Jing Shu couldn't help but laugh softly at what she heard, a short, breathy sound of genuine amusement in the damp cave air.
It's true what they say, she thought: never downplay your life too much in fear of looking flashy, because life will always, without fail, remind you what true extravagance looks like. There's no such thing as the most luxurious, only more luxurious. Just when you think you have seen it all, a new benchmark appears.
In this lifetime, her goal was simple. She didn't plan to flaunt her wealth ostentatiously, drawing every eye and every blade, but she would absolutely ensure her comfort, the small dignities that made survival bearable. She intended to live a life that didn't invite trouble but wasn't afraid of it either, prepared to defend her little island of order.
"Let us go check it out together?" Wu You'ai's eyes sparkled like stars reflected in dark water, the lure of the spectacle irresistible.
"Sure," Jing Shu said, equally curious about how many rich tycoons, what reservoirs of pre-apocalypse wealth and influence, still remained operational in this drowned world.
They had already finished packing up their own area, and what was left, final adjustments, securing loose items, could be handled by Jing Lai and Jing An. Grandma Jing was busy by their little kitchen area, unpacking ingredients for lunch, and Grandpa Jing was working with spare wooden planks, carefully crafting simple folding stools with a small hand saw and hammer. Everyone seemed occupied, settled into their new routines.
Su Lanzhi was on her phone, her back turned to the noise, repeating herself several times because of the poor signal that crackled and faded. "Yes, yes, we're in Zone Z, Cave No. 5! Remember that! Zone Z! No. 5!" She pressed the phone closer to her ear, straining to hear.
Zone Z, Cave No. 4 was much larger than Cave No. 5, its ceiling higher, the space more cavernous. At this moment, it was surrounded by a dense crowd of curious onlookers from multiple caves, all peering in. The setup was visually impressive: three sleek, white trailer-style RVs were hitched together, being carefully positioned by an imposing, mud-splattered off-road vehicle, followed by a large flatbed truck piled high with crates.
There were over a dozen workers in matching grey overalls bustling around, their movements efficient, with one man in a clean jacket shouting directions, a clipboard in hand. A portable generator roared nearby, its noise echoing off the stone, flooding the section of cave with the harsh, bright light of construction lamps.
By the time Jing Shu and Wu You'ai arrived, squeezing through the ring of spectators, a modular platform roughly 100 square meters in size and 30 centimeters high had already been snapped together from interlocking panels, topped with a deep red carpet that looked absurdly plush against the cave floor. Workers were erecting a lightweight metal frame around it and unloading the truck, which was filled with neatly stacked, foldable light steel panels.
Jing Shu immediately recognized this as a container house system, the kind used for high-end temporary installations.
These were originally developed for rapid disaster relief, designed to be quickly assembled by a small team into secure, insulated temporary housing. With enough flat ground, China could set up enough prefab housing units for tens of thousands of displaced people in under thirty minutes, a feat of engineering logistics.
Later, an upgraded luxury version of these container houses became popular among the wealthy for garden offices or remote retreats, costing millions per set, complete with integrated plumbing and smart systems.
"Are they… building a house here?" a woman next to Jing Shu whispered, her voice filled with disbelief.
"Looks like it." Her companion nodded slowly. "Wow, look, they're unloading a leather sofa, a huge round bed, a freestanding bathtub, a flat-screen TV still in the box, and a double-door refrigerator! Are they really building a house right here? In a cave?"
"Even before the apocalypse, I never lived like this," the first woman murmured, a complex mix of awe and bitterness in her tone.
Just then, the door of the central RV trailer swung open with a hydraulic hiss. Curious onlookers near the front peered inside the ten-square-meter space and gasped, a wave of sound passing through the crowd.
It was a luxury KTV RV. A massive screen mounted on one wall was playing a music video by a top celebrity, the synth-pop melody and auto-tuned vocals echoing tinnily throughout the stony cave. The plush, U-shaped booth seating was piled high with colorful bags of chips, bottled drinks, and even fruit bowls, enough to make mouths water and stomachs clench with sudden hunger. But the two pale white snakes, thick as a man's wrist, coiled lethargically in a clear terrarium at the back of the space, made everyone shiver again, a primal fear cutting through the envy.
Then, a woman in strappy red high heels and a slinky crimson cocktail dress stepped out, blinking in the brighter light of the construction lamps. Her makeup was delicate and understated, expertly applied to accentuate a kind of fragile, pitiful beauty. People stared in shock, whispers exploding. Wasn't this the very celebrity whose song was playing on the screen? Qin Feifei?
