The elderly couple had moved all the bedding, daily necessities, and clothing from the countryside into the new house, the rooms now holding the familiar scent of their old quilts and the polished wood of their heirloom cabinets. It seemed they were planning to stay permanently. Because of this, Jing Shu finally felt at ease, a knot in her chest loosening. With her grandparents under her watchful eyes in this life, how could they possibly die? She watched Grandma Jing arrange a set of blue flowered ceramic mugs on the kitchen shelf.
Third Aunt and Wu You'ai also made a special visit to Jing Shu's villa one afternoon. Third Aunt spent several days knitting a cotton vest, knee warmers, and cotton socks for Jing Shu with thick, soft wool yarn, the stitches even and tight. Wu You'ai, on the other hand, carried over a cardboard box that faintly rustled, filled with more than ten plump, creamy white silkworms moving slowly over fresh mulberry leaves.
Wu You'ai said, setting the box carefully on the coffee table, "Didn't you say the other day that you wanted silkworms? So I asked my mentor for some experimental ones. Domesticated silkworms are gone, but these are Amber Silkworms. The silk they spin is golden and currently only cultivated in India. They can feed on many different plants. Whether they survive depends on you." She pushed her glasses up her nose.
Jing Shu accepted the silkworms with delight, peering into the box at the small, diligent creatures. These days she had been so busy collecting all sorts of supplies, cramming shelves and stacking boxes, that she had completely forgotten about silkworms. By the time she remembered, they were already impossible to find in the pet markets or online. Most had likely died from the cold weeks ago unless they were kept somewhere like her villa, which was maintained at a constant temperature 24 hours a day by the quiet hum of the generator.
Jing Shu had not expected Wu You'ai to actually find some. Even if they were not a Chinese breed, any silkworm that could produce silk was good. She already had a small mulberry tree sprouting in one plot of the Cube Space.
Raising some silkworms now would prove useful later. In the apocalypse, cotton and linen had no new harvests. In the first few years it was fine, as people could strip clothing from abandoned houses or corpses, the fabric often musty and torn. But later, once the government had distributed most of the existing cotton quilts and clothes from state reserves, there would be no more new ones. Though Jing Shu had stockpiled plenty, bolts of fabric and bags of clothing, one day those would still run out.
Cotton was manageable since Jing Shu could plant some in the Cube Space and weave it openly on the small loom she had bought. But many things that required silk, fine thread, delicate linings, certain medical applications, were impossible without silkworms. She did not need many, just enough to maintain a breeding line in a controlled environment so she could expand the population whenever necessary.
Jing Shu understood that Third Aunt and Wu You'ai were thanking her for the medicine she had given them that day during the fever. They did not say much, but their actions spoke volumes. To Jing Shu, this was how family should behave, mutual courtesy and gratitude, a quiet exchange of care.
Family members had no obligation to do anything for you. It was like Su Meimei, who endlessly demanded things under the guise of being family, her voice always tinged with entitlement. Helping was kindness, not helping was only natural. There was no debt.
Because of this, Jing Shu's fondness for Third Aunt and Wu You'ai, with whom she had not interacted much in her previous life, their faces blurred in her memory, grew somewhat. She made a note to set aside some extra fruit for them next time.
"Making tofu is a profound skill!" Grandpa Jing turned the small stone mill, the granite grinding surfaces rasping together, as he launched into his trademark "Jing Shanhe style bragging." Grandpa Jing's full name was Jing Shanhe, a name both grand and imposing, which he felt suited his occasional pontifications perfectly.
Grandma Jing stood nearby at the ready, occasionally pouring a ladle of soaked, swollen soybeans and some water into the mill's hole, and bossed him around as if driving a donkey. "Faster old man you are slowing down." Jing Shu could not help but laugh as she watched from the doorway, the milky white soybean slurry collecting in the bucket below.
Over the following days, the kitchen perpetually clouded with steam, Jing Shu began the process of grinding soybeans into tofu and turning them into all sorts of delicious foods. The air smelled of clean, nutty beans.
In the south, gypsum was used to set tofu, making it tender and smooth like pudding. In the north, brine was used, producing firmer tofu with a stronger taste and more chewiness, able to hold its shape in a stew. Since Wu City was in the north, brine was more commonly found, and Jing Shu had stocked several bottles.
She also made more than ten 2 liter containers of soft tofu pudding to keep for breakfast, sprinkling them with white sugar. She cooked a great deal of soy milk, the large pot bubbling, filling the last 1 cubic meter of available space in her Cube Space with stacked containers, so it would be ready to drink anytime, hot or cold.
