Six coconut trees filled up six one cubic meter plots entirely, their broad, frond heavy crowns brushing against the invisible upper boundary of the Cube Space, and Jing Shu had wanted to plant strawberries or something similarly low growing around their bases, but there simply was no space left at ground level, the roots and trunk filling the block. Jing Shu waited every day for them to bear fruit, checking obsessively, but even after the trees had shot up to twenty five meters tall, their fibrous trunks thick and sturdy, there was still no sign of coconuts, only more leaves.
Fortunately, each cubic meter farmland block inside the Cube Space operated on its own logic, allowing crops to grow to their natural size regardless of the nominal volume, extending infinitely in all directions for the plant's needs, though the space outside the plant's immediate footprint couldn't be used for storage. When Jing Shu's spiritual sense probed anything outside the physical boundary of the growing crops, it was blocked, like the fog of war in a strategy game map, invisible and untouchable.
Her long awaited coconut milk remained only a dream, a craving for that clear, slightly sweet water, but the corn planted in the other six plots had been harvested several times already, the stalks regrowing quickly. She planned to "accidentally remember" during a family meal that she had harvested a large batch of corn months ago and had meant to use it for a cooking livestream that never happened. Then she would drag sack after heavy sack of dried corn from the basement storage, as if they'd been forgotten there. Making corn juice, a thick, creamy drink, would be a perfect way to vary their liquid intake.
Life was like a play, and everything depended on acting skills. She rehearsed the casual mention in her head.
Perhaps it was because she had exerted herself so much, both physically and mentally, the previous night, but she ate an unusually large supper, her body demanding calories. A few days ago, she had cleared out the villa's ornamental fish pond, cooking the surviving carp and grass carp into dishes: grilled fish with cumin, crispy fried fish strips, and a large pot of spicy poached fish.
Tonight, she devoured an entire pot of white jade fish slices in a milky, spicy broth dotted with green pepper rings. The soup was too flavorful to waste, so she used it as a base for hot pot, adding dollops of shrimp paste, handfuls of beef meatballs, thin slices of marinated beef, and leafy vegetables to dip into it. Slurp. Delicious. The simple pleasure of a full stomach was profound.
As she ate, chopsticks moving swiftly, Jing Shu mentally replayed the fight from the night before, coldly analyzing her tactics, her positioning, the efficiency of her strikes, and noting lessons to improve further. It was a habit from her last life, a way to stay alive.
Because the enemies carried real blades and there were many of them, she had wisely avoided close combat and given them no time to react or surround her, using massive stones for instant, overwhelming force. It had felt brutally satisfying in the moment, but one conical stone had shattered on impact. Crafting a new, perfectly weighted and shaped conical stone was no easy task; it required finding the right rock and hours of careful chipping.
"At a distance of seven to eight meters, I can't fully unleash the kinetic power of the stones; they lose some force. Next time, at such close range, I should use the ten compact crossbows I've stockpiled, firing simultaneously under my control from within the Cube Space. For engagements at fifteen meters and beyond, use the stones. If I am in immediate danger but I can't expose the Cube Space's secret, like in a crowded place, then I will use the other weapon." She mentally catalogued her small arsenal.
Jing Shu practiced manipulating objects within the Cube Space for two hours that night, moving stones, arranging crossbows, testing the speed of retrieval and deployment. She made noticeable progress, especially as the residual adrenaline from the earlier violence had left her mind hyper focused, her connection to the space feeling more intuitive. She slipped into a state of complete absorption during her training, the outside world fading away.
"In a few months at most, with this intensity of practice, I will definitely upgrade the Cube Space to Level 6!" The conviction was strong. She could feel the next threshold, a gathering potential.
When her mastery of the Cube Space reached a certain critical point, she could feel the impending breakthrough in her mind. It was like the instinctive understanding of intimacy, one might not know the mechanics at first, but when it happened, the body and mind simply knew what to do. It was part of a deeper, human instinct for adaptation and control.
At four in the morning, the world still pitch black, Jing Shu was fully armed under her loose jacket, carrying the broken iron rod in a bag, accompanied by Xiao Dou on a leash, the mother frog in a ventilated carrier, over a hundred small frogs in stacked containers, and a coil of ropes, all loaded into the scooter's trailer. She was escorting Su Lanzhi to work, a mobile pest control unit.
Yesterday had been the official first day of construction on the artificial sun in Wu City. The news had been filled with images of ground breaking ceremonies. Enormous amounts of power and material resources had been diverted to the project, with thousands of workers conscripted or hired, and reports stated that many official guards had been re stationed there from other duties, leaving other areas thinner.
Starting that day, as an austerity measure, salaries in all government and affiliated units in Wu City were halved and would now be paid in kind: rice, flour, water vouchers, or even vegetables when available. The announcement stated that one month later, this in kind payment system would be extended to all remaining corporate entities, lasting "until sunlight and normalcy return."