"How's the setup? Satisfied with the environment? You'll have to rough it here for a few days, sweetheart." The man who followed her out, Zhou Daheng, was big-framed, with a watch that glinted under the lights. He groped her hip openly, relishing the chance to humiliate a star who once stood high above the masses on screens and stages, but now had no choice but to please him. The thought alone, the power of it, made him hard.
Qin Feifei bit her lip, the pain a sharp anchor against the rising fury in her chest. Two months before the apocalypse hit, China had launched a sweeping crackdown on tax-evading celebrities, and many, including former colleagues, were arrested under various charges. Unfortunately, this man had somehow seized hold of her financial records, her weakness. If she hadn't chosen to flatter and comply with him, to become his pretty accessory, she would've been sitting in a cold prison cell by now, not in a cave.
She would kill him one day. No, she would repay every humiliation, every casual cruelty she had suffered this year, a hundredfold. The vow was a cold coal burning in her gut.
Outwardly, Qin Feifei blushed shyly, ducking her head. "I like it here. It's… novel." She paused, casting a glance at the staring crowd. "But… I don't like all these people staring at me. It makes me nervous."
"If Feifei doesn't like it, then we'll go somewhere more private," Zhou Daheng sneered, enjoying her performative discomfort. He scooped her up in a bridal carry, making her squeal, a sound that was part act, part genuine surprise, and carried her into the other, more secluded-looking RV.
Moments later, the vehicle began rocking rhythmically on its suspension, accompanied by low, unmentionable sounds that carried in the acoustics of the cave.
"That poor actress…" an older woman sighed, shaking her head. "In the apocalypse, even she is reduced to being a rich man's plaything."
"Plaything or not, she eats well, dresses well, and enjoys life. Which woman wouldn't want that in times like these?" a younger woman retorted, though her eyes were hard.
Jing Shu shook her head slightly, tuning out the debate. Anyone who had survived the financial and legal crackdown two months before the apocalypse was now thriving in a different way, their wealth or secrets having bought them passage. Some had even latched onto military or government supply chains, becoming indispensable in the new economy.
As people gawked at the construction crew's rapid work and speculated in hushed, excited tones about this family's mysterious background and connections, even more shocking news arrived, passed mouth to mouth through the crowd like an electric current.
"Holy crap! Go check out the main plaza! Someone just transported an entire mansion over there. A whole row of them!" a breathless man shouted as he pushed his way back from the direction of the central cavern.
"Stop lying. How do you move a mansion? They weigh hundreds of tons!" someone scoffed.
"You're behind the times. These are lightweight steel mansions. They don't have traditional foundations. They're modular, flat-packed, and easy to transport and assemble. I saw it with my own eyes!" the man insisted, his eyes wide.
The crowd, already primed for spectacle, surged as one toward the main plaza, a river of bodies flowing away from Cave 4. Wu You'ai grabbed Jing Shu's sleeve, her earlier curiosity reignited, eager to join the spectacle. "Come on!"
Jing Shu had seen this scene in her past life. The memory was vivid, overlaid on the present.
In her previous life, around this time, she had already spent a long, miserable night sleeping on cold stone in a different cave. It was a night of gnawing hunger and penetrating cold, and she hadn't slept well at all, her body aching, when the same news spread like wildfire that someone was so extravagantly wealthy they had literally brought a mobile mansion into the shelter. Naturally, numb and despairing, she had shuffled with the crowd to go and see it for herself.
And then she had witnessed a scene she would never forget. Just like in this current life, it was utterly astonishing: a complete, two-story mansion, with a peaked roof and faux-wood siding, simply and easily transported in sections on flatbed trucks to the square. They worked with practiced efficiency, setting up the entire mansion, walls, roof, windows, in less than five minutes with cranes and power tools. It looked as if it had been built there originally, a bizarre transplant of suburbia into a limestone cave.
In under an hour, a whole district of stylish, high-class mansions had been erected on the square, forming a surreal, ghost-neighborhood under the vaulted rock ceiling. The advantage of these mobile mansions was not just their speed; they were aesthetically designed, energy efficient, with excellent insulation, keeping you warm in winter and cool in summer, and their lightweight steel frames made them resistant to earthquakes and typhoons.
After the apocalypse, there were still people like this who could take their mobile mansions with them wherever they went, their wealth translating directly into portable, dry, comfortable living space. The sheer extravagance of it, the audacity, was something the Jing Shu of her previous life had envied to death, a bitter ache amidst her own struggle.
