After a night's rest, the drugged Su Lanzhi and Jing An felt much better. Once they saw the factory running for real, the family packed up, then drove the energy vehicle and the amphibious shark submarine away from Jing Pan's place in Wu County.
This New Year let their relatives see, up close, the foundation the family had built in the apocalypse.
Clothing: two clean, dry outfits per person every day. Without a dryer, most homes could not manage that.
Food: three proper meals daily. Milk and eggs were standard at breakfast, which stunned everyone. Almost no one dared to eat like this now. The portions were huge, the dishes varied, and—most shocking—Jing Shu could really eat. She never left leftovers. There was always more food than the family could finish. Jing Zhao's family grew even more determined to cling to this thigh.
Nowadays, most people ate only two meals. Those who could afford a daily bowl of porridge were already middle class.
Shelter: luxury tents, moisture-proof mats, down quilts. In this era there was nowhere to buy such things. Cotton was welded down at the source. These items were hard to come by. They even carried their own fuel to heat a clay kang. Their standards for lodging were sky high. They could not tolerate even a hint of mold or stink. Some called it picky.
Transport: having one working car per household already turned heads. They had two. No one knew what they kept in the vehicles, but it seemed like food and supplies never ran out. They even had guns, a crossbow, and a massive spiked mace that she swung like a toy. Her strength was terrifying.
With so much gear on every trip, it felt like they were moving house. Clearly, they lived better now than before Earth's Dark Days.
Most important of all was her frightening combat power. Anyone who had thought the family was fat sheep had it wrong. They was a rampaging dinosaur. Don't provoke them.
It was the second day of the New Year. While the country enjoyed its buffets, the family took the leftovers from Jing Pan's, swung by the villa to drop off Grandma Jing, Jing Lai, and Wu You'ai, then headed to Su Yiyang's home in the old Xishan district of Wu City.
Compared to last year's filth and mess, this year defied description. The old district's drainage was poor, and the endless rains left water above knee height. That was after daily efforts to divert and pump it.
Trash floated on the water, and red nematodes wriggled around every pile of garbage.
Some buildings had no toilets. People hurled waste downstairs or relieved themselves wherever they stood. If you were not careful, you could be splashed with filth. No one dared drink ground water anymore. Everyone caught rain from the sky. Anything on the ground was like drinking urine.
Do you know why French perfume became famous? A thousand years ago, before flush toilets, human waste went everywhere. Cities reeked. High heels, by the way, were invented to avoid stepping in filth.
Now, the Xishan old district had returned to that France. The nobility invented perfume; she used lemons instead.
Soaked in water, feces bred every kind of bacteria and bug. With so many people packed into old Xishan, you could imagine how bad conditions were.
The air stank. She was nearly dizzy. Some things you never got used to, not in two lifetimes. She looped a lemon under her nose and felt a little better.
Jing An was forced to drive slowly to avoid stalling. Had she known Xishan was like this, she would have squeezed her parents into the amphibious shark submarine instead.
They struggled through and reached Su Yiyang's again. As last Lantern Festival, the family brought a spread that looked ordinary at first glance.
Unlike last year, when everyone sat blankly on the sofa, Wang Fang and her elder brother's family all stood to open the door and welcome them in. The difference in reception was night and day.
Wang Gang ushered them first. "Little Sister, brother-in-law, come in, come in."
It proved the old saying: poor in the city, no one asks; rich in the mountains, kin come from afar.
"Ai, it's really hard to get around now," Wang Fang said, bustling them to the sofa. "You must be tired. Have some hot chicken soup. My brother paid a premium for half a chicken."
She glanced around Eldest Uncle's home after a year away. Someone had clearly tried. The sofa was less greasy, wiped down with rainwater.
But this year the sofa reeked of rot, and mold spread over clumps of bug eggs.
Plaster had fallen off the walls in slabs, and mold covered broad patches. With her sharp eyesight she could see larvae crawling.
This was exactly why, in the second year of the apocalypse, red nematodes might drop from above at any moment, and some would pop them into their mouths like snacks.
For now it was only red nematodes. In two months, mold mushrooms would grow, and more bugs would breed in the caps. Sleep would be impossible. People would wake in the night to scratching bites. She had bought crates of medicated wind oil even if a clerk thought she had a strange fetish, just in case.
As if on cue, two red nematodes plopped onto her head.
She dodged with a quick tilt and pulled on a sealed raincoat.
Wang Fang fretted. "My fault. I forgot to clean the ceiling. Jing Shu, bear with the raincoat." She also wanted to raise more and trade them for virtual coins.
Her elder brother, Wang Gang, laughed loud. "Jing Shu's just timid. At dinner she should pitch a tarp or the bugs will drop into the dishes."
Just that one small action drew everyone's eyes and comments.
"Ai." Wang Fang thought it was only a few bugs. She ate mushroom dishes full of bug eggs now and then herself. But remembering how precious the girl's family was these days—no red nematodes at home at all—she let it go. With their wealth and grain, who could blame them? Just look at the food they brought today. She was speechless.
Wang Cancan sat quietly. Last year she and Su Meimei's daughter, Zhang Hanhan, had sat together, watching Zhang Hanhan mock Jing Shu. This year? Rumor had it Zhang Hanhan was doing terribly, while Jing Shu's life looked more refined than ever.
Ten dishes and one soup, a lavish spread. The soup was chicken that Wang Gang had acquired, a quarter simmered for broth and another quarter stir-fried into chicken cubes. The remaining nine dishes came from her family.
This year, the table talk was not about how Wang Cancan had landed a civil service job at twenty-six. Instead, Wang Fang found a dozen ways to praise Jing Shu, which put Su Lanzhi in a wonderful mood. For all her flaws, the sister-in-law could speak frankly.
After the meal, Wang Gang explained how he had gotten that half chicken. It came from a batch slaughtered in advance last year and distributed for the holiday. He also bragged about how many goods were stored in Wu City's big warehouses and how much had been used for New Year.
"Uncle," she said, "I have a large batch of feed that needs storage in the government's main warehouse. Do you have a way in?"