The two of them walked out hand in hand, still letting out small, satisfied burps as they went, their footsteps fading down the hallway.
Jing Shu gritted her teeth and exhaled a long, slow breath through her nose, her mind already churning with cold, detailed plots on how to deal with Wang Zijian and his father later. The anger was a hot coal in her chest, but it had to be banked for now.
"Kids these days don't understand manners, it's all because the shrimp was just too delicious," Uncle Sun said with a jovial, dismissive wave of his hand, as if that excused everything. He then proceeded to finish the remaining shrimp porridge in the communal pot, scraping the bottom with his spoon to get every last drop.
Jing's Dad, seeing the meal was finally over, finally brought up the urgent matter of the repayment. Uncle Sun, wiping his mouth, promised with his usual cheerful smile to return the money within a few days. But this time, Jing's Dad had started to doubt the empty promise. His voice was firmer than before. In the end, after some back and forth, they agreed that payment must be made by three o'clock sharp the day after tomorrow. Only after extracting this specific commitment was Uncle Sun allowed to finally leave their apartment.
Once the door closed behind him, Jing Shu sneered and immediately gathered all the plates, bowls, and chopsticks that the three of them had used. She carried the whole stack to the kitchen and threw them directly into the trash bin. If the timing were different, if her father's job weren't on the line, she might have already taught them a physical lesson they wouldn't forget.
Speaking of Uncle Sun, Jing Shu actually held a kind of grim admiration for him. In one word, he was like a tough, old piece of gristle, impervious to water and fire, oil and salt, neither soft nor hard! He was a master of passive resistance.
No matter what you told him, no matter how clearly you stated your needs, he'd agree with that same unwavering, cheerful smile and a nod. But he never actually followed through with action. And Jing's Dad, either out of a desire to save face or misplaced loyalty to their old friendship, would at worst say, "Please, you must try to repay the money soon."
Uncle Sun would always reply, "Yes, yes, certainly, you have my word," and that'd be the end of the conversation. The matter would be shelved, again.
Those who owe money are always the ones in charge. It was an infuriating universal truth.
That night, Jing's Mom returned home late from her overtime. She sat down with Jing's Dad and praised the meal Jing Shu had prepared, saying it was incredibly delicious, the best shrimp she'd ever tasted.
After eating, the three of them held a small, serious family meeting in the living room. Su Lanzhi's face was weary but focused. "Starting tomorrow, the new national emergency regulations will be trialed in our city first. Our government unit will be one of the first to implement them. After the trial period, they'll be widely implemented across the country.
This concerns the direct relatives of all public employees and civil servants. The rules state that if a direct relative seriously misbehaves, violates major decrees, and is reported, we could also be held accountable and fired. In severe cases, the family is treated the same as the culprit, unless we report the relative's intentions or actions in advance."
Such rules, she explained, had existed even in ancient times, the concept of familial liability. If one person committed a crime, their direct relatives were held accountable. More distant relatives might have to undergo mandatory re education. Families who actively disobeyed or hid information would receive no future relief aid, while informants would be rewarded.
"Things have been getting very strict recently. Something big might be about to happen," Su Lanzhi said, mentioning the noticeable rise in public security measures and new surveillance rules. City streets were now filled with more frequent security checks and patrol vehicles, and facial recognition scans were required to enter almost all major buildings and use public transportation.
Jing Shu's heart sank like a stone. So the government's preparations had started long ago. They already knew about the coming star collisions and the potential for social chaos, and they were taking preemptive, draconian measures to maintain control. The new rules effectively aimed to cut off many people's opportunistic or desperate intentions right at the beginning of the crisis, using family ties as a leash.
Unfortunately, she thought bitterly, no one in power had expected the disaster to last at least ten years. No one had foreseen that the Earth would become so comprehensively plagued, and that the problems would go far beyond simply a lack of sunlight.
Afterwards, Jing's Dad mentioned their own financial crisis. He said the family car had a potential buyer and could likely be sold in the next couple of days. The apartment would be listed at a slightly discounted price to sell quickly.
"I've also decided," he said, his voice low and resolute, "I want to withdraw my shares from the company and work independently." He stated it abruptly and then refused to explain further, closing off the topic.
Jing Shu knew that a proud, traditional man like her father would never openly admit, "I'm about to be fired." He'd contributed more to that company over the decades than almost anyone and had deep emotional ties to it. This was his way of warning Su Lanzhi and Jing Shu in advance, of preparing them for the coming change while saving his own dignity.
