Chapter 276: Food After the Sixth Year of the Apocalypse

Qian Duoduo suffered even greater losses. Every place with a building was rigged with bombs and all were detonated. Out of six hundred people, over a hundred died due to various reasons. The employee dormitory Qian Duoduo had seen when passing West Mountain was completely flattened. The bodyguards and servants had nowhere to live. The financial losses were huge. The expensive farms and breeding grounds were ruined. However, it was said that Qian Duoduo’s castle still had plenty of food and should be able to hold out.

In short, today was a mutual destruction with no clear winner. Lin Yi was completely wiped out. Wait, if anyone benefited, it seemed to be Jing Shu.

Jing Shu was certain that if she hadn’t gone this time, the Rubik’s Cube Space might not have upgraded for a long time. So the upgrade was definitely a life-saving trump card for her.

With the upgrade, she gained new abilities and 14 tons of TNT explosives, which would be quite useful in the apocalypse. She also earned valuable favors from Su Xiangnan and Qian Duoduo. With this network, even if she wasn’t a big shot yet, she was moving in that direction.

Catching Lin Yi surely earned her a first-class merit and some virtual currency as a reward—finally some income.

Thinking of this, Jing Shu felt much less tired. Because she was eager to see the upgraded Rubik’s Cube Space, she ate dinner much faster.

Jing Shu naturally treated the day’s experience as a joke—not to brag, but to reassure her family. Jing Nai specially killed a chicken and made fish soup to calm Jing Shu’s nerves. Of course, Jing Shu glossed over the explosives part, only saying she uncovered a conspiracy and was rewarded. Otherwise, Jing Nai, who had a weak heart, might have fainted.

After dinner, each family member drank a sip of medicinal wine to dispel dampness and ate some available fruit. Jing Shu asked her father to look after the leeches and Jing Ye to take the chickens out.

Because there were too many people in the community, even the fat chickens were given plastic raincoats and leashed like dogs. Fortunately, the heavy rain and darkness outside made it hard to tell if it was a dog or a chicken. The fat chickens had grown as big as medium-sized dogs, and it was unknown if they would grow bigger.

If they got too big, would they be taken for research? The research institute might not have time now. There were many new mutated and evolved species. Their focus was on how to increase grain production. It was said they were researching genetically mutated animals.

Due to different statuses, Jing Shu hadn’t heard of this in her past life, but this time she heard Su Mary mention it. The idea was to extract genes and combine them with vectors to introduce target genes into recipient cells, creating new species or plants adapted to the apocalypse to increase food production.

Jing Shu found it a bit confusing until Su Mary whispered:

“Basically, it’s making a chicken grow legs and wings all over, even multiple reproductive organs to lay eggs; or turning cows into egg-laying animals that can lay eggs daily, hatching a batch of cow eggs monthly; or fattening fish by injecting hormones and drugs so each generation can grow to dozens or hundreds of pounds in months. They even add anti-melatonin or remove photosynthesis abilities, forcing growth by other means.”

“They completely ignore the genetic breakthroughs’ side effects, forcibly increasing yield without caring about consequences. After all, if the apocalypse continues, given the country’s situation, China might be destroyed in less than ten years. You don’t know, but recently livestock and crop prices have skyrocketed again.”

“Because the country is storing large amounts of red worms, with enough feed, they want to breed more livestock.”

After Su Mary’s explanation, Jing Shu understood how the infamous mutant food after the sixth year of the apocalypse came about. The research started heavily in the second year. But Su Mary was right: from the fifth year, migration, heavy snow, and cold weather caused crop yields to plummet, starving many. Without new food, China would be wiped out.

If the first five years of the apocalypse were eating local products like red worms, maggots, and corpse worms, then in the later years, people started eating things with no meat flavor, strange and hard to swallow.

Jing Shu shuddered, unwilling to think about it. Not to mention genetically modified food, even in her past life, only the wealthy could afford it.

She remembered once eating genetically modified fattened fish. The fish meat wasn’t really fish meat. The cells were enlarged a hundredfold. Biting into it was like chewing wood chips—hard and hard to swallow. The fishy smell was amplified hundreds of times, like vomit in a gutter for months.

Yes, eating fish was like eating garbage from a stinky gutter.

When the market was full of genetically mutated food, the most precious and valuable were the unmodified, original ecological foods. Chickens, ducks, and fish then were like antiques before the apocalypse. Why did they become more valuable? Couldn’t they be bred extensively?

Because of environment and cost.

First, “survival of the fittest” was no joke. The longer the apocalypse lasted, the more original plants and animals that didn’t adapt would be eliminated. Original species were too fragile—darkness, cold, viruses, low yield, and easy death.

Cost-wise, the same food might only feed one original livestock, but after genetic breakthroughs, yield multiplied 5-10 times. With a population of a billion, China had to choose low-cost, high-yield breeding to keep most people from starving.

Original species only existed in the upper class.

Shaking her head, these were still distant issues. Genetically modified organisms were a livelihood issue for China. If the “father of rice” hadn’t invented grafted high-yield rice, maybe half of the Chinese would have starved. So living was more important than anything.

After locking herself in her bedroom, Jing Shu took out the now 8th-level challenge Rubik’s Cube and silently said, “Rubik’s Cube Space!”

Instantly, the Rubik’s Cube Space entered its second form, expanding around Jing Shu. The current space was 7×7×7 = 343 cubic meters. If she completed the 8th-level upgrade, it would be 8×8×8 = 512 cubic meters. Great! Jing Shu was full of motivation!

The 7th-level space changed a lot. The central spirit spring still produced a pitiful amount daily, but now six new space fields were added—36 square meters of planting area.

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