I Am Cultivating in the Apocalypse

Chapter 698: Digging Tunnels Encounters a Problem

The end of the New Year celebrations officially marked the beginning of a new year.

The Jing family made sweet dumplings on the Lantern Festival. Besides the black sesame ones, they also created various homemade flavors, as the store-bought frozen ones from before the apocalypse were long gone.

In the apocalypse, no matter how much food you stored, it would eventually run out. Often, you wouldn’t even realize how much your household consumed over time. To survive long-term in the apocalypse, cultivating your own food sources became essential.

One doesn’t realize the cost of firewood, rice, oil, salt, and vinegar until one manages a household. A single person could consume over a thousand kilograms of grain in a year. And when disasters severed humanity from the fruits of its millennia-old wisdom... you would find that satisfying any specific craving became extremely difficult.

Now, if you wanted to eat sweet dumplings or fried red bean buns, you had to start from the very beginning: cultivating your own crops.

Fortunately, Jing Shu had her space, allowing her to harvest crops every ten to fifteen days.

Having satisfied her immediate culinary desires, Jing Shu began to schedule the cultivation of various raw materials. She didn’t need to plant much of each type. A single field, with its six plots, could be densely planted—for instance, with corn growing above and sweet potatoes below.

Jing Shu took out the glutinous rice she had grown in her space, and Mr. Jing ground it into flour.

With the glutinous rice flour ready, how could they not make glutinous rice cakes, glutinous rice desserts, sticky buns, and cool cakes? Thus, the entire family started to get busy.

The Jing Family had many mouths to feed and consumed a lot. Just making sweet dumplings used several dozen kilograms of glutinous rice flour. Jing Shu, not particularly fond of overly sweet dumplings, made plain glutinous rice balls for herself.

These types of frozen goods were especially popular during the apocalypse. Since they were already going to such lengths, they decided to prepare various kinds of rice dumplings again.

They made sweet rice dumplings, savory rice dumplings, pork-filled rice dumplings, and ones with chicken legs, ribs, and so on. All were wrapped in lotus leaves from the pond, boiled until cooked, then frozen. Reheated later, they were delicious.

During these days, Jing Shu did a thorough inventory of all the materials in her space, directly proceeding to create all sorts of finished food products.

One portion was food that could be openly accounted for, things they could take on the road in the RV for everyone to eat. This mainly consisted of pre-cooked, frozen goods.

Another portion consisted of items that, given the current situation, absolutely couldn’t be revealed, like fresh durian. She used these to make things like durian mille-crepe cake, which she stored in her space.

Furthermore, she could cook her favorite foods and store them directly in her space for preservation. These tasted much better than frozen goods. Crucially, this saved the reheating step and conserved fuel.

Still, freshly made, hot food tastes the best, especially in this bitterly cold winter. It felt great to be able to eat various delicious dishes anytime, anywhere.

In this apocalypse, the coolest thing was, whenever you craved something, you could just have it.

For example, if I wanted roast duck or whole roasted lamb the next second, I could simply pull it out of my space, eat it, and feel immense satisfaction.

For such blissful moments, Jing Shu, undeterred by the hard work, planned to cook every item from the second half of her cookbook in the coming days and hoard them in her space.

In the deep quiet of the night, she’d take out some food and have a secret snack.

In the time to come, there wouldn’t be another place as secluded and leisurely as the villa for cooking freely. Jing Shu even wondered if she should take the barbecue grill from the villa’s back door with them during the migration. After all, using it to roast ducks, which were then wrapped in pancakes with cucumber, sweet bean sauce, and shredded spring onions, was simply too delicious.

Forget it, I’d better roast more ducks, whole lambs, and suckling pigs, and store them secretly in my space to eat by myself.

To prevent the aromas from spreading, Jing Shu went to considerable effort, eventually opting to cook inside her space, which also increased her speed.

Master Jing was busy for two months before he had to take Wang Dazhao to learn how to pilot a helicopter, because Jun Bao had begun dispatching helicopters to explore new paths.

The tunnel digging finally encountered a problem.

Insects kept disappearing mid-dig, which Xiao Wei reported to Jing Shu.

"The insects disappeared? Were they killed? Or..."

Xiao Wei said, "It feels like my insects are suddenly very far away from me. They’re all still alive, but they can’t come over, and we can’t get to them either. They’re living quite well over there; currently, they’re in no danger."

Jing Shu then understood: they had ’crossed a boundary.’ Earth’s new continental plate map meant some areas would be normal, while others might possess strange energies, exhibiting various unique characteristics.

It sounds mysterious, but it’s essentially similar to an ’invasive species’ phenomenon, a normal occurrence.

Are crayfish, as an invasive species, terrifying or mystical?

No, they’re just delicious.

So Jing Shu reported the situation to the Township Government, saying, "If we continue digging now, we have two main choices. First, dig straight ahead according to the original plan, taking the shortest, most direct route. This will be difficult, but if it’s for a trade route, it will be faster. The downside is the unknown dangers.

"Second, explore this newly appeared continental plate, then detour around it to reach the destination. This would make the digging route longer, and the future trade route would also be longer and consume more resources, but it would be safer."

Jing Shu remembered from her past life in the apocalypse: there weren’t so many complications back then. The tyrant, who would let nothing stand in his way, simply led his mighty army straight ahead; those who couldn’t keep up were left to die.

It took a full six months of travel to reach the destination then.

Therefore, Jun Bao immediately ordered the Township Government’s helicopters to scout the map, just like last time. They were to fly in groups of five, maintaining distance and communication, equipped with personal small satellites, supplies, and armed forces.

Each team was also accompanied by a person with supernatural abilities. Of course, Wu City had far fewer such talents compared to the Imperial Capital, and their abilities weren’t as monstrously powerful as Zhen Nantian’s.

Every one of these individuals was precious, so the mission’s goal was to detect any anomalies and be able to send a distress signal.

Because of this development, Jing Shu hurriedly took Wang Dazhao to learn how to fly a helicopter. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be a huge joke if they needed to flee and didn’t know how to pilot one?

The tunnel digging was thus temporarily halted.

Losing each insect and each rotten mermaid pained Jing Shu greatly.

During this period, Xiao Wei’s tribe began crafting handmade items for use on the road, taking precautions.

For example, walking to keep up with the main group’s pace would be too tiring. So, they created dual-use ’insect cars,’ equipped with sled runners for snowy areas and wheels for difficult terrain.

They could produce more of these insect cars to transport supplies, or at the very least, rent them out to earn some rental income and food.

Supply issues were still quite a headache.

Thus, the fur from the recently prolific long-haired balls found a new use. Jingshu Clothing Factory also had a new task: making specialized tents from the long fur. These tents, if sold to migrating travelers, were airtight and would at least prevent people from freezing to death.