Forget it, forget it. Making those dirt patties still required a small amount of flour and salt to act as a binder. Even if the ratio was ten to one, or even a hundred to one, Jing Shu couldn't justify the expense. Otherwise, the meal would literally be nothing more than eating dirt; she wondered who could actually stomach that for long. The texture would be like chewing on dry, gritty firewood that refused to go down.
She lowered her head and covered her face, looking at Xiao Dou, who had somehow managed to grow even fatter during the holidays. There she was, her head buried in the loose earth again, pecking away at unseen treasures. The hen strutted around the back hill behind the villa, her proud chicken claws tiptoeing carefully as she stomped through the muddy puddles. She appeared thrilled to test out the new rubber shoes Grandma Jing had fashioned for her.
Those little claw shoes might have been cut and refitted from an old pair of discarded rubber boots, but their meaning to the bird was far from simple. Xiao Dou seemed to know it too. They were a visible symbol of her status in the Jing household because, after all, neither Da Hua nor Gou Dan had shoes of their own. She treasured them dearly, although she still insisted on wearing them every day when she went out for a walk with her owner. She wanted the world to know that she, Battle Chicken Number One, was the only one with new footwear.
Watching the muddy water trickle down from the back hill had become a permanent part of the Jing family's daily routine. The television and the online reports were constantly announcing that one place had been buried by a mudslide or another had been flooded, so everyone felt safer checking the perimeter every day.
One way or another, the year officially came to an end on the Lantern Festival. Although everyone kept saying they were trying to save money, Grandma Jing's actions spoke louder than her words. If her granddaughter wanted something different to eat every day, the old woman would never say no.
The Lantern Festival meal was even richer than their New Year's feast. Besides the sweet tangyuan Jing Shu had wrapped by hand, the dough soft and yielding under her fingers, Grandma Jing brought out food they hadn't even touched during the holidays. There were grilled pork ribs smothered in a thick, bubbling layer of cheese—a culinary novelty for everyone at the table. There was also Iberian ham, sliced paper-thin so the light could almost pass through it, layered with more cheese and crusty bread. The salty, nutty flavor of the meat burst in every bite.
Wu You'ai mentioned she was already happy just having the tangyuan. Her mentor, Chu Zhuohua, still hadn't returned to the city, so she had been busy managing community affairs on her own. According to her reports, the synthetic meat project funded by Qian Duoduo had made some measurable progress. The biggest remaining issue was the cost and the difficulty of sourcing raw materials. If the cost didn't drop significantly, mass-producing cheap synthetic meat would remain a dream. It was going to be a long road. If it were that easy, the previous life wouldn't have seen so many people starve to death. Even a man as wealthy as Qian Duoduo wouldn't have been squeezed dry by those greedy capitalists.
The world was changing, and humanity was forced to adapt along with it. Figuring out how to grow more food in a sunless, freezing world was a challenge everyone was working on; it wasn't something that could be rushed.
In Wu City, the government canteens also distributed free tangyuan. They were made from the last batch of glutinous rice flour found in the deep storage reserves. There were two varieties available: meat tangyuan made from frozen chicken and duck meat that had been chopped up bones and all, and sweet tangyuan filled with a mixture of brown sugar, water, and black sesame. Each person was entitled to two for free, while full-time workers received double that amount. They didn't taste particularly great, having a bit of a stale, fermented aftertaste from sitting in storage for too long, but the people were still genuinely happy for the treat.
Lately, since the situation in Ningshan City had worsened, many citizens had been recruited to help recover buried supplies. This provided jobs and free meals for many, and with the Lantern Festival rations added on top, the city finally felt a bit festive again.
After the holidays ended, life returned to its grueling normal. Everyone accepted the mudslide disasters as a permanent part of their reality. Ordinary people just wanted to survive; they had to work, earn virtual coins, and buy whatever food was available to keep living. There were plenty of ways to earn virtual coins now.
Besides stable government positions, many other gigs had opened up. Some places hired day laborers and paid them with free meals. Others allowed people to collect trash and exchange it for coins at recycling stations. Even human waste could be traded for a small sum each day. And now, a hot new profession had emerged: soil digging.
A sharp, bitter regret tightened in Jing Shu's chest. In her previous life, she had never been able to work as a digger. The job required immense physical strength, and workers had to sift through the mud to find the finest soil without any pebbles or debris. Back then, she had been so skinny and weak, her hands and ears covered in painful frostbite. She could never have managed that kind of labor. Her father, Jing An, had done it instead, working himself to a state of total exhaustion.
She shook her head, pushing those old nightmares aside. She focused instead on Wu City's current situation and her own business plan. The city's food reserves were running dangerously low. The limited output from the Twelve Departments and the artificial sun zones wasn't nearly enough to feed millions of people.
They had been rationing what was left, providing some canned food one day and a few hard biscuits the next, often mixing minced frozen meat into other dishes just to add a trace of nutrition. Every portion of grain had been stretched tenfold, lasting three whole years. The items with short shelf lives were long gone. What remained was the real food, the true national reserves, kept untouched unless it was a matter of life or death. That meant her plan would soon come into play; it was only a matter of time.
"Because of my butterfly effect, things really did turn out better than before," she murmured to herself.
This time, even the dirt patties had insect meat mixed into them, saving countless people from starvation. That was thanks to the Red Nematode Factory she had built. She didn't brag about it or act smug. Jing Shu lifted her chin and looked up, only to meet the eyes of a group of workers digging an irrigation channel nearby. They were hard at work redirecting the muddy water from the hill into the massive sinkhole she had purchased the rights to.
Su Mali's row of five villas provided the first rent payment Jing Shu collected. The rest of the villa owners had initially planned to freeload. They saw how effective her sinkhole was at draining the mud, but they still thought they could just use the service for free. After all, no one wanted to pay to rent a hole in the ground during a crisis. But once they saw a prominent figure like Su Mali pay the fee, everyone else quickly followed suit, transferring their virtual coins the next day.
Jing Shu hadn't expected the process to go this smoothly. She figured they knew how to read the room and were giving her some face. The virtual coins she collected were immediately exchanged for natural gas. Hardly anyone dared to use gas freely anymore, except for her family and Su Mali, who still insisted on taking a hot bath every day. Even Jing Shu wouldn't dare such a luxury in these times.
Lately, she had started processing her food stocks into semi-finished meals, and even her grandparents helped with the labor.
"Who knows when we will get flooded?" Grandma Jing said as she stirred a large pot. "If we're lucky, maybe never. But if it happens, we have got to be ready to grab our things and run. We might never come back here. So we need to take our supplies with us. Last time there was an earthquake, remember how hard it was to cook while wandering outside for half a month? Washing vegetables, kneading dough—everything was a nightmare. Better to prepare now while we still have gas."