In the fields where vegetables had matured, the Spirit Spring would no longer water them automatically. Left unharvested, the plants would eventually wither and die, their life cycle complete. "So its power sustains growth but can't defy entropy forever," Jing Shu mused, observing the perfect, untouched cabbages. "But what are its limits?" If it could so profoundly affect plants, speeding their growth and boosting their yield, what might it do for animals? Or, more critically, for a human body?
This was the urgent, driving question that pushed her to visit the livestock breeding base ahead of schedule, intent on experimenting with creatures of different sizes and lifespans. In this lifetime, she refused to be weak and fragile again, so pitifully eradicated by betrayal and chaos. She would grow stronger in every way, physically and in her resolve. She would live with a low profile, keeping her head down, yet be able to act with a high profile and decisive force whenever needed.
A row of small truck drivers specializing in livestock transport swarmed her the moment she arrived at the dusty outskirts of the base, vying for her business with shouts and waved hands. She calmly bypassed the eager men and chose instead a woman with a steady, no-nonsense gaze who claimed seven years of experience on a worn business card. Her name was Sister Zhou.
The base itself was a cacophony of stench and noise, a wall of sound and smell unbearable to the unaccustomed city dweller. Jing Shu worked quickly, her senses assaulted but her purpose clear. She selected her specimens with care: fifteen healthy-looking hens and two sturdy roosters, six ducks and one drake, five plump rabbits, and ten small, quick quails. The purchase alone swiped 2,500 yuan from her nearly maxed-out credit card. Sister Zhou proved immediately efficient and strong, carrying wire cages and wooden crates in batches and loading them onto her modified truck with practiced, unflustered ease.
Next came the larger, more serious investments: a young heifer for 4,000 yuan, a young bull for 3,500, a pair of bleating, fuzzy lambs for 1,700, and a pair of rooting, energetic black piglets, a breed famed locally for their superior taste and hardiness, for 1,000 yuan. Sister Zhou not only helped keep a sharp eye on the deals, pointing out the liveliest animals, but also bargained fiercely in a dialect Jing Shu barely understood, convincing the skeptical sellers to throw in bags of starter feed, metal feeders, and plastic troughs for free. By the time the two women had packed the truck to its brim with animals and supplies, the afternoon sun was already waning in the sky.
Luckily, the piglets and lambs were still small enough to share a partitioned crate, the poultry was securely caged, and only their incessant, bewildered clucking and quacking pierced the air. Why couldn't they learn from the clever little black piglets, which had already found a comfortable corner of their crate to curl up and nap?
Following the navigation on her phone, Jing Shu directed Sister Zhou through the winding roads to her remote villa on the city's outskirts. At the gated community entrance, she swiped her resident ID, and they drove on in silence until they reached the house. Sister Zhou, without being asked, even helped unload the bewildered, complaining menagerie into the empty front yard. Jing Shu swiped another 350 yuan from her card for the transport fee and then pressed a crisp fifty-yuan note into the woman's calloused hand. "Sorry for making you miss lunch, Sister Zhou. Please, get yourself a proper meal on the way back."
Sister Zhou left, smiling so widely her cheeks ached, and she even left her personal phone number with Jing Shu, telling her to call for any future needs. As she drove off in her now-empty truck, she shook her head in bemused wonder. "Do people who live in big villas nowadays all like raising pigs and sheep right in their yards? City folk really know how to have fun."
Jing Shu dared not use the Cube Space directly at the villa gates. This estate was built to house thousands, a small city in itself, and though it was now half-empty, a sign of the pre-apocalypse property bubble, there was no guarantee a curious eye wasn't watching from a distant window, or a surveillance camera wasn't silently recording. China had built enough housing for 6 billion people, after all. Empty didn't mean unseen.
She dragged the animals into the walled backyard trip by trip, the cages and crates heavy, her breath coming in heavy pants by the end, her muscles protesting. Once the yard gate was firmly shut and she had double-checked her solitude, peering through gaps in the fence, she finally stored them away into the Cube Space: the calves and lambs into a clean, prepared 4-cubic-meter space; the black piglets in a snug 1-cubic-meter space; the seventeen chickens into another 4-cubic-meter space with roosting bars she visualized; the seven ducks into a 2-cubic-meter space with a shallow water trough; the five rabbits and ten quails each into their own separate 1-cubic-meter spaces. She tossed in the provided troughs and feeders, added water from the villa's outdoor taps into containers she willed into existence, and set it all within the Cube's organized structure.
