[Zhang Bingbing No. 4]: "I was robbed too. Four or five people with clubs came at me for my things. I dropped them and ran. Next time someone goes out, call me along. The shuttle bus in the morning comes too late, so I usually ride my bike at night when it's a bit cooler."
[Wang Xuemei No. 2]: "I will call you next time. My family also rides bikes. Who knows when these days will end? Ever since the freezer food was eaten up, the dried shiitake mushrooms I bought are gone, the snacks are gone too. Every day we only eat plain rice or the corn porridge that was distributed before. I really hope the Earth's Dark Days end soon [praying emoji]."
[Fat Girl No. 25]:"Tighten your belts and wait for the artificial sun. Everything will get better! But does anyone still have the scalper's phone number? I really want to buy something, I can't take it anymore!"
Jing Shu's memory was stirred, the chat a familiar echo. In her previous life, at this time Su Lanzhi was still working hard and doing endless overtime, coming home exhausted. Because Yu Caini was promoted to "Deputy Director," her previous position became vacant. Su Lanzhi and that sycophant Tian Qing competed for it, but in the end both failed, the position given to an outside appointee. Soon after, the combination of workplace betrayal, depression, and severe heatstroke broke her mother down completely, and she never even made it into the protected government system again, left to scramble with the masses.
As for Jing Shu herself back then, she was still ignorant, just another frightened face in the crowd. Every day she went with Jing An, carrying home welded steel pipes for protection, to line up at the supermarket for food, her heart pounding, afraid the family would run out of grain, afraid they would be targeted and robbed after buying their meager allotment. She was the same as everyone else in the chat, hoping against hope the Earth's Dark Days would end soon, expecting some deus ex machina to save them, pinning all her fragile hopes on the government, on scientists, on anyone but herself.
Jing Shu later realized, through hunger and loss, that in the end, people still had to rely on themselves. No cavalry was coming.
Almost as if on cue, once everyone's refrigerators were empty and pantries bare, the public power supply was shortened again. The announcement came via text alert. It was now from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., a precise two hour window.
Within these two hours, everyone had to finish all household electrical needs: charging power banks, phones, and flashlights, steaming rice for the day with the rice cooker, boiling drinking water, keeping the lights on for at least an hour (news reports said humans needed daily exposure to bright light to regulate circadian rhythms, and besides, candles and batteries were already used up), and watching the mandatory news broadcast to stay updated on regulations and "progress."
Of course, this excluded a handful of the ultra rich who owned UBC solar power systems. It was said that the price of one full set had soared past a million yuan now, and only truly wealthy people with deep, pre apocalypse connections could get them. Less than 0.03 percent of people had them, their roofs gleaming with dark panels.
And it also excluded those with real, institutional power. Their electricity was never cut, their compounds lit up like beacons in the night. Rules had always been tools for managing those below, in any country, in any era. But to be fair, Jing Shu thought coldly, those who had truly contributed enough, who were making the brutal decisions to keep the machine running, did deserve some special treatment. It was a transactional survival.
For example, the ones who managed to keep the last hundreds of millions of people alive during the hardest days through rationing and force. Yes, their cold calculations caused a third of the population to die from starvation, disease, or violence, but as a survivor, Jing Shu had to admit it was a grim kind of remarkable. Two thirds of the people lived on in such an environment. Other countries had fractured completely, gone dark, gone extinct.
A cynical saying was popular in the later years after the apocalypse:
With money, you had UBC, with power, you never lost electricity, with nothing, you relied on public use.
With money, you ate dried food and cans, with power, you ate fresh vegetables, with nothing, you ate bugs and bark.
With money, you drank purified water, with power, you drank mineral water, with nothing, you drank filtered rainwater and prayed.
So what did it count as, that Jing Shu in her villa, with her Cube Space and stockpiles, had all of these? Thinking about it actually made her feel a sharp, private satisfaction, a tiny flame of security in the vast dark.
There was no need for air conditioners anymore, since the temperature began to drop rapidly after 5:30 p.m., the unnatural heat subsiding somewhat with the false twilight. Four months into the apocalypse, people's bodies had slowly, miserably adapted to surviving the heat largely thanks to just barely sufficient water intake. They moved slower, spoke less.
But even water supply rules had changed, the restrictions tightening like a vise. The water trucks only delivered once per day now, rationed strictly by headcount. Each person got only 1.5 liters, measured out into their own containers by unsmiling workers. In such hot weather with constant sweating, 1.5 liters was barely enough for drinking, leaving nothing for washing. Adults were best off consuming 2 liters per day, the health broadcasts said, a cruel joke.
