Nobody in that room could sit still. Some were flaunting identity, some were texting for help, some were throwing tantrums, trying every trick they had. The fat officer was unmoved by any of it. He was the kind of man you couldn't pressure into pity.
Jing Shu didn't fight. She stared hard at the supply list on the left. The price table was detailed, and as she ran the numbers on her assets, she felt her jaw drop. Seeing it on paper made it clear, and it scared her. If everything were tallied this way, she was sitting on a fortune, and honestly, everyone else looked broke.
Right now the most valuable things were live poultry, fresh vegetables, rice, flour, oil. She had fresh fruit, sky-high herbs she'd planted herself, and even without using the Rubik's Cube Space, the livestock alone put her far ahead. On top of that, she'd stocked up millions worth of pre-apocalypse supplies, rare snacks, cured meat, sausages. It was astronomical.
The list priced items by weight, down to the gram. Pull one item out and she could outclass everyone here. Some people were eating through their stores, but Jing Shu was farming, breeding, producing more every season. That meant her assets would keep rising in value.
But she couldn't just hand stuff over. The fat cop was right, this was an assessment, a sweep of Wu City's middle class. If she revealed everything, she'd end up as last year's leeks, harvested for whatever the government wanted. So what could she offer that wouldn't make her last, wouldn't make her look flashy, and wouldn't earn someone's hatred?
She scanned her holdings and brightened. Of course, red nematode patties.
After constant quakes and natural disasters, the state had no time or space to plant crops at scale. Lots of people had been displaced and couldn't produce value anymore. So the government started burning through the second year's stock of red nematode patties. People were tired of them, even sick to death of them, but in this world they still saved lives. They weren't glamorous commodities. They were like corn feed before the apocalypse, good only for feeding animals.
"Twenty jin (10 kg) of red nematode patties equals one virtual coin," Jing Shu read. "That's the going rate now. But I bought 200 jin for one virtual coin back then. Even accounting for water weight and compression, after labor, storage, and shipping, my profit's still around 500 percent. That's obscene. And given current demand, prices'll only go up."
Back then she'd raised a batch in the Space to feed the leeches, and she'd also set up an extra breeding pool as seed stock. What started as one cubic meter of red nematodes had, after half a year, swelled to a full eight cubic meters, roughly eight tonnes (about 8,000 kg). She knew that level of growth wasn't normal. In Wei Chang's pool the increase had only been maybe half as much. Red nematodes used to explode, breeding a new batch every seven days, but now growth rates had collapsed.
Something was off, and everybody was trying to figure it out. How to get bacteria to reproduce faster, how to restore the old breeding rate, how to make red nematodes boom again. The state cared too, because red nematodes were crucial to avoid mass starvation.
Jing Shu knew her numbers weren't normal. If she could fix the reproduction problem, she might stop a lot of deaths and become a sort of mini Yuan Longping. She even felt a little ridiculous thinking that, but she couldn't deny the thought.
So she put down a figure: one million virtual coins. That was her red nematode mogul price.
After everyone's resistance failed, the fat officer told them to reveal their cards. People glanced around, comparing numbers. The suit guy had written 3 million. Jing Shu had put down 1 million. The rest clustered between 100,000 and 800,000. Nobody wanted to be last, so most people inflated their numbers. There wasn't a single entry under 100,000.
The fat cop clapped, satisfied. "Alright, I'll run the auction. Captain Wang, keep tally of what everyone spends. Afterward you donate the equivalent items. If you can't, you can sign an IOU. We're not that strict, hehe."
Jing Shu rolled her eyes. The man was vile, stoking donations until people bled out, all to avoid being last.
"The first Type-95 automatic rifle starts at 1,500."
"Sold. 1,800. 1,900. 2,500. Final at 2,700."
The hook-nosed cop grinned maliciously. The projection screen updated a ranking table showing who'd pledged what. It was obvious who'd end up last. The further the auction went, the higher prices climbed.
The old man never bid, like he was asleep. Jing Shu didn't bid either, since nothing on the list really tempted her. That wasn't the point. A few more rifles or submachine guns would be useful, sure, but the bigger issue was the trap. Once you bought the guns, the follow-up ammo would be what kept you paying. Jing Shu'd bet her little finger those smiling old men would show up every few months asking for more donations, or to sell bullets at a price.
"Too bad Li Yuetian's not here, he'd make this less awkward," she muttered under her breath.
Li Yuetian wasn't faring any better. The fat officer wasn't lying about the monthly million quota. The director who'd overseen Banana Community had seen his people shifted under Lingshan's management, and now he had to scramble for donations elsewhere. There was no clean way out.
The auction kept climbing. Jing Shu narrowed her eyes. Maybe she should aim for defensive gear instead.
Then the single-use rocket launcher appeared on the list, and her eyes lit up.
"Model 08 single-use rocket launcher," the officer announced. "Cheap to produce. Pre-apocalypse they cost a few hundred yuan each. Easy to carry, and devastating in firepower. We've only got ten to sell, they're numbered, and we'll inspect them every three months. Use requires registration and video. Ten pieces, starting bid 15,000."