Jing Shu's mind cleared further and further. With this upgrade of the Cube Space, she felt as if she were fusing with it.
Before, to enter the Cube Space she had to summon it with her mind and step into a pitch-black world segmented by squares of white light. She called that "mind-summon." Now, she no longer needed it.
Though Jing Shu stood beside the bed in her room, she also felt herself inside the Cube Space.
It seemed that if she lifted a hand she could touch the Spirit Spring. Fields stretched before her eyes, and there were coconut trees. On her right were the poultry. On her left were abundant supplies. Her control over the Cube Space had obviously risen to a new level.
Only the images were ghostly, overlapping reality like phantoms. Yet the sounds of pigs, cows, and sheep were crystal clear, and even the bees' droning flights over the fields reached her ears.
The greatest shortcoming of the Cube Space was that people could not enter it. Jing Shu did not know whether as the Cube Space kept upgrading it would gradually merge with the real world, and whether humans, including Jing Shu herself, would one day be able to step into it.
"Too noisy." The instant Jing Shu had the thought, all the sounds from the Cube Space vanished, though the images remained.
"Can it return to the way it was?" No sooner had she thought it than her world returned to normal. The phantom images disappeared entirely.
Jing Shu called the upgraded sixth-tier Cube Space the Second Form, while the former mind-summon mode was the First Form. Now she could switch between the two at will.
The benefit of the Second Form was that she could see the Cube Space at any time, layered over reality, like being there in person, and even observe plants growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
This way, Jing Shu could practice with the cube while inspecting any changes inside the space. The Second Form was suitable when nothing urgent was happening, letting Jing Shu split her attention and better tend crops and poultry.
As she had hoped, the space expanded from 5×5×5 to 6×6×6, that was 216 cubic meters. The fields increased from 12 plots to 18. Subtracting the one cubic meter of the central Spirit Spring, Jing Shu still had 197 cubic meters left. It was wonderful. The original 125 cubic meters had become far from enough. Now it had jumped so much at once that Jing Shu could not help feeling thrilled.
She hurried through her wash, then ate the breakfast Grandma Jing had warmed for her in the dining room: six boiled eggs, three bowls of soy milk, five fried dough sticks, five corn flatbreads, and a dish of garlic scapes pickled in vinegar. Jing Shu felt her appetite had grown again. After all that, she still wanted more.
Jing An and Su Lanzhi, along with Third Aunt, had already gone to work. They had caught the last bus into the apocalypse-era work system. In less than half a year everyone would be fighting for a job.
But because darkness lowered productivity, few could hold jobs and earn food. Mostly the government sent people to do whatever was needed, and those people worked themselves to the bone for a little rations in return. In her previous life, Jing Shu's family had drifted through ten such years.
Grandpa Jing was the most diligent of all with the crossbow, practicing in the back yard at a homemade target.
Grandma Jing was scrubbing lotus roots. A large patch in the pond had ripened, and Jing Shu had insisted on honeyed lotus root.
So Grandma Jing decided to make more. A small batch would not even cover two meals for Jing Shu. For the lotus root to come out sweet and glutinous, it needed hours in the pressure cooker. No wonder this dish was counted among the eight classic cold dishes.
After breakfast, Jing Shu, with rare free time, helped Grandma Jing prepare the honeyed lotus root while opening the Cube Space's Second Form to reorganize the newly expanded space.
Grandma Jing had already washed and peeled the lotus roots and sliced them into segments. Now, aside from Jing Shu, the one closest to No. 1 was Grandma Jing, because Grandma Jing always fed No. 1 all the scraps. No. 1 gobbled them with delight.
That was right. No. 1 had gained another role in Jing Shu's home: garbage disposal.
Anything edible, whether bones or peels or roots, even almond shells, as long as it was food related, No. 1 could eat it. At the moment it weighed 45 jin (22.5 kg), larger than a typical medium dog.
After finishing a whole box of lotus peels and getting a few affectionate pats from Jing Shu, Xiao Dou puffed out its chest and resumed patrolling its territory. Xiao Dou would not permit any bug to live on its domain. It also kept order in the coop so the flock stayed harmonious. As a chicken, its responsibility was immense. This generation's master was not easy to serve.
What Jing Shu needed to do now was lift the "skullcap" from each lotus segment, pack in pre-soaked glutinous rice, then pin the caps back on with toothpicks. After that, into the pressure cooker with red dates and brown sugar for a long simmer. Cool, slice, drizzle with syrup, sprinkle with osmanthus. Each slice tender and sticky, honeyed lotus root was done. Slurp, so good.
There were so many lotus roots that Grandma Jing and Jing Shu worked all day to finish. Jing Shu quietly tucked an extra portion into the space for sneaking bites later. The rest were sealed and chilled, perfect as a nightly cold dish.
Jing Shu finished reorganizing the space as well. Over the past half year, she had eaten through some items herself, and there were changes to the poultry area. The new layout in brief:
One cubic meter Spirit Spring + 18 cubic meters of fields + 2 cubic meters of fish schools + 18 cubic meters for poultry.
The remaining 177 cubic meters formed Jing Shu's current storage. Items occupying one cubic meter each included: seeds, daily necessities and clothing, spare feed, fish and insect feed, bees, water for the bees, Häagen-Dazs, yogurt shaved ice, honey lemon, potato curry chicken, spicy blood-and-offal hotpot, braised black pork ribs, prawns in tomato sauce, steamed hairy crabs, fried fish bites, fried chicken bites, seafood and shrimp congee, carrot and corn mutton soup, mushroom chicken soup, pork rib and lotus root soup, crucian carp tofu soup, and corn pancakes, for a total of 22 cubic meters.
Items occupying two cubic meters each included: steaks, popcorn chicken and fries, coconut milk, and chicken, duck, and quail eggs, totaling 8 cubic meters.
The rest: 9 cubic meters of assorted dried nuts and fruits, 14 cubic meters of gasoline, 11 tons of mineral water, 15 cubic meters of flour and oil, 20 cubic meters of cone-shaped boulders. Jing Shu still had 78 cubic meters free. She planned to plant more vegetables and store them inside. If she waited until she craved something to eat, she would have to wait many days for it to grow.
During this half year, Jing Shu had finished off the steaks, beef jerky, various cooked meats, plus one cubic meter of hot pot, fried fish rice, roast quail, soy milk, and more. When she had time she would stock up again. In the last life she had starved too long. Without abundant food in the space, she felt panicky.
Right. She had planted medicinal herbs in all six new plots. With hospitals out of medicine, she had hoped the artificial sun would allow large-scale cultivation.
But the dream had lost to reality. After ten years of apocalypse, medicine had become incredibly scarce. The nation had been forced to pour vast resources into medicinal herb cultivation. She would stockpile an early batch herself. It also let her test a theory about the fields in the Cube Space. She would compare growth between the coconut trees and the herbs.