Zhu Zhengqi only truly understood the devastating power of ridicule and public shaming after he had been severely attacked and humiliated himself.
Back in his junior year at a university in Hebei, he had drunkenly molested a female classmate at a party. The incident was secretly recorded and then exposed on local online forums. Overnight, thousands of insults and profanities rained down on him across social media. He didn't want to look, but he couldn't resist the morbid pull. Seeing the endless hate made him feel completely abandoned by the world, utterly alone. Wherever he went on campus afterward, people pointed and whispered behind their hands. Some even threw literal filth at him on the spot. Others just stood and watched, coldly enjoying the spectacle of his downfall.
Zhu Zhengqi couldn't comprehend why a simple, drunken grope, a "simple touch of a chest" as he minimized it, had blown up to such a serious, life destroying degree. Every single day, anonymous people cursed him, calling him a worthless scum who should just die. He couldn't bear the relentless pressure, fell into a deep depression, and within a few days the situation escalated so badly that the school administration intervened and expelled him to contain the scandal.
Returning in disgrace to Wu City, he cried and begged an influential, shady man he knew for help. The man took 100,000 yuan from him, hired a team of skilled online trolls to craft elaborate sob stories and systematically whitewash Zhu Zhengqi's image across the platforms, gradually calming the public fury. That brutal experience was when he first realized the immense, terrifying power of orchestrated online opinion and decided to join the industry himself, becoming a manipulator rather than a victim.
Public opinion, he knew, could utterly crush a person, leaving no trace. It wouldn't take three full days to see it happen to that naive girl, he thought with cold satisfaction.
...
After all, it was the first full day living in the villa, and everything still felt new and unfamiliar. Her grandparents were surprisingly energetic and spent the morning busy tidying up the yard and their new space. Jing Shu had prepared the guest bedroom on the first floor for her grandparents with fresh, comfortable bedding and sheets. The 20 square meter guest bedroom with its own attached bathroom was more than enough space for the elderly couple.
The master bedroom was a more generous 25 square meters, also with a bathroom and a large built in wardrobe. This prime space was reserved for her parents, who had more clothing and personal miscellaneous items.
Jing Shu herself took a large bedroom on the second floor. After the apocalypse, the entire second floor would serve as one of her main storage and secure living areas. The second floor suite included a private study, a walk in storage room, a massive walk in closet, and another bathroom.
The study was already stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of bottled water and various drinks. The dedicated storage room held all the kinds of outdoor equipment and bulk daily necessities bought during the Double Eleven sales. The 20 square meter walk in closet was packed, wall to wall, with the mountain of snacks purchased during those same sales. There were so many boxes and bags that it gave her an immense, visceral sense of security just to look at them.
There was also another 20 square meter walk in closet on the first floor, designated for storing her family's everyday clothes, underwear, sweaters, pants, down jackets, and more. After the apocalypse, new cotton and linen fabrics would essentially no longer be produced, and the past floods and earthquakes had caused huge losses of personal goods. Jing Shu had no intention of ever scavenging mildewed old clothes from ruins again in this life.
The second floor also had an independent living room that had been converted into the large temperature controlled greenhouse. Another empty bedroom across the hall was now filled with bags upon bags of feed for the chickens, ducks, pigs, cows, and sheep.
With all these preparations firmly in place, Jing Shu no longer feared the early arrival of the apocalypse. If by some miracle it didn't happen at all, that would be even better. Unfortunately, every sign, every news report, suggested everything was proceeding exactly according to her previous life's terrible trajectory. She could only silently count down the remaining days of normal sunlight.
At night, following her now established routine, she added extra feed for the animals while doing her final inspection of the Cube Space. Jing Shu removed the roots and tough stems from all the harvested vegetables and fed them to the chickens, cows, and sheep. Then she began planting a new batch, this time of various fruit tree saplings, planning to harvest several rapid cycles of fruit before the apocalypse for canning, drying, and preserves.
Jing Shu's detailed planting plan included, snow pears, cherries, oranges, lychee, and yellow peaches, all ideal for canning, strawberries, pineapples, red dates, and grapes, perfect for drying into snacks, rock sugar apples and apricots to be later transplanted to the villa's yard, sugar tangerines and hawthorns for keeping as potted plants in the greenhouse, red grape vines to be trained along the greenhouse walls, persimmons for making dried persimmon cakes, pomegranates, watermelons, and more oranges for juicing and storing in the Cube Space. She mentally savored the future flavors. Slurp.
Did you think you could sleep in late on the quiet second floor, free from Su Lanzhi's morning kitchen bombardment? Think again. Now there was chicken crowing from the yard, the morning news broadcasts from the living room TV, Grandma Jing's clattering cooking sounds, mixed with Grandpa Jing singing snippets of old opera at the top of his lungs and the distinct, rhythmic vibrations of the 10,000 yuan massage chair from downstairs. Ah. She had forgotten to close her bedroom windows last night.
