Jing Shu quickly returned the staff member's gesture of respect, but in her flustered excitement, she accidentally raised her hand too high and too sharply, turning it into a perfect, crisp Young Pioneer salute from her childhood. She realized her mistake instantly and dropped her hand, feeling a flush of embarrassed heat creep up her neck. She was just a little too excited by the whole situation.
The community police office was a hive of subdued chaos. In this one large room, a dozen desks and chairs were arranged to handle multiple disputes simultaneously, domestic fights, petty theft, and various other public incidents. Since the arrival of Earth's Dark Days, Wu City had seen a noticeable rise in opportunistic theft and brawls. Nearby, several sullen-looking alleged thieves were handcuffed to desks, along with a couple who were still glaring at each other after a fight, and a few shifty-eyed individuals who had likely been caught committing minor misdeeds.
But Jing Shu's excitement had a very specific source. Her eyes kept drifting to the far wall, where two massive, grey, rectangular safes were embedded. They were the kind colloquially known as gun vault safes, heavy-duty and imposing. Each had a dedicated, serious-looking guard stationed stiffly nearby, their presence making the purpose of the safes unequivocal.
China was different from many other countries in this regard. After the apocalypse in foreign movies and novels, those places were like sci fi war zones every day. But in China… well, in her previous life of 32 years, Jing Shu had never once seen an ordinary civilian own anything resembling a personal weapon vault. The very concept was alien.
If the apocalypse abroad was portrayed as a game of thrones relying on firearms and heavy weapons, then China's apocalypse, in her experience, was more like a brutal, gritty battle of farm tools, shovels, sickles, hoes, and groups acting like desperate street gangs. The scale and sophistication of the violence were, frankly, far lower.
In TV shows and online novels, protagonists often looted police stations or military caches with relative ease. In Jing Shu's real, lived world, that never succeeded. For several concrete reasons.
Firstly, the apocalypse didn't arrive with a single, dramatic bang. It crept in slowly, insidiously, like boiling a frog in warm water. By the time the average person truly realized how bad things were, it was too late to stage a dramatic heist, and crucially, the core social systems and their enforcement hadn't collapsed overnight.
Secondly, any small-scale, individual attempts only got the perpetrators killed or captured immediately. The consequences were swift and absolute.
Thirdly, even if you somehow found yourself in front of a cache, you couldn't open it without the specific codes and procedures. These strong safes would lock down automatically after failed attempts. You couldn't just pry them open or smash them, they were essentially solid metal blocks.
Fourthly, even with a code, opening often required remote network authorization, on-site personnel authorization, and biometric verification, a bit like trying to transfer more than 500,000 yuan from a bank account; it needed multiple layers of approval. And even if you miraculously overcame every single obstacle, opening one safe didn't mean you automatically had ammunition. Safes and bullets were often stored separately. You could have bullets without a safe, or a safe without bullets. You might get to choose one, if you were lucky.
Acquiring functional weapons in China was, in her experience, extremely and deliberately difficult. Jing Shu had been pondering this problem for a long time, with no workable solution. Today, by pure coincidence and as a result of their civic action, she actually found herself in a room with not one, but two safes, and she could stand openly beside them without raising immediate alarm. Under any other circumstance, standing that close uninvited would have gotten her tackled to the ground.
Could Jing Shu not be excited? Her heart was hammering against her ribs.
Pretending to send a voice message to her mother, she lifted her phone to her ear and wandered casually closer to the wall, using the cover to activate the Cube Space. With her other hand resting casually against the cool metal of the nearest safe, she focused. She tried to store only the contents, visualizing them leaving their secure housing. The massive safes didn't make a sound, no clunk or whirr. But she felt the subtle, spatial shift.
Yes! It worked! The internal mechanism of the Cube Space had obeyed, bypassing the physical container.
The safes were tall and undoubtedly heavy, likely holding roughly several dozen standard-issue weapons. More advanced or specialized weapons were probably stored in an even stricter, more remote equipment cache.
Moving with forced casualness, Jing Shu quickly willed two unnumbered, generic-looking handguns from the depths of the Cube Space inventory into a deeper, hidden partition she mentally designated. She then grabbed a few boxes of matching bullets from the inventory of the other safe and mentally loaded the magazines. The entire process, from touch to completion, took less than five seconds of intense, hidden concentration.
"Please make personal calls somewhere else, miss," the guard nearby finally said, waving her gently away from the secured area. He was polite but firm, his job to keep unauthorized people from lingering too close.
"Sorry, sorry," Jing Shu murmured, slipping away with an apologetic dip of her head, nearly giving another automatic salute before stopping herself.
Using a miraculous Cube Space to steal a couple of handguns might have been the most humble, unglamorous use of a "golden finger" in apocalyptic history. But for the sake of survival, Jing Shu did it without a shred of hesitation and already planned to practice this specific skill later to increase her speed and options.
Soon after, Jing An finished giving his formal statement and came out, scratching the back of his head with a mix of sheepishness and residual anger. "I don't know what came over me. I get too excited lately and just can't control my impulses."
The young officer, who had introduced himself as Zhao Yun, shook Jing An's hand with a wry, joking tone. "Just remember, Uncle Jing, try not to aim for the face next time. The swelling made it hard for him to talk clearly. I had to guess half of what he was mumbling."
