"So what did he modify it into?" Jing Shu asked, her thumb and forefinger rubbing her temple in a slow, frustrated circle.
Back when the matter first came up, she had thought just like Chen Nan. To make up for the parts lost on her RV refit, she told him she would add another 800 virtual coins and cover the vehicle Chu Zhuohua wanted to modify as well. He had agreed at the time.
She never imagined Chu Zhuohua would burn through every premium material in the shop. She knew what a memory metal and aluminum alloy build meant; even if the chassis was deformed in a crash, a dousing with boiling water would pop it back to shape without a single repair.
"He turned it into a house," Chen Nan said, her expression weary as she looked at the stripped shelves.
"…What?"
Chen Nan grimaced, the lines around her eyes deepening. "Probably a trailer RV. But he also used my only, priciest, giant collector's set of AT all-terrain tires. The thing is a monster. You will understand when you see it."
So what exactly had he built? And had her own RV been finished yet?
Jing Shu felt too guilty to linger. She had ended up costing Chen Nan twice now. So she insisted on leaving her one blood mushroom and hurried back to the villa, deciding she would check the shop herself tomorrow.
"Home really is the best." She peeled off the raincoat, the heavy plastic rustling as it fell to the floor, changed into lounging clothes, and sprawled on the living room sofa. She made herself a fruit salad and reviewed the past few days of surveillance on Lin Yi. In three days he had gone out twice. Once he came back with a small paper medicine bag clutched in his hand. Nothing else looked off in the grainy, flickering footage.
Xiao Dou flapped her heavy wings and settled at her feet, quietly waiting for food scraps. Sorry, big girl, not today.
Three days away and the villa felt damp. Jing An replaced the desiccant in the courtyard, the dry crystals clicking as they filled the plastic trays. Grandma Jing fired up the boiler for radiant heat, the metal pipes expanding with a series of dull thuds. Su Lanzhi worked a warm-air blower through the corners. Jing Lai wiped down every surface with a clean cloth.
Grandpa Jing cleaned the chicken run and the pigpen. The chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, and sheep, fed with Spirit Spring, ate voraciously; the troughs were spotless when they finished. In just a few days there was a startling heap of manure.
He couldn't bear to waste it. He found Wang Qiqi again and rented a small plot for 4 virtual coins a month. He put up a prefab shed and built a tiered rack to dry manure. He meant to make fertilizer. In the apocalypse there is no chemical fertilizer. If they want crops next year, they need good compost.
With the heavy rains, he even made a hand-cranked blower to speed the drying. The smell was indescribably pungent, a thick scent of rot and ammonia that hung in the air.
He was doing it so the family would grow better vegetables. It also gave them a neat excuse for outsiders; see, our greens and fruit grow well because we fertilize properly.
As for feed, besides the mountain Jing Shu had stockpiled before Earth's Dark Days, her grandparents made plenty by hand. To boost nutrition for the poultry, they mixed red nematodes, leaf and root scraps, and feed pellets.
Even so, that huge pre-apocalypse cache had dwindled to half. If she didn't want to feed pure red nematodes later, she would need other options.
The animals in the Rubik's Cube Space were not a concern. The vegetable leaves from the fields inside were enough to keep them thriving, with surplus to spare for the villa's poultry.
On her evening walk, she also transferred the red nematodes from the four containers at home into the space to feed the leeches. A small colony stayed in the villa yard; the rest were inside. She fed both sets in turn.
Inside the Cube Space's cramped four cubic meters, a cluster of blood mushroom root stubs was guarded in the center by the leeches. When she sprinkled nematodes, it was like tossing feed to starving fish. The leeches thrashed and lunged, fighting for each wriggler in the soil.
The red nematodes fought back as if facing a natural enemy, but strengthened by the Spirit Spring, the leeches were ferocious. The nematodes lost ground fast and were swallowed in droves.
She even considered raising a balanced herd of red nematodes as sparring partners for the leeches. In half a year the nematodes will carry a virus and can no longer be used as feed, but if she wants the leeches to keep producing blood mushrooms, she will need fresh nematodes for them.
"Better wait for the Rubik's Cube Space to upgrade. It is really too small now," she sighed. The larger the space, the more she can do. Right now it is bursting at the seams.
Among the creatures she kept; chickens, ducks, quail, rabbits, cattle, sheep, and pigs; feed is manageable. The Cube Space's food chain looped neatly toward self-sufficiency.
Of course that demanded time. Every day she split her attention. Whenever her eyes drifted to nowhere, that was where the Cube Space was in her mind's eye; either feeding or cleaning.
The bees would gather honey year-round. The horned frogs ate bugs. The leeches ate red nematodes.
As for the five-step vipers, the hatchlings had completed their first shed. Sloughed skins lay everywhere, translucent and fragile. It meant they were ready to eat. Another set of hungry mouths. After long thought she made the call: feed them horned frogs.
Five-step vipers feed on frogs, rodents, and insects. Before this she had mixed nematodes and Spirit Spring. Now that she had a lot of young snakes, it is time for real nutrition.
Horned Frog No. 6 and No. 7 were entering their spawning phase and already weighed several jin. They bred fast. Rather than waste the surplus, she would raise them a bit larger and feed them to the young snakes. Frogs didn't consume grain; give them nematodes and they thrived. Snakes that ate froglets grew better, and the medicinal broth will be stronger.
"What a clever little fox I am," she thought, feeding the freshly shed hatchlings. In a few days she will finally steep them in wine. The thought made her a little giddy.
After a full day as chief poop-scooper, she harvested a round of ripe crops from the fields and finally went to bed.
At dawn, after breakfast, everyone tackled their jobs. Jing Shu piloted the amphibious shark submarine to Chen Nan's mod shop.
Wu City's sky was still pitch-black. She used her key to open the now dilapidated workshop. In the empty bay, the first thing she saw was her MAN RV. Behind it, hitched up with two enormous wheels, stood a little house.
Her jaw slowly fell open. From inside the brightly lit cottage, a DJ track thumped, the bass vibrating through the concrete floor.
"Chu Zhuohua! You've got some nerve!" she howled into the cold, empty garage.
So that is what he had modified. He had bolted a trailer house to the back of her RV.
Well. The idea is ambitious.