Time flew. At the peak of the heat, Jing Shu insisted on staying at home with the air conditioner on, drinking cold drinks, feasting well, practicing with the cube, sun-drying vegetables, and skimming the petty dramas in several chat groups. Jing Shu lurked silently and refused to go out unless it was life or death.
People kept dying in droves. In Jing Shu's community, three more people died from prolonged dehydration. When Wu You'ai called to have the bodies hauled away, Wu You'ai said they were mummified already. At the crematorium they were thrown to feed maggots, but even the maggots refused to lay eggs.
The government's water allotment kept shrinking, cut by another 100 ml. Even the mountain spring water reserved for senior officials was almost gone. The rich no longer dared to bathe casually. Jing Shu's family also stopped bathing and doing laundry. Clothes piled up until they filled half a room.
Their last one ton of water was nearly used up. They had started dipping water from the fish pond to irrigate the fields, and the pond's level had visibly dropped. Grandma Jing was anxious. Only Jing Shu sat steady as Mount Tai, eating and drinking as usual.
Wu City's major reservoirs were down to muddy pits. Part of the current drinking water supply was "black snow water" hauled from the mountains and roughly filtered. It was bitter and fishy enough to make people retch. Jing Shu knew that the black grit was carrion scavenger feces.
Do not ask how Jing Shu knew, ugh.
Every day, people in the chat groups asked why the water tasted so foul. Even after boiling, there were still many tiny black flecks. People wondered if it was some virus. Much later, the government finally said, oh, those are carrion scavenger poop.
Jing Shu's family no longer went to pick up water. First, the amount was too little. Second, water like that was useless for irrigation. As for the livestock, even when Jing Shu diluted the stench with filtered water, the animals refused to drink it.
Outside the villa was a living hell. Inside the villa was paradise. In this life's apocalypse, Jing Shu truly lived the way she wanted.
Just when most people were on the verge of collapse from dehydration, governments across China finally released earth-shaking news. The artificial sun would be activated.
The Wu City government announced that it would officially switch on the artificial sun on October 1, National Day. Hold on for a few more days and everything would pass.
At the same time, to keep the artificial sun running, Wu City requisitioned all usable energy sources: petroleum, natural gas, coal, and more.
Operating the artificial sun was, in essence, a nuclear fusion process. The government did not disclose that a critical technical issue remained unsolved and they had gone ahead anyway.
The consequence was that it burned money every second. It was not true self-sustaining fusion and still needed massive external energy input.
Regardless, the artificial sun gave the masses something to believe in.
Once the announcement came out, Jing Shu's high school classmates' group exploded. The twenty-some students who had attended last time invited even more classmates who had not shown up to buy distillers, then began frantically promoting, relatives dragging in relatives, friends dragging in friends.
Zhang Lingling ran herself dizzy every day. In the previous life, Jing Shu had left the group early and never knew how it ended. In this life, Jing Shu learned that Zhang Lingling had gone all in and opened twenty "accounts."
One person paid twenty work points and could build unlimited downlines. Zhang Lingling opened more than twenty accounts and dumped four hundred work points in at once. That meant Zhang Lingling needed two hundred recruits just to break even. For every ten people Zhang Lingling pulled in, Zhang Lingling opened another account, using one account to feed another.
Even just the high school group brought Zhang Lingling considerable returns.
After classmates took the distillers home, they excitedly followed the instructions, dug a deep pit, and buried the device. The next day, there was water in the box.
After that, people hauled in relatives and friends to scrape together points, even selling their last valuables to buy the gadget. Soon, expanding the chain mattered more than the distiller itself.
A few days later, doubts started to appear.
"My distiller's been in for two days and only collected one mouthful of water. This thing is practically useless."
[Zhang Lingling]: "Mine has collected plenty. Your placement must be wrong."
[Nima]: "Exactly. We set up three at home. Just buy more, right?"
Whenever anyone questioned the device, the group spoke with one voice and smothered dissent. If you were going to sell something, you had to say it was good, no matter what.
Even if the distiller underperformed, everyone tacitly avoided mentioning its flaws.
But now the artificial sun would be used. In the future, water would not be scarce. For people, a distiller that collected water would become tasteless and pointless. No one would need it.
So the group began to panic.
"I only recouped ten points."
"I earned a dozen, but my relatives have not made theirs back."
[Zhang Lingling]: "@everyone, internal news. Do not be misled by headlines. The artificial sun starts on October 1, but it will need ten days or so before water appears, and who knows how long until it reaches the public. We still have plenty of time to operate. Hurry and reel in your lines. Stop opening new accounts."
[Wang Chao]:"Received."
The artificial sun announcement shook all of China. The follow-up notice about further shortening electricity hours felt like a drizzle by comparison.
[Wu You'ai]: "@everyone, to supply the artificial sun, Wu City's power-on window will be adjusted to 18:30 to 19:30. Once the artificial sun stabilizes, returning to pre–Earth's Dark Days levels is not impossible. Anyway, people are not cooking or heating water for baths now."
Power supply dropped from two hours to one. People started counting the days to the artificial sun's launch.
[Wang Qiqi]: "By the way, on September 29, Mid-Autumn Festival, Wu City will host a one-day buffet. Only 0.1 work points. All-you-can-eat maggots in every flavor."
[Fei Niu]: "Great, I can eat salt-and-pepper maggots again. Awesome."
[Zhang Bingbing's Husband]: "I am taking my wife for a proper meal. The baby in her belly needs nutrition."
On September 29, 2023, Mid-Autumn Festival, Jing An picked up her eldest uncle's family of three and brought them to the villa for a reunion meal.
By custom, they should have gone to her eldest uncle's home.
Although her eldest uncle and aunt had become outreach staff, the natural gas had been shut off, they could not cook, and vegetable supplies had been suspended. There was nothing decent to serve.
Recently, due to severe water shortages, the Agricultural Management Department where Su Lanzhi worked stopped providing vegetables to ordinary civil servants, supplying only a few hundred people in the upper ranks.
The government switched the vegetable rations to white rice. Each civil servant could collect two meals of rice and a small piece of meat per day.
Countless people were crazed with jealousy. Everyone sharpened their heads trying to land a government job. The government clearly wanted to spur the public. Only when hierarchies were obvious would people feel motivated to climb.
Mid-Autumn is for moon-viewing. Traditionally, people dine at night under the moon, and this time was no different. Daytime temperatures were terrifying, so the meal was naturally set for the evening.