The little chubby kid in the apocalypse, with rounded cheeks and a visible layer of baby fat, was truly a rare sight, a relic of a vanished world of plenty.
Jing Shu was defeated by his silent, persistent stare. Sticking firmly to her newly forged principle of never giving things away for free, of creating transactions even in kindness, Jing Shu held out a single, perfect cashew nut between her thumb and forefinger and said, "One question, one cashew. What's your name?"
The chubby boy thought for a moment, his brow furrowing in concentration, then used a short stick to write three complex characters in the dust on the concrete floor: 牛牪犇.
Jing Shu's face filled with confusion: "???" "Niu… what?" Was this kid testing which Chinese teacher she had slept through their classes? She recognized the first character, 'ox,' but the next two were obscure variants.
The boy confidently took the proffered cashew and explained around it, his voice clear, "It's pronounced Niu Yanben." He stretched out his grubby hand again, palm up, clearly asking for another nut as payment for the pronunciation lesson.
Jing Shu, amused despite herself, gave him one more. She herself grabbed a handful from her pocket, stuffing her cheeks like a squirrel while staring at the boy. The boy nibbled his cashew halves slowly, savoring each tiny bite, and when he finished, he looked eagerly at Jing Shu's full pocket again.
The boy's eyes suddenly sparkled with a mischievous light. "My name's meaning comes from the phrase Niu Yanben Shanhu, Ma Dubiao Hailong." He reached out again and successfully received another nut as a reward for the literary reference.
Jing Shu: "???"
She felt her IQ was being casually crushed by a preschooler.
"It means oxen charging together against a mountain tiger, and horses stampeding together against a sea dragon. It describes an unstoppable, collective momentum, like thousands of horses thundering forward." After finishing his precise, textbook explanation, the boy triumphantly stretched out his hand and got yet another nut, his small stash growing.
Jing Shu: "..."
This damn brat was not just showing off his erudition but was systematically making her, a college graduate, look like an uneducated fool. She chewed her cashews with more force.
In the following minutes, the brat, fueled by nuts, began gossiping nonstop about his family in a hushed, rapid stream: how his mom loved strawberries more than anything, how his dad had his mom's name tattooed in tiny characters on his left buttock as a dare, how if his dad couldn't satisfy his mom's demands, he'd be forced to kneel on the hardwood floor with an additional weight of 1.9 kg on his back, how his dad's secret stash of private money was hidden inside a hollowed-out electrical socket but had already been discovered and stolen by him to buy candy, and so on.
Jing Shu thought, her expression deadpan: "I really don't want to hear your parents' bizarre domestic gossip."
Niu Yanben replied with his bright, knowing eyes: "No, you do want to hear it. It's more interesting than watching wilted spinach."
Jing Shu hiccuped, then pulled out her last remaining whole cashew from the depths of her pocket. "So," she said, lowering her voice, "who exactly is your dad? What does he do here?"
The boy carefully put the precious final cashew in his shirt pocket, buttoning the flap. Pointing toward the row of brightly lit, official-looking greenhouses where important people worked, he said, "My dad is Niu Mou. Everyone here calls him Director Niu, but I heard the adults whispering he'll be leaving soon to become some kind of Vice Minister." He said it with the casualness of a child repeating overheard words.
Jing Shu: "..."
This was definitely not the right day for casual conversations. She seemed to have stumbled upon a huge, accidentally revealed piece of gossip. In her previous life, she only knew from fragmented news that Director Niu of this district had been promoted early on, then kept rising higher and higher in the restructuring, bringing his protégé Yu Caini along as well. But the same stern, upright Director Niu everyone feared actually had his wife's name tattooed on his butt and was henpecked into weighted kneeling?
The boy's eyes grew watery and pleading again as he stared at Jing Shu's empty hands. Then, with a magician's flourish, he pulled out a slightly crumpled White Rabbit milk candy from his own pocket and held it out to her. "One question, one candy. What's your name?" He had perfectly mirrored her transaction.
Good kid. He had learned the rules of the new world quickly.
Finally, it was Jing Shu's turn to be quizzed. Feeling strangely excited, like a child in a game, she used his stick to write down her name in the dust: 景舒. She had assumed a six-year-old boy would barely recognize many characters, but the boy read it fluently and even said, "It comes from the poem Jìng Nǚ in the Book of Songs, right? 'Jìng nǚ qí shū, sì wǒ yú chéng yú.' I just memorized that passage last week." He looked immensely pleased with himself.
