On the first day of June, Jing Shu received her first paycheck in this new era, a digital notification of work credits deposited into her linked ID account, earned from the frog sales to Minister Niu. It wasn't a fortune, but it was a tangible, system-recognized resource.
Su Lanzhi also got her first official salary since the apocalypse began, transferred as virtual credits. It wasn't much, but the significance was immense, it represented stability, position, and a continued place within the functioning skeleton of the state.
And now, even though paper money seemed nearly useless, devalued to near-zero, it could still, for a short while longer, be traded for certain daily non-essential goods at wildly inflated prices on the black market. That was still better than having nothing of transactional value.
Jing Lai, after deducting the cost of the meals she packed home every day from the staff canteen, was still able to exchange her remaining wages for some extra food and water vouchers. Last time, when Zhetian had attacked the petroleum community, they had also reportedly planned to raid the Ai Jia supermarket distribution hub, but Ai Jia was now permanently occupied by a platoon of government forces and remained completely untouched, a fortress of order.
The government's grand strategy of control and incentivization had been in place for exactly one month. After a month of internal testing and distribution to employees, the virtual currency system was officially launched for all registered citizens. For now, virtual currency could only be used to purchase state-controlled food and water rations, while other barter goods, clothes, tools, scrap, still required the dying paper money or direct trade.
Thus, the era of virtual currency in the first year of the apocalypse had decisively begun. It would slowly, inexorably replace all cash, marking the quiet but total arrival of the era of big data and zero privacy. Every credit spent, every ration collected, was a data point logged to a profile.
Normally, a monetary transition of this scale would have caused a massive upheaval of interests and violent resistance. But the truth was, the powerful and connected had already divided the new "cake" of influence and access in advance, during the chaotic first months. The system was designed by them, for control.
From this day forward, virtual currency officially entered the apocalypse economy as the primary medium of exchange for survival.
In her previous life, Jing Shu's perspective had been far too low, too focused on day-to-day scavenging, to notice these macro-level changes as they happened. In this life, standing in a more secure position, she was finally witnessing every chilling detail unfold around her, understanding the machinery.
Reports of robberies or sightings of wanted criminals could now earn a reward of one to one hundred units of virtual currency, deposited directly. This policy effectively turned eighty percent of Wu City's desperate citizens into a voluntary surveillance network, watching their surroundings closely, ready to report their neighbors at the first sign of trouble for a meal ticket.
With armed patrols and, reportedly, still-functional satellite surveillance verifying reports, the new big data analysis system tracked every individual's daily movements, based on ID scans at distribution points, phone pings, and camera hits, and algorithmically assessed the likelihood of their involvement in unreported crime. It created risk scores.
When the government later announced that a certain tech magnate, Jack Ma, had been appointed as a "chief financial advisor" to the big data governance project, along with a list of its terrifying capabilities, everyone who understood shuddered. That's why, even in areas without patrols or cameras, certain fugitives were caught simply by showing up at a meal distribution center, their pattern flagged. Big data, trained on a decade of pre-collapse digital life, was that powerful.
These days, only a fool would openly talk about having food stockpiles at home. A single careless mention in a group chat or conversation would put a target on your back, either from desperate neighbors or from the system itself, marking you as suspiciously resourceful.
Grandma Jing, who once liked to chat with other elderly women in the community by the gate, now no longer stepped out of the house unless necessary. The sight of boxes of supplies in the pantry and five fully stocked refrigerators and freezers humming in the basement filled her with a deep, quiet sense of security that outweighed any loneliness. She had become a silent partner in their fortress.
Meanwhile, Wu City had gone without the staple distributed food for three days because the carrion scavengers had finally devoured most of the remaining mushroom crops across the twelve other districts.
To be precise, the ubiquitous mushroom rice, which had been the depressing but consistent supply, was gone. Only plain white rice remained at the distribution points, priced at a steep two units of virtual currency per small serving. Many families had already exchanged everything they owned for only ten or so total units, barely enough to cover minimal water and food for a few days. Before, mushroom rice had cost only 0.5 units, just enough for a poor household to scrape by.
There were also plain steamed buns and shrunken, gristly meat portions, but those could only be obtained in exchange for surrendered kitchen knives or other weapons, a disarmament policy that continued.
By the fourth day, the carrion scavenger infestation was rampaging through the city, devouring not just crops but stored grains, fabrics, anything organic. At this point, most households had already traded away their spare clothes and scavenged every last metal tool for food, and had eaten through their tiny stockpiles. Now, they not only faced starvation but also the constant danger of being bitten by scavengers in their sleep, a death by inches.
