Gritting her teeth, Qu Meijing decided to reveal a little information. “I dreamed that after the apocalypse, many places would become terrible. But around Xinling Village, life would still be bearable.”
To be more precise, in her previous life, Xinling Village and the surrounding area were located right on the border between two cities. Nearby were several large warehouses. So when the disaster struck, this area was incorporated into a safety base.
Inside a safety base, personal security was guaranteed.
Moreover, when the rainy season came in the second year of the apocalypse, the higher elevation of Xinling Village meant it avoided flooding. She couldn’t afford to miss such a good location.
But she would never reveal the full truth of her previous life. She could only give a plausible reason. After all, everyone’s prophetic dreams were fragmented. Saying this shouldn’t raise any issues.
Qin Sang could tell that Qu Meijing wasn’t being entirely truthful. But from her words, Qin Sang gathered that Xinling Village would be safe after the apocalypse.
That made Qin Sang happy.
She hated being indebted to others. So she decided to offer a few pointers. “Your stockpiling and home renovations have been very conspicuous. Especially after the disaster announcement, the villagers guessed that you had stockpiled a lot of supplies in advance. So be careful. As for the livestock rooms—you might not know this, but the whole village is doing the same thing in their own homes.”
She left it at that. What Qu Meijing did next was up to her.
Qu Meijing had just been feeling sentimental about what a good person she was. Then Qin Sang’s warning left her frozen in place.
——
“Is Miss Qu okay?”
Mom Qin asked casually when she saw her daughter come downstairs. Although Qin Sang hadn’t said anything, she had guessed that something was going on with Qu Meijing.
Qin Sang shook her head. “She’s fine. Just a minor injury.”
It really wasn’t a big deal. Through-and-through wounds take a long time to heal. But Qu Meijing’s healing rate was faster than normal. Even though Qin Sang had secretly added some energy water, the healing was still unusually quick. And it wasn’t just Qu Meijing. When she had gone out with Brother Fa that morning, Qin Sang had subtly asked around. Brother Fa had mentioned that whenever he scraped himself recently, the wound healed very fast.
Closer to home, there was her father.
Their entire building was being reinforced, and workers were hard to find. Her father had been doing much of the work himself. With all that labor, he inevitably got minor injuries. And his wounds healed remarkably quickly too.
So Qin Sang suspected that space holders experienced a significant boost in physical fitness. One manifestation was faster healing than average.
She was sure the authorities had noticed this as well, given their much larger sample size.
And she was right. Many soldiers had been preparing for the apocalypse, and some had been injured. Among the injured were space holders. Military doctors quickly discovered their accelerated healing.
Now, the authorities were conducting comparative studies, trying to understand exactly how spaces affected the human body. This would determine how to allocate the jade they collected.
But before that, the authorities had already completed the nationwide coordination and management of supplies. The next step was to distribute the appropriate purchasing quotas to residents.
And of course, the reason they could distribute supplies to residents was that the nationwide registration and verification process was complete.
The supply arrangements followed immediately.
——
On July 22nd, the authorities announced the specific implementation plan for resident supply quotas on the Survival app.
The plan stipulated a minimum subsistence level of supplies that each resident could claim from the authorities every week. These supplies were meager but enough to keep a person from starving or dying of thirst.
These supplies were free.
Paid supplies also had quotas, but the quotas were larger than before when people lined up at supermarkets. Residents just needed to order and pay in advance through the mall section of the Survival app, then pick up their supplies at the local community office.
Yes, the mall section of the Survival app had finally opened. It worked just like a regular supermarket shopping app, with all kinds of supplies—some of which weren’t even available in supermarkets. For example, space detection compasses.
But the biggest difference from a supermarket was that this mall used points for settlement.
Now, those with points were smiling. Those without points were crying.
Many people online were asking how to earn points. The simplest way was for space holders to help the authorities transport supplies—that earned points. The hardest way was to take on infrastructure tasks posted in the official tasks section.
Comparing the two, people found that space holders had it far too easy.
Suddenly, the topic of how to obtain a space shot to the top of the trending searches.
It was also around this time that Manman was finally lured back to Qin Wenqiang’s home.
——
That same day, the authorities announced the resident supply quotas and the point-earning methods.
After seeing this, Qin Wenbang and Qin Wenqiang came to the same conclusion as everyone online: having a space was an enormous advantage.
So when Manman actually showed up, the gleam in their eyes was terrifyingly bright.
“Qin Wenqiang, you called me back saying you had something to talk about. Who’s this outsider?”
Qin Wenqiang stood up and straightened his clothes, which smelled like stale pickles. He hadn’t expected Manman to come directly to his home instead of asking him to pick her up at the station. It was a bit of a shock—but even more of a pleasant surprise.
