Hearing her shout through the damp morning air, Chu Zhuohua opened the heavy RV door. He stood there in the frame with a messy beehive head and deep, dark circles under his eyes; he looked nothing like his former suave and composed self. "Morning, Jing Shu. Come see my masterpiece," he said, his voice raspy from lack of sleep.
Jing Shu took in the sight of the two house-height wheels and finally understood what Chen Nan had meant by her priciest, biggest, collectible AT all-terrain tires. The rubber was thick and the treads were deep enough to swallow a fist.
The trailer's nose was streamlined into a smooth curve for easier towing through the resistance of the wind. The body was a sturdy rectangular house with small, reinforced windows and a narrow metal chimney. The strangest part was the set of massive wheels positioned on both sides of the "house": it was truly bizarre to behold.
"Look, cool tires, right? I copied a Maybach-style suspension for the chassis. No matter how rough the terrain gets outside, you will feel absolutely nothing inside the cabin. Come, I will give you a full tour," Chu Zhuohua said, gesturing for her to enter.
"So you plan to hitch this junk house behind my RV as a tagalong for the rest of the journey?" Jing Shu said, her eyes scanning the bolted seams of the exterior.
When she didn't know him well, she had thought him a cold, erudite, and eccentric rich boy. Once they had become familiar, he turned out to be something else entirely, a man driven by strange, mechanical obsessions.
"No, it's not a junk house. It has its own independent power system, though it's purely electric. Top speed is only 40 miles per hour (around 64 kilometers per hour). And yes, I do plan to hitch it to the back of your RV. From now on, every time we evacuate or move, I will cover half of the total fuel costs," Chu Zhuohua explained.
"Every time? What if..." She arched a brow at him. He probably didn't know she was already planning the massive upgrade for the RV to prepare for the great migration after year five.
"Of course every time. I would never take advantage of your resources," he said. His glasses flashed oddly in the dim light of the workshop. Best case, they would drive the RV every day and never stop. As the saying goes, those closest to the water will get the moon first. He wondered if it was true in this case.
She narrowed her eyes at his enthusiasm. It felt wrong to take advantage of his labor when the RV's refit relied entirely on his skill, and his perfectionist streak meant he could never hand back a flawed job. With her RV in his hands, his own compulsions would force him to finish it to absolute perfection.
While she hesitated, he held out a small, crinkling paper packet. "Wu You'ai said you're collecting all kinds of seeds; she mentioned the stranger the better."
"What seeds are these?" Jing Shu asked. Right after her rebirth, she had gone to the major wholesalers and bought practically every grain and fruit seed she could find, along with a wide variety of medicinal ones.
Her grain collection was the most complete in the region. For many crops, she held over a hundred different varieties. She could boast that she had more than a hundred types of corn seeds alone. The heavy seed packs filled a full cubic meter (about 35 cubic feet) of her storage.
So if the seeds were useless or common, she wasn't interested. But practical herbs and hardy flowers were always welcome in her garden.
"Tobacco," he said simply.
Her eyes lit up at the word. Tobacco was exactly what she lacked in her current inventory.
She had just been thinking that after the Rubik's Cube Space upgraded, she would plant several new species. At present, the fields inside were divided neatly into fruit, vegetables, and medicinal herbs. After the upgrade will be completed, she could finally add other categories to the rotation.
As for the grains, she could wait another two years before worrying about the supply. They still had plenty of rice and flour stored away. For oil, next year she could plant soybeans and peanuts and press her own fresh batches.
"Yes, yes, yes," she said, reaching for the packet. In her mind, she was already slotting the tobacco into the next expansion of the fields along with the cotton she had planned.
She also decided to make tobacco the sixth medicinal entry she would register as an upgraded vice chair at the Medicinal Herb Association, just in case the leeches somehow didn't count toward her required quota of species.
That's right. She would plant the tobacco at home in the villa, in the Rubik's Cube Space, and at the Medicinal Herb Association plots. It wasn't only so Grandpa Jing and Jing An could smoke and avoid fighting over the last of their stash, but also because tobacco itself is a potent medicinal plant.
Tobacco is warm in nature and sweet in taste, yet highly toxic in concentrated forms. It reduces swelling, detoxifies the skin, and kills various pests. It can be used against the "four harms" and even more: snail hosts of schistosomiasis, mosquitoes, flies, rats, and garden bugs, with an obvious and immediate effect.
What is abundant in the apocalypse? Bugs. Especially the biting kind that thrived in the damp. She had already burned through half of the two crates of medicated wind oil she had bought. Who knew how long they would last? Mixing tobacco into an insecticidal formula would be an excellent move.
In two months, as the bugs multiplied in the heat and the red nematodes diminished, tobacco's medicinal value would truly shine.
She found herself liking him more as a partner. What did this man's family do to have every strange and useful thing on hand?
"So, do you want the tour now?"
When a man introduces his proud creation, he always seems to stand a little taller. Inside the mongrel trailer, she felt the full breadth of his imagination. He had turned the interior into a compact loft. In less than 13 square meters (roughly 140 square feet), it held a full set of functions: a small living area, a toilet and shower unit, a kitchen, a sofa, and a bedroom.
The only flaw was the cramped headroom. The first floor was 1.8 meters (about 5.9 feet) high. The loft bedroom was only 1.3 meters (about 4.2 feet) high, with a big waterbed that sloshed and moved on its own when you sat down. It's fun, though she wondered if the movement would rock her awake at night.
The space felt a little claustrophobic with the low ceilings.
"I like compact, self-contained spaces. They feel safe when the world is falling apart," he said, his voice echoing in the small cabin.
She blinked at the comment. Wu You'ai had said the exact same thing when she had asked for a space capsule for her own room.
After the tour had ended, she had to admit it was impressive work. The materials were all top tier. Just as he had promised, no matter what happened on the road outside, there would be no sway inside the trailer. His design and finish were exceptionally strong, as if he had built an entire specialized vehicle from scratch in only a few days.
As for her own RV, it was unchanged from how it had looked before the New Year. He had obviously spent all of his time on his own build.
"Don't worry. I will finish yours quickly now that mine is done. Whatever comes next for us, I will be relying on you," he said, his motivation clearly rekindled, with new engineering ideas sparking in his eyes.
After leaving the modification shop, she hauled a heavy batch of charcoal to the factory Wang Gang had secured and handed the virtual coins over to Su Yiyang. The factory sat near the Xishan district, a bit away from the chaos of the old city.
Her uncle and aunt-in-law kept their day jobs for the time being. Community administrators were busy but their hours were flexible, so they could trade shifts and still manage the factory's production.
Wang Gang must have said the right things to his sister, because her aunt-in-law sprang back to life and was even more invested in the project than her husband. By the second day, all of the hires were complete and production could start the next morning at dawn.
This factory would be easier to manage than the one at Jing Pan's house. Each day they only needed to tally the incoming red nematodes and feed them directly into the processing machines.
When that was finally done, it was already late in the afternoon. She hurried to the Medicinal Herb Association to get the tobacco seeds planted. Evaluations were based on achieving medicinal quality, so the sooner she sowed the seeds, the sooner the plants would mature.
Astragalus, honeysuckle, gastrodia, bodhi, leech, and tobacco.
Of those six, the honeysuckle and gastrodia had already reached a high medicinal grade. The leeches could be processed into medicine at any time she chose. The astragalus and tobacco would need another two to three months of growth. The bodhi would need at least four months.
"Jing Shu, of all the days to visit, why did you come today?" Wang Danai groaned as she saw her. "You truly are an unlucky child."
Jing Shu: "???"