This sparked envy and resentment among those outside the system and drew even more dissatisfaction from those within who saw their already diminished livelihoods cut further.
Jing An drove silently, his face thoughtful. Su Lanzhi cracked dried apricot kernels with a small tool, tucking the meats away, and Jing Shu scrolled through local network posts on her phone in the back seat, the glow illuminating her face. Xiao Dou sat quietly at her feet in the footwell, looking up pitifully at its owner. Every time it had dared to poop in the car before, it had been scolded and lightly thumped, forcing this poor chicken with its fast metabolism to learn to hold it in during transport.
As in her previous life, the posts confirmed that the so called 'Zhetian Gang' had sent more than a hundred armed members to raid several hundred apartments in the Huasheng Community yesterday. They had moved in coordinated groups of ten, used crowbars to pry open doors, killed those who resisted, looted everything of value, especially food, and then melted away quickly.
With so few survivors willing or able to give detailed descriptions, and with the chaos, there were hardly any solid leads. The group scattered after their crimes, disappearing into the sprawling city's ruins, and in an era without functioning digital surveillance and with overwhelmed police, they presented enormous challenges to the government's stretched thin armed forces.
"That man has finally reappeared on the stage," Jing Shu thought, a cold knot in her stomach. "Who would have thought a single, charismatic psychopath could plunge entire regions into chaos and slaughter? Maybe he was just a catalyst, expertly exploiting the basest parts of human nature."
Soon, if history repeated, strange new organizations with grandiose names would sprout up across the nation, all claiming the true apocalypse had arrived, that old rules were dead, spreading rumors and doctrines that incited fear and unrest. In plain terms, controlling the narrative, the dwindling public opinion, would become an essential battleground.
And then would come the flood: those who secretly hated society, those who always wanted to break the law but never dared under the eyes of cameras, those who had already engaged in petty criminal behavior, they would all feel utterly unrestrained, unleashed. In a normally functioning society with strong order and consequences, such a rapid descent wouldn't have happened. It required the perfect storm of deprivation, fear, and perceived impunity.
Jing Shu only learned much later, in her first life, that this early wave of organized chaos had been a coordinated plot by three major factions, both internal and external.
Simply put, foreign powers and certain domestic interest groups were jealous and fearful. Why should they live every day like a scene from a dystopian gunfight or a sci fi disaster film, their leaders being replaced one after another, their streets filled with endless protests, while China, despite the global catastrophe, remained relatively calm and stable, its mobilization praised? Why should their death rates soar past ten percent while China's, through brutal triage and control, was held to half that? No, they had to stir up trouble, to destabilize.
They bribed countless desperate or ambitious people. They set an example by staging a few big, shocking attacks to set the tone: "Look, we did it and nothing happened. The authorities are weak. Why don't you do it too? Take what you want."
This fully unleashed the darkness that had been festering in countless hearts. And so began this infamous half year of inhuman cruelty that Jing Shu remembered. Even without that specific ringleader, she realized, perhaps the violence would have erupted anyway, given the conditions. The man was just a particularly effective spark.
Jing Shu sighed quietly, locking her phone. Even with her rebirth and all this foreknowledge, she couldn't change the macro tide. That man was playing with the deep currents of human nature. All she could do was what she was doing: protect her small family, build their fortress, and ensure their survival in the increasingly brutal landscape of the apocalypse.
After Su Lanzhi arrived at work, she immediately dove into her tasks, overseeing the transplanting of new seedlings. Jing Shu, meanwhile, became a one woman pest control service, taking the frogs on their cords through greenhouse after greenhouse, clearing out the gnats and beetles that had sprung up overnight.
That morning, around nine, Director Niu Mou arrived not with his usual small entourage, but with two full buses that pulled into the compound. Out stepped a crowd of well dressed men and women, some with children in tow.
It looked like a bizarre sightseeing tour. Why else bring family members to a research facility? Before Jing Shu could figure out the purpose, Director Niu, spotting her, walked over briskly and spoke first, his voice carrying to the assembled group.
"Thank you to all the leaders and family members for your support and for taking time to visit. Today, we are here to tour the development zone's premium vegetable cultivation areas. In fifteen days, the first harvest from these plots will be supplied to all official employees in Wu City. Please rest assured, these crops are grown by us personally, with strict quality control.
Also, see these little bug eating frogs our young technician is handling?" He gestured towards Jing Shu and her amphibious entourage. "This is part of the development zone's innovative, contracted biological pest control project. If any family needs it, you can purchase a pair to raise at home. Ever since I brought one home," he added with a convincing chuckle, "I have not seen a single bug. It's better than any chemical spray."