Chapter 107: "The Second Form of the Rubik's Cube Space":

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Jing Shu's mind grew clearer, and she felt that with this upgrade, she was becoming one with the Rubik's Cube space.

Previously, to enter the Rubik’s Cube space, she had to call upon it with her consciousness and step into a pitch-black world filled with glowing white grids. She called this process "consciousness summoning." But now, she no longer needed to do that.

Although she stood by her bedside, Jing Shu felt as if she were inside the Rubik's Cube space at the same time.

It was as though, by raising her hand, she could touch the spiritual spring. Right in front of her were the farmlands, and there were coconut trees. To her right were the livestock, and to her left was an abundance of resources. Clearly, her control over the Rubik's Cube space had reached a new level.

The only odd part was that these things appeared ghost-like and overlapped with reality, yet the sounds of pigs, cows, and sheep were loud and clear. She could even hear the bees buzzing over the fields.

The biggest limitation of the Rubik's Cube space was that people couldn’t enter it. Jing Shu wondered if, as the space continued to upgrade, it would eventually merge entirely with the real world. Would humans, including herself, be able to enter it?

"It's too noisy," Jing Shu thought, and the sounds from the space immediately ceased, though the visuals remained.

"Can it return to how it was before?" As soon as she had this thought, the entire space reverted to its original state, and the ghostly images vanished completely.

Jing Shu named this upgraded Rubik’s Cube space the Second Form, while she now referred to the previous “consciousness summoning” mode as the First Form. Now, she could freely switch between the two forms at will.

The advantage of the Second Form was that she could constantly observe the scenes in the Rubik's Cube space, seeing the virtual space and reality overlap. She could even watch the plants grow at a visible pace.

This way, she could practice with the Rubik's Cube while monitoring any changes in the space. The Second Form was perfect for times when nothing urgent was happening, allowing Jing Shu to keep a close eye on her crops and livestock.

Her most anticipated upgrade had indeed come true: the space’s size had expanded from 5x5x5 to 6x6x6, now providing her with 216 cubic meters of space. The farmland had grown from 12 plots to 18. Aside from the 1 cubic meter taken up by the spiritual spring, she now had 197 cubic meters left, which was simply fantastic. The original 125 cubic meters had become too cramped, and this new increase excited her immensely.

After a quick wash, Jing Shu ate a large breakfast in the dining room that Grandma Jing had prepared: 6 boiled eggs, 3 bowls of soy milk, 5 sticks of fried dough, 5 corn cakes, and a plate of vinegar-pickled garlic shoots. She felt like her appetite had grown again; even after eating all that, she still wanted more.

Jing Shu’s parents and her third aunt had already gone to work. They were fortunate enough to have secured jobs in the post-apocalyptic system, something that soon everyone would desperately want.

Due to the darkness, productivity had plummeted. Only a few people could earn a living, with most working whatever jobs the government assigned to them, often in exchange for a meager amount of food. In her previous life, Jing Shu's family had struggled like this for ten years in the apocalypse.

Grandpa Jing, meanwhile, was the most diligent of all when it came to practicing with his crossbow. He had set up a target in the backyard to train on.

Grandma Jing was cleaning lotus roots. A large portion of the lotus in the pond had ripened, and Jing Shu had eagerly requested honeyed lotus root.

So, Grandma Jing had decided to make a lot of it—just a small amount wouldn’t last Jing Shu two meals. To get the lotus roots soft and sweet, they had to be pressure-cooked for several hours. It made sense that this dish was one of the eight famous cold dishes—it was truly something special.

With some rare free time after breakfast, Jing Shu helped Grandma Jing prepare the honeyed lotus root while using the Second Form of the Rubik’s Cube space to organize her new space.

Grandma Jing had already washed, peeled, and chopped the lotus roots. Number 1, the creature closest to Jing Shu besides her grandma, was happily munching on the discarded lotus peel. Number 1 had gained a new role in Jing Shu’s household: garbage disposal.

Indeed, whether it was bones or food scraps—whether skins, roots, or even almond shells—if it was remotely edible, Number 1 could eat it. At the moment, it weighed a solid 45 pounds, larger than a typical medium-sized dog.

After devouring an entire box of lotus peel, it affectionately rubbed against Jing Shu before proudly puffing out its chest and continuing its patrol of its domain. It wouldn’t tolerate a single insect on its turf, and as the leader of the chicken coop, it took its duties seriously. This batch of poultry was not easy to manage!

Now, all Jing Shu needed to do was hollow out the tops of the lotus roots, stuff them with soaked glutinous rice, and secure the tops with toothpicks. Then, she could place them in a pressure cooker with red dates and brown sugar. After cooking for two hours, the lotus roots would cool down, get sliced, drizzled with syrup, and sprinkled with osmanthus—yielding delicious, sweet, and sticky honeyed lotus root. *Yum!*

Since there were so many lotus roots, Jing Shu and Grandma Jing spent the whole day preparing them. Some were secretly stored away in Jing Shu’s space for future snacks, while the rest were sealed and refrigerated to serve as a delightful cold dish in the evenings.

By the end of the day, Jing Shu had also finished reorganizing her space. Over the past six months, she had consumed a fair share of the food in her space, and there were some changes in the poultry area. Here’s a quick summary:

- 1 cubic meter for the spiritual spring

- 18 cubic meters for farmland

- 2 cubic meters for fish

- 18 cubic meters for poultry

That left 177 cubic meters for everything else. Here’s what Jing Shu currently had in the space:

- 1 cubic meter for seeds, daily necessities, spare feed, fish feed, honey, Haagen-Dazs, yogurt ice, honey lemon, potato curry chicken, spicy duck blood soup, braised black pork ribs, tomato prawns, steamed hairy crab, fried fish chunks, fried chicken, seafood shrimp porridge, lamb soup with carrots and corn, chicken stew with mushrooms, pork ribs and lotus root soup, carp and tofu soup, and corn cakes, totaling 22 cubic meters.

- 2 cubic meters each for steak, chicken nuggets with fries, coconut milk, and chicken, duck, and quail eggs, totaling 8 cubic meters.

- The remaining space held 9 cubic meters of various nuts, 14 cubic meters of gasoline, 11 tons of mineral water, 15 cubic meters of flour and oil, and 20 cubic meters of large stone blocks, leaving Jing Shu with 78 cubic meters of space.

Jing Shu planned to grow more vegetables in the space so she wouldn’t have to wait for them to grow every time she craved something.

In the past six months, she had eaten all the steak, beef jerky, cured meats, 1 cubic meter of hot pot ingredients, fried fish, roasted quail, and soy milk. She would need to stock up again soon. Having lived through hunger in her past life, Jing Shu panicked whenever the space didn’t have enough food.

Oh, and the extra six plots of farmland? Jing Shu had planted medicinal herbs. Now that medical supplies had run out, she was no longer waiting for the artificial sun to return—she needed to be prepared.

Though it was nice to imagine the artificial sun returning and facilitating crop growth, the harsh reality of the apocalypse had shown her that medicines would become extremely rare over the next ten years. Jing Shu planned to stockpile herbs now, while testing her hypothesis about the space by comparing the growth of coconut trees and medicinal plants.

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*Author’s note*: Thanks to Hui Xue for the tip!