Jing Shu had been spending money like water over the past few days. After buying all the grain, oil, dry goods, dried fruits, air conditioners, and major appliances, she only had about 300,000 yuan left in usable funds. And she still needed to stockpile a mountain of essential daily supplies and specialized equipment to survive the specific, harsh conditions of the coming apocalypse.
She'd need a large sum of money very soon, and she had no choice now but to push for her father to arrange more funds, to sell everything that could be sold.
…
"November 10th, Mr. Zhou, a concerned citizen in Beijing, reported and through verification, it was found that the national lottery core fund had been embezzled by over a hundred billion yuan."
"November 11th, Mr. Liu in Chengdu reported strange, flashing lights in his neighbor's house late at night. Investigation and verification showed that a man named Zhang in Yuzhou had hidden hundreds of billions worth of gold bars in dozens of secret locations across the province."
For several consecutive days, explosive news reports arrived daily with the morning broadcast, mostly about which official had embezzled how much, or which wealthy tycoon had hoarded unimaginable wealth. All of it was being swiftly confiscated by the state. Jing's Dad and Jing's Mom checked these early morning reports religiously, their faces growing more solemn with each revelation.
"This is only the beginning," Jing Shu yawned as she finished washing up one morning. She went out for her usual morning run and used the opportunity to secretly dispose of the poultry droppings from her Cube Space. Recently, community notices had been posted strictly forbidding the secret breeding of large animals in residential areas, citing hygiene and potential damage to public property. She wasn't entirely sure if the new rules were indirectly aimed at someone like her, but it put her on edge.
Everything was following the same trajectory as her previous life. Sadly, she had been too wrapped up in her own small dramas back then to notice the signs. Jing Shu felt the November sun, still pleasantly warm on her skin, but she knew in a month and a half, she wouldn't see real sunlight. The thought was a constant, cold undertone to every day.
"Every day, they expose another major fraud, report which celebrity donated how much to the national emergency fund, or which food factory was caught hoarding supplies. Those business owners who disobeyed the new anti hoarding decrees were later wiped out, their stock seized by the government and redistributed to citizens with clean records."
In the first year of the apocalypse, when global crops failed and plagues raged, survival for the masses had depended entirely on the government controlling the remaining food industry and strictly rationing stored supplies. The reports she was hearing now were the prelude to that total control.
Everyone was now being subtly encouraged to actively stockpile a reasonable amount of grain for their own households. Why shouldn't Jing Shu do the same, but on a much larger, more prepared scale? She'd bought in bulk everything she could justify. She knew that while big online marketplaces weren't always much cheaper than wholesale, the sheer convenience of having everything delivered, of saving countless trips and effort, was worth a small premium.
The Double Eleven online shopping festival rules were getting more complicated by the year, but Jing Shu was unfazed. She'd stayed up late, knowing that at midnight, many stores offered half price deals for the first ten minutes or the first hour. She'd already placed a small batch of orders in the early hours of the morning.
Today, she focused her attention on the major platforms, Tmall Supermarket, JD, and NetEase Kaola, their virtual carts overflowing.
She bought multiple boxes of every available snack she could find, compressed biscuits, high calorie chocolate bars, beef jerky, sliced meat snacks, crispy noodle packs, and other filling, non perishable foods. She ordered five boxes of each type.
She also bought milk, yogurt, boxed beverages, and several tins of adult nutritional milk powder for emergency use. She noted that bottled water would need to be bought from a physical wholesaler later to fill an entire storage room at the villa.
Instant noodles, canned ham, self heating hotpot ingredients, and all kinds of canned goods, from meat to fruit, were essential. She purchased ten large boxes of assorted cans to store on the second floor of the villa.
Then came the daily necessities, toilet paper, shampoo, body wash, sanitary pads, toothpaste, bars of soap, laundry detergent, disinfectant, dishwashing liquid, and basic skincare cream. She bought everything in quantities calculated to last a family of three for ten years, a staggering volume.
Jing Shu also bought fifty 60 liter storage containers with airtight lids. These were for organizing the dry goods and miscellaneous supplies, making inventory easy and ensuring everything could be loaded into the Cube Space in an orderly, rapid manner in case of a sudden evacuation.
She also wanted to buy more specialized clothing, such as windproof, insulated space suit style overalls and extreme cold weather gear rated for polar expeditions. However, her funds were now insufficient for such expensive items.
She realized with a pang that most of her remaining money had been spent on the comforting but perhaps less critical mountain of snacks. The thought of reducing those purchases felt physically unbearable, because she knew with certainty that these specific branded foods would be discontinued forever after the apocalypse began, never to be available again. Letting go of even one package felt like accepting a future with less joy.
Jing Shu would have to wait, impatiently, for the next installment of funds from her father's asset sales. The waiting was its own kind of agony.