I Am Cultivating in the Apocalypse

Chapter 706: Back to Wu City to Set Up the Factory

The Magic Cube Space, now replenished, was brimming with vigor and energy. Jing Shu even saw overlapping illusions, as if hundreds of Magic Cubes were spinning in her mind.

She just had to quickly restore the First Order Magic Cube, and then she could upgrade!

It seemed she had to intensify her practice in the coming days; otherwise, being stuck at the critical point would be quite uncomfortable.

Jing Shu even wanted to go home right away, seclude herself, and then obsessively practice the Magic Cube to hurry and upgrade! Upgrade!

She temporarily suppressed the urgent desire to upgrade.

Her surroundings were still quiet, with no anomalies occurring. This time, Jing Shu approached the giant pit. She discovered it reeked; hardly any green slime remained, only densely packed, green, wriggling insects frantically devouring each other.

Jing Shu left. With the green crystals, she could breed these Hulks. The process this time was unexpectedly smooth!

All the backup plans Jing Shu had prepared went unused.

It wasn’t until five days later, when Jing Shu left the ’realm,’ that she still couldn’t believe how easily she had succeeded this time.

It was as if she had really come for a vacation and just ’picked up’ a good find.

However, this smooth success was thanks to Jing Shu’s research and understanding of dimensional matters. Otherwise, if she had been as clueless as before, she would probably have been utterly confused when facing such situations.

Moreover, she wouldn’t have known about the concept of a trajectory. This place was so vast; if she truly had to search for the source, it could have taken forever.

And with reverse thinking, one would probably look for bigger and bigger Hulks, rather than searching for the origin.

Later, Xiao Wei asked Jing Shu, "What would have happened if we had gone to look for bigger and bigger Hulks back then?"

After some thought, Jing Shu said uncertainly, "We might have never been able to leave this place."

Because that was their developmental trajectory.

Simply capturing a Hulk was useless; breeding them still required the power of the green dimension.

As it turned out, Jing Shu didn’t realize she had caused a significant problem. By taking the original power of that ’realm,’ she caused the Hulks, which were supposed to evolve along a set trajectory, to suddenly be deprived of that crucial element.

Unstable power would lead to unknown changes—either collapse or the Hulks becoming berserk.

So, that place was no longer as Jing Shu remembered it from her previous life. What it would evolve into afterward, nobody knew. Whether the Hulks would still emerge, or what the multitude of organisms in the pool would become without the constraints of the dimension and trajectory, was a mystery.

Jing Shu would only find out about all of this when she passed by again during the migration.

However, Jing Shu and Xiao Wei did find the missing insects. After such a long exploration, it turned out this place was not dangerous.

So, after returning and reporting the situation, Jun Bao decided to continue digging the tunnel straight through this area, then follow the line on the map and press straight ahead!

The insects started working again, and the hired diggers behind them began the repair work, using the most primitive labor to complete the tunnels that might extend for tens of thousands of kilometers!

Don’t think that once the insects completed the initial, simpler tunneling work, the subsequent manual labor would be easy.

Supply stations would be set up along the tunnel. Every few dozen kilometers, there were service areas from before the apocalypse. These needed to be manually refurbished, and connecting upper and lower tunnels and roads had to be dug. Once that was done, energy and food supplies wouldn’t need to be transported all the way.

Up until now, the mortality rate had reached 20%, with deaths due to accidents, exhaustion, illness, or freezing.

But not a single person had died from hunger.

There were two meals every day, and after the tunnels were dug through, one could join Wu City and become a true Wu City person. This prospect motivated everyone immensely, and complaints were rare. If they hadn’t come to repair the tunnels, they probably would have starved to death in some forgotten corner.

"Jing Shu, you must come to see us often," Xiao Wei said, very reluctant to part.

"Don’t worry. Didn’t I give you a few mobile phones? If you need anything, just call me. I’ve also sent you a complete cookbook; keep practicing, and you’ll get the hang of it. Besides, I still have to come over to check on the progress every few days."

The chef was leaving—the one who cooked such delicious food. Although in the past few days the chef had smoked all the meat and made a lot of spicy beef jerky, cold pot skewers, and various snacks... it was still very hard for them to see her go.

「...」

After Jing Shu returned to Wu City, the first thing she did was get a new factory up and running.

Raising Hulks had no special requirements. If it weren’t for the fear of workers freezing to death, a site wouldn’t even be necessary. So, the prototype for this batch of prefab houses was simply a row of large warehouses hoisted over from the former Jiuding Wholesale Market.

It had no other advantages except that it was tall and vast, with nothing inside as far as the eye could see.

As a future mode of transportation and also the starting station, the site had to be a bit larger.

Jun Bao was indeed very responsible. During Jing Shu’s absence, the personnel he had assigned had already figured out the technology for concentrating rotten corpse insects.

"Not only that, but they can provide you with two technologies," Jun Bao explained enthusiastically. "One is concentrated insect powder, a feed made with a 10:1 ratio. The other is concentrated insect fluid. This one is slightly more costly, but it makes feed with a 30:1 ratio. They say that just a test tube’s worth can fill a cow."

Actually, this wouldn’t have been considered much of a technology before the apocalypse. But after the apocalypse, many things were lost, making it quite troublesome to recreate them.

Jing Shu nodded, very satisfied. Hulks would consume a lot of food in the future. If they couldn’t migrate or move about freely, would they have to carry large packs of rations? Food was also a crucial part of their future breeding and growth. Eating dirt provided no nutrition; green energy could only be used for initial rapid breeding.

"I want both. Produce as much as possible. The workers have already been recruited, so let’s start production as soon as possible."

Jun Bao tapped the table, then held out his hand. "Before that, could you please pay back the money you owe?"

"Huh?"

"Have you not noticed that there are a lot fewer rotten corpse insects in Wu City?"

Jing Shu pondered for a moment. On her way back, especially in the uninhabited suburbs, she had seen people carrying makeshift shovels and pushing homemade carts, digging for rotten corpse insects.

And there were quite a few of them.

They’ve already dug as far as the suburbs?

Jun Bao continued with a smile, "During the days you were away, we collected a lot of rotten corpse insects. Despite the 1000:1 collection ratio, people were so eager that they nearly emptied Wu City. Now, your factory’s warehouse can’t even hold it all. I’ve stored it in the grain reserve for you. You can take it whenever you need. There’s no storage fee, since there’s hardly any grain left anyway."

"Didn’t I leave money and also let them exchange for Insect Cake?"