At the same time, Jing Shu sat at her desk going through her old plans one by one, filling in the unexpected changes that had cropped up along the way. She looked closely at number five on her list: the specific part about the seeds and rare minerals that were supposed to arrive and be traded with Jin Tianci. She picked up a pen and changed that entry to "wait for updates." If no news came in soon, she would head out with Yang Yang and the others, bring Hao Yunlai along for his unique luck, and go track down that shipment herself.
Rumor had it the cargo was already nearby, but after the tectonic changes shifted the earth, the route had become impassable. Fortunately, she had plenty of experience with situations like this. When it came to those seeds, she refused to give up until she got them in her hands.
As for the villa's backyard renovation, another month had passed, and the project was finally complete. The whole 300-square-meter area was now fully enclosed, belonging entirely to her family. A tall, sturdy wall surrounded the perimeter, and the backyard's main entrance was guarded by a huge, V-shaped monument that looked hauntingly like a massive tombstone. When Su Lanzhi came home from work and saw the structure, she thought she had walked into the wrong house.
To cover for herself, Jing Shu had a stonecarver engrave a Buddhist scripture onto the surface of the stone. The characters spoke of compassion and mercy. She claimed she had been having ominous dreams lately, and that the Buddha told her in a dream that this monument would ward off bad luck and turn misfortune into blessing for the whole family.
Her father, Jing An, nodded knowingly as he looked at the stone. "I knew it. Our daughter never does anything without a reason."
Grandma Jing squinted her eyes as she laughed. "She takes after me. Whatever the Buddha says, we will do it exactly that way."
Grandpa Jing puffed on the wooden stem of his pipe and grumbled, his voice low. "How come Buddha never gives me dreams, huh? I have been a believer my whole life!" He looked genuinely offended by the lack of divine communication, but before he could say more, Grandma Jing grabbed a nearby broom and chased him toward the house.
"You old fool, every time something happens, you go begging all eighteen gods for help, and you have got the nerve to talk!"
He ran fast, of course, his feet hitting the ground as he darted into the backyard to keep working. Now that the villa's yard was fully sealed off from the outside world, the place felt much safer. Still, the area was huge, and there was plenty of work to do to reorganize the space. Grandpa Jing decided to set aside part of it to raise all the poultry that didn't fit in the other coops.
Then he marked off another section for vegetables, driving stakes into the dirt. After all he had lived through, he knew better than anyone that the world wasn't getting better anytime soon. They needed to stockpile as much food as they possibly could.
"Must plant more corn," he muttered to himself as he worked. "It's high-yield, and we're running low on feed for the animals."
Since the yard was going to be so busy with growth, heating was a must to keep the plants alive. He started installing a looped hot-water pipe system all around the area, creating an early form of underfloor heating.
Normally, a builder would lay tiles over the pipes to finish the floor, but in these end-of-the-world conditions, that was a luxury they didn't have. As long as the hot water flowed through the system, the yard stayed warm enough for the crops and livestock.
The villa's boiler room already ran every day, burning through piles of coal instead of natural gas to save resources. They had stocked over ten tons of coal before the apocalypse began, and at this rate, it would last maybe two or three more years. Still, what choice did they have? With Wu City's temperatures dropping below minus ten degrees, neither people nor animals could survive without a steady source of heat.
When the coal ran out, they would switch back to using gas. And from what Jing Shu knew of the future, even when supplies got tight, Su Mali never lacked energy.
Then there was issue number thirteen on her list: the Crimson Spirit Spring experiment. That one was a mixed bag because it covered so many different biological things.
Take the orange trees, for example. They ended up producing grapefruits and tangerines instead of the original fruit. She made honey grapefruit tea to share with the family, turned the tangerine pulp into canned fruit, and dried the peels for medicinal use.
That gave her a new idea. Maybe she should start stocking more canned fruit from now on. It was easier to store and easier to ration out when things got difficult.
But the Crimson Spirit Spring also brought her a real headache. It was those dino-chickens.
After Xiao Dou mated with the dino-chickens, they laid tons of enormous eggs that were twice the size of normal ones. At first, Xiao Dou had diligently sat on them every day, just like any good old hen would do. But a month later, the eggs had piled up like a mountain inside the Cube Space, and not a single one had hatched.
Xiao Dou clucked irritably a few times, then gave up on them entirely, walking away from the nest.
Jing Shu studied the eggs for days but couldn't figure it out. Eventually, after checking some online data, she realized what was going on. It was a matter of ecology and species isolation.
In simpler terms, Xiao Dou's genes had evolved too far beyond normal chickens, almost stepping into the realm of intelligent species. The dino-chickens' genes were similarly advanced. They simply weren't compatible species anymore, so their eggs couldn't hatch into new life. Theoretically, there was still a one-in-a-thousand or one-in-ten-thousand chance, but that was basically nothing.
Still, it didn't affect Xiao Dou's relationship with the dino-chickens at all. Those two were inseparable. Every day, they snuggled together in the Cube Space before patrolling the chicken flock like a royal couple.
Jing Shu wasn't about to give up on the breeding project. She went on a breeding frenzy, pairing Xiao Dou with normal roosters, but there were no results. Then she tried pairing the dino-chickens with regular hens, but again, nothing happened after more than two weeks. Under the Cube Space's optimized conditions, that should have been more than enough time for eggs to hatch, but still, there was nothing.
So she tried again. This time, she fed a few regular hens with diluted Crimson Spirit Spring. Those hens didn't mutate into dino-chickens, but they grew much larger and stronger than before.
When those specific hens mated with the dino-chickens, one in ten eggs actually hatched.
That one success had Jing Shu practically jumping for joy in her room.
What hatched out, well, they were technically still chickens, but they weren't ordinary ones. She named them "mutant chickens."
After a month of raising them to maturity, she discovered just how incredible they were.
These chickens were born large, reaching about the size of a medium-sized dog when they grew to full maturity. They were fierce creatures, half like dinosaurs with strong legs and sharp claws, and they had terrifying appetites. They ate everything put in front of them, and they could digest it all without getting sick.
What is more, the chicks could be tamed to recognize their owner. That meant they could guard the house like dogs, lay eggs, and even have their feathers harvested for down coats. Even their droppings made great fertilizer for the garden.
In the apocalypse, that made these mutant chickens the Rolls-Royce of survival beasts because they were tough, versatile, and low-maintenance.
The hens laid more than two eggs a day, and each one was bigger than a fist.
And most importantly, these mutant chickens were a fully invasive species, completely immune to carrion scavengers and zombie-virus insects.
Jing Shu's first reaction was simple: she was about to get rich.
Chickens had been wiped out by more than ninety percent. First, the extreme heat killed a huge number of them, and then the zombie virus infected the rest. Once the birds were infected, they were doomed.
Now, she had bred the perfect post-apocalyptic chicken that was strong, immune, and endlessly useful.
So yeah, maybe she really was about to make her fortune from chickens.