"That's right, Mu Xiaoxuan. How many people are you going to hurt by backing out? Without you, our group doesn't have enough people to link the chain!" Another voice joined Wang Chao's, the pressure mounting.
"And didn't you hear Zhang Lingling? She already submitted the report. Her virtual points have been deducted." The statement was meant to trap her, to make her feel responsible for a loss that wasn't yet real.
Mu Xiaoxuan lowered her head, her shoulders hunched, aggrieved. "But I really don't want it. This kind of distiller barely makes any water. Do you really want to push it on friends and waste their virtual points?" Her voice was small, choked.
"Whatever it makes is still something. It's basically a free water collector. You recommend it to a friend, your friend brings another friend, and soon everyone gets it for free, with lots of work points to earn." The logic was circular, seductive.
"Exactly." Others nodded, reinforcing the groupthink.
Mu Xiaoxuan ducked her head as tears streamed down, cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "But, but…" She was outnumbered, her resolve crumbling.
Seeing Mu Xiaoxuan surrounded, the flashlight beams creating a harsh circle around her, Jing Shu shoved through the loose ring of bodies with a sharp movement. "If she doesn't want it, she doesn't want it. You planning to force a sale? Stop using those flimsy tricks as an excuse. You know perfectly well what you're doing." Her voice was flat, cold, cutting through the emotional pressure.
A person who drank from the Spirit Spring daily and had killed before carried a different aura, a subtle but palpable sense of grounded lethality. Her sudden, domineering presence, her unblinking gaze, stunned many of them on the spot, making them take an unconscious step back.
Zhang Lingling pointed a finger at Jing Shu, her arm outstretched. "You, if you won't buy, fine. But don't be so unreasonable!" Her voice rose, a mix of anger and defensive bluster.
"Alright, drop it. If they don't want to buy, forget it. I don't care about those points," Xie Zihao stepped in to mediate, his tone weary, perhaps seeing the ugliness unfolding.
Zhang Lingling snorted, a sharp exhalation of disdain. "Kindness treated like donkey liver. I'm trying to help her make money, and she thinks I'm out to harm her. Let us go. We're transferring virtual points at the supermarket." Zhang Lingling worried that Jing Shu would ruin a perfect setup, sowing doubt. "Since when had her personality changed so much?" The thought flickered behind her eyes.
"Since I didn't register, I will pass. Jing Shu and I still have things to discuss," Yao Zixin said quickly, seizing the excuse to extricate himself from the confrontation.
"Hmph, don't come begging me later." Zhang Lingling shot them a final, venomous glare, then turned and rode off with her core group on their bicycles, the wheels crunching on debris, the beams of their flashlights bobbing away into the dark.
In a blink, the area near the mall quieted, the oppressive group energy dissipating until only three were left in the silence. Mu Xiaoxuan sobbed softly, the sound muffled. "It really is a pyramid scheme. Just like my uncle. No matter how you talk, he won't listen." She wiped her face with a dirty sleeve.
Jing Shu handed over a clean tissue from her pocket and a small, unopened bottle of mineral water. Mu Xiaoxuan accepted the tissue gratefully but shook her head at the water, pushing the bottle back into Jing Shu's hands. "I… I can't."
Jing Shu pushed the bottle firmly into her hands. "Head home early. Be careful." The instruction was simple, final.
"Thanks." Mu Xiaoxuan thought for a moment, her tears subsiding, then took a small, intricately carved redwood box from her bike rack and offered it to Jing Shu, her hands trembling slightly.
"This is the mother seed of a Bodhi tree. My grandfather said it can be cultivated. It may be useless now, but if Earth's Dark Days end, it represents hope. The branches can yield rubber, the leaves can feed livestock, and it has many medicinal uses. It's valuable from root to crown." She spoke quickly, as if reciting a memorized passage, imbuing the small box with ancestral significance.
Jing Shu suddenly remembered, a memory from the later years of the apocalypse jarred loose. A few years in, some strange disaster struck, a new illness, and many died horribly. Later, a traveling doctor said that if there had been Bodhi tree extract available, it might have saved them.
What was it again? The specific ailment eluded her.
Jing Shu pulled out her phone, its battery still half-full, and quickly searched her offline downloads for the medicinal uses of the Bodhi tree. Mu Xiaoxuan and Yao Zixin watched Jing Shu, dazed and unsure what to say as she scrolled intently in the dim light from her screen.
"That's it!" Jing Shu said, a note of triumph in her voice as she found the entry. A few years into the apocalypse, a mutated parasite appeared in the water, tiny and deadly. After infection, the digestive tract ulcerated painfully.
Victims endured ten days of excruciating agony without dying, passing blood daily. People said it was the parasite expelling what was left of the organs. Only when the innards were fully eaten through did the victim finally die. It was a real-life iron wire worm nightmare, a story whispered in terrified tones.
But the parasite needed specific, rare conditions to survive and reproduce, and numbers were always small. It was like a terrible lottery. You prayed you never got picked.