On the sixth day, as panic crested, Wu City's distribution authority rolled out a new food option at 0.3 units per serving, cheaper than mushroom rice had ever been. The announcement was met with desperate, hungry curiosity.
The Dragon Boat Festival was just around the corner, a ghost of a normal calendar. After delivering the daily meal to Wu You'ai at Chu Zhuohua's base, Jing Shu began preparing ingredients for zongzi with Grandma Jing, a ritual of normalcy and defiance.
Jing Shu, however, knew something major would happen today, an event that had shattered her worldview in her previous life. When the entire city was on the brink of rioting over the absolute lack of food, Wu City's authorities somehow delivered yet again, with a solution so horrifying it silenced all complaint.
Yes, the science channel's smug prediction that carrion scavengers would dominate the world and sit atop the food chain had been utterly, disgustingly disproven. A few days earlier, a new natural enemy of the carrion scavengers had emerged on a massive scale, Wugu bugs.
Commonly known as maggots, the larvae of flies.
In this scorching, putrid heat, maggots were thriving everywhere there was decay, especially now that the high temperatures were peaking, accelerating their life cycle.
Jing Shu guessed that the carrion scavengers had initially caught the fly population off guard, overrunning their traditional food sources (decaying waste) and leaving flies with nowhere to lay eggs. Any fresh corpse or spoiled food would be overrun by carrion scavengers almost immediately, outcompeting the slower flies.
But now, maggots seemed to have evolved a brutal new survival strategy. Even if carrion scavengers occupied a food source first, flies would simply lay eggs in the immediate vicinity and let the hatched larvae slowly encroach on their rivals.
Flies began to display their astonishing, gruesome adaptability, laying eggs in strategic positions around carrion scavenger nests, using the scavengers' own gathered biomass as an eventual food source for their young.
Although maggots developed more slowly than the hyper-accelerated carrion scavenger larvae and would still lose the race to fresh food at first, once the maggots hatched and grew to a certain size, they became much larger, more mobile, and could actively crawl over to devour the competing carrion scavenger larvae and pupae.
Wherever there was concentrated organic matter and carrion scavengers, there would soon be swarms of flies, laying eggs, and then armies of hungry maggots, ready to clean up the infestation once they hatched, turning the tables.
Jing Shu recalled an old, twisted internet saying she'd seen once: Life is like chess. I am willing to be a pawn. Though I move slowly, have you ever seen me take a step back? It absurdly fit. Wugu bugs arriving at the battlefield in three seconds! They were the relentless, grubby infantry.
Jing Shu thought maggots were brilliant, disgusting biological strategists, like a ruthless commercial competitor. Just as where there is Vivo there will be Oppo, now wherever there are carrion scavengers, maggots would inevitably follow, a new link in the horrific food chain.
After the mushrooms cultivated by the other twelve Planting Industry R&D Management Departments in Wu City were completely eaten by carrion scavengers, swarms of flies miraculously arrived at the devastated growing halls, laying eggs in the rotting fungal matter and breeding vast numbers of larvae.
While everyone was panicking, utterly out of ideas, government biologists finally spoke up at a press conference, their tone carefully neutral.
Fly larvae, they explained, were rich in protein and amino acids, and when properly cleaned, cooked, and processed, actually tasted… acceptable. They could satisfy those constantly clamoring for meat. A sustainable, rapidly renewable protein source.
In fairness, the authorities pointed out, they were doing their part. At first, people complained there were no vegetables, so vegetables (mushrooms) were provided. Now, with complaints about the lack of meat, they were being given plump, nutritious, protein-rich meat substitutes. Technically, it was still animal protein. So what was there to complain about now?
Those who kept making noise, the unspoken warning hung in the air, should remember: just because the government wasn't retaliating now didn't mean they wouldn't settle accounts later when stability returned. That, however, was a topic for another, darker day.
For now, fly larvae, processed into a greyish paste or dried into crumbly nuggets, were about to officially join the apocalypse dining menu.
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If you forget, in here "五谷" is being used not in its literal, historical sense (insects in grains), but as a vivid, colloquial term for maggots. Next, mostly I will write Wugu Bug as maggots, just like how I write "静爸" Jing's Dad, and "静妈" Jing's Mom with their name.
"Wugu" (五谷) is a profound classical Chinese concept meaning "the five grains" (rice, two kinds of millet, wheat, and pulses). It represents staple crops and, by extension, agriculture and sustenance itself.