The whole family raised their glasses in unison, the crystal clinking softly, and amidst a chorus of earnest blessings, "May things get better," "To health," "To staying safe together," they began to eat, the simple act feeling like a profound defiance of the world outside.
Jing Shu was especially emotional, a lump in her throat as she watched the steam rise from the dishes. In her previous life, at this very time, her mother had suffered severe heatstroke and been forced to stay home "waiting for reassignment," a bureaucratic purgatory. Her father had stood in a supermarket line for days under daytime temperatures exceeding 40°C, and at night, when the temperature plunged to a bone-chilling 3°C, he would spread thick, musty quilts on the hard pavement to sleep and keep his precious spot, shivering in his thin jacket.
That was probably when she had truly, violently grown up. She not only had to nurse her feverish mother but also had to prepare all their meager meals for the day between 5 and 7 in the evening during the power window, then ride her bicycle three or four kilometers through dark, dangerous streets to deliver them to her father. He would stay in that endless line until the following night, a 24 hour vigil, just to buy a few kilograms of grain.
Every household left someone, a husband, a son, a wife, in those lines. Eventually, it evolved into entire families camping out, spreading quilts and mats on the filthy ground, with relatives bringing meals during the day, creating a dismal, spectacular scene of communal desperation. This continued until the chaos finally broke out, robbery, looting, and killings right in the queues. Eventually, the government, unable to maintain order, simply shut down the supermarkets entirely, plunging everyone into deeper panic.
Of course, this also meant many people, especially the elderly, suffered heatstroke or hypothermia while waiting. But with hospitals having run out of basic medicine months ago, all they could do was be carried to the shade or given a sip of water, told to lie down, and hope they survived the fever or the chill.
There were also many elderly people dependent on daily medication for heart conditions or diabetes to stay alive. Without their medicine, they slowly, quietly passed away in their apartments, undiscovered for days.
Such grim scenes were still rare in her new, better built community, but in the older, densely populated neighborhoods filled with elderly residents, deaths occurred in large numbers, the bodies collected by silent sanitation trucks at dawn. Many people who used to be quiet, law abiding citizens began to snap, to riot over a bag of rice or a bottle of water.
But in this life, her family sat together neatly around the sturdy dining table, eating fresh stir fried vegetables no one else had, drinking real milk no one else could get, and using electricity that had become an unimaginable luxury for most. Even water, now an extremely scarce public resource, was no longer a daily worry. Jing Shu's family had two large underground storage tanks constantly replenished from their own supply, enough to last half a year if carefully rationed.
Jing Shu felt deeply, overwhelmingly grateful. She had been reborn and was finally living the life she had only dared to dream of in her previous life, a life of basic security. They no longer had to stand in those soul crushing supermarket lines, constantly fearful of being robbed or of returning empty handed.
"The fourth thing to celebrate is that Jing Lai is now officially the head chef at the municipal government canteen!" This time, Grandpa Jing raised his glass, his face beaming with pride, and everyone clapped enthusiastically, the sound warm in the room.
All the remaining poultry from the slaughterhouse in the west of the city had been fully processed into cooked, preserved food and moved to cold storage. The army of temporary workers was dismissed, but Aunt Jing Lai, known for her diligence, hard work, and clean hands, was one of the few kept on, even promoted for her reliability.
As the family laughed and passed dishes, Jing Shu and Wu You'ai's phones on the table buzzed repeatedly, a jarring intrusion. When they checked, the screens glowing in their hands, they found their district group chat was blowing up with frantic messages.
[Wang Xuemei No. 2]:"HELP! There are five or six men with knives at my door, and one of them is trying to pry it open with a crowbar! I keep calling the police emergency line, but it is always busy! There are three of us in the house, me, my husband, and our daughter! We are in Building No. 2, Apartment 401! PLEASE!"
It was a terrible time for this to happen, as more than half the able bodied residents were at the supermarket or out lining up for water. Wang Qiqi quickly responded, her messages rapid, telling them that if the robbers broke in, they must not resist and should give them whatever they wanted to avoid being hurt. Then she started urgently asking if any men were home in the nearby buildings.
When everyone in the chat read that the attackers were armed with real blades, almost all of them hesitated, their responses slowing. The few security guards at the community gates had gone home days ago, unable to afford food with their stagnant monthly salary of three thousand yuan, which was now worthless. That left the community essentially unguarded, and opportunistic criminals knew it.
Wang Qiqi finally pleaded, arguing that if they didn't act together now, these criminals would succeed and likely target other homes next, emboldened. She called on all the men at home to bring whatever weapons they had, kitchen knives, pipes, and gather at the entrance of Building No. 2 to at least form a show of force and scare them off. After much desperate coaxing in the chat, they managed to gather promises from seven or eight men to come out.
Jing An immediately stood up, his dinner forgotten, and grabbed the two longest, sharpest watermelon knives from the kitchen block, his face set. But Grandma Jing rushed over and physically blocked his way, her small frame trembling. "Son, you cannot go throw your life away! They have knives! What if something happens to you?"
"Mom, I am doing this so that if anyone comes to rob our house later, others will be willing to help us too! It is about mutual aid!" Jing An insisted, his voice firm but eyes pleading.
But Grandma Jing, terrified, refused to budge, tears in her eyes.
In the end, Jing Shu suggested a compromise: Jing An could drive over and stay in the car some distance away, just to be counted as an extra body for morale, without directly confronting anyone. This finally convinced the elderly woman, though she still wrung her hands.
Jing Shu also insisted on going along, supposedly to keep an eye on Jing An and make sure he stayed in the car, but in truth, she wanted him out of direct harm's way while she assessed the situation, and perhaps acted.
