When Jing Shu came out of the space, she studied the Cube in her hand, which had already transformed into a five-layer form. This Cube was the key to evolving the space. No matter how far it was, as long as Jing Shu willed it, she could summon it back into the Cube space. The true Cube space, however, existed in Jing Shu's spiritual world, invisible and untouchable to others.
Right now the Cube space measured sixty-four cubic meters. To upgrade it into a 5×5×5 space of one hundred and twenty-five cubic meters, Jing Shu first had to master the five-layer Cube.
Which meant the algorithms were critical. She would need to download all the formulas later and store them. Practicing the Cube and upgrading the space could wait until night. For now, the most important thing was stockpiling supplies in preparation for the apocalypse that would arrive in two months.
It was two in the afternoon. Her parents were at work and would not return until late evening. Jing Shu had to take advantage of this time to draft a detailed plan.
But then her stomach growled.
"All right." Jing Shu walked into the kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, and began rinsing rice, slicing preserved sausage, washing greens, and greasing the bottom of a clay pot.
When the rice had cooked, Jing Shu turned off the heat, cracked in two eggs, and let them steam for five more minutes. She lifted the lid and drizzled in her seasoning sauce. The fragrance of rice and sausage mingled perfectly, and the two sunny-side eggs gleamed with a mouthwatering sheen.
"Bugs in the apocalypse really cannot compare to a bowl of rice."
Bite of sausage, bite of rice—Jing Shu chewed slowly, letting her tongue and teeth savor the back-and-forth until her taste buds were fully satisfied. The final lingering flavor slipped down her throat, leaving her floating in contentment.
Compared to the endless bugs and even carrion she had eaten during the apocalypse, this was truly beyond measure.
Carefully, Jing Shu scraped the last bit of crispy rice crust from the pot, licked up every drop of sauce and shred of greens, and let out a satisfied burp. She quickly washed the pot, tidied the kitchen, and opened her phone. In her notepad, she began listing out a detailed plan. With a plan, she could calmly and methodically collect supplies over the next two months.
At the same time, she downloaded and saved tutorials for solving Cubes from five-layer up to seventeen-layer, even printing them out and storing them inside the Cube space, ensuring she was fully prepared.
That afternoon, after Jing Shu finished drafting a long shopping list worth millions, she realized a serious problem: no money.
High-interest loans were out of the question. Even after the apocalypse, the Iron-Blooded Government would still exist. If you dared borrow and refused to repay, they would come after you ruthlessly until you screamed for mercy.
Jing Shu quickly jotted down possible ways to raise money:
Sell her mother's collection of stamps and old banknotes.
Sell their current downtown apartment, about eighty-six square meters. In her previous life, the family had abandoned it in the second year of the apocalypse when massive floods drowned half the city. To be precise, nearly thirty percent of the world's landmass had gone underwater.
Sell the family's commercial shop. In her previous life, it had been sold for six hundred thousand yuan to fund her attempt at becoming an internet celebrity.
Sell her parents' two cars. After the apocalypse, petroleum would be restricted and unavailable to civilians. Buying a cheap energy-powered vehicle would last much longer.
Demand that Uncle Sunzi finally return the one hundred thousand yuan he owed her father.
Oh right. Last year, they had also purchased a cheap villa near the mountains on the outskirts of the city, with Jing Shu's name on the deed. It had been meant as her dowry.
The villa had two floors, each one hundred and sixty-eight square meters, with a large sun terrace on top. Since her family was in the renovation business, Father Jing had personally handled the interior design once the house was finished. He had even dug out a basement, draining every last bit of savings.
The villa could not be sold. Its location was excellent. In her past life, downtown had been abandoned, and the government began building a new district on the outskirts. In a post-apocalyptic world where order still barely held, villas like this became hot commodities.
"For now, this will do. I'll add more ideas later. First I need to secure some funds to buy supplies, then I can move on with the rest of the plan." Jing Shu narrowed her eyes in thought. Meanwhile, Zhu Zhengqi's WeChat messages kept chiming nonstop, filled with more encouragement for her to become an influencer and promotional pitches.
"Wait. I can just trick my parents by saying I want to be an influencer. That way the money will come easily." Jing Shu smacked her thigh. If she repeated what she had done in her past life, the funding problem would be solved quickly. Otherwise, she really had no excuse to persuade her parents to sell the shop, the cars, and the apartment.
After all, how could anyone believe her if she claimed the earth would lose sunlight in two months and be plunged into endless darkness? Yet that was exactly what would happen.
But it was not even the most frightening part. About a month later, China would announce to the public that a planetary collision was imminent. Fragments in the upper atmosphere would spread and shroud the earth, blocking out sunlight. The authorities urged everyone to prepare and even handed out generous subsidies. Unfortunately, their prediction was that the sun would vanish for only one month. No one imagined that it would be ten years before sunlight returned.
Even worse was what followed. The earth, deprived of sunlight, should logically have frozen. But in reality, that year the global temperature soared into record-breaking heat, lasting for an entire year of darkness and drought.
The disasters brought by this scorching heat were immense. Crops failed completely. The oceans warmed. Freshwater fish boiled to death. Tropical regions turned into deserts. Sea levels rose, drowning island nations and wiping them from the map, triggering waves of refugees. Then, starting in the second year, torrential floods and unending rains followed.
Finally, the true drawback of losing the sun revealed itself. The earth plummeted into global deep freeze, an age of extreme cold.