A profound, immediate silence descended. The chickens stopped their frantic clucking; the sheep grew still and calm. It was as if the Cube Space itself exerted a gentle, calming magic, automatically simulating the most suitable temperature, humidity, and climate for its new inhabitants. They settled as if they had always been there.
Her Cube Space usage now stood at: 1 Spirit Spring, 6 farmland plots, 13 livestock sections, and 4 sections for miscellaneous goods. That still left a precious 40 cubic meters of free, modular space. The animals would continue to occupy their allotted room, but once she had butchered, cured, and smoked some of the meat, she planned to keep only a few breeding pairs for sustainability.
She circled the villa one final time, the renovation plan in her mind solidifying from vague ideas into a detailed, practical blueprint. Satisfied with the location and its potential, she locked up the empty house and left.
After a futile fifteen-minute wait on the quiet roadside without a single taxi in sight, she pulled out her phone and added a ten-yuan surcharge to finally call a Didi ride. Without hesitation, once the car arrived, she directed the driver straight to the city's new energy car market. Renovating the remote villa without a reliable vehicle would've been impossible. She could always sell it later if absolutely needed. For now, she could use it for commuting and hauling supplies; once the apocalypse came, there'd be no distant office to drive to anyway, but mobility would be more critical than ever.
After the collapse, she knew, vehicles reliant on gasoline, diesel, or natural gas became nothing more than ornate, immovable scrap metal, their fuel reserves hoarded by the government or long gone. Only new energy cars, especially electric ones you could charge from solar panels or generators, held any lasting value, particularly during the desperate, chaotic evacuations to come. The difference between running on foot through dangerous territory and driving in a sealed car was, quite literally, the difference between life and death.
The current market for pure electric cars and hybrids was still small and skeptical, plagued by public worries over short ranges, slow charging speeds, and unreliable batteries. They were seen as inconvenient novelties and held their value poorly.
But in the coming apocalypse? As long as the car could move, even slowly, you were king. What use was a Lamborghini if you couldn't find a single drop of fuel for it?
So Jing Shu went straight for an older, proven model known for durability: the BYD Song MAX. With the generous government subsidies promoting green vehicles, this boxy but practical seven-seater with its spacious interior and power-saving features cost just a few yuan to charge fully. The top model, after all the subsidies were applied, cost just over sixty thousand yuan. It was a steal.
She chose a bold, glaring red, reasoning it would be easier to spot in a crowded parking lot or, morbidly, in a wreck. Shamelessly, she took out a dealer-arranged loan, swiped 27,000 yuan on her groaning credit card for the down payment, finished the paperwork in a blur, bought the basic insurance, and got a temporary paper license plate taped in the window. Just like that, in a matter of hours, Jing Shu drove her new, shiny red Song MAX off the lot.
She had gotten her driver's license at eighteen but had rarely driven since, her skills rusty enough that maintaining a generous following distance was a courtesy to other drivers' survival as much as her own.
It took immense, white-knuckled concentration to navigate back across the city and park the somewhat bulky car in her apartment's crowded community lot. Then, with the last sliver of her credit limit, she stopped at a wholesale store and swiped it on several heavy cases of bottled mineral water, loading them into the new car. Finally, utterly broke and stomach growling with hunger, she trudged the short distance from the parking spot back to her apartment building.
The moment she slid her key into the lock and opened the door, she froze on the threshold.
On the living room sofa sat her eldest uncle, her eldest aunt, her youngest aunt, and her youngest uncle-in-law, arrayed in a neat, silent row like a solemn tribunal. Her parents sat in separate chairs, their faces tense.
All of them turned their heads in unison to look at her as the door opened, a choreographed movement that made her skin prickle.
Jing Shu swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. She glanced automatically at the clock on the wall: 6:25 p.m.
Even if they had all just gotten off work, their coordinated presence, the full set, felt like a planned ambush. The weight of their collective, unblinking stare pressed down on her, heavy with unspoken questions.
"What's going on?"