In her previous life, she had done terrible things to survive: she had killed people who wanted her dead in desperate struggles, stripped warm clothes from fresh corpses, slept beside dead bodies for warmth, and scavenged half eaten leftovers from the deceased. After months of drinking Spirit Spring water in this life, she constantly felt a simmering, unfamiliar energy in her limbs, a violent urge to test her new strength, to confront threat head on.
So this time, she had only one private goal: real combat experience. To see what she was now capable of.
Unfortunately, they were already too late. By the time the hesitant neighbors had gathered and Jing An arrived, the robbers had already broken down the flimsy apartment door.
Building No. 2 was at the far end of the large compound. Even driving the scooter, it took Jing Shu two tense minutes to get there, and she parked in the shadow near the entrance of the adjacent Unit 3, killing the lights and engine.
"Turn off the lights and engine. Stay in the car and do not go anywhere. Keep the doors locked. I will go meet the others and come back for you!" Jing An, wearing a motorcycle helmet and holding the two knives, rushed off into the gloom toward the gathering point at Unit 1.
Jing An still believed wholeheartedly in the old world principle, "If I help others, they will surely help me in return." It was a noble, humane sentiment, but the coming months of the apocalypse would teach him, brutally, that this social contract was often the first thing to die.
Jing An disappeared into the stairwell of Unit 1. Jing Shu, after a moment's pause, grabbed the solid iron rod from the scooter's basket and got out, moving quietly. Just then, as she rounded the corner, a group of men spilled out of the main entrance of Unit 2, laughing coarsely, and they collided head on in the dim light spilling from a broken streetlamp.
There were six of them. Four carried long, stained machetes, and two lugged bulging sacks that clinked, likely stolen rice and cans. They reeked of sweat, fear, and the unmistakable, coppery scent of fresh blood. The moment Jing Shu smelled it, her body tensed automatically. A surge of uncontrollable, electric excitement overwhelmed her, sharpening her focus.
"Hey, Brother Tao, that woman back there resisted. Took a bit of work. But look, another one came out of nowhere. She is dressed dark, but with that figure, she must be a woman." One of them, a lean man with a scar, stepped forward, reaching out with his free hand to grab her arm, his machete held loosely.
Jing Shu hadn't expected to run right into them at the exit, but the stench of blood and their aggressive posture triggered something deep and primal inside her. Adrenaline, laced with something more potent from the Spirit Spring, flooded her system. Her heart hammered against her ribs, her body heated up as if from within, and her senses sharpened to an impossible degree. In the near darkness, her eyes seemed to gather what little light there was, her vision becoming preternaturally clear, each man's face etched in detail.
Without a word, without hesitation, she swung the heavy iron rod down in a short, devastating arc. With a sickening, deafening crack, it smashed into the scarred man's temple. The impact was so violent the solid iron rod itself snapped with a sharp ping. The man let out a choked gurgle and crumpled to the ground like a sack.
Before the others could even shout, "Kill her!" Jing Shu's left hand, which had been at her side, flicked forward. A heavy, conical stone the size of a fist materialized from her Cube Space and hurtled through the air. They only heard the whistling sound as it cut through the air before it smashed into the nearest man's chest with a dull thud. The force lifted him off his feet. Pain exploded across their ranks.
The first man struck in the head was clearly dead or dying, brains and blood seeping onto the concrete. Another was hit square in the stomach, doubling over with a whoosh of lost air. A third took a stone to the legs, bones audibly cracking. Both went down, writhing and unable to move.
Her Cube Space projectiles, launched with her enhanced strength, were devastating. From a distance of seven to eight meters, she had incapacitated three men in under two seconds. Two others were grazed and injured, shielded slightly by the bodies of their comrades. The sixth, at the back, froze in shock.
As the injured men screamed in agony, crushed beneath the weight of conical stones that seemed to have fallen from the sky, Jing Shu approached step by step, the broken rod still in her right hand. Her vision in the darkness was unnervingly sharp. She saw their tear streaked, snot covered faces contorted in terror, and one man had even wet himself, a dark stain spreading on his pants. For reasons she couldn't explain, the sight didn't sicken her, it thrilled her, a cold, clean feeling of power.
"What are you doing?! No! Do not come closer! Ahhh!" one of the leg injured men shrieked as she loomed over him.
Jing Shu didn't hesitate. She rammed the sharp, broken end of the iron rod into his throat with a brutal, precise thrust. Her strength was terrifying, the metal tore through flesh and cartilage with sickening ease. Her first real battle in this life ended in total victory within seconds, the violence swift and absolute.
She quickly cleaned up the scene, her movements efficient despite the adrenaline tremors. Her body still buzzed with that strange excitement, but once the immediate action subsided, a cold wave of shock and fear crept in. She stared at her hands, sticky with blood not her own. She hadn't expected herself to be so instinctively violent, so efficient at killing. Was this the Spirit Spring's influence? Or was it the survivor from the last life, finally unleashed with the strength to act?
"If I had been able to fight like this in my last life, I wouldn't have died in that ditch, would I?" The thought was bitter, fleeting.
Of the five conical stones she had thrown, one had shattered against a man's ribcage, but the other four were intact, cushioned by the bodies they had crushed. Jing Shu retrieved them, wiped them on the dead men's clothes, and stashed them back into her Cube Space. She then used a shovel from the space to quickly drag the bodies into the shrubbery, digging shallow, hurried pits with her enhanced strength, covering them with dirt and debris. The whole process took less than ten minutes, a grim testament to practice born of necessity.
Only after calming her breathing, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, did she head upstairs to Apartment 401. The door was splintered and hung askew. Inside, she heard Wang Xuemei's heartbroken, muffled sobs. It turned out her husband and daughter were dead.