Good that she came. She had saved him the trouble of luring her.
He immediately walked to the door and looked left and right. The outside temperature was high, and no one was around. He was even more satisfied.
“Say something! Are you dead? And you dared to call the police on me before…”
Manman was still complaining when Qin Wenqiang, smiling, reached out and grabbed her, pulling her inside the house. Then he shut the door.
“Why are you closing the door? Didn’t you say you had jade to give me?”
Manman knew Qin Wenqiang well. He was a complete simp. On one hand, he was insecure about coming from an urban village family. On the other hand, he groveled before her because she was from the provincial capital. It was already 2025, and yet there were still people this deluded. The truth was, Manman envied his family for being a relocated households with compensation. With all that money, wasn’t he living a much better life than her, a broke provincial capital native?
That was the only reason she stayed with him.
If the apocalypse hadn’t been coming, she could have used his family’s resources to have a house, a car, and a decent job in the provincial capital.
But then the apocalypse was announced. Her rundown apartment in the provincial capital wouldn’t cut it. She had read plenty of apocalypse novels and knew that life would be easier attached to a man. And besides, she had gotten her space because of Qin Wenqiang. If she didn’t go back with him, she was afraid her secret would be exposed.
She just never expected Qin Wenqiang to be so stupid. He had let her hoard so many supplies in her space.
She simply couldn’t help herself. That many supplies—enough to live well in the provincial capital.
It wasn’t her fault! If anything, it was Qin Wenqiang’s fault for testing her with so many supplies. She had only made a mistake that any human could make.
But then this simp Qin Wenqiang had actually called the police on her. Thinking about her time in custody, Manman seethed with hatred. If she hadn’t been clever enough to share the secret of blood-binding jade to gain spaces with a certain boss in the detention center, she wouldn’t have gotten out so quickly.
She had come this time because Qin Wenqiang said he had found several good pieces of jade.
Of course she wanted to come! She wanted to try blood-binding a few more jade pieces to expand her space’s size. Maybe she could reach the pinnacle of life with a super-large space.
All the female protagonists in apocalypse novels had huge spaces, didn’t they?
“Wenqiang, show me the jade you mentioned.” At the thought of soon acquiring more jade, Manman’s tone turned syrupy sweet.
Smiling, Qin Wenqiang glanced at Qin Wenbang.
Qin Wenbang nodded. While Manman had her back to him, focused on speaking with Qin Wenqiang, he picked up a sharp knife and stabbed her from behind. Before doing so, he remembered to cover her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
Although these days, every household kept their doors and windows shut with the AC running, making it hard for sounds to carry.
But damn it, Qin Sang heard a faint noise from her own home. Acting on impulse, she pulled back the curtain and looked toward the source.
Her house and Qin Wenqiang’s house were both standalone properties with surrounding walls. The two walls had a gap of less than a meter. Strictly speaking, the two houses were very close.
Her unnaturally sharp eyesight and hearing allowed Qin Sang to clearly see what was happening in Qin Wenqiang’s courtyard from her third-floor window.
Qin Wenbang stood behind a woman, covering her mouth. Qin Wenqiang stood in front of her.
A knife had been driven through the woman’s chest. Bright red blood gushed onto the ground.
Qin Sang took a deep breath. She had never expected to witness a murder firsthand.
And she recognized the victim—it was Manman, the infamous Manman.
But now, Manman’s hands were hanging limply at her sides. She was likely beyond saving.
Qin Sang called the police and described the murder scene. Then she opened her phone and took a photo of the crime scene.
At the same time, she pricked up her ears to listen to the two murderers’ conversation.
“Is she dead?”
“Dead.”
“The space?”
“Look around.”
Like two idiots, the two men got down on the ground and searched inch by inch.
After a while, finding nothing, they looked around.
“No space, no supplies. Tell me, Qin Wenqiang, did the space merge with you?”
“Bullshit. If I had a space, I would have killed you a long time ago.”
“Oh, so you finally admit it!”
The two who had just cooperated in murder were now fighting each other. Qin Sang was speechless. What surprised her even more was their motive for murder: they thought that killing a space holder would make the space—or at least the supplies inside it—drop.
Did they think real life was a video game?
Then again, maybe they just didn’t value human life. They just wanted to try it. Kill someone and see. What if it worked?
This sent a chill through Qin Sang. She immediately opened her phone and searched online.
Good heavens, people online were indeed discussing this very thing. Although such posts were deleted as soon as they appeared, there were indeed people asking: if you kill a space holder, does their space drop? Or, at the very least, do the supplies inside drop?
Qin Sang remembered a saying: when you find a cockroach in your house, it means there are thousands more.
Likewise, when she saw such discussions online, it meant that people had already tried this method.
The sound of sirens filled the air. Qin Sang sighed.
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