"Absolutely, Officer Zhao. I'll remember that," Jing An replied earnestly.
"Alright, you're free to go. And thanks to your family's sharp eyes, we managed to catch the biggest local seller of that contaminated industrial water. In a few days, there might be a formal commendation process. For now, just go home and get some rest."
Jing Shu and her parents left the station together. Stepping outside, the world was surreal. Even though it was technically daytime, Wu City's streetlights blazed, creating a dazzling artificial night. The giant LED screens on skyscrapers flashed colorful, looping light shows and public service announcements, making the entire city center a sleepless, electric spectacle, it felt like the final, frantic brilliance before an inevitable storm.
A modified snow-clearing vehicle rumbled by, constantly sweeping the ever-accumulating thick dust from the main roads. Pedestrians, ghostly in the haze, wore double-layer masks and wide hats, their outfits a paradox of short sleeves and shorts against the heat, yet covered for dust protection. She saw a young woman holding a thirty-yuan milk tea but only staring at it, too afraid to take a sip under her mask for fear of ingesting sand.
These were people just struggling to make a living, to maintain a shred of normalcy. The elderly and small children no longer dared to go out in the murderous heat.
In the car on the way home, Jing An admitted, his voice low, that he had been feeling unusually impulsive and quick-tempered lately, always feeling a raw urge to solve problems with his fists. Su Lanzhi nodded vigorously from the passenger seat. "Tell me about it. I lost a tooth today at work."
Jing Shu's head snapped up from the backseat. "What?"
"It was that female colleague, Tian Qing. She deliberately provoked me, trying to suck up to Yu Caini over that whole house-selling commission dispute. She said some vile things. I just lost control and slapped her across the face. Twice." Su Lanzhi said it matter-of-factly, though a flicker of shame crossed her features.
Jing Shu's mouth dropped open. So her butterfly effect had already caused a physical altercation. her mother losing a tooth over the professional conflict with Yu Caini… that specific incident hadn't happened in her previous life.
"Are you okay? Is your tooth loose?" Jing An asked, immediately anxious, taking his eyes off the dusty road for a second to look at his wife.
"She tried to scratch me back. I just… lightly shoved her away to create some space. But she must have lost her balance or something, because she slammed herself into the partition wall behind her, and hard. Cracked her head open, bled everywhere. Seven stitches they said." Su Lanzhi sighed, a mix of anger and frustration. "She's ruthless, I'll give her that. And of course, I got the demerits at work, lost my quarterly bonus, and have to write a lengthy self-criticism report. The whole thing is just infuriating."
"You're not seriously hurt, that's what matters," Jing An said, reaching over to squeeze Su Lanzhi's hand while still steering with the other, their quiet solidarity ignoring the third-wheel in the back.
Jing Shu twitched at the corner of her mouth, looking out the window at the bleak streets. Her mother didn't seem to fully realize how much stronger she was now, her muscles and reflexes enhanced by the Spirit Spring. That "light shove" likely carried far more force than Su Lanzhi intended. It wasn't entirely an accident that the other woman got hurt.
It seemed the Spirit Spring water wasn't just turning mild hens into fierce battle chickens and pond carp into combat-ready piranhas, it was subtly altering her family's physiology, lowering their thresholds for frustration and turning them into people who increasingly solved problems with direct, physical force. Maybe this was one of the unforeseen downsides of the Spirit Spring. It could stir up one's latent Baozi temperament, that explosive, doughy anger. The thought, despite everything, struck Jing Shu as darkly amusing.
They arrived home at 6:30 PM. Shaking off the day's tensions, Jing Shu headed to the kitchen. She cooked a simple porridge using leftover rice, adding water and bringing it to a boil over high heat. She took some marinated pork tenderloin from the fridge, chopped it finely, and rinsed it briefly with hot water to remove any scum and strong smell. She chopped up some preserved eggs and added both the meat and eggs when the porridge was almost ready, finishing with a drizzle of oil, a pinch of salt, and a sprinkle of chopped scallions. A delicious, comforting pot of preserved egg and lean pork porridge was served! She plated side dishes of chilled, dressed enoki mushrooms and thinly sliced cold beef tendon in a spicy sauce.
By 7 PM, the family sat in the living room, eating their porridge while watching the evening news. The reports were grim. The continuous, unprecedented heat had caused mass die-offs of livestock and was devastating crops across the country, burning most nearly-ripe and mid-season vegetables and grains. This had caused market prices for fresh produce to triple in a week. The original agricultural forecasts, which had predicted reduced crop yields for perhaps one month due to the Dark Days, were now hopelessly optimistic. The news anchor stated that except for produce from expensive, temperature-controlled greenhouses, the next quarter would effectively see no harvest at all for traditional farms.
As they ate in solemn silence, Jing Shu's phone buzzed with a notification from the residents' group.
[Wang Qiqi 13]:"@everyone, I just got back from the hospital. I have unfortunate news. Our neighbor Luo Hao from Building 13 passed away this evening from complications of severe metal poisoning compounded by acute heatstroke. Rescue efforts were ineffective. My condolences to his family."