Now that money was no longer an issue, Jing Shu felt a wave of fierce, practical satisfaction. After buying all kinds of seeds, the Cube Space could produce more than enough food with a surplus to spare. What her stockpile truly lacked now were quality of life goods and first rate snacks, the small comforts that made existence bearable.
So, Jing Shu could finally shop without restraint. She bought a large washer dryer combo unit and a large capacity dishwasher, ordering the most efficient models. After all, once set up at the villa, she could generate her own electricity. These were not luxuries, but tools for preserving sanity and hygiene.
In her previous life, during the first year of the apocalypse, the public water supply had failed completely. Jing Shu remembered that everyone had to eat from their own single bowl and then lick it clean to conserve water. Clothes became so crusted with grime their original colors couldn't be recognized. By the second year, there was torrential, unending rain every day, but in the damp, sunless cold, clothes never dried, merely mildewed. Now, in this life, since conditions allowed it, she chose energy saving dishwashers and washing machines. Water could be recycled and filtered, after all.
She purchased a complete, professional grade water circulation and filtration system. This included multiple stage purifiers, ultrafiltration machines, faucet filters, and RO reverse osmosis filters. She also bought a ten year supply of multi layer filter cartridges. The system was designed to remove even the smallest microorganisms and contaminants.
She also bought four large commercial water storage tanks and the corresponding pumps and circulation piping, spending a total of 100,000 yuan on the entire water security setup. It was a massive investment, but water was life.
In the second year of the apocalypse, although the heavy rains temporarily ended water shortages, they also gave birth to a horrifying new species, the bloodworms.
Calling it "rain" was misleading. It was more accurate to say it was a bug rain. These creatures were entirely red, with black heads and tails. Large ones grew several centimeters long, small ones just a few millimeters. They were thread thin, slightly thicker than a strand of hair, and as long as there was moisture, they could survive and reproduce explosively. Half of the collected rainwater was filled with them, and they even liked to jump.
You'd turn on a tap, and a wriggling mass of bugs would pour out.
Think the bloodworms caused an unstoppable disaster?
Ha. Too naive. Do you believe the desperate, resourceful Chinese people couldn't eat a species nearly to extinction?
She didn't know what happened in Australia or America, but in China, bloodworms ironically ended up saving hundreds of millions of lives from starvation that year.
That year, you could see countless people fishing them out daily. They caught them from their own rainwater barrels, collected them in basins, or scooped them directly from the murky floodwaters. They handed them over to government collection points for credit points, which could then be exchanged for processed food, often the bloodworms themselves, prepared grilled, stir fried, or pan fried in various "flavors."
The taste was uniformly awful. Old folks and kids next door gave it a unanimous thumbs down, saying it would've been better just dipped in egg batter.
In this life, Jing Shu refused to live with damp clothes crawling with bugs, nor did she want the recurring nightmare of always picking bloodworms off her own skin to later eat as government issued "snacks." She was determined to block every single bug outside her villa walls. She'd never again have to drink water after filtering it again and again, boiling it again and again, only to still find tiny bloodworms wriggling in the bottom of her cup.
So this money was well spent! It was spent on peace of mind.
She continued her shopping spree. She bought a commercial ice maker. She bought a small, multifunctional grain thresher that could process soybeans, wheat, sorghum, millet, rapeseed, and corn. The grains she planted later could all be processed this way.
Electricity would fail for civilians after the apocalypse, but one could still generate limited power privately. Machines, however, couldn't be purchased later. So Jing Shu carefully selected every piece of equipment she envisioned needing over the next ten years. This included a small, durable millstone, a manual meat slicer, a meat grinder, an ice cream machine, a bag sealing machine, a vacuum packaging machine, and on a whimsical note, even a takoyaki maker, for the rare joy of a hot, savory snack.
Most of what Jing Shu bought required electricity to run. In the later years of the apocalypse, China's remaining electrical and thermal power resources were funneled almost entirely into the critical artificial sun project. Power to the people was cut to almost nothing. The only exception was a daily thirty minute broadcast of the national evening news between 19,00 and 19,30. That was the only guaranteed electricity supply, and everyone crowded into that sacred window to run their essential appliances, charge batteries, or cook.
Here, Jing Shu had to hand it to the Chinese government. Ten years of apocalypse, societal collapse, and unimaginable hardship, yet the evening news had never once been canceled. Rain or shine, bug rain or blizzard, it was always there at seven PM, like a stubborn, reliable old friend waiting faithfully.
Therefore, Jing Shu knew she had to buy the latest generation of solar systems, specifically the new models that could generate electricity without relying on strong, direct sunlight.
It wasn't that the sun had disappeared completely after the apocalypse. Rather, collisions among celestial bodies had produced vast amounts of fine dust and debris that lingered in the upper atmosphere, perpetually blocking and diffusing the sunlight. Nights were pitch black and freezing, while days seemed like a perpetual, gloomy dusk, with only the faintest gray light.
This made traditional photovoltaic solar panels nearly useless. Post apocalypse, a whole array of old solar panels could barely power a simple rice cooker once a day.
Then, a company called UBC had invented new bacterial solar cells. The complex science behind them didn't matter to Jing Shu. What mattered was the sales pitch, as long as there was any light at all, even the weak ambient glow of a cloudy apocalypse day, they could generate some electricity. Though the efficiency wasn't high, quantity could make up for it. Jing Shu, spending freely, bought ten full sets of these systems, plus a mountain of spare parts and batteries.
At first, Manager Wang was stunned, thinking Jing Shu was joking or had misunderstood the scale. But when she casually paid a 50,000 yuan deposit on the spot, his wrinkled face bloomed into a smile like a chrysanthemum.