Jing Shu snatched the candy, bolted back to her crate, and muttered under her breath, "We're not the same. At your age, I only knew how to play with mud and throw stones." She decided she hated this preternaturally smart brat. Not only had he tricked more than twenty of her precious cashews out of her, but he even used classical poetry to humiliate her. Hmph.
By ten o'clock, with no real sun to mark the time, it was already declared lunchtime by the compound bell. Sitting in the car with the cool air conditioning on, a luxury powered by the scooter's battery, they ate simply but well: thermos containers of thick, gelatinous silver ear and goji berry soup, two crisp apples, and then each had two large bowls of bibimbap with a soft-boiled egg mixed in, spicy kimchi on the side, and slices of pan-fried beef steak. This time, with no sharp-eyed little brat peeking at their food through the window, the meal was especially pleasant, eaten in secure privacy.
Su Lanzhi worked overtime for a while longer in the afternoon, checking each rack. She had to personally handle everything, from adjusting the lamps to mixing nutrients, unlike Yu Caini, who only gave orders from her office while others ran around on her behalf. Jing Shu thought, clinically, that Yu Caini's detached style was actually the more proper way of leadership in a hierarchy, but since Su Lanzhi lacked the connections to command respect, she had no choice but to do things herself, to lead by sweat for now.
From a distance, leaning against the scooter, Jing Shu observed Yu Caini's research greenhouse through the glass. It was buzzing with efficient activity, divided into several neat zones for different light and nutrient experiments. Everything was orderly, with categories from rare medicinal herbs to common leafy greens. The paperwork alone probably filled trays. But what was the point of all this pristine organization?
In the end, in this raw struggle for survival, it all came down to who could grow more edible biomass and grow it tastier, faster. On that front, Jing Shu was supremely confident that with her Cube Space and the Spirit Spring, nothing in this world, no funded project, could beat her. It was the ultimate cheat.
They didn't leave until noon, when Su Lanzhi's shift ended. On the way back, the roads were desolate, and there were no robbers blocking the road. Jing Shu guessed the predators were all lurking near the supermarkets and distribution centers instead, where the desperate congregated.
At the community gate, the security guards, now wearing padded vests, carefully checked their identities and even peered into the scooter's storage box before letting them in. Their vigilance had visibly increased. After all, home invasion robberies had indeed been rampant lately in less-secured compounds.
When they got home, Grandma Jing reported she had already completed the morning chores: fed the fish in the tanks, milked the cows in the makeshift stable, fed the silkworms their mulberry leaves, and taken care of the pigs, cows, and sheep kept on the villa's ventilated first floor.
Jing Shu went upstairs to the converted rooms to feed the chickens, ducks, and quails, collecting warm eggs from the nesting boxes along the way. She even slipped a few more fresh eggs from the Cube Space into the collection basket, which made it seem as if the family's birds were fantastically productive, their daily output something they could never hope to finish eating.
The black pigs and sheep in the villa's ground-floor pens were still noticeably smaller, leaner, compared to the ones living in the pastoral section of the Cube Space. The animals inside the Cube Space lived in a constant, comfortable temperature without sudden fluctuations. They were also fed excellent grain and greens, even mixed with a little Spirit Spring water in their troughs. As a result, they were much larger, glossier, and would be fully grown and ready for breeding in just two more months.
Jing Shu was already planning which useful people she would "gift" the first litter of black piglets to, and what favors, information, or protection she could extract from them in return. Nothing was free.
Afterward, she took her fat chicken, No. 1, on a leash to the scrubby back mountain behind the villa, continuing to sharpen stone cones against a flat rock and practice throwing stones and shooting arrows with a homemade bow. After more than a month of relentless training, she could now hit a man-sized target with a throwing stone at 30 meters with consistent accuracy. Jing Shu was very satisfied with this distance; in mid to long range combat against untrained raiders, she was practically unbeatable.
She also trained the fat chicken using gestures and commands. Now, whenever she pointed at a practice dummy and shouted, "Attack!" the nearly 20-kilogram chicken would launch itself forward with surprising speed, pecking and tearing at the stuffed sack with frightening strength, its claws leaving deep rents. Jing Shu felt her investment of Spirit Spring water in No. 1 chicken was well worth it; it was becoming a feathered guardian.
But bad news, carried on the digital wind of the community network, soon spread: another death, this time inside their own compound.
