Chapter 001: Rebirth

“A quiet and lovely girl awaits me at the corner of the city.” This is the origin of Jing Shu’s name.

Under the iron-fisted management of the town government, Jing Shu barely survived until the ninth year of the apocalypse. By that time, corpses of the starved were everywhere, and a bite of food was extremely precious.

At this moment, Jing Shu accidentally activated a Rubik’s Cube and obtained a portable space where she could farm, finally allowing her parents to have enough to eat.

But who would have thought that after being so cautious in the apocalypse for so long, she would fall into the trap set by her own relatives!

Jing Shu regretted it. She shouldn’t have let her parents help her aunt. Her mother always felt guilty: “Your eldest uncle’s family died tragically; it’s all because I was incapable. Now, only your aunt is left. Since we don’t worry about food now, let’s share some with your aunt.”

So, every few days, they would send over common foods like cabbages and sweet potatoes. Later, it escalated to her aunt bringing her whole family over: “Sister, I knew you found Wang Congsi’s secret grain storage. Otherwise, where would you get so much food without farming? Take us there, so you don’t have to keep sending me such small amounts that aren’t enough anyway. Don’t worry, only our two families will know this secret.”

Jing Shu’s mother was momentarily stunned and then furious. How could she explain this? Helping you was out of consideration for being the last remaining relatives; how can it be taken for granted?

An enraged Jing Shu directly kicked them out and severed ties.

Later, her aunt came to make trouble several times, all ending unhappily. Fearing they would come to rob them, Jing Shu specially reinforced the doors and windows. To avoid trouble, they even stopped going out. But then, her father’s close friend came with his wife and child.

When he knelt down, holding up the 100,000 yuan he had owed her father for thirteen years, trembling and crying, “Old Jing, I’ve finally gathered the money. Is it too late? For old times’ sake, please help us!” her father had no choice but to take in the family of three. That night, the two chatted by candlelight.

“This money would’ve been useful if it came ten years earlier. Now, in this apocalypse, its only use is to start a fire,” Jing Shu sneered, lighting a stack of banknotes and throwing them into the stove.

“Thanks to your Uncle Sun introducing me to your mother and getting your aunt a job… Debts of gratitude are hard to repay.” After saying that, her father thought of her aunt’s recent troubling demands for food, sighed, and said, “These times… people are driven by hunger.”

Who would have thought that the next night, Uncle Sun and her aunt colluded to break into their sealed house? Seven or eight people armed with sticks and broken glass bottles burst in. In the chaos, Jing Shu resisted fiercely and was killed, but before dying, she took a few down with her.

“Heh, tomorrow, just wait for the town government’s judgment; none of you will escape,” Jing Shu thought vaguely before losing consciousness.

Unfortunately, the Rubik’s Cube space couldn’t hold people.

—

She didn’t know how much time had passed. She only felt her throat burning, as if about to spew fire. Jing Shu coughed violently a few times and suddenly woke up, sitting up abruptly and looking around in shock.

What came into view was a familiar scene: a wall of bookshelves, a computer desk, and a familiar big soft bed.

Isn’t this how her bedroom looked before the apocalypse?

Jing Shu’s heart pounded wildly. With trembling hands, she groped for her phone on the bed and saw: November 1, 2022, Tuesday, 10:39 AM.

Two months before the apocalypse! She had returned to ten years ago! Back to when she was 22 years old, just graduated from college—a youthful time!

“Reborn?!” Jing Shu clutched the quilt tightly, her knuckles turning white. She understood that it wasn’t a dream. The ten years of hardship, hunger, and fear were vividly engraved in her bones. She had pinched herself purple countless times, hoping it was a nightmare, but unfortunately, she never woke up.

As if recalling something, Jing Shu got out of bed and swiftly pulled open the curtains. The soft sunlight instantly flooded in. Feeling the sunlight she hadn’t seen in ten years, memories flashed through her mind like a movie, recalling the chaotic scene before her death. Finally, she burst into tears, crying out loud. In this life, she would never repeat the same mistakes.

She rejoiced at finally seeing sunlight again. She hated, she was angry, she grieved for her parents. In an instant, Jing Shu experienced all emotions, leaving her mind blank.

After crying for a few minutes, the familiar hunger made Jing Shu calm down. She ran to the kitchen and found a bowl of warm milk, an egg, half an ear of corn, and a steamed bun in the pot.

Jing Shu grabbed the steamed bun and devoured it, picked up the milk and gulped it down, then took the corn and bit into it. The chewy texture and fragrant, glutinous taste instantly exploded in her mouth. At this moment, Jing Shu felt that the happiest thing in the world was to be able to eat grains.

Although she had a portable farming space in the ninth year of the apocalypse, unfortunately, many species had become extinct by then. The seeds that could be found were even fewer. Being able to grow something to fill their stomachs and survive had become a luxury for most people.

Jing Shu carefully peeled the egg, first biting off some egg white, which tasted fresh and fragrant. Then she evenly sprinkled salt on the yolk, put it all into her mouth, and chewed slowly, savoring it endlessly.

High-quality ingredients often only need the simplest cooking methods. For ingredients like eggs, whether boiled, fried, scrambled, steamed, marinated, or made into tea eggs, they could make the kid next door drool without even coating them in batter.

Young people who haven’t experienced famine and disaster will never understand why the elderly pick up rice grains that have fallen on the ground and eat them without minding the dirt.

To eat well and be full in the future, Jing Shu began to think about her Rubik’s Cube space.

The 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube is a cube toy made up of small cubes. In the game, the six faces are scrambled, and through transformations, restored to their original state.

At 16, Jing Shu achieved a 6.8-second restoration, becoming the fastest high school student in Wucheng, and felt it was meaningless.

At 18, her father, Jing An, gave her an adult gift: the Rubik’s Revenge, a 4x4x4 cube, whose English name implies revenge.

After a few unsuccessful days, Jing Shu didn’t touch it again. In the apocalypse, out of boredom, she started playing again, and her restoration speed became faster and faster. But it wasn’t until the ninth year that she activated it. Jing Shu later pondered the activation conditions for a long time.

“It should be the speed. Only that time, when I used less than 30 seconds, did I activate the Rubik’s Cube space.” Jing Shu returned to her bedroom and found the 4x4x4 Rubik’s Cube—the portable space where she could farm—from a pile of miscellaneous items in a storage box.

Jing Shu flexed her hands, took out a timer, took a deep breath, and started twisting the Rubik’s Cube at the sound of the ‘ding.’ As time ticked by, the colorful Rubik’s Cube in Jing Shu’s hands began to become orderly from the center at a speed visible to the naked eye. Then, one face after another became neatly arranged. When the last rotation aligned, Jing Shu pressed the timer with a ‘snap.’

“00:28:59!”

Success!