleased, even stacked together like a giant Tetris puzzle to create height and density.
In the apocalypse, where sunlight no longer reached the earth and crops withered in the endless grey, this Cube space would be her lifeline, her garden, and her fortress. She gazed at the glowing structure, and for the first time since waking, a plan, solid and fierce, began to take shape.