No, her senses had also become sharper from the Spirit Spring. Jing Shu went downstairs to investigate the noise and found Grandpa Jing lying leisurely in the grand prize massage chair, his eyes closed in bliss, occasionally letting out a howl of contentment. His expression clearly said, "So comfortable, feeling like life has reached its peak."
Jing Shu stared for a moment.
"..."
Just let him be happy, then.
The morning news still focused heavily on catching corrupt officials and confiscating illicit wealth, but it also now featured scrolling lists of donation forms from major corporations. Whoever donated more received public praise and likely future favors.
Those with money donated money, those with resources donated goods. Mobile carriers competed to offer citizens free call credits and data. Over the next half month, many people who weren't already scared would become so. The smarter ones, watching these signals, knew exactly what they needed to do.
The news presented a surface of harmonious, friendly unity, but Jing Shu, with her knowledge of the coming cliff, could sense the frantic, terrified undercurrents. In just over twenty days, hundreds of countries would simultaneously announce that the Earth would face an unprecedented period of darkness with no sunlight.
...
"Spicy pickled cabbage can be eaten in so many ways," Grandma Jing narrated cheerfully to the camera as she worked. "It's a perfect side dish with plain rice, wonderful in hotpot, excellent in fried rice, delicious stir fried with a little meat, comforting in a simple tofu soup, and more.
And for making pickled spicy cabbage, achieving the perfect balance of spiciness, crunch, sourness, and sweetness is a real art. Cabbage contains lots of good fiber, helping with digestion, weight loss, and is good for the skin too."
Grandma Jing chuckled warmly as she spoke. Seeing countless comments scrolling rapidly across the screen on the tablet she couldn't read, she asked Jing Shu if many viewers liked what she was saying.
Jing Shu squinted at the vile, hate filled stream of text and forced a smile, confirming it. "Yes, Grandma, many people like it." Her grandparents were illiterate and had no idea what the comments actually said. It was a small, merciful lie.
Today, Jing Shu was stationed at the vegetable washing area, meticulously cleaning dozens of heads of cabbage and the various auxiliary ingredients, carrots, apples, pears, green onions, and garlic. Grandpa Jing worked proudly at the dedicated cutting station, using his own unique methods to ensure each cabbage was trimmed perfectly, looking intact and beautiful for the process.
Grandma Jing then evenly spread coarse salt on every single leaf of the cabbages, layer by layer, and left them to marinate for half a day. In the afternoon, Grandpa Jing took over, starting the preparation of the complex, fragrant seasoning paste.
Later, the cabbages were rinsed thoroughly with clean water, squeezed dry, and the bright red seasoning was applied painstakingly to each layer. They filled ten massive traditional pickling jars. Some smaller 2 liter jars were set aside to eat in just a few days, a test batch.
After finally finishing the day's long livestream, Jing Shu at last had time to sit down and review the stream's analytics and the comment history.
Yesterday, she had virtually no followers and minimal activity. Passersby came, watched silently, and left. Today, the number of concurrent viewers had suddenly skyrocketed to a steady 50,000, holding that number mysteriously throughout the entire day.
The Jing Shu from ten years ago might not have understood, but the current Jing Shu, who had hired online trolls in her past life for her own brief fame, knew exactly what this meant.
The comments, when she scrolled through them, were utterly predictable in their vitriol.
"Crazy for money, selling this for 998 yuan, would never buy."
"Eat Korean trash? Get out of China."
"Look, a traitor worshipping foreign ways, she should be killed."
"This person deserves to die."
"Selling cheap garbage for top tier prices? Get out of this livestream, you're not welcome here."
Jing Shu first felt a bubble of disbelieving laughter, then a hot wave of anger. These hired trolls knew how to tailor their criticism based on the content, instantly labeling her and her food as unpatriotic. That absurd price point must have been the trigger they were told to latch onto.
"Even as a professional troll, you need some basic historical knowledge," she muttered to the empty room. "Kimchi originated with the Korean ethnic group within China's borders. Some Chinese merchants migrated to the peninsula long ago too. How's it solely 'Korean' now? It's still a part of my country's diverse culinary culture." She scoffed at their ignorance and malice.
Even though the livestream had no real, organic viewers, just these paid attackers, she was still furious. She was furious at the ugly, manipulative side of human nature.
It was blatantly obvious who had hired the trolls. Besides Zhu Zhengqi, desperate to force her hand, no one else had motive. She hadn't signed his contract, which would've secured his large commission. He was using this dirty, psychological method to pressure her, to break her spirit. For maybe 50,000 yuan, he could attempt to ruin someone's online life and mental peace. Was he really expecting her to crumble, to come crying and begging him to finalize the contract and save her? The arrogance of it made her blood boil.