Anyone placed in the Banana Community apartment blocks had owned at least one or two properties in the city before the flood. Their pre-disaster assets granted them a spot in a building, however crowded. Cramming a dozen people into one three-bedroom unit was now normal, even expected. Only the truly wealthy or those with real power could manage to keep a whole apartment or, rarer still, a villa for a single family.
The bare-shell units were crude and stripped. Doors had long been pried off and traded for work points or burned for warmth during the previous winter. Aside from a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, often flickering on shared generator power, there was nothing. No beds, no quilts, no spare clothes. Many of the new residents had worn the same soaking-wet outfits for days, unable to dry them in the pervasive damp.
This year, you had to give up on the idea of dry laundry. Even if you managed to keep off the direct rain for a few days and your clothes finally stiffened into a dry-ish state, they would mold anyway in the humid air. Between mildewed and perpetually wet, you picked your poison.
Some people had been assigned to units on the eighteenth floor. Climbing eighteen flights of dark, sometimes slippery stairs every day was not just trouble; it wasted precious strength and burned calories they could not easily replace.
"Come on, let us check the basement garage," Jing Shu suggested, knowing what awaited but feeling Grandma Jing needed to see the full scope.
Banana Community had only one underground parking level, but because the community was so large, the garage was cavernous. There were more than four thousand numbered parking spaces, and now, four thousand assigned family groups had been placed there. Just the single garage beneath Banana Community now housed over ten thousand people, a subterranean city.
In this lifetime, Jing Shu once again saw a scene she knew too well from her previous life.
The vast, empty concrete garage had transformed into a grim, bustling human market. The sections under Buildings No. 6, No. 7, and No. 8 were already densely packed. With weak emergency lights installed at intervals, you could see shaven heads everywhere in the gloom. People were curled up asleep on the cold floor, some sitting propped against pillars with empty, defeated eyes, others already arguing loudly over the possession of a single salvaged plank or a slightly drier patch of concrete.
There were shouters, quiet sobbers, and the constant background noise of petty quarrels.
Grandma Jing was visibly frightened and saddened by the sight.
A space that used to hold a single car now held an entire "home." In each standard 8-square-meter parking slot, six people at most, two at least, were meant to live. A little cardboard placard hung at the head of each space with family names scrawled on it. For these people, this marked-off rectangle of damp concrete would be home from now on, indefinitely.
People and their meager bundles covered every marked parking space, so the place felt like a horrifically jammed Spring Festival train station from the old days. No, it was worse than that. At least train stations had an endpoint, a destination.
Since it was the first day of placement, and most people's original homes had been completely flooded, there were no suitcases and proper quilts yet, so it did not look as cluttered as it would. Give it time. Couples would want a shred of privacy, so they would hang torn sheets and prop up planks to wall off their parking spaces, turning them into pathetic cubicles. Others would copy them.
Then they would start scavenging the receding floodwaters, picking up any piece of floating debris that seemed useful. Every slot would slowly fill with junk of every kind, broken furniture, plastic buckets, soggy books. By then, even walking through the garage's central lanes would be a challenge. Only then would you truly feel that this existence was not fit for humans or dogs.
"They are so pitiful. I can't imagine how anyone sleeps here. Let us go," said Grandma Jing, her earlier curiosity gone in an instant, replaced by a heavy sorrow.
A thousand people sleeping in a cavernous, echoing garage meant noise carried forever. A single cough rolled far. Add to that all the inevitable nighttime sounds of survival, including the awkward, furtive sounds of "continuing the family line" that would torment all the single people trying to sleep nearby. With this cold and the hard floor, peaceful sleep was a fantasy.
And this was only the first wave. More assigned residents would pour in tomorrow and the day after. Wu City had four million people before the flood. Even if tens of thousands had died or gone missing, there were still countless left to resettle. What then? With limited intact housing, you just stuffed them in wherever there was square footage.
Food and water distribution could be centralized. As for toilets, you had to keep your eyes open. It was not quite "gold everywhere," but close. They could build as many makeshift latrines as they wanted at the garage exits; they could not keep up with the numbers. The smell was already becoming a tangible presence.
Back home, Grandma Jing animatedly recounted what she had seen to the rest of the family. "Tsk tsk, so tragic. Good thing our house did not flood, and we've got enough food. Otherwise, ay." She shook her head, the comparison too stark to voice.
Grandpa Jing tapped the ashes from his pipe into a tin. "The water is not receding in the city center. I heard on the radio it is flooded to two kilometers out from the old shoreline already. Let us hope it does not creep up to us here."
Su Lanzhi, practical as ever, asked Jing Shu, "Did you find a repairman for the car yet? Our Planting Industry unit did not flood, it is on high ground. I need to get back to work tomorrow. With all this rain, strange as it is, we have to seize the chance to run some controlled planting trials. Water is not the issue now."
