"What? Jing Shu, what did you say? Say it again, your uncle must have misheard." Wei Chang's boots squelched in the cold mud as he turned toward her, the rain dripping from the brim of his hat.
Jing Shu sighed, the vapor of her breath blooming in the chilly October air. "Uncle, in a few days we should butcher all these pigs." She repeated it evenly, her gaze steady despite the grunting of the animals around them.
Wei Chang stared at her as if she had grown a second head. "Why? The pig market is great right now. Do you know how many virtual coins a jin of pork sells for? I get your angle; red nematodes are gone and feed is a problem. But our factory can still allocate my share of worm feed. I can raise a few hundred pigs on that. Holding out until the apocalypse ends isn't that hard, right?"
He made it sound like the apocalypse would end any minute. In reality, it was only going to get worse as the third year approached.
Jing Shu lifted her hand. It looked no different from before the apocalypse—pale and steady. She scooped a fistful of red nematodes from the pool, the worms writhing against her skin in a tangled, wet mass. She kneaded them between her fingers, then shook her head. "Uncle, how long have you kept this batch?
It's been that long and you have still got only one tank like this. Don't you think the reproduction is off? Ordinary red nematodes have a super short cycle. Bacteria to eggs takes about three days; egg to larva takes just a few more. When I raised them before, one squeeze and you would hear bubbles pop. That's high-activity eggs. Yours have very few eggs. I don't need to spell out what that means."
Few eggs, low hatch rates, and a long cycle meant they would never bounce back the way they used to. You couldn't harvest half the tank for pigs and expect it to regrow in days anymore.
Wei Chang finally caught on. He bent down to check the tank carefully, his eyes narrowed in the dim light. "I didn't notice that. I started with a small pool and they grew every day, so I was happy. But yeah, the speed is too slow. Reproduction can't keep up with consumption."
He frowned deeper. He had figured that if he nurtured this one tank, he could at least feed a dozen pigs daily. Pigs eat more feed than any other livestock.
"Even if this tank is a bust, we still have our quota. We have at least a hundred tons of red nematode feed. That's enough to keep pigs going. We trade pork for rice and supplies; we will make even more, won't we?"
Wei Chang paced the length of the pens, checking one pig and then another.
"Alright, Uncle, let me run the math you already know, and I will lowball it. To keep weight steady, a pig needs at least 3 kg of feed per day. Let's ignore sows' lactation and empty cycles. That's around one ton per pig per year. With the few dozen pigs you have now, plus the natural increase, your share of feed—even if you use all of it perfectly—only lasts about two years."
Wei Chang nodded, his jaw set tight. "Pigs sure do eat. If they lose weight, we lose money, so you have to feed enough to put on meat."
"And after two years? Even if some get sold along the way, you will still have a lot of pigs, but you will be out of feed."
"In two years, maybe there will be new feed sources. Or the apocalypse ends?" Wei Chang tried, though his voice lacked conviction.
"What if it doesn't?" Jing Shu asked quietly.
"...If it doesn't, then I will just butcher them all and trade for stuff. I still won't lose. Two years of selling dozens of pigs at current prices means I will get a lot of food and goods."
Jing Shu shook her head. "You won't have a fallback, and you will probably lose out in the long run. If you butcher now, you will earn more over the next two years. Keep only breeding stock and switch to selling piglets. Live piglets are worth way more than grown pork, and you will save dozens of tons of feed every year."
She went on, her explanation calm and clear. "That saved feed sustains your breeders. Two years later, you will still have enough to keep breeding for years. And these live red nematodes can be your emergency buffer."
Wei Chang's eyes lit up as the logic clicked into place. "You're right, Jing Shu. We don't know when the apocalypse ends. If we plan for the worst, it won't end at all. Growing crops might never recover. Piglets can sell to rich folks for great prices, and we will get back more in trade. Live pigs are rare now. This slashes our risk. You always need a way out."
Jing Shu smiled faintly and let the matter drop. As long as he had figured it out, the crisis could be averted. Chasing short-term profit could bury the future. Expanding the herd wasn't the route to take. Soon enough, people would starve in swaths. Who would have spare feed for pigs?
If a few years later Wei Chang ballooned the herd to several hundred, the first thing the authorities slaughtered would be him. But if he kept only two or three breeders and treated them like protected stock, at least the pigs would have a path to survive. The authorities could see that much.
"Alright, it's only a few days anyway. Jing Shu, every day they eat over a hundred kilos of feed. It hurts me just thinking about it. Let's do it today. I will call in favors for oxytocin on the side. With dozens of pigs, I will get Wang Mazi to help slaughter. One wasted day is that much feed gone."
Wei Chang was a move-fast kind of man. Once he decided, he acted immediately.
"Uncle..."
"Don't worry, the idea doesn't need your aunt's approval. Whatever it is, she will back it with both hands." He grinned.
"Uncle, I mean you don't need to call anyone. If word gets out we're butchering this many pigs when grain is tight, someone might cause trouble, or try to seize them. All our pigs... I will do the killing. You handle the offal and clean-up. Let's finish before Sister-in-law goes into labor." Jing Shu cleared her throat. She usually did it in the Rubik's Cube Space where gravity and space were hers to control. Inside absolute space, slaughtering was easy. She had never tried it in the real world.
She wanted to try it here.
"Right, I forgot how strong you're. You will be a natural at this. Fine, let's go."
Jing Shu started her first slaughter in the open air. The rain drizzled down, cooling the heat of the pig shed. Uncle wanted to truss the hogs five-flowers-style to keep them from thrashing at the end. "No need, Uncle. I usually stun them and go straight in. You boil the water and set things up."
"Got it. We're not in a hurry; step by step."
Once she sent Uncle off to the kitchen, she finally began. If anything went sideways, she would just pull the carcass into the Rubik's Cube Space and finish there. She had already sharpened her blades on dozens of cows, sheep, and pigs in that space. Now, the knives in her kit were itching to work.