Sometimes fate works in strange ways. The less you want to get involved with something, the more it clings to you. Just like Jing An. But that is a story for later.
The next few days, the entire family plunged into a busy routine.
Jing An planted a small tree laden with candy-heart apples in the front yard, and a small apricot tree full of white apricots in the back yard. "Do they still sell trees with fruits attached? Why do the roots of this tree form a perfect cube?"
"What do you know? This is high-tech. Only with this can so many fruits hang on one tree. In a month, we'll have fresh fruit to eat." Grandpa Jing drooled at the thought, wincing in pain from his teeth. Nobody knew when these teeth had grown or how long the pain would last. Truly cruel.
Jing Shu suppressed her laughter. This apple tree occupied a full cubic meter of land. The roots had no room to spread, so they had twisted together.
Grandma Jing tidied the front yard soil and planted vegetable seedlings. Grandpa Jing installed the lights, and Jing An organized the mushroom kits in the living room. In about ten days, they would sprout all kinds of mushrooms.
Su Lanzhi built grape trellises along the edges of the greenhouse, all loaded with red grapes. There were three rows of trellises, each with six layers. Then they transplanted grown strawberries, sugar tangerines, hawthorns, cherries, and lychees. The tree fruits were planted with entire branches in the soil and nutrient water, allowing them to remain fresh for a long time.
Jing Shu handled preserving the other fruits. Snow pears, cherries, oranges, lychees, and yellow peaches were made into canned goods. Strawberries, pineapples, red dates, and grapes were dried. Persimmons were turned into dried persimmons, and pomegranates, watermelons, and oranges were juiced into 2-liter sealed jars stored in her Cube Space for whenever they wanted a drink.
Because of the variety of fruits, and the apple tree taking up a full cubic meter, even after a month of planting and harvesting, the total volume wasn't huge. Jing Shu closed her livestream and left a message: "I'll resume broadcasting after the Dark Days."
This separation could last ten years—or a lifetime.
With everything prepared, the apocalypse was imminent. Jing Shu relaxed, feeling the same calm as before an exam when all preparation is done and only the test remains.
Perhaps because of this mindset, the Rubik's Cube she had practiced for nearly two months finally reached a breakthrough. She felt clarity, moving faster and more skillfully during evening practice, seeing steps ahead—even ten moves in advance.
As the last twist aligned all six faces, she quickly pressed the timer.
"Ding~"
"95 seconds!"
This reached professional ninth-dan level.
Suddenly, her head hurt, and she fainted again. The five-layer cube in her hands reconfigured into a six-layer cube, and her Cube Space officially upgraded from a 4-layer cube space to a 5×5×5 = 125 cubic meter 5-layer cube space.
She woke up to her father's screaming. Sleeping on the floor all night, she rushed to the yard, finding her grandparents already there.
Grandpa Jing held a shovel. "Hand it over. I'll knock it out."
Jing An was holding a net in one hand, frantically swinging a fish with the other. But the fish refused to let go, as if glued. Jing Shu saw that her father had been bitten by a crucian carp.
The scene was indescribable.
Grandpa Jing struck the fish with a shovel multiple times. Dead, yet still stuck. Jing An's index finger bled. Grandma Jing suggested cutting from the side with a knife.
Jing Shu covered her face. Her father was pitiful, but she didn't feel sad—in fact, she almost wanted to laugh.
Finally, Jing Shu rubbed some oil into the fish's mouth, slipped on a black bag, and instantly stored it in the Cube Space. Problem solved in minutes, something that had stumped the family.
"Anyone wanting to catch something casually, who knew this fish would be so ferocious?" Jing An shivered. Were all the fish in the pond piranhas? Too dangerous.
"I have to catch the fish myself. The pond is wild. They are fierce." Jing Shu stirred with the net. The fish scattered, and she scooped up some small lobsters using the Cube Space. She tied them up, laughing. "Look at these lobsters. One even has a fish in its claws. Lunch will be spicy lobsters."
"Good. My granddaughter hasn't wasted all those meals." Grandma Jing laughed so hard her mouth could barely close. She loved eating spicy lobsters, always sucking the entire body at once.
"Why am I not even as good as my daughter?" Jing An applied a bandage. "Social media says there won't be sunlight during the Dark Days. Should we buy some vitamins?"
"I already bought them." Jing Shu remembered how vitamins were sold out in her previous life during panics, followed by restrictions on health insurance cards. This life, she had everything prepared in advance.
Jing Shu finally had a chance to inspect her upgraded Cube Space. She was thrilled. In her previous life, she never achieved this, but now in just two months, she had.
The center still contained a 1-cubic-meter Spirit Spring, surrounded by 12 black cube fields. The remaining 112 cubic meters made the 5-layer space twice as large as the 4-layer one. Even the black cube fields had increased by six, filling Jing Shu with satisfaction.
She organized the new 5-layer Cube Space and re-planned her supplies:
1 cubic meter of seeds
3 cubic meters of chicken, duck, quail eggs
10 cubic meters of assorted dried fruits
1 cubic meter of backup feed
1 cubic meter of fish and bug feed
1 cubic meter of bees
1 cubic meter of bee water
5 cubic meters of gasoline
1 cubic meter of Haagen-Dazs
1 cubic meter of cooked beefsteak
1 cubic meter of fruit juice
1 cubic meter of beef jerky, diced rabbit, and assorted cooked meats
1 cubic meter of knives, daily necessities, and simple clothing
5 cubic meters for raising 10 pigs
8 cubic meters for 2 cows and 4 sheep
4 cubic meters for chickens
2 cubic meters for ducks
1 cubic meter for quail
1 cubic meter for rabbits
2 cubic meters for fish fry
In addition, she spent a day collecting 15 tons of mineral water into the Cube Space, occupying 15 cubic meters—emergency water in case the villa's filtration failed.
Over three days, she bought 10,000 liters of gasoline in batches, occupying 10 cubic meters. When she wanted more, gasoline became limited per ID.
Most of the household's rice, flour, and oil went into the space to extend shelf life, occupying 15 cubic meters.
In total, she used 87 cubic meters, leaving 25 cubic meters free.
Jing Shu also reorganized the black cube fields: 4 cubic meters for fruit, to be juiced and frozen to face the scorching sun. The pulp would feed pigs.
8 cubic meters were planted with vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, pumpkins, broad beans, sesame, soybeans, etc., ready to transplant to the greenhouse in early apocalypse.
In the blink of an eye, it was December 31.