"The modest maiden, so fair, waits for me at the corner of the city wall." That was how Jing Shu's name came to be.
Under the iron rule of the Town Government, Jing Shu's family barely scraped by until the ninth year of the apocalypse. By then, corpses littered the land, and a single bite of food had become unbearably precious.
It was during that time that Jing Shu accidentally awakened the Cube, gaining a portable space where she could grow crops. At last, her parents were able to live without starving.
But who could have imagined, after surviving so cautiously for so long, Jing Shu would fall into the pit dug by her own kin?
Jing Shu regretted it bitterly. She should never have let her parents give food to her aunt. Her mother was always guilt-ridden: "Your uncle's family died such a terrible death. Now only your aunt is left. We should secretly send her a little food."
Yet one day, her aunt brought her entire family to their door.
"Sis, I knew you had found Wang Congsi's secret grain stash. Otherwise where would you get so much food? Just take us there, will you? That way you don't have to keep sending me such little portions that never last. Don't worry, only our two families will know this secret."
Mother Jing was dumbstruck, then furious. How could she explain? Helping her sister was only because of blood ties, not something to be taken for granted.
Enraged, Jing Shu directly drove them out, cutting ties once and for all.
Later, her father's old friend, Uncle Sun, arrived with his wife and child.
Kneeling on the ground, Uncle Sun raised trembling hands clutching money he had owed Jing Shu's father for thirteen years—one hundred thousand yuan. Tears streamed down his face as he pleaded, "For the sake of the help I gave you back then, please pull us through this."
Because Uncle Sun had shown kindness in the past, Father Jing could not turn them away. That night, the two men sat long into the evening, talking by candlelight.
"This money might have been worth something ten years ago. Now, in the apocalypse, its only use is kindling. As for the old favor, this debt should have been repaid long ago." Jing Shu sneered as she lit a stack of bills and tossed them into the stove.
"Debts of gratitude are the hardest to settle." Her father sighed, thinking of her aunt's shameless fight over food. "In this world, everyone is driven to madness by hunger."
Who would have thought, the very next night, Uncle Sun and her aunt colluded and forced their way in. In the chaos, Jing Shu fought too fiercely and was killed. Even so, she dragged a few down with her.
"Heh, tomorrow the Town Government will pass judgment. None of you will escape." That was Jing Shu's final, fading thought before losing consciousness.
The Cube space, unfortunately, could not hold living people.
…
No one knew how much time had passed. A burning pain rose in her throat as if she would spit fire. Jing Shu coughed violently, suddenly jolting awake. She sat up, bewildered, and scanned her surroundings.
What entered her eyes was achingly familiar: a wall lined with bookshelves, a computer desk, and her large, soft bed.
This was her bedroom, just as it had been before the apocalypse.
Jing Shu's heart pounded wildly. Trembling, she fumbled for her phone, flipped it open, and saw: November 1st, 2022, Tuesday, 10:39 a.m.
Two months before the apocalypse began. She had returned ten years into the past. Back to when she was twenty-two, a girl fresh out of university, still in the springtime of youth.
"Reborn?!" Jing Shu clutched her blanket tightly, her knuckles white. She knew this wasn't a dream. Ten years of hardship, hunger, and terror were carved into her very bones. Time and again she had pinched herself until her skin turned purple, praying it was all a nightmare. It never was.
As if recalling something, Jing Shu jumped from bed and yanked the curtains open. Warm sunlight spilled into the room. Ten years since she had last seen such light. Her mind flashed like a film reel with scenes from those long years, and again with the chaos of her final moments before death.
Jing Shu clenched her fists. In this life, she would never repeat the same mistakes.
She rejoiced at the sun. She hated herself for being too weak. She raged, grieved, and exulted all at once. Joy, anger, sorrow, delight—they surged through her, leaving her mind blank.
Several minutes later, a familiar hunger gnawed at her, pulling her back to reality. She had overslept, and her stomach was empty. Jing Shu ran to the kitchen and found a bowl of warm milk, eggs, corn, and a steamed bun waiting.
She grabbed the bun and devoured it, gulped down the milk, then sank her teeth into the corn. Its chewy sweetness exploded across her tongue. In that instant, Jing Shu thought the happiest thing in the world was simply eating real grains.
In the ninth year of the apocalypse, even with her farmland Cube space, countless species had already gone extinct. Seeds were rare beyond belief. To plant enough to survive was already a distant luxury for most.
Carefully, Jing Shu peeled an egg. She bit into the soft white, savoring its fragrance. Then she sprinkled salt over the yolk and slipped the whole thing into her mouth, chewing slowly, savoring every note of flavor.
The finest ingredients often required the simplest preparation. Eggs—whether boiled, fried, scrambled, steamed, braised, or steeped in tea—were a delicacy that could make any starving child cry with longing.
Those who had never endured famine would never understand why the old would pick up a grain of rice from the floor and eat it without care for dirt.
If she wanted to eat well and live well in the future, Jing Shu had to reconsider the Cube.
The Cube was a 3×3×3 puzzle, a toy mixed until its colors scrambled, then solved by returning it to its pristine state.
At sixteen, Jing Shu solved it in 6.8 seconds, the fastest in Wu City's high schools. After that, she lost interest.
At eighteen, Father Jing An gave her a Rubik's Revenge for her coming-of-age gift—a four-layer Cube, 4×4×4, its English name hinting at revenge.
After failing to solve it in a few days, Jing Shu abandoned it. Only after the apocalypse began did she pick it back up out of boredom, gradually growing faster. Yet it wasn't until the ninth year that the Cube finally activated. Jing Shu had long wondered about the conditions.
"It must have been speed. That one time, I solved it in under thirty seconds, and that's when it activated."
Back in her bedroom, Jing Shu dug into a storage box of random things and pulled out the four-layer Cube—the very artifact that could open her farmland space.
She flexed her hands, set a timer, and took a deep breath. At the beep, her fingers flew across the Cube. Piece by piece, color after color fell into place. Finally, with one last twist, the final layer clicked into position. Jing Shu slammed the timer.
"00:28:59!"
She had done it.
She had succeeded.
===
The original opening was "静女其姝,俟我于城隅" (Jìng nǚ qí shū, qí wǒ yú chéng yú)
That line is a quotation from the Book of Songs ("诗经", Shijing), one of the oldest collections of Chinese poetry. It comes from the poem "静女" (Jìng Nǚ, "The Modest Maiden") in the Airs of Zhou section.
The poem depicts a young man speaking of a maiden he loves. He describes her as beautiful, reserved, and graceful, waiting for him in a secluded place near the city wall. The tone is tender and filled with admiration, highlighting her modesty and allure.
The author is using this line to explain the origin of the protagonist's name: Jing Shu (静姝).
静 (Jìng) means "quiet, modest, serene."
姝 (Shū) means "beautiful woman, fair lady."