Even if she had to pay out of pocket, it was worth it.
Right now the most valuable things were grain and resources. Unfortunately for everyone else, Jing Shu lacked neither.
As for Hengda Logistics, wasn't their guy Heng Jin? As expected, after the apocalypse he had squeezed his way into the system and was now taking government jobs.
"Fine. I'll contact him. Once the RV is back, I'll see how 'bad' it actually is."
Jing Shu hung up and immediately messaged Heng Jin on WeChat.
"Are you about to ship an RV back?"
"We are. How did you know?" Heng Jin narrowed his eyes.
"Because that RV was procured for me."
Heng Jin: "..."
Fate between people really was weird. Jing Shu had never expected to do business with Heng Jin again.
Before the apocalypse, Jing Shu was a so-called "three-no" girl—no relationship, no income, and no social circle. Basically, she had no romance, no money, and hardly any social life. She earned a little cash by testifying for Heng Jin, who was a wealthy second-generation heir to a logistics company.
After the apocalypse, with famine and harsh conditions everywhere, Jing Shu lived in a villa and had no worries about food or drink. She even had the clout to have the Armed Police bring an extravagant RV from America just for her.
Meanwhile, Heng Jin ran all over the place, struggling for a year to merge into the government system, hauling supplies for them, and now he would be working for the same "three-no" young woman.
What a gap.
Heng Jin's emotions were complicated. "Didn't expect the owner of the RV from America to be you. But even if we're friends, I can only give you a small break on the shipping."
"Okay. What do you want?"
Look at that, the woman whose WeChat steps ranked near the bottom every day was still outrageously rich. What had happened to Jing Shu this past year?
"Eight hundred virtual coins, or sixty kilograms of grain. Half the route can go by sea, but there's still over a thousand kilometers by land. That burns a lot of fuel."
Eight hundred virtual coins was half a year's salary for a civil servant. With that, you could buy half a year of two bowls of white rice a day. A family of three living on maggots and vegetables once a week would spend only fifty virtual coins a month.
That was the gap. Grain would only grow more valuable in the apocalypse, hardening into a new class divide. Those who could not afford grain would only fall farther behind, scraping by on manual labor and a bare-minimum stipend.
Jing Shu thought for a moment and decided to pay in virtual coins.
She had traded the second batch of frogs to Niu Mou for 300 kilowatt-hours of electricity, 200 bottles of mineral water, 500 virtual coins, and received another 300 virtual coins as a commendation for rescue work. She also had a regular "salary." More than enough. If she did not spend the coins, they would just sit there.
She was not about to use virtual coins to buy rice that would mold in the apocalypse's second year.
"Make it eight hundred virtual coins. I'll transfer two hundred as a deposit now, and pay the rest on delivery."
"Deal."
With a major worry settled, Jing Shu felt lighter all over. That night, while practicing the Cube, her mind felt crystal clear. Her understanding of the 7×7 cube rose another level. She could finally restore it smoothly.
Going from smooth to masterful would be another big threshold. Jing Shu found that practicing a little every day boosted her proficiency a lot.
But the 7×7 cube was much bigger than a regular one, and every time Jing Shu pulled it out, her family gave her strange looks.
Especially when Jing Shu sat on the sofa, eating fried chicken and sipping a drink while solving the cube. It was like a parent watching a kid play video games, endlessly annoyed. These days Su Lanzhi had said it several times:
"If you don't want to be a streamer anymore, find a stable job in the system. Or trade piglets for a position at the Livestock Breeding Center and raise pigs.
Don't just sit around eating and drinking all day while hugging that broken cube. 'Honored Frog Breeder' sounds awful. Besides, water isn't that scarce anymore. In two months, everyone will be able to raise frogs. You'll be out of work."
True. With water no longer short, what couldn't be cultivated? The weather was still hot, but there was enough water, people could eat maggots with stir-fried greens, and folks were already quite satisfied with life.
Jing An veered off topic. "I remember the cube I bought for my girl wasn't that one."
Jing Shu kept twisting the cube quickly. "Mom, my strength just won't allow me to raise pigs. I'll have better, more suitable work in the future."
"Oh really? If you won't raise pigs, are you going to raise a divine beast? Planning to fly to the heavens?" Su Lanzhi sorted the dried yardlong beans as she spoke. "Why do I feel like these dried vegetables keep multiplying?"
Besides dried beans, there were dried bamboo shoots and dried bracken. Jing Shu had replanted a new batch of chilies and dried them all as well.
Last year she had sun-dried over 100 jin (≈50+ kg) of chili powder, and they still had not finished it. Next year they would mostly toss a few dried chilies into dishes for flavor.
Dried chilies also helped drive moisture from the body, which would keep them from developing lingering ailments during the coming year of constant rain and damp.
The milk powder project had cost Jing Shu several more days.
They produced dozens of kilograms of milk daily and could not drink it all, so she turned it into yogurt curds, shaved ice yogurt, ice cream, and cheese. After storing over a month's worth, Jing Shu started making milk powder and milk tablets.
Milk powder required specialized equipment. After searching for a long time, Jing Shu found an abandoned milk powder plant in Wu City. She brought her own generator, pasteurized the milk in a low-pressure pot, then used a centrifugal spray dryer to produce pure, additive-free milk powder.
Ten kilograms of milk yielded one kilogram of powder. Jing Shu made over a hundred kilograms of it, enough to last through the apocalypse, then used the factory's tablet press to make some milk tablets.
There were still cans in the abandoned plant. After sterilizing them, Jing Shu tinkered for a while, filled them with milk powder, and sealed the lids. Homemade milk powder, finished.
So when Jing Shu hauled a full cart of milk powder home, everyone's expressions were priceless. Back when Jing Shu had said she would process the cow's milk into powder, Su Lanzhi had scolded her for making trouble.
"What's the point of all that hassle? If you have milk, just drink it."
"But milk powder keeps much longer. We can use it in emergencies. It will be more valuable. It's also a good gift."
Grandma Jing still did not quite understand. "Wherever we go, we just lead the cow along. No milk powder needed."
Jing Shu: "..."
Jing Shu had not expected that a bit over a month later, when the whole family went to sleep away from home, Grandma Jing would really insist on bringing all the poultry.
Anyway, no one expected Jing Shu to actually pull it off herself.
Wu You'ai gave a thumbs-up. "There's nothing you can't do."
Seeing the neat packaging and smelling the rich aroma after opening a can, Su Lanzhi could not help praising her too. "I admit, this is really well done. My girl is good at everything, except studying."
Emmm, thanks, Mom.
While her dear mother complained every day that Jing Shu needed to get a job and kept pushing her to raise pigs, the Saint Su Mali, whom Jing Shu most wanted to avoid in this life, contacted her again. As expected, the trouble came from that batch of traditional medicine last time.
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The author write 末世前,静姝还是三无女青年靠着给恒紧作证收入了一笔钱;恒紧则是物流公司不缺钱的公子哥.It was literally translated as "Before the end of the world, Jing Shu was still a "three-no" young woman who earned a sum of money by giving testimony for Heng Jin; Heng Jin, on the other hand, was a rich young master from a logistics company."
"三无" (sān wú) or "three-no" in here was another Chinese slang. It was usually stand for a person who is lacking three things. The exact meaning can shift a little depending on context, but in web novels it usually means:
No relationship – single or not dating.
No income or savings – financially struggling or living paycheck-to-paycheck.
No social circle – very few friends or social connections.
It paints a picture of someone who's quiet, low-profile, and not doing well socially or financially—not necessarily pathetic, but definitely "ordinary and invisible."