All the way back home in the rattling scooter, Su Lanzhi couldn't stop blaming herself, her voice tight with frustration.
"If I had known earlier that Yu Caini was such a shameless, vindictive person, I should have been prepared, should have posted a guard. The look in her eyes yesterday when she left was already off, full of spite, but I never thought anyone could be this malicious, to ruin months of work. I guess I really do think too kindly of others, always expecting basic decency."
Humans always seem to learn only after suffering real, painful losses. No amount of warnings or lectures can compare to a single harsh fall that bruises both pride and prospects. To toughen up her inherently trusting, baozi parents, you sometimes have to let them get burned badly by reality. Once isn't enough to forge true caution. Then let it happen twice, until the lesson sinks into the bone.
Back at the villa, Spirit Spring water, poured generously but carefully over the selected garlic shoots and oyster mushroom logs, worked its subtle magic. In just a few hours under the grow lights, the plants perked up visibly, shooting forth new growth, appearing even more lush and vibrant than before. Jing Shu hesitated for a moment, a flicker of worry that such exceptionally healthy experimental crops would draw scientific suspicion because their yield and vitality far exceeded normal parameters, only to realize she was overthinking it. In this desperate, results-driven environment, everyone was cheating somehow, hers was just a better, undetectable cheat.
At the same time, holding a perfect, emerald-green garlic shoot, Jing Shu understood with cold clarity why she had survived as long as she did in her previous life. She thanked whatever cruel heavens had spared her and for letting her live ten grueling years into the apocalypse despite consuming so many unknown, potentially toxic substances. Resilience was written in her cells.
The competition hall, a repurposed exhibition center, was a surreal spectacle. The thirteen district governments of Wu City were like showy birds competing to sing the loudest with their experimental crops. One display featured spinach injected with a certain chemical that forced maturation in two days, the leaves an unnaturally uniform dark green. Another had garlic plants, grafted and dosed with experimental agents, that could produce six or seven bulbs from a single stalk. Whether those freakishly large, clustered garlic bulbs were edible or just bizarre biomass was a question politely ignored.
Even though Su Lanzhi's oyster mushrooms were exceptional in their natural perfection, her work, labeled Traditional Optimized Cultivation, only earned a solid third place in the final evaluation by the panel of officials and scientists.
First place, amid much fanfare, went to a genetically modified oyster mushroom strain developed in the Xinshi District research hub. The demonstration mushrooms were injected with dozens of types of mold and chemical catalysts, then soaked in a vat of faintly stinking green nutrient liquid. Each fungal bag could grow over a dozen dense bundles of oyster mushrooms, with layers of moss-like, fuzzy green secondary mushrooms sprouting from the base. The sight alone was nauseating, a biological obscenity.
Jing Shu finally realized, with a jolt of disgust, that this was the very high-yield vegetable she had once been forced to eat until she vomited and sworn off for good in her last life. To think it had been developed and triumphed this early was like forcing a chicken to grow four or five wings. Possible, but monstrous.
A single such fungal bag, the presenter boasted, could feed twenty people in one meal. The pros were brutally obvious, astronomical yield, low material cost, easy spore extraction for scaling, and scalable production. The cons, mentioned in a rushed mumble, were texture and taste challenges, and the fact that mold residues and chemical catalysts that failed to evaporate fully would leave dangerous deposits in the human body. But in the calculus of survival, yield trumped safety.
Second place went to a plot of genetically modified corn, altered into a startling new dwarf species that purportedly didn't require strong sunlight. It had high yield and minimal growing conditions, but it was still under long-term study. Because of its perceived future potential to revolutionize calorie production, it ranked second, a bet on tomorrow.
Su Lanzhi was, against the odds, proud of her third-place ranking, especially after several high-ranking leaders sampled her simple stir-fried garlic shoots and mushrooms and lavishly praised their authentic flavor and texture. In the end, as a unique niche, her development zone was officially designated as Government Supply Only premium farmland. It was a backhanded compliment and a gilded cage.
From now on, the other twelve districts would focus on producing bulk, engineered food for the general population, while Su Lanzhi's small zone would exclusively supply natural vegetables to the entire Wu City government apparatus. It was both a promising mark of trust and an incredibly dangerous assignment, making her family a visible target tied directly to the elite's table.
As for Yu Caini's entry, it performed dismally. Her vegetables, grown with heavy pesticides and catalysts, lacked the exceptional, clean taste of Su Lanzhi's crops and fell far short of the shocking, low-cost, high-yield model of the first-place mutant mushrooms. Her work was revealed as no better than the other districts' mediocre experiments, which mostly relied on pouring in costly catalysts for mass production of bland biomass.
The result. She ranked a forgettable seventh.
Yu Caini exploded on the spot, her composure shattering. "She cheated. Her lab vegetables were all eaten by bugs last night. I saw it. She must have stolen these samples from somewhere else, or they're fakes." She pointed a trembling finger at Su Lanzhi.
And so it proved once again, in the stark theater of bureaucracy. Winners write history, losers get ignored or vilified. The winner's words were taken as gracious truth, while the loser's frantic protests fell on deaf ears, seen as the sour grapes of a poor loser. Director Niu Mou, seeing the matter was settled to his strategic satisfaction, stepped forward with an air of finality to resolve it perfectly.