The Bodhi tree was used in traditional medicine for asthma, diabetes, and epilepsy, and it showed significant anti-parasitic effects. But in the first year, the species had withered from the relentless drought and heat; it was basically wiped out in the wild, a loss few noticed at the time.
Prevention never hurts. Jing Shu turned to her car, opened the trunk, and brought out a sealed five-liter barrel of water, handing it to Mu Xiaoxuan. "This is payment for the Bodhi mother seed. Don't refuse. You deserve it, and I happen to need it." Her tone brooked no argument.
In Mu Xiaoxuan's hands it might never sprout, might never realize its value. In Jing Shu's Cube Space, with the Spirit Spring, it could grow, mature, and save many lives. Whether used for paid treatment later or given as free aid to secure alliances, it would be a great merit, and it protected Jing Shu's own family too, a layer of insurance against a future horror.
Mu Xiaoxuan took the heavy barrel of water, her eyes wide, then pushed her bike, and left in a fog of confusion, the unexpected fortune outweighing the earlier distress. The follow-up discussion with Yao Zixin about PVC dimensions and installation timelines left Jing Shu distracted. She skimmed the designs and measurements, found no major issues, handed over the ten liters of water as agreed from her trunk, and headed for home, her mind already on the seed.
On the way back, she tied the sleek shark submarine securely to the back of the BYD Song with heavy-duty straps and towed it slowly through the dark, empty streets toward home. There was no space left in the villa's courtyard or garage, so upon arriving, she backed up to the unfinished RV port and, with some effort, maneuvered it straight into the designated storage bay beneath the raised RV chassis, a perfect fit.
"You go out in the middle of the night and haul back another useless contraption? Go on then, what is today's story? A thank-you gift from saving Lao Wang next door, or the president this time? How do you keep saving people every day, and why do they always give you such weird things?" Su Lanzhi had come out at the sound of the car, and she stared for a long time at the strange, finned blue shape now occupying the garage bay, and still couldn't tell what it was.
For the first time, Jing An talked back to Su Lanzhi, coming to his daughter's defense. "Enough. Every time our kid brings something home, you say it's useless. And then?" He crossed his arms, a faint smile on his face.
Then came the slaps to the face, metaphorically speaking. Even if it was useless at first, it always became critically useful later, a pattern now firmly established.
Su Lanzhi flushed for once, caught between irritation and the undeniable truth of his statement. "Fine, fine. Put your precious toy away and go to bed. It's late." She waved a hand, surrendering the argument.
"Got it." Jing Shu secured the submarine's cover and headed inside, the redwood box feeling heavy in her pocket.
Upstairs, in the privacy of her room, Jing Shu hesitated for a long while, mentally reviewing the layout of her Cube Space. Then she cleared out one cubic meter from a corner of the medicinal herb plots, carefully moving some slower-growing seedlings, to plant the single Bodhi tree seed. She didn't know when it would be useful, but planting it now, giving it the best possible start, wouldn't hurt. The information she read said Bodhi trees grow fast under ideal conditions. When it matures, Jing Shu would fell it, process the wood and leaves, and store the valuable materials in the Cube Space for the future.
…
In a well-appointed, temperature-controlled study far from the dusty streets, a conversation unfolded in low tones.
"I heard the young miss traded for a batch of honeysuckle today?" The middle-aged man behind the expansive desk rubbed his temples. His voice was cold, devoid of parental warmth.
A well-dressed, portly old man standing by a sideboard stirred fresh milk into a cup of precious coffee, smiling lazily as he handed it over. "Yes. She traded with a classmate. The young miss is hiding it like a treasure. I haven't had time to analyze its components yet." His demeanor was unflappable.
Bang!
The man slapped the polished surface of the redwood table hard, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
"Analyze what? Best case, she got conned and that old bastard drinks poison. That bastard has the gall to use my resources and still win my daughter's devotion, and I can't even show it. I want to tell that silly girl straight out, the man she wants to save is her father's mortal enemy!" The fury was tightly controlled, but it vibrated in the air.
The old man kept smiling, a picture of serene composure.
"You know the young miss's fate. Master Zhang said she is favored by Heaven, blessed with a heart where wishes come true. Anything she wants, anything she sets her mind to, she gets it done. She wanted an antidote, and here it is. If she wants to cure that man, he might be up and lively tomorrow." He stated it as a simple fact, a mystical equation.
"Hmph. Maybe that's for the best. The illness has tormented him long enough. Death is a release. Whoever comes after might be an even worse bloodsucker. Let us just hope the artificial sun goes smoothly." The man sighed, the anger dissipating into weary calculation.
"Shall I still investigate?" the old man asked, sipping his own coffee.
"Investigate. Outside of our own controlled stock, all the Chinese herbs in the region have withered, and the national reserves have nearly been used up these nine months." The man narrowed his eyes, the strategist taking over from the father. "If it's real, I hope it's fake. If it's fake, I hope it's real." The paradox revealed his conflicted position, he wanted his daughter to be happy, but not if it strengthened his enemy; he wanted the medicine to be useless, but also hoped, for some deeper reason, that it was genuine.
The old man chuckled softly, the sound rich and knowing. "I fear you will be disappointed again."