Chapter 003: Selling Everything That Can Be Sold

Coming out of the space, Jing Shu examined the fifth-order Rubik’s Cube that her previous cube had transformed into. It was the key to the space’s evolution. No matter how far it was, as long as Jing Shu wished, she could summon it back to her Rubik’s Cube space at any time. The real Rubik’s Cube space existed in Jing Shu’s spiritual world; others couldn’t see or touch it. In her previous life, Jing Shu had experimented, having her parents try various methods to perceive the Rubik’s Cube space, including having her mother play with the cube, but it was useless. Once the Rubik’s Cube was activated, it recognized its master.

The current Rubik’s Cube space was 64 cubic meters. To evolve it into a 5×5×5=125 cubic meters space, she first had to learn how to solve a fifth-order Rubik’s Cube!

In her previous life, Jing Shu practiced for a year but was never proficient due to power outages, lack of internet, and insufficient systematic formulas. Upgrading the Rubik’s Cube space would have to wait. The most important thing now was to stockpile supplies and prepare for the apocalypse coming in two months! Although it was a bit rushed, Jing Shu was already very satisfied.

It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. Her parents had gone to work and wouldn’t be home until late afternoon. Taking advantage of this time, Jing Shu needed to write a detailed plan.

However, from the moment she was reborn, Jing Shu had decided: eat on time, sleep on time, and strengthen her exercise routine.

Nothing was more important than eating. In this life, she would no longer order takeout. Jing Shu walked into the kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, and began washing rice, slicing cured sausage, and cleaning vegetables. She smeared some oil at the bottom of a clay pot, added water and rice, then a bit more oil, brought it to a boil over high heat, and then simmered it over low heat. Once cooked, she added the sausage and vegetables and cooked it a bit longer.

Smelling the fragrant aroma of rice, Jing Shu swallowed her saliva while preparing the seasoning sauce, thinking about her plan as she cooked. After it was done, she turned off the heat, cracked two eggs into the pot, and let it stew for another five minutes. Then she lifted the lid and drizzled the seasoning sauce over it. The fragrance of the rice mixed with the aroma of the cured meat had fully permeated the clay pot rice, and the two sunny-side-up eggs emitted an enticing glow.

“Eight or nine years without eating rice,” Jing Shu said, tears streaming down her face as she swallowed hard. Unable to wait, she brought the small clay pot directly to her mouth. She took a bite of the cured meat and then a bite of rice, chewing slowly, moving it back and forth between her teeth and tongue, letting her taste buds experience the utmost satisfaction. Finally, swallowing the flavorful food, Jing Shu felt a sense of happiness lifting her spirits.

Compared to what she ate during the apocalypse—grass roots, tree bark, rotten corpses—it was worse than what pigs and dogs ate!

Carefully scraping the last piece of crispy rice from the pot into her mouth and licking clean the remaining sauce and vegetable leaves, Jing Shu burped contentedly. She quickly washed the pot and tidied up, then opened her phone and began listing her recent plans in the notepad. With a plan, she could steadily and orderly collect supplies over the next two months. Otherwise, remembering one thing today and forgetting another tomorrow would lead to a lot of unnecessary work.

At the same time, she downloaded tutorials and methods for solving Rubik’s Cubes from the fifth to the seventeenth order onto her phone. Jing Shu didn’t know how many levels her Rubik’s Cube space could reach, but it’s always good to be prepared; after all, it would be her greatest reliance after the apocalypse.

At 3 p.m., after listing her plans, Jing Shu discovered a big problem: she had no money.

So Jing Shu began calculating the total assets of their family of three.

Her father, Jing An, was a small shareholder and woodworking supervisor in a large-scale renovation company in Wucheng. More than twenty years ago, he partnered with his friend Wang Zhong; the friend provided a 100-yuan rental fee, and he invested his carpentry skills. Through hard work and treating people with integrity, they achieved today’s scale, earning 8,000 yuan per month plus an annual dividend of 200,000 yuan.