Jing Shu learned from the frantic chat history that Wang Dazhao's pregnant wife had died after eating vegetables bought from scalpers at astronomical prices. To preserve the vegetables' fresh appearance in the high heat during transport, the scalpers had coated them with industrial-grade wax and preservative chemicals. The pregnant woman, unable to wash them properly with their rationed water, had ingested the toxins. She miscarried violently and hemorrhaged, dying in her husband's arms before the slow, overloaded community ambulance even reached the gate.
The police were called, took statements, but the scalpers had long fled the area, their burner phones dead.
Wang Dazhao, in a grief-stricken rage, sought out Wang Qiqi who had shared the contact, demanding he find the culprits. Wang Dazhao swore in voice messages, his voice raw and broken, that he would kill their entire families. Wang Qiqi, sounding shaken, agreed without hesitation, even admitting he bore some responsibility for vouching for the source and would see it through, help track them down.
The incident left the entire group chat silent for hours, a digital void. Just days ago, Wang Dazhao had proudly shown off photos of his stockpile of baby goods and expensive infant formula bought on the black market. In the blink of an eye, he lost both his unborn child and his wife. What he lost was not just family, but his hope for the rest of his life, his reason to keep struggling forward.
Even if he physically survived the apocalypse, he would only be like a walking corpse now, unless he managed to transmute that grief into vengeful purpose and pull himself out of the abyss.
This vegetable wax scandal finally made most people give up entirely on buying fresh food from unknown scalpers. With no water to spare for thorough washing, the risk of eating toxic, chemically coated produce was simply too great, a gamble with death.
Just as everyone resigned themselves, in despair, to living on plain white rice and occasional fortified porridge, a new, biological nightmare appeared on the periphery of awareness. After four months of mutation and accelerated evolution under the apocalyptic conditions of heat, darkness, and radiation, a new category of the biosphere emerged from the shadows: the Darklife—twisted, resilient organisms born from the collapse of ecosystems. The first and most infamous of these to achieve widespread notoriety, the Carrion Scavengers, successfully invaded human habitats. It took them only three days to go from silent, overlooked invaders to infamous, opportunistic killers.
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牛牪犇山虎,马騳飙海龙
上联 (First Couplet): 牛牪犇山虎 (Niú Yàn Bēn Shān Hǔ)
牛 (niú): Ox
牪 (yàn): A rare character meaning "a pair of oxen" or "oxen walking side-by-side."
犇 (bēn): The variant of 奔 (bēn, "to run"), specifically depicting "three oxen running"—meaning "a stampede" or "to rush."
山虎 (shān hǔ): Mountain Tiger
下联 (Second Couplet): 马騳飙海龙 (Mǎ Dú Biāo Hǎi Lóng)
马 (mǎ): Horse
騳 (dú): A rare character meaning "a pair of horses" or "horses running together."
飙 (biāo): To whirlwind, to speed, to storm.
海龙 (hǎi lóng): Sea Dragon
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The author initially write "就在大家都一致决定,还是老老实实的吃白米饭的时候,黑暗物种,腐尸虫经过四个月的进化和衍变,终于成功入侵了地球,它们从悄无声息到名声大震,仅仅用了三天的时间."
Literally translated as "Just as everyone had unanimously decided to stick to their white rice, the dark creatures, the carrion worms, finally invaded Earth after four months of evolution and transformation. They went from a silent presence to widespread fame in just three days." (I use google translate for this)
黑暗 (Hēi'àn - Dark) + 物种 (wùzhǒng - Species as in scientific term for a classification of living organisms).
To be honest I torn between using Species or Creatures for this translation. But because that term eventually used for mutated living things (plants, animals, etc.) with a wide range of characteristics, so I feel both of them feel too restricting. And so, I need a new term for it.
"Darklife" is an umbrella term that encompasses everything: dangerous animals, grotesque mutants, tame plants, and everything in between. A "species" is a subset of life. A "creature" is an animal. "Life" includes it all.
While not a strict scientific term, it implies a biological classification. It has a more formal, conceptual ring than "Dark Creatures" and avoids the overly-specific false precision of "Dark Species" for a group that includes non-animals.
"The Dark Species" might refer to one type, like the Carrion Scavengers. "The Darklife" implies the entire new ecosystem—a whole class of mutated existence.
And so, I decide to make an introduction with clear and concise flow about the "Darklife" or as the author write "dark creatures". Because this was the first time that term used.
I introduces the concept first, then specifies the Carrion Scavengers as the first major example. By doing this, it clearly defines Darklife first as a broad "category of biosphere" and "twisted organisms," giving the necessary context. It also achieves introduction and specification in just two sentences, keeping the narrative pace and impactful.