Jing Shu took detailed photos of the RV from every angle, inside and out, using her phone's camera with flash to capture the damage and the existing layout. Then she measured everything meticulously with a steel tape measure, recording all the dimensions, wall heights, cabinet depths, floor space, ceiling clearances, in a small notebook.
That way, if she ever wanted to modify it later, she would already have the precise parameters. She also jotted down any modification ideas that came to mind in the margins: reinforce front impact structure, install steel panels on lift-deck, create bunk beds along left wall, ventilation for animal crate?
Afterward, thoroughly chilled and crawling with the sensation of wriggling bugs, she and her father went into the villa's enclosed saltwater pool area, a pre-apocalypse luxury that was now a vital decontamination station, to wash the red nematodes off their bodies and clothing before stepping into the warm, dry villa for a proper hot bath.
She scrubbed her skin until it was pink, put on clean, soft cotton-padded clothes, and sat wrapped in a blanket, sipping steaming brown sugar goji ginger tea. Only then did she feel the deep, bone-chilling cold begin to recede and truly feel alive again.
She didn't dare to let her mind dwell on how those huddled in the damp caves or the open shelters were enduring this weather, nor did she dare to think in detail about how she, with far less, had managed to scrape by day after miserable day in her past life. The comparison was too stark, the guilt and the survivor's unease too sharp.
The luggage they had brought back from the overturned car was piled in the covered courtyard. Xiao Dou, ever efficient, was pecking clean every spot crawling with escaped red nematodes. It was worth mentioning, Xiao Dou's intelligence seemed to have gone up another notch.
Ever since the first time it had gotten red nematodes crawling all over its body in the flood and nearly scared itself to death with its own frantic pecking, it had learned. After watching Jing Shu enter the saltwater pool and come out free of bugs, Xiao Dou now intentionally waded into the shallow saltwater trough Jing Shu kept for it every time the nematodes clung to its feathers, soaking until they let go and died.
Grandma Jing and Su Lanzhi busied themselves with salvaging the luggage soaked by floodwater during the rollover. Grandma Jing cursed under her breath as she worked, her heart aching over the broken ceramic bowls and dented pots, but she conceded most items could still be used once washed and dried. Water, thankfully, was no longer a scarce resource for them, thanks to their household's industrial super filter, which had become absolutely indispensable.
While other households in the community had red nematodes occasionally gushing out of their faucets with the murky water, theirs, after passing through the multi-stage filter, produced clean, pure water.
Of course, the filter needed frequent cleaning and backflushing. Sure enough, after finishing his bath, Jing An put on a raincoat and went around to the external filter housings and water intakes to scrape away the clumps of nematodes and silt before they could completely clog the system.
Jing Shu remembered the coming agricultural disaster vividly: in the first year of the apocalypse, vegetable yields were pitifully low largely because of the water shortage and poor soil.
In the second year, the main culprit was the red nematode eggs that contaminated everything. Even though the rains were plentiful that year and people could, in theory, eat plenty of wild mushrooms, cough, even if those mushrooms were inevitably crawling with nematode eggs, they still technically counted as vegetables.
That was, honestly, one of the better years for food variety in the ten years of apocalypse. Compared to later years when only carrion and carrion scavengers remained commonly available, red nematodes weren't so bad. Sure, they were rubbery, tasteless, and got stuck in your teeth or throat, but aside from that, they didn't have many immediate toxic downsides. They were just disgusting.
From her ten years of hard experience in the apocalypse, Jing Shu ranked the "foods" like this: first-year maggots, from the ration protein bars, tasted the best, oddly savory and packed with protein. Second was the mature red nematode. They had no flavor but filled the belly, and the best part was they were always abundant, renewable, and ready to eat raw or cooked.
That year, if a household miraculously managed to grow a few garlic sprouts or scallions in a protected pot, they made all their neighbors green with envy.
The government, while frantically figuring out how to house and feed millions of displaced people, also planned to take advantage of the seemingly plentiful rainwater to restart some crop cultivation. Around noon, Su Lanzhi received a group notice from the Planting Industry R&D Management Department about distributed seed packets and encouraged "patriotic planting." Everyone initially thought they could finally grow some real food again, but that was precisely when the red nematode revealed its true, insidious horror.
Any water that wasn't filtered absolutely clean of nematodes and their microscopic eggs couldn't grow crops at all.
Because red nematodes were omnivorous pests in their larval stage. Their tiny, rasping mouthparts chewed through root hairs and soft stems. Before reaching maturity, they devoured every nutrient and living cell around them. Once grown, they did nothing but breed, leaving their eggs everywhere.
