Since Su Lanzhi's promotion, her workplace had changed from the old administrative office to a dedicated facility. She now worked at the Planting Industry R&D Management Department, a compound located in a sparse industrial zone between the old, crumbling city center and the current, fortified villa district. Compared to her old commute across the city, the new place was much closer, only 14 kilometers away as the crow flies, though the route was anything but direct.
Even so, Jing Shu dared not drive the electric scooter too fast. The battery indicator was a constant worry. In Wu City, only the main arteries of the city center were cleared daily by rumbling bulldozers, while other areas had wind blown soil and debris piled so high in the streets that cars and scooters could only follow the deep, parallel tracks left behind by heavy supply trucks, weaving between the ridges.
At 4:40 a.m., under the starless, dark purple sky, the temperature was a surprising 3°C, a biting cold that felt alien after the daytime inferno. Jing Shu turned the scooter's weak heater up as she drove, listening to the static laced 949 radio station broadcasting public announcements and old songs. Since petroleum was no longer sold to civilians, the pumps chained shut, most logistics companies had ceased operations. Energy cars, powered by swappable battery packs from rare charging stations, had become outrageously expensive on the black market and were now called "luxury cars," status symbols for the connected.
Gasoline vehicles, meanwhile, had fallen to rock bottom prices, useless without fuel. Major manufacturers had stopped producing them altogether and shifted their hobbled assembly lines to energy cars. Yet due to crippling shortages of lithium and other raw materials, their production remained scarce, a trickle for the elite.
In the passenger seat, Su Lanzhi cracked open dried apricot pits with a small metal tool, neatly tucking the pale kernels into a small cloth bag as snacks for her long workday. "I really don't know how our backyard apricot tree produces so many fruits. I eat them every day, and I still can't finish them all. The branches are still heavy." Her voice held a note of quiet wonder.
Jing Shu rolled her eyes behind her helmet visor. To ensure her mother could enjoy apricots daily, She had been secretly watering the tree's roots with heavily diluted Spirit Spring water every few nights. There was a saying, "When life feels easy, it's only because someone else is carrying the weight for you."
This was absolutely true. In her previous life, Jing Shu lived in relative comfort, oblivious, only because her parents bore the crushing burdens, hiding their struggles. In this life, it was her turn to be the pillar. But she had learned her lesson too, the hard way, she would never again raise an ungrateful white eyed wolf, never invest love where it would not be returned.
They arrived right on time at Su Lanzhi's workplace, a compound surrounded by a high concrete wall topped with wire. At the entrance, heavy iron gates and several security guards in bulky bulletproof vests wielding crackling electric batons checked their IDs and work pass under a harsh floodlight before sliding the gate open just enough to let them through.
Rows of costly, newly built thermostatic greenhouses made of opaque composite panels stretched ahead under the artificial dawn of perimeter lamps. Bright, energy intensive lights shone through the small, thick windows, illuminating the busy, shadowed figures of early shift workers inside. As Jing Shu parked the scooter in a designated bay, a large government shuttle bus, its sides streaked with mud, pulled in, dropping off the last batch of staff with a hiss of doors.
Among them, Yu Caini stumbled out, her steps unsteady, with messy, bird's nest hair escaping from a loose bun. Half a year ago, Yu Caini had been radiant, sharp, and commanding in her tailored professional OL outfits. Now she looked disheveled, her clothes wrinkled as if slept in, and her whole demeanor was one of exhausted defeat, shoulders slumped.
Fixing her hair and smoothing her jacket with quick, irritated motions, Yu Caini suddenly spotted Su Lanzhi and Jing Shu by the scooter. A flash of pure, undiluted hatred instantly burned in her eyes. She straightened and strutted over arrogantly, blocking their path to the main building door, saying:
"Find a time to handle the property transfer. That apartment is yours again, just return my money. All of it." Her voice was tight.
Damn it. Who would have thought that the apartment she had thought was a steal, a bargain snatched from Su Lanzhi's hardship, would lose most of its value in just half a year? The 1.4 million yuan flat in the now deserted downtown was now worth less than 300,000 on paper, and no one would buy it even at that price. It was just empty concrete.
That bastard Clerk Liu from the property agency had sworn up and down the city center's housing market would never collapse, unless it was the end of the world. Well, wasn't it exactly that now? The joke was on her.
Every time the estimated price dropped in her mind, Yu Caini cursed Su Lanzhi bitterly in her heart. "If only I'd used that money to buy an energy car instead. Damn Su Lanzhi, it's all her fault for selling that cursed apartment. Otherwise, I'd be driving to work every day in comfort instead of crammed into this stinking shuttle like livestock."
Su Lanzhi tugged at Jing Shu, who was hefting one of the soil boxes, and turned away, aiming to walk around her. Jing Shu looked back over her shoulder with a wide, insincere grin. "Congratulations! The housing market really did crash. That's what it means when evil meets its own punishment. Karma's a ledger." Her voice was cheerful.
