Jing Shu reached out and grabbed one of the giant bug's thick, bristled legs. With a sudden, forceful wrench, she snapped it clean in half. A sharp crack echoed through the clearing, like a heavy branch breaking in winter, and she casually tossed the severed limb over her shoulder. The segment landed in the dirt directly in front of Liu Dali, who stood there completely dumbfounded.
Under the wide-eyed stares of the trembling villagers, she broke off several more in quick succession. She tossed them toward Wang Dan and, after making sure the bug's remaining legs looked perfectly symmetrical on both sides of its body, she clapped her hands together to clear the dust and walked away in satisfaction.
The villagers stood in stunned silence.
The bug itself didn't seem to care about missing a few of its many limbs; it had plenty to spare and continued its grisly meal without pause.
Jing Shu had only taken six legs off the thirty-six-legged creature, and she had been careful not to break them from the base. She had snapped them halfway down their length, which meant they would likely grow back after some time. When that happened, she could simply harvest them again—much like pulling lotus roots from a pond.
But the villagers didn't see the logic in her actions. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape as if they couldn't quite process the scene. That massive creature had just stood there like an idiot, letting her tear its legs off without the slightest bit of resistance. It was nothing like the ferocious, armored beast they had seen swiping Liu Dali aside earlier.
"What are you all standing there for?" Jing Shu asked, turning back to the stunned crowd. "Didn't you say you wanted meat? Is this enough? If not, I can go back and break a few more."
She looked at Liu Dali, wondering why he hadn't moved. She felt she was being quite considerate. These people complained they were hungry, and she had provided fresh meat. People as easygoing as her were rare in this dying world, honestly.
It took Liu Dali a long moment to react. He leaned down and hugged three of the bug legs to his chest, but he couldn't hold them; each segment weighed more than ten kilograms. His mind felt as if he were trapped in a dream, and his own legs felt weak beneath him. He couldn't believe what he had just witnessed. This woman had mutilated a monster, and it hadn't even fought back.
Wang Dan wasn't doing any better. When he looked at Jing Shu now, his expression was one of pure, unadulterated worship. To him, Jing Shu was no longer just a person; she was a total freak of nature who commanded the world around her.
"She really broke a monster's leg off, and it didn't even resist," someone whispered in the crowd.
"Look, she is walking away... and the monster is just going back to eating the corpses!"
"I guess it isn't that scary after all. Should we go grab a few legs for ourselves and grill them?"
"Those legs look like giant crab legs, don't they? Have you ever eaten crab? It's delicious!"
A few of the braver men actually started to move forward, eyeing the bug as if it were a buffet line rather than a predator.
Jing Shu waved to Wang Dan and Liu Dali as they began to walk back toward the center of the camp. "That bug is mine," she stated clearly. "It only listens to me, so don't mess with it. If it decides to eat you, I'm not helping. Take these legs and share them around. Consider it extra food. Everyone should work hard and stock up on rations so you won't starve on the road."
After delivering the warning, she left the two of them behind. Whether the others would listen to her wasn't her concern. Right now, things were the same everywhere; authorities were struggling just to keep people from starving to death. Having anything to eat at all was already a stroke of immense luck.
Jing Shu had Liu Dali help Auntie Wang clean and process the meat. They stripped off the hard, chitinous shells, dug out the pungent flesh, and chopped it into fine bits. Auntie Wang mixed the meat into a coarse flatbread dough before baking it dry over a low fire.
The fuel they used was poor quality and filled the air with a harsh, acrid smell that stung the eyes, but there was no other choice. Auntie Wang knew they had to cook as much as possible before the rescue team arrived. The journey ahead was long. Even if the government came to help, they wouldn't send private vehicles for villagers; that would waste far too much precious fuel. In the end, they would probably have to walk out on their own feet.
Sure enough, later that afternoon, a man tried to copy Jing Shu's casual harvesting. But the moment he approached the bug with a rusted knife, its massive pincers snapped down with lightning speed. The sharp mandibles crushed the man's arm clean off at the shoulder. Blood gushed onto the mud in a violent spray. The villagers finally realized exactly how dangerous the creature truly was and didn't dare go near it again.
Jing Shu wasn't nearly as relaxed as she appeared to be. Li Dayou had been watching over the seed stockpile far too closely, recording every bag and ounce in detail. It was proving difficult for her to sneak any of the hoard into her Cube Space without him noticing. She would have to wait for a better opportunity. Now that rescue seemed certain, she wasn't in a desperate hurry.
Still, she had another reason for sneaking off alone. Her Rubik's Cube Space had finally identified that strange black liquid needed for its next upgrade, and she wasn't about to give up on it so easily. Yesterday, when she had observed the chaotic "giant wave" that devoured everything at the boundary where the lands collided, she had noticed something suspicious.
After finishing her chores, she quietly made her way to the edge of the zone where the two tectonic forces met. The closer she got, the more the ground beneath her boots trembled. A deep, guttural rumble echoed constantly. It sounded like the grinding of massive metal treads, crushing and carrying everything forward until it was pulverized and dragged into the depths.
It looked like a black hole in the earth, swallowing everything in sight. Just standing there watching the horizon collapse made her feel dizzy and nauseated.
She didn't understand the science behind why the world was folding this way, but that didn't matter anymore. Not after the apocalypse. Still, the dizziness made her wary, so she remained near the edge of the ravine, afraid to move too close to the shifting lip of the abyss.
But there was definitely something hidden here, and she intended to find out what it was.
Jing Shu was cautious by nature—she had died once before, after all—so she wasn't about to take unnecessary risks with her own life. She sent a small, agile snake to investigate first. The moment the serpent slithered onto that unstable ground, it was caught in the surging flow of debris and dragged away like a piece of worthless trash.
Through her mental link with the snake, she caught a fleeting glimpse of what lay ahead. But the connection lasted only for a moment before the creature was crushed, as if it had been fed into a massive industrial meat grinder.
She frowned, her eyes narrowing. Snakes were the most agile creatures she could control, but it seemed even their flexibility wasn't enough to survive the crushing weight of the shifting earth. Her only remaining option now was to use insects.
She split a swarm of bugs into several smaller groups and sent them toward the raging currents of dirt and stone. They were pushed along, tumbling toward the point where the two massive forces collided.
"Good. They are slow, but they are small enough not to get smashed by the waves," she murmured, a small grin touching her lips. Even an elephant couldn't easily stomp an ant to death in a pile of rubble.
She focused all her attention on the faint signals coming back through her link. The bugs were swept along with the debris, crushed and transported all the way to the end—directly into that black, hole-like space.
The moment they fell in, she sensed only absolute darkness and a viscous liquid all around them before the connection vanished completely. The bugs were gone, devoured by that black liquid. She couldn't tell if it had consumed their physical bodies or simply snuffed out their minds.
Her heart started pounding against her ribs. The thought wouldn't leave her mind; if she could get her hands on that black liquid, she would strike gold.
But right now, everything she sent in was wiped out instantly. So, how was she supposed to collect something that deadly?