Jing Shu's mouth twitched at the thought. She remembered those pedals perfectly. The first time she had boarded the minibus, she had spotted them right away and wondered what kind of bored mechanic would install a bicycle chain and pedals inside a high-end vehicle. She had even thought they were meant for some bizarre workout routine during the long, monotonous hauls.
Only now did she realize the pedals were meant for propulsion in the water. The mechanism was easy to figure out once she looked at the drive shaft. It worked just like those small, plastic paddle boats in park ponds she had played on as a kid. You pedaled hard with your legs, the propeller underneath spun, and the boat moved forward through the water. As for the actual power behind it, well, that was better left unmentioned.
With a heavy, armored minibus like this, she doubted a single set of bicycle pedals could really move it with any speed.
Either way, the real problem remained the swamp blocking their way.
"Maybe we should look for another route, or come up with a different plan?"
Everyone started racking their brains for an alternative. The modifications to the minibus were a one-time use; if they switched to water mode, the mechanism would destroy its land configuration. That was a massive risk, since no one knew how much farther they would need to go or if the road would suddenly turn back into solid ground.
They all agreed to avoid using that function unless they had no other choice. Even if the minibus was slow on its wheels, at least it still had a functional engine. Once that failed, they would have to rely on their own legs to navigate the peaks, and none of them wanted to end up dead-tired in the middle of a mountain range.
Yang Yang tied two wide wooden boards to his feet using thick twine, planning to test the consistency of the mud ahead. "Want to go skiing?" he joked, though his smile didn't reach his eyes.
"You go first. I will watch from here," Jing Shu replied. She couldn't deny she was a little curious about the properties of the mire, as she had always had a knack for finding small bits of fun in grim situations.
But this mud wasn't fun at all. Jing Shu shook her head at the sight.
Hong Bin started checking the rocky surroundings, seeing if they could climb the nearby slopes to bypass the swamp entirely. Lǚ Liu, meanwhile, sent out a drone that buzzed into the air to map how big the mud pit was and what the terrain looked like on the far side.
Even though Jing Shu was dressed warmly from head to toe, the biting cold seeped through the thick mud beneath her boots and made her shiver. She hated that icy, damp feeling and worried she would get sores on her feet if they stayed out here too long. She couldn't help but envy Jun Bao; he got to soak and wash his feet in a medicinal bath every night. She wanted nothing more than a hot foot bath right now.
She decided then that she would add another layer of thick wool socks when they got back inside. Her toes were already starting to feel like blocks of ice.
Xiao Dou strutted around the edge of the swamp in its special miniature shoes, fluttering its wings happily without splashing a single drop of mud onto its feathers. Every so often it darted down, pecked up a bit of the dark sludge, and swallowed it with a satisfied cluck.
"Cluck cluck cluck!"
The bird sounded delighted. Apparently, the mud here tasted great and was exactly to its liking.
Jun Bao brought over a metal bucket and started digging in the mire again. He wasn't just scooping aimlessly. He kept choosing specific spots, leaning over the edge of the pit with a look of intense focus. His waterproof boots only reached his knees, but he still wanted to go deeper into the muck. He looked a little regretful, as if the mud further in was more valuable for his research than what he could reach from the bank.
"Maybe we can stop by the center later," he said, more to himself than anyone else. Being the one in charge meant he could make that kind of call whenever he wanted.
Xiao Dou flapped its wings and skimmed over the swamp surface, still eating the mud as it went. When Jing Shu looked closer, she noticed it wasn't just eating at random either; it's picking out specific, darker patches of silt.
Jun Bao watched the bird thoughtfully. "Your chicken seems to have found something interesting. It looks like it's sensing the same thing I did." His tone carried a hint of teasing, as if to say that even her chicken had noticed the anomaly before she did.
Jing Shu raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. "Mud? What is so special about it?" She had seen more mud in her two lives than she cared to count. After the landslides of the fourth year, mud was everywhere. It was all the same gritty, brown mess, wasn't it?
She didn't want to bother with whatever this idle man was up to, but she still humored him. "What is different about it? My chicken eats mud and water every day. It's normal behavior for a bird like this." Though she had to admit, Xiao Dou had been in an unusually good mood these last few days.
Jun Bao handed her the bucket and said matter-of-factly, "This mud contains traces of the crimson liquid you brought back from America last year. Only one or two gene strands match, but I think it's worth studying. The fact that your chicken likes it might just confirm my theory. Maybe this is a key to breaking through in dark food research."
Crimson liquid.
Jing Shu's heart skipped a beat at the mention of the name. She knew exactly what that meant. It was the only substance she had ever seen that could stand up to the potency of her Spirit Spring.
That same crimson liquid was what she had used to breed the dino-chickens, which had become one of her family's most valuable resources. In the apocalypse, those birds were another layer of absolute security. Even without grain, those birds could survive on the energy from the Dark Day alone and still lay eggs. No one understood better than she did how precious that was.
The downside, though, was that the birds were incredibly hard to reproduce in large numbers.
When she had gone to America last year, she had carefully stored ninety-nine percent of the crimson liquid in her Cube Space. The tiny bit that had leaked out had been picked up by Zhen Nantian and Yang Yang, who must have handed it over for government research. She never imagined that this quiet man, Jin Tianci's nephew, would have access to that kind of sensitive data.
She glanced down at the bucket. Her Cube Space was completely calm, wasn't a ripple of reaction. That puzzled her. When she had handled the concentrated crimson liquid before, she had felt it resonate with the space immediately.
Jing Shu took off her gloves and dipped her hand into the mud in the bucket, focusing her senses through the Cube Space to try to draw a response. There was nothing.
"Are you sure about this? How can you even tell the difference? This swamp is huge."
Jun Bao took out a small metal spoon from his pocket. "It's simple. The ones that react with iron contain traces of what we are looking for. Do you see? When you scoop it up, the mixture should look like flowing starlight. Here, this is what I managed to extract after several days of work."
He pulled out a tiny glass vial, no bigger than a thumb, holding less than a milliliter of black liquid. It was barely a dozen drops in total.
At first glance, the liquid looked ordinary. But the instant Jing Shu touched the glass bottle, her mind exploded with a sudden, sharp pressure. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead despite the cold as a wave of overwhelming desire surged inside her. She wanted to take it, to make it hers, to pull every drop into her Cube Space.
It took everything she had to resist the impulse. Her head throbbed painfully as she forced herself to hand the vial back to him. The moment she let go, the urge faded away like water receding into sand, as if nothing had ever happened.