In comparison, what Jing Shu had now, her well-stocked car, her tents, her supplies, was just a drop in the bucket; she only had an RV's worth of comfort, not a mansion's.
Wu You'ai was practically drooling, tugging Jing Shu along, eager to see who could afford to live in such splendor while the world drowned. But then Su Lanzhi called again, her voice urgent through the phone, asking Wu You'ai to go and pick up her uncle's family, who had also come seeking refuge from their own flooded zone and were lost somewhere in the vast shelter. With a regretful glance toward the plaza, she had to abandon her sightseeing plans. Duty called.
The central plaza, a vast open area where several major tunnels converged, was packed with people, a sea of damp, upturned faces. Despite the heavy rain still falling outside the mountain, the daytime temperature deep inside the cave had climbed back to a sticky, humid 35°C. People stood around sweating, eating scant rations, chatting, and soaking in the spectacle of the rising mansion neighborhood.
Jing Shu soon found her uncle's family with Wu You'ai's help, the three of them looking drenched and exhausted like drowned rats, their clothes clinging. They had also escorted a group of 300 residents from their own community to the cave, a harrowing journey, but the shelter staff had merely handed them a cardboard sign with a zone letter and cave number and left, offering none of the guided placement or relative space that Jing Shu's family had received through Officer Li's influence.
Along the way, these people had seen the delivered mansion sections and, just like the Jing Shu of the previous life, were insanely, viscerally envious, the disparity a fresh wound.
"We're staying in Zone Z, Cave No. 7," Su Yiyang said, wiping water from his brow. "Looks like we're pretty close to you guys."
"I know that spot. It's just past the next bend," Jing Shu said. "I'll take you there."
As they passed Cave No. 4 again, where Zhou Daheng's lavish container house was now taking more definite shape, the walls half-up, the crowd's muttered envy deepened, a palpable haze of want and resentment.
By comparison, the onlookers' mental calculus was clear: Jing Shu's family setup made her a "rich woman," someone who had prepared well. Zhou Daheng's container mansion operation was "obscenely luxurious," a display of post-apocalypse power. And the owner of the mobile mansions now rising in the plaza…
===
Author's Notes:
To Our Beloved Readers:
If the Earth doesn't explode, we won't take a holiday. If the universe doesn't reboot, we won't rest! When the sky turns misty blue, I'll be right here waiting for you.
There are no four seasons anymore, only two: busy if you work hard, slow if you slack off!
-
Reiya's note:
In truth, I was torn between using Mobile or Portable, and using Villa or Mansion in this chapter, regarding 移动别墅 (yídòng biéshù)
移动 (yídòng): Mobile, movable, portable.
别墅 (biéshù): Villa, luxury house, mansion.
In the end, I pick mobile mansion. My consideration for mansion:
-"Mansion" carries a much stronger connotation of immense size, cost, and ostentatious wealth than "villa." A villa might be a nice holiday home; a mansion is a statement of extreme affluence.
"相比起来静姝的就有点毛毛雨了,她只是带个房车而已."
("In comparison, Jing Shu's was just a drop in the bucket; she only brought an RV.")
-Using "mobile mansion" makes this contrast sharp and clear: an RV vs. a Mansion. "Mobile villa" softens this contrast, as "villa" and "RV" feel closer on the spectrum of luxury.
-The description isn't of a quaint, rustic holiday home. It's a two-story, "高大上" (high-class, tall, big, and upscale) structure that forms an entire "别墅区" (mansion area or compound). This scale and impressiveness are better captured by "mansion."
-The crowd is described as watching "热闹" (the excitement/a spectacle) and "羡慕的不得了" (so envious it's unbearable). The reaction is to something jaw-dropping and unprecedented—a mansion appearing out of nowhere in an apocalypse. "Mansion" justifies this level of shock and envy more than "villa."
My consideration for mobile:
It is designed for movement and is likely self-propelled or easily towed. And the description of it being "轻易的被移到了广场" (easily transported to the square) and set up in 5 minutes points to a integrated vehicle system, not just a structure that can be moved.
While "Portable" suggests something that can be carried by a person, like a portable generator, portable speaker, or portable toilet. This is the direct opposite of the image of a heavy, two-story, grand structure described in the text.
It completely misses the crucial idea that this is a drivable or towable unit. A "portable mansion" sounds like a pop-up tent or a prefab shed, not a luxurious, vehicle-based dwelling. "Portable" can sound cheap or temporary, which clashes with the theme of extreme, "obscene" wealth (壕无人性). "Mobile" sounds sophisticated and expensive; "portable" sounds practical and lightweight.