Jing Shu picked up a small tube and shook it under the dim light. The liquid inside shimmered, scattering starlike colors across the glass.
"What's this?" She rested her chin on her hand, frowning. The metal box only had a label: ZS-880.
"Could this be what we're supposed to find this time? The reagent that, when fused with the cauldron, can make cells divide one more time? But we're supposed to look for the formula, right? Whatever, let's just keep it for now. No matter what it is, it's worth a fortune once sold. Worst case, we can trade it for other supplies."
Even though digital currency didn't mean much to her anymore, materials were getting scarcer, prices kept rising, and with the fifth year's blizzards and migrations coming, Jing Shu had to start spending big to prepare. Money might've turned into mere numbers, but in the apocalypse, no one ever thought they had too much of it.
Ironically, not long after she'd boasted that digital money was just numbers, she found herself millions in debt, running around every day trying to make cash to pay it off. But that's a story for another time.
With a sharp clack, she shut the metal box and turned to the most eye-catching thing in her Rubik's Cube Space—a pile of fist-sized, uneven stones, about a dozen of them, with a small card attached. Jing Shu ran the text through her translator:
[Martian meteorite. Formed under high temperatures upon impact, it contains a unique magnetic field and rare elements. Every so often, it can produce 24 of the rare elements required for ZS-880 synthesis.]
She didn't know exactly what ZS-880 was, but she had a good idea. Probably the reagent formula they were after. Great. The formula's missing, but she found the essential refining material instead.
Martian meteorites—she'd heard about those. One had once sold for tens of millions of euros. Priceless treasures, really.
And now, in this world, these things were the key to extracting rare elements. That alone made them absurdly valuable. Jing Shu couldn't help feeling uneasy, though. Holding that much wealth in her hands… would someone kill to get it?
Next, she opened the third container. Inside was a high-tech data carrier and a frosted glass vessel chilled with dry ice. Something strange floated inside, along with another small card.
Her heart thumped wildly. Could this be the formula they were searching for? Modern tech usually stored important data in chips, not cloud servers, to prevent hacking.
The translation wasn't perfect, but with Jing Shu's own understanding added in, it roughly read:
[Z10 Bacterial Synthetic Meat. By cultivating bacteria to produce proteins, then modifying the protein's NDA chain, synthetic meat is formed. Current data allows 95% replication of beef flavor, 90% of chicken flavor, and 80% of fish flavor. Main components include—]
The label on the vessel read: Z10 Bacterial Sample.
She read it several times, and it hit her—this must be the core formula and tech behind synthetic meat.
Of course, for someone like Jing Shu, who had her own space and no shortage of chicken, duck, cattle, and sheep, this wasn't much use personally.
But the world was starving. China was starving. Even before the apocalypse, America had already developed synthetic meat, claiming it would end slaughter, save resources, and cut breeding time. The texture was almost identical to real meat, but…
The cost was ridiculous. Like spending two hundred thousand yuan to fake a hundred-yuan bill—it looked real, but what was the point?
"I wonder what this Z10 Bacterial Synthetic Meat costs to make. Still, it fits perfectly with the massive food mutations two years later. First, use bacteria to synthesize meat, then enlarge it hundreds of times. That'd solve Wu City's food shortage. If it works, this is basically a money-printing cheat! But this one has to go through official channels."
Two years later, when people would panic at the mere mention of food shortages, she didn't plan to act like a hero. But she could pull strings from behind the scenes. Jing Shu had been thinking about how to save Qian Duoduo from collapsing, kind of a "curve rescue" approach to saving herself. After all, she was still a shareholder of Xingfu Shiyuan. The root of all evil was food scarcity, right? If there was enough to eat, even tyrants might calm down. If not… well, she hadn't said a thing.
Jing Shu quickly organized the items. Anything that didn't need to be made public went into her space, while those that had to be "officially processed" went into another burlap sack. Some she didn't even have time to inspect went straight into storage.
Every single item was valuable, but most couldn't be used directly.
One, however, caught her eye. It looked ordinary—a small card, kind of like an ID. When she picked it up, she saw a chip embedded inside. No clue what it did, but anything from a rich man's vault had to be something precious, probably one of a kind.
She kept it close to her chest. Maybe it'd come in handy later.
Smoke still curled in the air behind her. The alarm blared on, yet no one showed up. Jing Shu frowned. Seriously? Was this entire estate empty except for the guards she'd already taken care of? With noise like that, the whole manor should've heard it by now. Wasn't their "two-kilometer instant targeting system" supposed to kill everything that moved? Big talk.
If so, then where the hell was everyone?
She glanced into the sack at Hao Yunlai, still pale and unconscious. She checked his breathing—still alive. Good enough.
Before leaving, she sent a message to the group:
"I made a little explosion here. Pretty loud. But not a single guard showed up, not even one person. I think this manor might be completely empty. Snake Spirit, maybe test it from the air and the front gate?"
"Aerial defense is active. I released ten hydrogen balloons just now, all got shot down."
"I'll send some creatures over to test the perimeter."
"I told them I heard an explosion earlier and they didn't believe me. How's your haul inside?"
"Father will arrive in ten minutes. If you still can't find the target, we'll have to move to Plan B."
Dragging Hao Yunlai and the items meant for public delivery, Jing Shu arrived at the second villa—the place where her Five-Step Snake had vanished.
It looked like another European-style mansion, nothing unusual at first glance.
But she knew better. This place was definitely as booby-trapped as the last one. She was about to send out a few more snakes to die for reconnaissance when—
A synthetic voice echoed suddenly, making her almost piss herself.
[Welcome home.]
"Huh? Did I trigger something?" She immediately crouched low and backed away several steps, terrified another laser trap would fire. There was actually a motion sensor here!