That afternoon, Jing Shu had told Wu You'ai about the RV and the need for a skilled mechanic. Her mentor's own home had flooded too, so they were busy moving their own family and workshop. They said they would come by when they had time, hopefully in a couple of days.
Over dinner, Jing Shu summarized the day's earlier troubles, the extortion attempt, the fight, for Wu You'ai and Jing Lai. It scared them both half to death. They were just thankful nothing worse had happened at home. A false alarm, but a warning.
"Mom, let Dad drive the shark submarine to take you to work first tomorrow. Hold off on using the electric car until we can get it properly inspected," Jing Shu advised.
…
That night, after the chaotic day, Jing Shu practiced with the Rubik's Cube Space as usual, seeking the familiar mental focus. She found she was gradually getting used to the cube's sudden, autonomous color shifts. Her reaction time was improving. With that perceptual hurdle being cleared, she felt she was one step closer to leveling it up to the next form.
She finally had quiet time to work on bonding with her two new snakes. She released them from their travel cage into a designated, climate-controlled section of the Rubik's Cube Space and started feeding them droplets of Spirit Spring from a dish, using the chance to build rapport through calm, repeated exposure. Once the two five-step vipers entered the optimized environment of the space, they relaxed at once, their movements becoming fluid, their spirits sharp and lively.
If the Cube Space's first form could simulate the optimal temperature and habitat for any stored creature, then its second form seemed to increase mutual perception, making it easier for her to forge friendly bonds with living things within it.
The vipers' venom was notoriously potent. To strengthen her future biological deterrents, her trump cards, she decided to grant the two snakes access to the No. 4 grade Spirit Spring, a richer variant. Compared with poison bees suddenly buzzing out of nowhere, two silent snakes slipping out in the dark would go almost unnoticed. Perfect for an ambush or area denial.
With ideal warmth, humidity, and nourishment, snakes bred easily. Add the enhancing properties of Spirit Spring, and a clutch of hatchlings would not take long. She planned to consume a batch for meat, brew some medicinal wine with others, and save the snake galls as a rare, potent tonic.
As for venom extraction, the data she recalled suggested drawing once every month or two was sustainable for the snake. With Spirit Spring nourishing and accelerating their recovery, she could safely set it to once a week and stockpile the precious toxin. It would be useful later, for medicine, for trade, or for less savory purposes.
So now, beside No. 1 Xiao Dou (chicken) and No. 6 horned frog, Jing Shu officially added No. 4 five-step viper to her growing roster of enhanced companions.
Sometimes Jing Shu idly wondered if she should try to collect a full set of the legendary "Five Poisons" (scorpion, snake, centipede, lizard, toad). That would be truly badass, a walking ecosystem of venom. She shelved the thought for later.
…
These flood days dragged on endlessly, each blending into the next under grey skies. Jing Shu had not slept deeply in ages, always half-alert. Tonight, with the stress of the day finally ebbing, she still did not sleep well. She nearly lost her temper. Next door, Su Mali's villa renovations continued unabated; the sounds of prying, hammering, and electric drilling went on all night. She really wanted to punch someone.
Morning came, grey and wet as ever. She got up with dark circles under her eyes, panda eyes. If the construction continued tonight, she decided, she would not be polite. She would have a very direct word with the foreman.
No one had stayed in the villa for several days, and without a dehumidifier running constantly, the interior had grown noticeably damp. Grandma Jing busied herself airing out bedding and tending to the livestock in their sheltered pens. After a breakfast of reheated porridge and pickles, Jing Shu started up the dehumidifiers in every room. Jing An tossed the armloads of dirty, damp clothes from yesterday's misadventures into the washer, then ran them through the dryer, a luxury of power few could imagine.
Su Lanzhi had already left for work at the relocated Planting Industry R&D center, taking the shark submarine with Jing An as chauffeur.
Wu You'ai left early too, overwhelmed by her new duties. Banana Community was slated to receive more than twenty Consolation and Counseling Specialists to manage the massive influx. They would spend today trying to settle the first wave, then begin a fresh, more permanent round of assignments and registration.
Jing Lai's workplace had also shifted. The Second Detachment had relocated its local office to the commercial building at Banana Community's main gate, so that was where she would report from now on. The remnants of the Ai Jia Supermarket operation had moved to the first floor of the same building for centralized distribution.
The Second Unit had managed to haul everything salvageable from the flooded original Ai Jia Supermarket, but much had been washed away or ruined. They were critically short on large cooking gear for the communal kitchens. The government had just delivered a first batch of rationed coal to the community for meal preparation; the black, dusty bricks were now a more valuable currency than gold for many.