Grains and fruits, real, fresh, unblemished produce, would only grow scarcer and more astronomically expensive as the apocalypse dragged on. Jing Shu had already decided she wouldn't sell them unless absolutely necessary, a life-or-death situation for her family, and even then, only as a colossal, unrepeatable favor to be called in later.
Since her own private, hidden resources, abundant as they seemed, would never be enough to bankroll the kind of security and influence she needed in the wider, harsher world, she had to rely on cultivating rare, unusual, and high-value items to accumulate the necessary capital. The benefit of this approach was that it wouldn't attract the same level of desperate, mass envy as openly trading in staple foods, and it could strategically help her build connections with people in higher, more specialized positions, doctors, researchers, officials in charge of luxury goods or health.
That was why blood mushrooms, with their new, hype-driven "life-extending" reputation, were one of the things Jing Shu hoped most to succeed with.
It had been more than ten days since she had harvested them from the submerged city. Aside from the two blood mushrooms she had eaten in the stew, four large, perfect specimens remained, stored in the stasis of her Cube Space. Jing Shu had even carefully transplanted two of them, roots and all, into the rich, dark soil of her Cube Space's fields.
But even after all these days, with the regular nourishment of diluted Spirit Spring water, the same water that made her eggplants swell and her papayas flower and fruit in record time, the blood mushrooms hadn't grown even a single millimeter. They sat there, stubbornly dormant, like crimson stones.
So today, as she mentally brought out the largest blood mushroom from her Cube Space to inspect it, a sudden, counterintuitive thought struck her. What if she was doing it all wrong? What if the key wasn't perfect soil and clean water, but replicating the mushroom's natural habitat?
Others might not be able to do that under the current conditions of the apocalypse, who would deliberately cultivate vats of sewage and parasites?, but she had the Cube Space. She could create separate, contained biomes. Planting and cultivation, however unorthodox, were her most reliable and presentable skills right now.
Each individual Cube Space field, she theorized, could simulate the optimal, albeit disgusting, survival environment for different creatures. Even if blood mushrooms were considered nearly impossible to cultivate artificially by pre-collapse standards, she had the best, perhaps the only, chance of succeeding.
From the fragmented news reports and the whispers among salvage divers, she knew blood mushrooms usually grew only in specific, foul places, where leeches and red nematodes were found in dense, squirming masses. Their relationship was like the old proverb about venomous snakes and the detoxifying herbs that supposedly grew beside their nests, mutually contradictory, yet mutually dependent, a balance of poison and antidote.
Jing Shu didn't need to understand the intricate microbiological details. If she just caught a batch of live leeches and red nematodes to raise in a dedicated section of her space, then placed the dormant blood mushrooms among them, she would quickly know whether her brutal idea worked.
If it did, she could even try nourishing the whole disgusting ecosystem with diluted Spirit Spring water to increase their vitality and, hopefully, the mushrooms' growth rate and potency. Blood mushrooms, like any commodity, had grades, the larger, thicker, and more vibrantly red the cap, the higher their market value.
"That's right!" Jing Shu suddenly remembered, her eyes widening. Leeches themselves had great, established medicinal value! Alive, they could be applied to the body in certain therapies to draw out pus and toxins, reduce blood stasis, and improve circulation, a practice called hirudotherapy. Dried and ground into powder, they could treat a whole range of ailments, invigorating blood and unblocking meridians. Prepared with honey, they could even be used in eye drops to treat corneal opacities and cataracts. Truly, every part of a leech was valuable. She even recalled a doctor on the community broadcast not long ago loudly demanding any available leeches for compounding medicine.
She rubbed her hands together, a slow smile spreading. More importantly, if she raised leeches, they'd officially count as "medicinal fauna," which meant another legitimate business line and research topic for her within the Medicinal Herb Association.
Raising leeches was practically killing three birds with one stone, relatively easy to manage once established, potentially very profitable, and it would provide both the leeches themselves and, hopefully, the blood mushrooms that grew from their waste. Of course, this was just her ideal scenario, sketched in the clean space of her mind. Whether it would work in the messy reality of writhing invertebrates remained uncertain.
She was so lost in planning, mentally jotting down equipment needs, fine mesh nets, separate containers, water pumps, that she didn't even fully register the journey. Before she knew it, she had arrived at Old Master Yang Yang's residence in the old Xishan district.
By now, Jing Shu was practically itching to experiment. She wanted to excuse herself, head straight back to the flooded city center, and wait near the salvage operations for someone to get into trouble again, so she could have a legitimate reason to dive in and "accidentally" collect a starter batch of leeches.
Ahem, she meant to heroically save people, of course! Save people!
But reality proved she wasn't as preternaturally lucky as her friend Su Mali seemed to be. Even after mentally planning several such trips, she had to admit she had never again witnessed someone vanish or get tangled right in front of her. Clearly, she needed another, more proactive plan instead of waiting passively for disaster to strike near the right patch of sludge.
Old Master Yang lived in the old, elevated district of Xishan, in a residence built entirely of local gray stone, which gave it a fortress-like solidity. The house looked ancient, at least a hundred years old, its walls darkened by time and weather. At the entrance stood a pair of imposing stone lions, the male resting a paw on an embroidered ball, the female with a playful cub beneath hers, their features worn but still exuding a quiet, formidable cultural richness.