Before she could say more, Su Lanzhi covered Jing Shu's mouth with her hand and quickened her pace, pulling her towards the research building entrance.
Yu Caini snorted at their retreating figures, her hands curling into fists. "You can hide for now, but not forever, Su Lanzhi. In this upcoming monthly competition, you'll lose for sure. I'll crush you completely so you'll never rise again. In this world, in politics, those without connections will always remain at the bottom, groveling. Hmph." She muttered the last part to herself, then straightened her jacket and headed towards her own well lit greenhouse.
Dragged into the dimly lit research building, the air smelling of damp soil and ozone, Jing Shu could still hear her mother muttering irritably under her breath: "Why bother provoking her? We already got such a huge bargain out of that sale, so just let her whine. I don't even want to live in that little apartment anymore, and we've already spent all the money on supplies. Let her report all she wants, there's nothing left to take." Su Lanzhi's face was lined with stress.
The Planting Industry R&D Management Department was divided into different sections and clear hierarchies. The best resources, power, nutrients, personnel, went to the Director, who oversaw the newly built, state of the art research greenhouses with eight hours of guaranteed electricity and sixteen hours of stable temperature daily. Each Deputy Director was in charge of one smaller experimental site for testing crops under Earth's Dark Days conditions. Their results in the coming days, the yield and vitality, would determine who advanced in rank, who got more resources, and who might become the sole director of their division.
And the contrast between the two deputy directors' sites could not have been clearer.
Yu Caini's research facility was a proper greenhouse, humming with climate control. Rows of pristine metal shelves were filled with lush lettuce, vibrant spinach, and other leafy crops under the relentless glow of full spectrum artificial lights running 24 hours a day. She had more than a dozen researchers and technicians in lab coats working for her, ample supplies of special nutrient solutions in labeled drums, advanced instruments monitoring pH and humidity, and even university professors personally visiting to guide the work. Her daily tasks, as far as Jing Shu could see, were to check progress printouts, offer empty encouragement, and, conveniently, take home bundles of fresh vegetables to enjoy while others starved.
By contrast, Su Lanzhi's assigned research site was a mere, cavernous warehouse converted in haste. It was cramped, lit by only a few flickering LED shop lamps strung on wires, and the vegetables on the makeshift wooden racks were withered, yellowed, and malnourished, clinging to life in poor soil. She had only three sun weathered, experienced farmers assisting her, their hands calloused from real work, and no instruments or advanced equipment at all, just watering cans, hand trowels, and a shared sense of futility.
It was heaven and earth. No wonder Su Lanzhi had been sighing every evening at home, staring at the wall. "What can I do? I told them my results were from homegrown, simple methods, so they gave me only this, said to 'replicate the natural conditions.' Yu Caini has her uncle, a professor at the Agricultural Institute, assigning her resources and even supplying growth catalysts from the university stockpile."
No wonder she had felt hopeless. Against such blatant, institutional unfairness, there was nowhere to complain. People without connections, without a patron, like Su Lanzhi, could only be trampled as stepping stones for others to rise, their labor and ideas appropriated.
"You rest here for a bit on this crate. I'll spread the soil we brought over the racks." Su Lanzhi took the box from Jing Shu, her movements weary but determined.
She laid out the rich, dark soil she had brought from the villa over the parched vegetable beds, mixing it gently with the existing poor substrate. She could not understand why vegetables grew so vigorously and lushly at home but struggled here under nearly identical lamps. Until Jing Shu had casually suggested it might be the soil quality, the microbiome, she hadn't considered it. Of course, this soil was special, it was mixed with Spirit Spring water and enriched earth from the Cube Space, a cheat code for life.
Because of the Earth's Dark Days, the focus of the department's research was on crops that required little sunlight, such as garlic sprouts, spinach, crown daisy, lettuce, and various mushrooms. These were exactly what filled the sad racks in front of them.
Su Lanzhi worked tirelessly alongside the three farmers, discussing spacing and moisture. Meanwhile, Jing Shu, hungry and bored, sat alone on an upturned wooden crate in a dim corner, crunching on a handful of charcoal roasted cashews from her pocket, the rich, buttery taste a small comfort.
Suddenly, she felt a pair of small, unblinking eyes fixed on her from the shadows near a stack of empty pots, making her freeze mid bite.
"What are you eating?" The voice was thin, a whisper.
It was a dirty little boy with a runny nose, about five or six years old, dressed in oversized, stained clothes. He had tiny, sharp eyes that gleamed in the low light, fixed on her hand.
Jing Shu shook her head slowly and stopped chewing, closing her mouth under the dim light.
The chubby boy just stood there, perfectly still, patiently staring at her bulging cheeks. When Jing Shu got up to walk away towards her mother, he followed at a distance of three steps, a silent shadow, his eyes full of a desperate, silent pleading. Without saying another word, those bright, hungry little eyes conveyed ten different ways of begging for food, a whole vocabulary of need.