Chapter 277: Chapter 277
Not only that, but the houses in the urban area had now grown a thick layer of green mold, and mushrooms were faintly starting to sprout from it. Jing Shu knew that the age of poisonous mushrooms and insects was about to begin.
Every time she walked in the Banana District, each building was coated with green-black moss. This moss would soon grow into green long-haired monsters and would also spawn various insects. In a few more months, the houses would be full of this green moss and mushrooms, along with insects crawling everywhere that could bite people. Many died from infections caused by insect bites.
Thinking about living in a damp house infested with mold and insects... Jing Shu didn’t know how she had endured it in her previous life. That’s why Jing Shu’s house now paid close attention to these issues. They dried the villa inside and out every two days and replaced the desiccant with fresh lime every three days. Additionally, every five days, Mr. Jing and Jing Shu would take tools to clean the rooftops and exterior walls where moss was about to grow.
After all, the villa had been soaked for several months, and some parts were no longer waterproof. Once a month, Jing Shu would reinforce the waterproofing of the villa to keep the humidity from becoming too heavy inside.
As the apocalypse developed, one-fifth of the population now suffered from rheumatism, limping as they walked in pain. Jing Shu’s Snake Medicine Wine was indeed highly welcomed. However, it was a rare item, and she had a limited amount of liquor, so she always bartered the prepared medicine wine for goods or favors.
Speaking of which, everyone had assumed that the father and son duo (her abusers) would meet their fate. However, to many people’s surprise, that father and son were released just a few days later. This was because Zhang Bingbing was pregnant again. Zhang Dada was not yet a hundred days old, and these two beasts had made Zhang Bingbing pregnant again!
It was Wang Xue Mei, who went to take care of her, who discovered that Zhang Bingbing had not menstruated for a long time and grew suspicious. She dragged her to have the Doctor take her pulse and found out.
By the way, in the apocalypse, the handling of menstruation... was to not handle it at all. Those who could afford it might cut some cloth from clothing; those who couldn’t just lay there and let the water from outside wash them—it wouldn’t be noticeable in the dark.
The middle class exchanged Virtual Coins for toilet paper, one Virtual Coin per roll, while the upper echelons used stockpiled goods from before the apocalypse, since all consumer goods had ceased production. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn NoveIꜰire.net
Luckily, Jing Shu had bought enough. Of course, with so many more people in the house... if it ran out, she could make some from cotton, which was skin-friendly and absorbent. All she needed to do was cover it with a waterproof layer.
"If Zhang Bingbing’s next child is a boy, he’ll be called Zhang Er, and if it’s a girl, she’ll be called Zhang Erjie," Jing Shu said. Children are so rare in the apocalypse, she thought. The scene when schools reopen next year...
Wu You’ai shrugged. "Anyway, you sponsored the child’s milk, so you have the most right to name the child."
Every day, Wu You’ai personally delivered a bowl of hot milk and fed it to the baby. How could Zhang Bingbing possibly have breast milk when her diet was so poor? Since there was plenty of milk at home, saving a baby was also considered a good deed.
This month, Jing Shu improved the operations at her two Red Worm Feed Factories, thanks to Su Malie.
Previously, Jing Shu had to transport a batch of feed from the original production site to the storage facility every few days, which was quite troublesome and, importantly, fuel-consuming.
Once, Su Malie invited her to a high-society party to have fun, exchange information, and trade goods. During the party, Su Malie learned about Jing Shu’s transportation woes. Consequently, she arranged for Jing Shu to rent a natural gas truck from her father. The truck, along with its driver, was charged solely with shuttling goods between the two feed factories and the storage warehouse.
Jing Shu only needed to check a number against the goods, each time paying just 30 Virtual Coins, which was practically a giveaway.
In the past few months, the cost in Virtual Coins for producing Red Worm Feed had skyrocketed. She had now invested 30,000 Virtual Coins and estimated she could continue for another two months or so, possibly investing another 30,000. Jing Shu had increased her recovery efforts.
Last month, the transaction with West Mountain Fat Pig went according to the original plan, and Jing Shu only received 12 tons of gasoline. With such a large investment in feed, the money Jing Shu used was earned from the Blood Mushrooms sold at Su Malie’s auction.
The more Virtual Coins she earned, the less they seemed to suffice. To fill the financial hole in the Red Worm Feed Factory, Jing Shu had started brewing white liquor, red wine, and the sweet fermented rice she had always wanted to drink, planning to make money from snake wine before tobacco products appeared on the market.
Among these, the sweet fermented rice was the simplest to make. Jing Shu cooked white rice, let it cool, added sweet wine yeast, and maintained a constant temperature of around 37°C for 72 hours. The resulting fermented rice was sweet and tangy.
Jing Shu initially wanted to store the sweet fermented rice in glass jars and refrigerate them. Whenever she felt like it, she could scoop out a few spoonfuls. She would then boil it with water, cook sweet dumplings in it, and add poached eggs and milk, resulting in a mouthwatering sweet fermented rice soup.
The poached eggs had to be runny. One must bite into them twice, each time only halfway, so the egg white encased the partially set yolk. The outer layer would be slightly solidified, while the inside would still leak a bit of liquid yolk. This, you would swallow eagerly, savoring the taste on your lips and bringing your taste buds to their peak satisfaction.
But a single pot with a dozen or so poached eggs was no longer enough for Jing Shu. So, she made several dozen more pots, filling up 2 cubic meters of her Magic Cube Space. She used up several bags of rice and didn’t count the eggs; instead, she cracked a whole stack of them into the pots, successfully addressing the egg storage issue in Jingshu’s space.
A full 2 cubic meters felt so secure. Whenever she wanted, she could ladle out a big bowl, immediately getting five to six runny-yolk poached eggs. The ability to eat cooked food at any time, anywhere—this was her greatest source of happiness at the moment.
Next, making red wine was also easy. Jing Shu saved up a lot of grapes and followed tutorials to make red wine. In the end, the only troublesome part was filtering it twice; the rest was just letting it ferment.
Speaking of which, she had to applaud her own ingenuity—she had discovered another function of the space.
The heavy rain and damp weather outside were not suitable for fermentation and brewing. So, Jing Shu placed them in the space to ferment. But if there was no life inside, the independent Magic Cube Space would automatically convert to a vacuum, time-stop mode. That meant if you put something fermenting inside, it would remain unchanged no matter how long it was left there before being taken out.
Thus, Jing Shu placed the items for fermentation in the space alongside the snakes she was raising. After thinking it through, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and cows had too strong a scent, which she feared might affect the taste of the wine. It wouldn’t be good to end up with a chicken or duck-flavored wine.
The only things without a scent were the small insects Jing Shu had picked up from West Mountain. After such a long time of breeding, the dozen or so insects she had initially brought back had, after three generations, become extremely ferocious, eating anything. If she merely kept them separated by the jars, Jing Shu feared they would gnaw through the containers and ruin the wine.
In the end, she placed the snakes and the wine together. The snakes were relatively large, occupying only about one cubic meter. Jing Shu used an iron cage to separate them from the wine. The jars were sealed, so even if a snake accidentally got into the wine, it would simply become Snake Medicine Wine—how convenient!