On this particular stormy night, a huge, waterproofed canvas canopy had been erected over the entire front courtyard and driveway, doubling as a large parking shelter. The main gate itself was a heavy, double-door affair in a retro style, with two glowing red lanterns hanging from the eaves, their light fighting the gloom. Crowds of well-dressed guests bustled in and out, their voices creating a lively, noisy hum that contrasted sharply with the surrounding desolation.
At Su Mali's underground auction, everyone had arrived in silent, chauffeured luxury cars, moving like ghosts of the old aristocracy. Tonight, however, most of the vehicles parked under the canopy were ordinary, understated black Audis and Volkswagens, the preferred transports of mid-to-high-level bureaucrats and officers. Still, a few unmistakable, high-profile luxury cars, a matte-black armored SUV, a sleek electric sedan with custom plating, stood out among them, declaring the presence of real money or unassailable power.
Jing Shu in her undeniably eye-catching amphibious shark submarine, drew a few curious glances as she parked at the edge of the canopy. She was received at the door not by a servant, but by Wang Dazhao himself, who had been stationed there as a combination of security and greeter.
The moment she stepped across the threshold, she could feel the weight of cultural heritage and unspoken class in the very air. It felt like stepping into the preserved mansion of a late-Qing dynasty scholar-official or a wealthy landlord from a century ago. Everything in the main hall looked authentically old, even shabby in places, worn floorboards, faded scrolls, yet each item carried an immense, quiet value. The structure itself was a classic three-courtyard residence layout.
But upon closer inspection, many details had been cleverly, expensively modernized. The central air conditioning hummed softly from vents hidden within ornate wooden beams. The electric lights were designed to look like antique candleholders with realistic, flickering LED flames. The heavy furniture was all dark, oiled rosewood, antique and elegant, its surfaces cracked with a fine spiderweb of age but polished to a soft sheen.
The floor was paved with large, aged green bricks, cool to the touch, some areas obviously repaired with newer, matching stone. Every detail, from the iron door studs to the lattice windows, testified to a long, careful history.
In the central courtyard, now sheltered by the canopy, there were miniature rockeries and a large, rectangular pool stocked with dozens of fat koi and silvery crucian carp, their colors vivid against the dark water.
A side pavilion looked newly built from reclaimed timber. The former decorative flowerbeds lining the walkways had been practically converted into raised vegetable plots, with full-spectrum grow lights suspended above them. Only the stubble roots of freshly harvested leeks and lettuce remained.
This house was even older and more authentic than most tourist-trap courtyard homes in the capital, yet it seamlessly integrated hidden modern technology for comfort and survival. Jing Shu thought Old Master Yang was someone who, like her, valued quality of life deeply and refused to surrender to mere brutish survival. If conditions allowed, he never compromised. Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone to the immense trouble of roofing the entire courtyard against the acid rain, nor added so many considerate, energy-consuming details.
"This must be someone with real, entrenched power," Jing Shu mused silently. After all, very, very few individuals could host a full-scale, catered birthday banquet in the heart of the apocalypse and have this many important guests show up.
Wang Dazhao led her through the bustling main courtyard toward the rear hall where the main banquet was being held. It was a huge, high-ceilinged space, with a raised wooden stage at the far end where performers in traditional costumes were actually singing a segment of Peking opera, their voices sharp and clear over the din of conversation.
Dining followed strict Chinese tradition, ten people per large, round table. Over twenty such tables were arranged in the hall, each draped with bright red, festive tablecloths. The sight was jarringly luxurious, more extravagant than any wedding or corporate banquet Jing Shu had ever attended, even in the prosperous world before the apocalypse.
The sheer scale of it, the food, the guests, the entertainment, was far beyond what she had imagined. It was the kind of scene she had only seen in historical television dramas about the decadent Qing court.
She was guided to a table in the upper right section of the hall, a position of some honor. Most seats were already filled with serious-looking men in well-fitted, though not flashy, clothing, the air buzzing with low-level political and military shop talk. Yang Yang was already there, sipping baijiu slowly from a small cup, his eyes squinted as if lost in a melancholy thought. Only when he noticed her approach did he straighten up and yield the seat beside him.
"Your grandfather really knows how to put on a show," Jing Shu remarked quietly, taking the proffered seat.
"Yeah," Yang Yang replied with a wry, knowing twist of his lips. "All for appearances and old-face. You will see the bill for all this later. He will definitely be kneeling on the washboard tonight after my grandmother audits the household accounts." His tone was fond but exasperated.
"Come, sit here. The view's good for the stage. Everyone at this table is one of us, people who can be trusted. These folks over here," he gestured to three older gentlemen deep in discussion, "went on a diplomatic mission to America with my grandfather back in the day. The last three seats are reserved for Lao Niu's family. They're running late."
As soon as the words left his mouth, a commotion came from the entrance. Niu Mou, the agricultural director, came bustling in, lugging several wrapped gift bags, dragging his flustered-looking wife along by the elbow while trying to keep a grip on his squirming son's hand.
In the crowd, the boy, Niu Yanben, immediately spotted Jing Shu sitting at the table. His eyes, which had been wide with anxiety, lit up. With a desperate wrench, he freed his hand from his father's grip and rushed over through the forest of chairs and legs. He grabbed Jing Shu's hand with both of his, his own small and slightly sticky.
"Sister Jing! Sis!" he whispered urgently, his voice trembling on the edge of tears. "Save me, please! My mom said she's going to punish me hard when we get home! She found the candy wrappers under my bed!"