Only her own team really understood what was going on inside her mind, since she had already gone through something very similar before.
"Alright, I will go see Hao Yunlai myself."
Jing Shu didn't waste any time. She jumped into the amphibious shark submarine and drove straight to his place, the vehicle cutting through the murky water. Yang Yang was standing there in the room, holding a sharp syringe and hesitating about whether to jab him or not.
Hao Yunlai looked thinner than ever, with dark circles under his weary eyes like a giant panda. He was using a small stick to force his eyelids open while muttering to himself, "A bit to the left... yeah... now right... harder, come on..."
Hao San'er, who was cowering in the corner of the room, trembled like a leaf in the wind, terrified out of his mind. He looked ready to drop to his knees and worship whoever was standing in front of him.
"Tsk," Yang Yang sighed, "Hao Yunlai's brain is fried right now. The aftereffects are serious. He keeps mumbling to himself. I wanted to give him a sedative, but he absolutely refused to take it."
Jing Shu gently set her case down on the floor, took off her gloves and hat, and blew out a soft breath of air. "Hao Yunlai, tell me what is going on with you."
The man struggled to turn his head toward her, fighting off the heavy pull of sleep with sheer willpower. "Jing Shu, thank you for saving my life, for pulling me out of hell, but I can't sleep. I don't dare. Down there is too terrifying; it's really, really terrifying."
She frowned at his words. The aftereffects were indeed bad. Was there anything that could stop him from dreaming altogether? She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. The crimson crystal had worked once before to save him through time, but using it again might not help his current mental state.
"Wait... the Crimson Spirit Spring," she muttered to herself under her breath. "If my guess is right, it's the essence refined from that crimson liquid. Since the crimson crystal came from a fourth-dimensional substance, maybe its refined form could eliminate the aftereffects. This is a perfect chance to test it on Hao Yunlai. But if it triggers the strongest genetic traits, would he turn into a monkey or something else? Hmm... though honestly, maybe humans already have the strongest genes. He probably won't end up like a dino-chicken, right?"
After a long internal debate, she finally decided to let him choose for himself. "If drinking this could cure you, but it might turn you into an ape, would you take it?"
Hao Yunlai let out a painful, dry laugh. "I would do it even if it sent me straight into the beast reincarnation path."
"Alright then, drink this." She handed him a small test tube of diluted Crimson Spirit Spring. Whether it worked or not, she had to find out for sure.
She had gone all-in to test its full effects on a human subject.
Speaking of tests, the eggs Xiao Dou laid earlier—those strange dino-chicken ones—the hen had gone into full mama mode and was guarding them carefully under her warm feathers. Since she seemed so determined to hatch them, Jing Shu figured she might as well let her try.
Who knew what might come out of those shells? Maybe this was the dawn of an entirely new species. If she could hatch a batch of badass dino-chickens that could both fight and lay eggs, that would be amazing. Just imagine, a whole flock of them patrolling her yard day and night. If anyone dared steal from her again, they would be executed on the spot by the birds.
Still, it was too soon to celebrate the possibility. She quickly logged it in her notebook:
[Xiao Dou is incubating dino-chickens.]
Without any further hesitation, Hao Yunlai gulped down the Crimson Spirit Spring. A moment later, the glass test tube slipped from his hand with a sharp clink against the floor, and he passed out cold.
Jing Shu caught the falling glass just in time before it could shatter, muttering, "Close one." Her physical reflexes had clearly improved along with her general constitution.
"He just... fell asleep? Did you give him a sleeping pill or something? Damn, that's fast."
Yang Yang reluctantly tucked away his unused syringe. "It's the same medicine, but he refuses my shot. I guess my needle is too thin for his taste."
She shrugged at the comment. "It's fine, it's done. Now it's all up to fate."
That settled his case for now. She would wait until he woke up to see how it turned out. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that he was sent by the heavens just to take the blame for her. Why did she even think that? She didn't know the answer.
At least things finally quieted down for a bit. But today was also the official opening of the Red Nematode Processing Factory. Su Yiyang said he couldn't handle the massive crowd alone, so she had to show up to steady the scene and cut the ribbon.
Jing Shu didn't refuse the request. The factory was finally on track, and that made her thrilled. The moment it started making a real profit, she would be even happier. Thanks to the new points system, everyone was starting to rely on points and see their intrinsic value, but of course, some folks just had to test if those points could be exchanged for virtual coins.
Every time she checked her balance, it was lower than before. On top of that, with resources flowing again, 98% of the people wanted in on factory jobs. But there weren't enough positions to go around, so what could the rest do?
The answer was simple. They started pushing heavy carts around Wu City, digging up carrion scavengers from every dark alley and open field. But soon, people realized they could only dig up a hundred or two hundred kilograms a day. The points earned for that amount were pitiful.
It was exhausting and barely profitable for an individual. But if they bought the bugs from others at a cheaper rate than the factory offered, they could collect a few thousand kilograms, then resell them for a margin. That meant earning ten or more points a day, which was worth over ten virtual coins. Before the apocalypse, that was unthinkable.
And it was easy money. Mobilizing all those bored civilians to collect bugs was the fastest way to boost the overall productivity.
Of course, it needed capital to start. Many people started mortgaging their points for virtual coin loans through the finance office, then used the funds to sweep the entire Wu City, gathering corpse bugs and animal carcasses.
The problem was, every single coin came from Jing Shu's own account. In just a few days, tens of thousands of virtual coins had flowed out, and that number would only keep climbing as time went on.
Because collecting corpse bugs wasn't short-term work. It was a long, ongoing cycle of labor.
She hesitated for a long time. If she raised the corpse bugs herself, she would have to feed them anyway. No matter what, it would require resources.
It was way less efficient than just buying them cheap from the wild. These bugs were everywhere, crawling across the land like kings of the apocalypse. Leave your window open for a second, and they would bite you in your sleep. They even ate their own kind when hungry. They were tough little bastards.
So yeah, collecting them from the wild was cheaper, faster, and it kept the virtual coin economy flowing properly. It gave people a way to earn money and created many jobs. If she hoarded too many coins herself, the circulation would stop, and no one would have money to buy more corpse bugs.
And if that happened?
No one would have coins, no one could afford the Red Nematodes, and everyone would eventually starve. The government would have no choice but to distribute the Red Nematodes for free again.
And in the end, the one losing out would still be Jing Shu.