The store was running Double Eleven promotions. For every 5,000 yuan spent, there was a raffle ticket for a grand prize. For every 10,000 yuan spent, there was an instant 1,000 yuan discount.
She spent a total of 340,000 yuan in that one store. She pulled 68 raffle tickets, and received 34,000 yuan in immediate discounts. In just two frantic hours, Jing Shu had spent 306,000 yuan of her precious funds.
She paid the deposit, left her villa address for delivery, signed all the required paperwork and warranties, and hurried home. The raffle drawing could wait until next time. If she didn't make it back before Jing Shu's mother finished cooking dinner, she'd be scolded relentlessly!
…
The meal Jing Shu's mother prepared that night was, unfortunately, enough to shatter some of Jing Shu's newly reborn fantasies about enjoying everyday foods. Once this intensely busy period passed, Jing Shu swore she'd take charge of the kitchen herself! Her mother's culinary reign had to end for the sake of everyone's palate and nutrition.
That evening, as had become her routine, she fed the livestock their measured doses of diluted Spirit Spring and collected the daily eggs. The marked eggs set aside for hatching still hadn't hatched. Chicken No. 1, which had received the most concentrated Spirit Spring, had grown much larger and fiercer than the others. It had already asserted itself as the clear leader of the seventeen chickens, strutting and pecking at the others.
The quails, ducks, and rabbits had also grown noticeably plumper. Among the pigs, the sow was growing the fastest, already twice the size of the boar, her sides round and full.
The fish fry in the aquatic section of the Cube Space showed little visible change, but the water plants and algae were flourishing wildly, creating a murky green jungle. The Cube Space's constant, gentle light and the traces of Spirit Spring in the water provided abundant nourishment.
Most encouraging, most of the six crop fields had begun bearing early fruit or forming heads. In another two or three days, the first batch of vegetables could be harvested. This success pressed upon Jing Shu, she needed to accelerate her next rounds of planning and purchasing. The clock was ticking loudly.
On November 4, Jing Shu rose early, did her exercises, disposed of the manure from the space during her jog, and returned home for breakfast.
Breakfast was a takeout specialty, a rich milk tea from a famous Wu City shop. A thick, chewy layer of secret recipe milk skin floated on top, fragrant and satisfying, lingering on the palate. It was paired with freshly fried dough sticks and a side of sour spicy shredded potatoes. Jing Shu mentally gave the stall owner 99 points. She withheld one more point, fearing it would make him too proud.
After breakfast, the family of three set out for the day.
"I'll take your mother to work first, then bring you to meet Captain Chen," her father said while driving, his mind clearly elsewhere, likely thinking bitterly that they really might have to sell the apartment now. "He oversaw the villa's last renovation. You explain to him how it needs to be redone according to your contract plans. If you don't understand something, ask Lao Chen or the people from the entertainment company. Put everything on my tab with him, I'll settle it later." A single coin could topple even the proudest man, and her father felt that weight.
"Dad, Mom, I've been thinking," Jing Shu said, seizing the moment. "I want to buy a cheap car, worth maybe twenty to thirty thousand yuan. That way, I can follow along with the villa renovations easily, and run errands for supplies. I can't always go with you to the company and rely on Uncle Chen to bring me back and forth. It wastes his time. Once the villa is complete, Mom can use the car for commuting to work too." This was her prepared excuse to bring the new energy car into the open logically.
"That's fine. It's a practical idea," her father said, still simmering over how cheaply the BMW had been sold. It would've been better not to sell it at all. "Let your mother give you some more money from the fund later."
…
Captain Chen's team consisted of six experienced men, a well organized and highly efficient small renovation crew.
Captain Chen arrived at the villa with Master Liu, the head carpenter, to listen to Jing Shu's detailed instructions for the rework.
After the apocalypse, as long as the Iron Blooded Government's order held, villas in this planned district were somewhat protected by the local authorities. But Jing Shu still planned to arm her villa to the teeth. She'd rely on the government for macro order, but on herself for immediate, intimate security.
"I want to build a second, outer shell," she began, pointing at the existing two meter high perimeter wall. "I want tempered glass walls surrounding the entire villa property, built on top of this existing wall. Then, I want to install a retractable tempered glass roof that seamlessly connects with those four glass walls. The entire overhead structure should use steel trusses, forming strong inverted triangular shapes for support. This will give the villa a unique, modern style." She presented it as an aesthetic choice for her influencer persona.
The unspoken truth was that the protective cover was essential. It would guard against the future bug rain, against hurricanes and blizzards, and against thieves looking for an easy target!
Nor did she need to worry about the extensive renovations attracting undue attention now. In the coming apocalypse, these outer tempered glass walls would quickly be buried under several decimeters of windblown black soil and grime, becoming invisible. Besides, this entire area was under future government protection, and order hadn't collapsed completely then. In an age of pervasive big data surveillance, almost no one dared blatant, large scale breaking and entering. Of course, Jing Shu would also lay hidden traps and arm herself to the fullest privately. She intended to procure every legal and practical weapon available! The glass shell was just the first, visible layer of her fortress.
===
One of the reasons I got hooked on this novel is because of this "red nematode." I don't know why, but every time I read it, I kind of sing the words in my head. LOL (♪ red nematode~ ♪) (*≧▽≦)
In case you're curious, I usually read Chinese webnovels with Google Translate add ons, and back then 红线虫 (hong xian chong) was translated as red nematode. These days, if I use it again, it shows up as bloodworm instead.
Technically, "red nematode" or "red thread worm" is the literal translation, and even the proper biological name for this creature. But in more common, everyday English, this creature is known as "bloodworms." That's why I decided to go with bloodworms instead of red nematode in the translation—since it's the term you'd be more familiar with.