Yu Caini was publicly stripped of her title as Deputy Director, demoted three ranks to a junior researcher, and ordered to undergo three months of mandatory ideological and technical retraining under the supervision of the Planting Industry R&D Management Department, Su Lanzhi's department. If she refused, she would be sent home to wait for reassignment, which was essentially the same as being fired in government units that almost never used the term dismissal.
Clerk Liu, her accomplice, was accused of gross negligence in facility security that caused heavy financial losses, the ruined warehouse, was demoted by one rank, and also sent for three months of retraining, with the same wait at home penalty if he refused. His pot belly seemed to deflate with the verdict.
"See. Concrete evidence isn't always what matters. If someone in power wants to crush you, they can find any convenient excuse and make it stick." Jing Shu pointed out Niu Mou's ruthless, efficient tactics to Su Lanzhi later in private. "In just one day, without a messy investigation, he wiped out all of Yu Caini's influence and supporters within the department, clearing every obvious obstacle in your way just before he officially takes his higher office. A clean slate for his protégé." It was a masterclass in political hygiene.
Not only that, Niu Mou, in a show of support, left Su Lanzhi a tangible gift. He officially hired Jing Shu, on a special contract, as an honorary advisor to the development zone's management department. Her stated task was to oversee and expand the frog-breeding biological insect control program, aiming for pesticide-free cultivation. Her pay would be determined by the area kept pest-free and the measurable effectiveness of her work, a performance-based role that gave her legitimacy and a small income.
In the days that followed, Su Lanzhi became swamped with the administrative transition and handover details with the soon-to-depart Director Niu.
Meanwhile, Yu Caini and Clerk Liu were forced to report for retraining every day, a public humiliation. Their mornings were spent in a stuffy classroom memorizing updated agricultural regulations and ethical codes, and their afternoons doing manual grunt work under the stern supervision of assigned trainers. The dirtiest, most physically demanding tasks, like spreading human and animal manure evenly on drying racks, fell to them. Within days, Yu Caini's manicured hands were raw and blistered, and she had lost noticeable weight, her formerly sharp cheekbones now gaunt.
On Monday, May 1st, 2023, as in Jing Shu's previous life, the evening news broadcast confirmed the national artificial sun project would have its first pilot built at the reservoir in Xinshi District and officially launched construction. The ambitious plan was to finish primary construction in four months and begin trial operation in early October, with the promise of restoring stabilized water, electricity, and gas supply to the city thereafter.
At the same time, news agency releases spread the word that similar artificial sun projects would soon be launched in other major cities as well. Timelines varied, but the core message from every official channel was identical and relentless. Hold on a little longer. When the artificial sun goes live, everything will be better. Whether or not the real sun returns, whether it's scorching in the day or freezing at night, there will be an endless, clean supply of energy for all. It was the mantra of the hope campaign.
But by this point, the general populace, who had endured five months of escalating hardship, and those with ulterior motives sensing weakness, could no longer fully suppress their desperation or ambition. A palpable, restless tension began to stir in the long lines and darkened streets.
Starting that very day, as announced, all residential natural gas service in Wu City was shut off at the mains. From now on, cooking meant either using a rice cooker or induction stove during the power window, or going back to primitive methods with coal, charcoal, or scavenged firewood.
Thankfully, as the authorities dryly noted, most families no longer had fresh vegetables, dried goods, meat, or frozen food to cook anyway. Stir-frying was a forgotten luxury, and even cooking oil had long been depleted from the markets. The problem was somewhat self-limiting.
The only staple foods left for most were plain steamed rice and boiled noodles.
As long as families could cook a day's worth of these bland staples within the two-hour daily power window, the immediate impact of the gas cut-off was minimal, a nuisance rather than a crisis.
But a new, more insidious problem arose from this very adaptation.
A family of three, with no other food, now easily consumed 1.5 kg of rice a day. In the past, a 10 kg bag of rice lasted a small family several weeks or even months. With no side dishes to fill stomachs now, a 10 kg bag lasted only six or seven days. Families that had a dozen bags last month suddenly found themselves with only a few bags left this month, the arithmetic of hunger becoming terrifyingly clear.
Even if a family devoted someone to queue at the supermarket daily, they often had to camp there for two days just to secure a spot in line when the gates opened. And each person was limited to buying only 0.5 kg of rice per day, far less than their actual daily consumption needs. The math didn't add up, the system was designed for slow starvation.
That was still better than the situation for those who hadn't stockpiled any grain at all. What about those families. What about the ones who had been living off community charity or scavenging since last month, while neighborhoods grew more insular and less charitable.
And so, with the gas turned off and the rice sacks emptying, the first sparks of widespread social unrest were lit. You could feel it in the longer, angrier supermarket queues, in the boarded-up lower-floor windows, in the way people no longer made eye contact.
"Cheers."
"Cheers."
That evening, in the relative safety and warmth of the villa's dining room, a small celebration was held. "Today, we celebrate three things." Jing An raised his glass of dark red wine, a precious bottle saved from before. "First, the official launch of the national artificial sun project, may it bring light sooner. Second, Lanzhi's well-earned promotion to Director. Third, our Jing Shu's new, respectable official job." His voice was hearty, a deliberate bubble of normalcy in the gathering storm.