At the same time, Jing Shu was going through her old plans one by one, filling in the unexpected changes along the way. For example, number five on her list: the part about the seeds and rare minerals that were supposed to arrive and be traded with Jin Tianci. She changed that to "wait for updates." If no news came in, she'd head out with Yang Yang and the others, bring Hao Yunlai along, and go track down that shipment herself.
Rumor had it the cargo was already nearby, but after the tectonic changes, the route had become impassable. Fortunately, she had plenty of experience with situations like this, and when it came to those seeds, she refused to give up until she got them.
As for the villa's backyard renovation, another month had passed, and the project was finally complete. The whole 300-square-meter area was now fully enclosed, belonging entirely to her family. A tall wall surrounded it, and the backyard's main entrance was guarded by a huge, V-shaped tombstone-looking monument. When Su Lanzhi came home from work and saw it, she thought she'd walked into the wrong house.
To cover for herself, Jing Shu had someone carve a Buddhist scripture onto the stone—something about compassion and mercy. She claimed she'd been having ominous dreams lately, and that the Buddha told her in a dream this would ward off bad luck and turn misfortune into blessing.
Her father, Jing An, nodded knowingly. "I knew it. Our daughter never does anything without a reason."
Grandma Jing squinted as she laughed. "She takes after me. Whatever the Buddha says, we'll do it exactly that way."
Grandpa Jing puffed on his pipe and grumbled, "How come Buddha never gives me dreams, huh? I've been a believer my whole life!" He looked genuinely offended, but before he could say more, Grandma Jing grabbed a broom and chased him.
"You old fool, every time something happens, you go begging all eighteen gods for help, and you've got the nerve to talk!"
He ran fast, of course, darting into the backyard to keep working. Now that the villa's yard was fully sealed, the place felt much safer. Still, it was huge, and there was plenty to reorganize. Grandpa Jing decided to set aside part of it to raise all the poultry that didn't fit elsewhere.
Then he marked off another section for vegetables. After all he'd lived through, he knew better than anyone that the world wasn't getting better anytime soon. They needed to stockpile as much food as possible.
"Must plant more corn," he muttered. "It's high-yield, and we're running low on feed."
Since the yard was going to be so busy, heating was a must. He started installing a looped hot-water pipe system all around it, basically an early form of underfloor heating.
Normally, you'd lay tiles over the pipes, but in these end-of-the-world conditions, that was a luxury they didn't have. As long as hot water flowed through the system, the yard stayed warm enough.
The villa's boiler room already ran every day, burning through coal instead of natural gas to save resources. They'd stocked over ten tons of coal before the apocalypse, and at this rate, it'd last maybe two or three more years. Still, what choice did they have? With Wu City's temperatures dropping below minus ten degrees, neither people nor animals could survive without heat.
When the coal ran out, they'd switch back to gas. And from what Jing Shu knew, even when supplies got tight, Su Mali never lacked energy.
Then there was issue number thirteen: the Crimson Spirit Spring experiment. That one was a mixed bag—it covered too many things.
Take the orange trees, for example. They ended up producing grapefruits and tangerines instead. She made honey grapefruit tea to share, turned the tangerine pulp into canned fruit, and dried the peels for medicinal use.
That gave her a new idea. Maybe she should start stocking canned fruit from now on. Easier to store, easier to ration out.
But the Crimson Spirit Spring also brought her a real headache—those dino-chickens.
After Xiao Dou mated with the dino-chickens, they laid tons of enormous eggs, twice the size of normal ones. At first, Xiao Dou had diligently sat on them every day, just like any good old hen would. But a month later, the eggs had piled up like a mountain inside the Cube Space, and not a single one had hatched.
Xiao Dou clucked irritably a few times, then gave up on them entirely.
Jing Shu studied the eggs for days but couldn't figure it out. Eventually, after checking some online data, she realized what was going on—it was a matter of ecology and species isolation.
In simpler terms, Xiao Dou's genes had evolved too far beyond normal chickens, almost stepping into the realm of intelligent species. The dino-chickens' genes were similarly advanced. They simply weren't compatible species anymore, so their eggs couldn't hatch. Theoretically, there was still a one-in-a-thousand or one-in-ten-thousand chance, but that was basically nothing.
Still, it didn't affect Xiao Dou's relationship with the dino-chickens at all. Those two were inseparable. Every day, they snuggled together in the Cube Space before patrolling the chicken flock like a royal couple.
Jing Shu wasn't about to give up. She went on a breeding frenzy, pairing Xiao Dou with normal roosters—no results. Then she tried pairing the dino-chickens with regular hens—again, nothing after more than two weeks. Under the Cube Space's conditions, that should've been more than enough time for eggs to hatch, but still, nothing.
So she tried again. This time, she fed a few hens with diluted Crimson Spirit Spring. Those hens didn't mutate into dino-chickens, but they grew much larger and stronger.
When those hens mated with the dino-chickens, one in ten eggs actually hatched.
That one success had Jing Shu practically jumping for joy.
What hatched out, well, they were technically still chickens, but not ordinary ones. She named them "mutant chickens."
After a month of raising them to maturity, she discovered just how incredible they were.
These chickens were born large, about the size of a medium dog when grown. They were fierce, half like dinosaurs with strong legs and claws, and had terrifying appetites. They ate everything, and they could digest it all.
What's more, the chicks could be tamed to recognize their owner. That meant they could guard the house like dogs, lay eggs, and even have their feathers harvested for down coats. Even their droppings made great fertilizer.
In the apocalypse, that made these mutant chickens the Rolls-Royce of survival beasts—tough, versatile, and low-maintenance.
The hens laid more than two eggs a day, each bigger than a fist.
And most importantly, these mutant chickens were a fully invasive species, completely immune to carrion scavengers and zombie-virus insects.
Jing Shu's first reaction was simple: she was about to get rich.
Chickens had been wiped out by more than ninety percent. First, extreme heat killed a huge number of them, and then the zombie virus infected the rest. Once infected, they were doomed.
Now, she'd bred the perfect post-apocalyptic chicken—strong, immune, and endlessly useful.
So yeah, maybe she really was about to make her fortune from chickens.