Jing Shu coughed lightly, the sound brief and sharp in the humid air of the factory. "It takes three days for them to mature and seven days to reproduce a new batch, but the newly developed red nematodes can only breed two generations. Beyond that, they can't reproduce anymore. So basically, every ten days, we will need to feed in a new batch of larvae. Right now, we can only produce about ten tons a day."
The numbers she reported were the ones she was willing to sell publicly, keeping the true extent of her production hidden for now. The rest would be stored once production stabilized; some for paying debts, some for trade with Qian Duoduo, and the rest as reserves. These were her costs and expenses, carefully calculated to ensure her own long-term survival.
There was no point selling everything she produced. What good would a pile of virtual coins do? Those coins were just a means to keep the market flowing and maintain the appearance of trade. Her real goal was preparing for the famine of the fourth and fifth years, to save both Qian Duoduo's Shiyuan estate and her own shares in it.
Qian Duoduo couldn't die yet. He needed to stand at the front, taking the heat and the public attention, while she quietly grew stronger in the background. That was the real strategy, a shield of wealth and influence to hide behind while she developed her own power.
Here is an example of how the world worked. Everyone in China knew who the richest person in the country was each year. One year it was Wang Linjian, another year it was Father Ma, and another year it was the guy from Penguin. But who remembered the second richest?
People always remembered who was number one. It was no different in Wu City. Mention the richest person and everyone thought of Qian Duoduo. But the second richest? Ninety-nine percent of people had no clue who that person might be.
After hearing her report, Jin Tianci looked satisfied, his head bobbing in a slow, contemplative nod. "You have still got room to grow. Keep it up. If you run into any problems, go to the government. We will help you figure it out. Do you think it's possible to increase production to over a hundred tons a day?"
Jing Shu almost popped her eyes out at the sheer audacity of the question. Was he really saying that with a straight face? She forced a polite smile and said, "There's not enough raw material, and we're short on conversion reagents too. If those were solved, we could produce however much you want."
He must be joking. If she produced that much red nematode every day, the Spirit Spring would be drained dry. Sure, it only acted as a catalyst, but with that much output, the consumption would skyrocket. With her thrifty and stockpiling nature, there was no way she would waste too much of that life-saving Spirit Spring on mere public production.
"Unless I can find large quantities of the materials that make up the Spirit Spring," she thought. The Rubik's Cube Space can convert items from other dimensional spaces. That means as long as she found other dimensional products, the Cube Space could also transform them into Spirit Spring, maybe even with different effects. But that depended on luck. If she ever found another dimensional item, she could try it.
Jin Tianci looked a bit disappointed, his shoulders slumping slightly at her answer. "Alright, then. Keep up the good work. If you need any materials to increase output, just come to me. As long as it's something the government can handle, we will take care of it." After all, in times like these, anyone who could develop new food sources was invaluable. Support was a must for the survival of the city.
Director Su led the group onward, touring the now fully operational factory while giving an enthusiastic explanation. His words painted a vivid picture of the difficulties and high costs behind breeding red nematodes, and he subtly emphasized that only Boss Jing herself could create and mix the secret formula.
As the workers scooped out the dead red nematodes from the bottom of the pools, they passed them along the conveyor belts to massive grinders that hummed with a low, vibrating power. The nematodes were ground up to prevent the rubbery texture that made them impossible for children and the elderly to chew.
The paste was then sent into giant steam kettles that hissed and sputtered in the large room. The place used to be the factory's boiler room before the apocalypse, so it was the perfect fit for the new machinery.
With winter getting colder by the day, especially with the fifth year expected to drop below minus seventy degrees Celsius, they had to keep the boilers running. Otherwise, the workers would freeze to death in their beds. The boiler room was connected to the dorms, so once the heat started flowing, maintaining the temperature didn't cost much. It was like electricity; it only took a bit of fuel each hour to keep the rooms warm.
That way, the dorms stayed above zero degrees, and workers didn't have to shiver through the night under thin blankets. It was a major perk of the job and explained why a single dorm room cost a hundred points per month. With such comfort, no one wanted to leave the factory anymore.
Just a few days ago, some LV3 employees with enough points had applied for four-person dorms and kicked out others who didn't have enough points. Those who didn't have enough points had to sleep in the hallways, working extra hard these days to level up their status and earn their place back.
Still, housing was limited. Jing Shu estimated it wouldn't even take a month before people started realizing the benefits of higher levels and VIP perks. Soon enough, the four-person and two-person dorms would fill up as everyone scrambled for better living conditions.
When the first LV5 employees moved into single rooms, space would become even tighter. By then, she planned to open LV6 permissions for luxury suites, and later LV7 for presidential suites. Anyone capable of earning hundreds of thousands, even millions of points, deserved to enjoy that top-tier, "one-person-below-the-boss" kind of treatment.
She had also promised her Maternal Eldest Uncle's family a place to stay. Right now, her uncle was living in a single dorm room, and her aunt was still at Xishan. If they moved here, three people would be crammed into one small room. Living like that for long wasn't convenient at all. And imagine their kid asking, "Dad, Mom, what are you doing?" when things got awkward. Everyone needed a little privacy.
Most importantly, Jing Shu had chosen this factory site for a reason. It was a lucky piece of land that had survived countless crises during the apocalypse. It was the perfect location for a second home and a potential refuge.
She wanted to build a larger, more comfortable manor-style estate here, something that would provide true safety. The villa in the Banana Community was already packed with supplies and felt cramped. Even after adding a three-hundred-square-meter backyard, it still couldn't compare to this massive ten-thousand-square-meter factory site. There was also a patch of wasteland nearby, which she was already thinking of developing into something more useful.
"But it's about time we planned new residential housing for employees," she murmured softly. Still, rebuilding wasn't realistic right now. Whether it was the new manor she wanted or dorms for the staff, they didn't have the resources or materials. It was too expensive.
Construction materials were scarce, and building anything from scratch took time that they didn't necessarily have. It would only get colder later on, and those tin shacks wouldn't keep anyone alive. They would need proper insulation and solid walls.
And if she was going to build a second manor for herself, it couldn't be inferior to her villa. So what could she do?
A mobile manor estate, of course.
There were plenty of luxurious mobile homes left in the old shelters, relics of a past life that still held their value. Some were lightweight, warm, and easy to relocate. They were the kind of things she could only dream about in her past life—the ultimate luxury for the rich. Wherever they went, home followed.
Even in this life, Jing Shu hadn't planned to go after such things, but now that she had land and resources, her ambitions were growing. She didn't just want to eat the best food in the world; she wanted to live in the biggest, most comfortable home too.
After all, what was the point of being reborn if not to live better in this godforsaken apocalypse?
Her gaze shifted back to Jin Tianci, and a new idea began to form.