When making tofu, a thin, delicate layer of skin formed on top of the boiling soy milk. Once cooled and peeled off, this became tofu skin. Jing Shu fried them into crispy, golden sheets that crackled when broken and also made yuba, the dried rolls, storing them in the refrigerator she had cleared of less essential items.
She turned some tofu into frozen tofu, letting the blocks crystallize for hotpot, some into various flavored dried tofu strips marinated in soy sauce and spices, and some into fried tofu puffs. She coated small cubes in beaten egg and fried them in shallow oil until they puffed up golden and hollow, then sprinkled them with salt while hot. Simple but absolutely delicious, the outside crisp, the inside soft and spongy.
Grandma Jing kept some fresh tofu to ferment and make stinky tofu in a sealed clay jar placed on the balcony. That instantly made Jing Shu crave the famous stinky tofu from Changsha, fried black and served with pickles and chili, her mouth watering at the thought.
The rest of the soybeans, several kilos worth, she roasted in a wok with five spice powder until crispy and brown. Since she had no more room in the Cube Space, she stored them in a dozen 2 liter sealed glass jars, squeezing two jars into whatever cramped space was left in a kitchen cabinet. With this, she achieved the ultimate food hoarder's dream, to always have snacks on hand whenever she wanted them, to reach into a jar and hear the satisfying crunch of beans.
Time slipped by, the days marked only by the relentless heat, and by mid March the weather remained unbearably hot, the night offering no relief. The Earth's Dark Days showed no signs of ending, the sun a permanent, muted bruise behind the haze, and everyone began to realize a horrifying truth whispered in queues and over low phone batteries, the Dark Days might never end, and the weather might never return to normal.
Meanwhile, household grain stores were being consumed at an alarming rate because there were no vegetables or side dishes to stretch them. Families survived on plain rice or noodles, boiled in precious water, which quickly depleted supplies. A bag of rice that once lasted a month now vanished in two weeks.
Food stored in refrigerators was spoiling too, since power was not stable, cutting out for hours at a time. Families who ate through their frozen meat quickly enough managed, but others who delayed, hoping for a better occasion, found their food rotting, the smell seeping out into hallways.
Eating the same grain every day caused widespread frustration. Many could no longer stomach the sight of white rice. It was just like Jing Shu's previous life, rice at noon, plain noodles in the afternoon, or rice stir fried with a little salt, steamed, or boiled into congee in different styles.
But no matter the style, the essence was unchanged. Eating the same food for a week was enough to kill appetite, let alone after more than a month. Jing Shu even swore to herself, stirring a pot of plain rice, that she would rather eat instant noodles, that salty, artificial broth, than another bowl of this bland, sticky whiteness.
The family group chat on her phone buzzed incessantly.
[Wang Cuihua]:"We used to get two buckets of water every two days, but now it's only one. It's barely enough for drinking, not enough for cooking rice properly."
The text was followed by a photo of a single blue plastic bucket.
[Jing Lai No. 25]:"I went to the west side of the city to prepare cooked food at the community kitchen. They say water will only become scarcer. The lakes in Wu City are all green now, full of rotting organisms. You can smell it from the shore."
Third Aunt and Wu You'ai had joined a larger district group chat on behalf of Grandma Jing to pass along information. Third Aunt had also been working on the west side making cooked food, ladling rice and stew into containers. It was hard, back aching work, but she enjoyed the chatter and made many friends among the other volunteers.
Wang Cuihua sent another voice message, her voice tinny through the speaker: "Are they still hiring where you are? I heard at least they give you a hot meal with vegetables with your shift."
[Jing Lai No. 25]:"Not anymore. The slots filled in an hour. If they start again, I will let you know.But the line for applicants was longer than the food line."
[Wang Qiqi, No. 13]:"@everyone, important notice from the neighborhood committee. All supermarkets will now only open from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., just one hour. Families without reserves should queue daily to buy food. No one knows when the Dark Days will end, which means no crops can be grown until then. Also, they say natural gas might be restricted soon. If it's cut off, we won't even be able to cook."
That announcement shocked countless lurkers into speaking. People bombarded the chat, messages scrolling too fast to read, asking if it was true, if it was official. Power outages and water shortages were bad enough, but if natural gas was cut, how would they even prepare meals? How would they boil water?
[Young Master with Kids, No. 13]:"This is like the end of the world. Many posts online exposed it, but they were deleted by morning. Some claim the Dark Days will never end, and China will not be able to grow crops for years. Even with three years of stockpiles, it will run out eventually. We should hoard as much food as we can now."
[Wang Dazhao, No. 1]:"It's true. If I had known, I would have bought more months ago. I came to line up at 2 p.m., six hours early, and there were already many people. Next time you better come by noon. The line behind me stretched across the street. With just one hour open, who knows if we will even get anything."