Wang Zhong didn’t take a salary; he only took an annual dividend of over 10 million yuan. Jing Shu quickly wrote on her phone ways to generate funds:

1. Have her father withdraw his shares and buy out his portion to get money. Her mother, Su Lanzhi, was a civil servant with a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan.
2. Sell her mother’s collection of stamps and banknotes.

Looking at their salaries, Jing Shu’s family had a yearly income of several hundred thousand yuan, but expenses were high. The family had two cars to maintain and a big baby—Jing Shu—to support. Last year, they had taken out a loan to buy a villa in the mountainside suburbs. Father Jing was the guarantor, and it was registered in Jing Shu’s name as a dowry; they could also spend weekends there to relax.

In 2022, housing prices had already fallen, especially in third-tier cities in the northwest. The suburban villa was 5,000 yuan per square meter. Calculated based on land and building area, it totaled 168 square meters, with a 50-square-meter yard included, amounting to 840,000 yuan.

The villa had two floors, each 168 square meters. The top floor had a sun terrace of over 40 square meters. Since the family was in the renovation business, Father Jing had the house decorated after it was handed over and even dug a 20-square-meter basement, completely spending all their money.

Their current residence was an 86-square-meter school district apartment in the city center, which could sell for 1.3 million yuan. In the second year after the apocalypse, the whole family moved out because floods submerged half the city. To be precise, 30% of the Earth’s land was submerged, but there were reasons for this, which we’ll discuss later.

They also had a 15-square-meter prime commercial space, which brought in an annual rental income of 50,000 yuan. In her previous life, they sold it for 600,000 yuan to help Jing Shu cover her expenses to become an internet celebrity.

As for Jing Shu, she was still in a deficit situation. The family had at most tens of thousands of yuan in cash; the rest were immovable assets and two cars. In her previous life, Father Jing’s Toyota Prado was sold for more than 200,000 yuan; they couldn’t bear to sell Mother Jing’s small BMW.

In this life, Jing Shu decided to sell both of her parents’ cars and also sell the commercial space and the school district apartment! Happily, she wrote down the third point on her phone.

The villa couldn’t be sold; its geographical location was excellent. Whether it was floods, earthquakes, or storms, it wasn’t significantly affected. In her previous life, the city center was directly abandoned, and a new district began to be established in the suburbs.

Previously, it was said that a bite of food could exchange for a villa, and it wasn’t a lie. Jing Shu’s family’s villa was indeed traded away; only then could their family of three survive and get through the most challenging fifth year of the apocalypse.

4. Find Uncle Sun and get back the 100,000 yuan he owed her father!

“That’s enough for now. I’ll write more as I think of them. First, I need to secure some funds to gather supplies, then start on plans 1 and 4!” Jing Shu squinted her eyes in thought. Zhu Zhengqi’s WeChat messages kept pinging, filled with promotional talk encouraging Jing Shu to become an internet celebrity.

“Wait, I can trick my parents by saying I want to become an internet celebrity. Won’t that get me the money?” Jing Shu suddenly slapped her thigh. If things went like they did in her previous life, wouldn’t the money problem be quickly resolved? Otherwise, there was really no reason to persuade her parents to sell the commercial space, cars, and apartment.

Could she tell them that in two months, the Earth would lose sunlight and be shrouded in darkness every day? However, that wasn’t the scary part. In over a month, China would announce that a planetary collision was imminent, and the upper atmosphere and distant fragments would rapidly surround the Earth, blocking sunlight. They would prepare everyone and even issue generous subsidies. Unfortunately, they only predicted a month without sunlight, not realizing that the sun would be blocked for the next ten years.

What was even more terrifying were the ensuing disasters. The Earth’s temperature, which should have plummeted due to the lack of sunlight, actually soared globally that year, entering a period of extreme heat, darkness, and water scarcity that lasted a whole year.

The disasters brought by high temperatures were enormous. Grain yields were nonexistent. The most direct impact was the rise in ocean temperatures, freshwater fish dying from heat, tropical areas turning into deserts, sea levels rising, island nations being submerged and disappearing, leading to refugee crises. Then, in the second year, floods and heavy rains began.

Finally, the drawbacks of losing sunlight began to manifest, with temperatures plummeting drastically, entering a global extreme cold mode.