The changes, like boiling a frog in warm water, were easy to miss until it was too late. In the first month, every person had one full bucket per day. Then it was reduced to two buckets per family. Then one bucket per family. After three months, it had become 1.5 liters per person. The public found it hard to accept, grumbling in lines, but faced with armed police in full riot gear with shields and guns overseeing the distribution, they dared not complain aloud, only muttering.
"Delivering water needs armed police? Like we're criminals?"
At most, people muttered complaints from behind curtained windows. The fact that water distribution needed armed escorts showed just how scarce and contested it had become. Freshwater lakes had turned green and stinking with algae and rotting organisms, silt was rising, and the sustained high heat had baked the riverbeds dry. There was no time or resources for remediation, and still it didn't rain, not a drop.
Scientists on the Official Science Channel now spoke with one carefully scripted voice: the prolonged high heat would inevitably cause polar ice melt and sea levels to rise, which in turn would bring catastrophic floods and torrential rains once the atmospheric balance shifted. A third of the world's coastal land would be submerged, and island nations might be wiped out entirely.
"Rain will come sooner or later, and widespread flooding is likely. Preparations must be made in advance, or the consequences will be unimaginable." The scientist on screen looked grave.
In the first month, when scientists warned this, everyone was nervous, buying inflatable rafts and sealing documents. But after four months of the same prediction with no change, people were numb, cynical. "Hurry up and rain already! Floods would be better than dying of heat and thirst! At least we could drink the floodwater!" The comments on local networks were bleakly humorous.
But still, no rain fell. No floods came. Japan had prepared for three months to be submerged, building seawalls, but not a drop of water fell from the hazy sky.
Perhaps only Jing Shu, with the weight of a previous timeline in her mind, knew the terrible truth. Everyone let down their guard, grew complacent, but in the second year of the apocalypse, all these predictions came true with a vengeance. The flood was not absent, only waiting, gathering, and when it came, it swept away several low lying countries and a third of China's coastline and plains. That year was one of endless, watery deaths.
She shook her head, as if to dislodge the grim memory. Every day's events, every chat message, kept pulling out these old, painful recollections. After finishing a breakfast of ten scallion egg pancakes, two bowls of silky double layer milk custard, and a big pot of tomato egg noodle soup, Jing Shu put on her motorcycle helmet, grabbed her solid iron rod leaning by the door, and set out to take Su Lanzhi to work on the electric scooter.
Yes, a real, solid iron rod, not hollow pipe. Some people might not understand the sheer weight of wrought iron, so Jing Shu gave herself a quick mental explanation: one cubic meter of iron weighs 7.8 tons. This solid, 1 meter long rod, as thick as her wrist, weighed approximately 39 kilograms. It was a brutal, simple weapon.
Now Jing Shu could lift it with one hand with ease and swing it dozens of times without her arms tiring. If some fool dared to come near, she could break bones with no problem, one solid hit guaranteed to shatter limbs or skull.
She also carried along two unmarked cardboard boxes filled with rich, dark soil from the villa's stockpile in the trunk of the scooter. Su Lanzhi's workplace competition was almost here, the monthly yield review, and Jing Shu had decided to cheat a little for her mother. No matter what, Yu Caini had to be pushed out, had to fail. This promotion was crucial for their family's protected status.
"You really have to come? Isn't it safer to stay at home? The outside is so dangerous now." Su Lanzhi fretted, smearing some ash and dirt on her face and neck from a small pouch. Jing Shu followed suit, rubbing the grit into her own skin. After months of drinking Spirit Spring water, their skin had become too clear, too healthy. Without sunlight and with long term malnutrition, most people's skin was sallow, dark with grime, or splotchy. They stood out too much, looked too well fed.
After months without real sunlight, people were aging fast, losing nutrients, their hair brittle. In her previous life, Su Lanzhi had looked like a woman in her seventies before she even turned fifty, wrinkled and stooped. But this time, she was still vibrant, like a woman in her thirties, with glowing skin and bright eyes.
As for Jing Shu, she looked even more like a well cared for young girl, which was dangerously conspicuous. The unnatural beauty was so inconvenient that she had bought many shades of foundation and creams before, which now seemed like a prescient move.
Jing Shu slammed the iron rod down on the tile floor of the garage with a definitive thud that echoed. "Look at my strength now. If anyone dares to mess with us, I will beat them into the ground! Dad was called away by Uncle for some supply run, and no one else can send you. I can't rest easy letting you go alone. Besides," she added, hefting the rod over her shoulder, "I want to see what that shady workplace of yours is really up to, get a feel for the layout." Her tone was casual, but her eyes were hard.