In her previous life, Jing Shu had learned from fragmented news reports that red nematodes were some kind of evolved microorganism, something between a primitive bacteria and a complex trace element cluster. Their eggs, essentially microbial spores, absorbed the essential life elements, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, from anything organic around them.
So, just when the government and people worldwide had reignited a flicker of hope for farming again, the apocalypse slapped them hard across the face with this biological bottleneck.
Lack of sunlight could, in theory, be solved with simulated grow lights for photosynthesis.
But when people tried planting again, days passed without a single sprout. If a sprout did miraculously appear, it was quickly chewed to nothing or simply withered. Upon inspection, they found clusters of tiny, sticky eggs clinging to the dead seedlings. A few days later, those eggs hatched into wriggling red nematodes.
Even people trying to plant herbs in jars at home discovered the same problem. They tried laying out layers of cotton cloth and gauze to filter the rainwater, but it was useless. The eggs were too small.
What they needed were high-tech, micron-level filters capable of removing microorganisms at the near-elemental level, the kind used in advanced labs or certain industrial processes.
In the whole of Wu City, there hadn't been many such filters, and most had been stored in research institutes or factories now submerged in the city center. The government salvage teams later managed to recover a few intact units, saving the situation just in time for some state-run greenhouses. These ultra-filters literally determined how much fresh vegetable supply there would be for the elite that year.
Mushrooms were the frustrating exception. They were the only "vegetables" that could mature fast enough, often in two to three days with enough moisture, before the nematode eggs on them hatched and the larvae could cause significant damage. By the time the nematodes were big enough to be seen by the naked eye, the mushrooms were already harvested.
Of course, the sight wasn't appetizing, clusters of grey oysters or white buttons speckled with tiny red dots and sometimes with a few hatched nematodes crawling across them.
The government, in its typical pragmatic, morale-boosting way, waved it off in their broadcasts: "Well, you used to complain about no meat, then you complained about no vegetables. Now you have got both in one package! Perfect solution! From now on, this is what we eat! High protein, high fiber!"
By the way, highly concentrated saltwater could also kill nematode eggs. Ordinary seawater wasn't salty enough. It worked in theory, but the cost of producing and distributing enough salt or brine for mass farming was economically impossible.
Besides ultra-filters and saltwater, China also eventually revived an old ancestral, low-tech method involving layered sand, charcoal, and specific clays. It couldn't filter perfectly, but it was enough to grow some stunted, crooked garlic sprouts and hardy greens. That method required no advanced tech, and any household with the right materials could rig a version. Jing Shu planned to "rediscover" and bring it up casually once Su Lanzhi and her department discovered their crops wouldn't grow, letting her mother take credit for the useful achievement within her professional circle.
She couldn't afford to act like a prophet now, not with so many eyes potentially on them.
So, with filtered water severely limited, that year's legitimate crops and clean vegetables became "special supplies," available only to a privileged few in power or with the right connections. If Jing Shu hadn't installed the industrial super filter in advance, her family would have harvested nothing from their garden. And her secret crops in the Rubik's Cube Space would have had no chance at all without the pure Spirit Spring water she used there.
Wu You'ai had promised to return to the villa by noon, but by the time the family finished a subdued lunch of reheated stew and bread, the Hongshan Ecological Park had only just begun the massive logistical operation of sending the first assigned groups back to their new zones. Banana Community was a priority destination.
Jing Shu, not wanting any complications, had already dragged Shangguan Jun's corpse into a heavy-duty plastic bag and stored it in the Rubik's Cube Space for later discreet disposal. After all, the first batch of assigned residents was about to move into Banana Community today. If someone stumbled on a fresh corpse and reported it, it would stir up unwanted police attention and questions she couldn't answer.
Unfortunately, Yang Yang and Wang Dazhao were still unreachable by phone. She figured they had probably lost their phones or were in an area with no signal, still making their way back from their mission.
Banana Community, with its relatively intact housing and infrastructure, was the largest and most luxurious development in the safe district, a big, fat cake about to be carved up by the government and allocated. Many people with means or influence were already restless and eager to snatch a share, or a whole villa, for themselves.
Naturally, the original residents' interests and privacy would be harmed. The Consolation and Counseling Specialists and housing officers would soon come door-to-door to reassign space, to "optimize utilization."
Jing Shu thought, as long as no one touched her family's core interests, their villa, their garage, their immediate yard, she didn't care much what political games happened elsewhere in the community. But if anyone dared cross her line, dared to try to force strangers into their home… tch. She had just thought that when, sure enough, someone came looking for trouble.