The apocalypse had not yet arrived, but the ocean was already showing signs of distress. The most obvious sign was the steady stream of dead fish washing up on the beach—and in considerable numbers. The authorities had no choice but to send crews every night to clean them up, to prevent contamination.
Before coming, Qin Sang had expected to see dead fish on the beach. But when she actually arrived, the stench of rotting fish mixed with the sea air was overwhelming. As far as she could see, the beach was densely littered with dead fish.
“Why are there so many?” Qin Sang asked in shock.
They had arrived at the beach early in the morning. The sun had just risen, and the temperature was just over fifty degrees Celsius—still bearable.
Team Leader Lin sighed. “If the temperature keeps rising, there might be even more.”
Qin Sang thought about it and realized he was right. Higher temperatures would raise the ocean temperature. Excessively high temperatures reduce the ocean’s ability to dissolve oxygen. When oxygen levels in the seawater drop, marine life naturally suffocates. Another contributing factor was that extremely high water temperatures could also cook marine life alive.
For now, this impact hadn’t reached the deep sea. The marine life in the shallow waters was the one suffering.
Qin Sang spotted shrimp carcasses mixed in with the piles of dead fish. They were bright red—clearly cooked by the high temperatures.
Sigh…
According to the official announcements, the future would only get hotter. Setting aside the negative effects of rising sea temperatures, the consequences of melting polar ice caps alone would be incredibly difficult to address.
For this reason, when Qin Sang had been stockpiling supplies earlier, she had specifically asked Da Linzi to buy plenty of portable oxygen cylinders.
She hoped she would never have to use them.
——
“Man, this place smells worse than a landfill. If it weren’t for the points, I wouldn’t want to come here.”
“Haha, Brother Hu, if you don’t work hard to earn points, how are you going to support those 18-year-old schoolgirls at home?”
The group laughed and joked as they talked, their conversation extremely vulgar. They either rated each other’s women or bragged about what supplies they had recently acquired.
Just as Qin Sang was worrying about the coming disaster, she suddenly heard this disgusting conversation and turned to look at the speakers.
She saw a team of about twenty people, each looking utterly sleazy. None of them wore the official red vests issued by the authorities. Clearly, they weren’t official personnel.
“Captain, who are these people?”
Normally, ordinary people couldn’t access the dock area. Security was tight right now. So the only way these sleazy-looking people could have gotten in was if someone had let them.
Team Leader Lin said, “They were probably arranged by Dafa Ocean Fishing Group.”
Qin Sang asked, “Wasn’t this task assigned by the authorities?”
At this, the other team members, who had remained silent, all chimed in. They had all received notifications before going to bed last night, telling them to report here today for a temporary task.
Team Leader Lin explained, “Dafa Ocean is the largest fishing group on Hainan Island. Our task this time is to load a portion of the fish that Dafa Ocean is supplying to the authorities.”
Hearing this, Qin Sang understood.
Even though the apocalypse was approaching, these groups and conglomerates all had their own survival strategies. Dafa Ocean, for example, had likely partnered with the authorities. A portion of their catch would be handed over to the authorities, and the rest would be theirs to keep.
Technically, the authorities could handle this themselves. But time was tight right now, and they couldn’t spare the manpower.
The team members present were all sharp, and they quickly grasped the nuances of the situation.
Seeing this, Team Leader Lin nodded slightly. “So, let them say whatever they want. We’ll do our job. When the boats dock, our team will load first. Once we’re done, we leave immediately.”
The task was urgent, so the authorities had sent over fifty people in five teams. However, everyone’s spatial storage was already partially filled with residents’ supplies. In total, their available space was only about the equivalent of twenty empty storage spaces.
Qin Sang calculated how many fish that volume could hold and found that it wasn’t much at all.
That meant the fish population in the sea had probably decreased significantly.
She looked again at the beach covered in dead fish. These dead fish would be roasted under the scorching sun all day, then disposed of at night. Then new dead fish would appear. The cycle would continue until all the fish were gone.
The thought was chilling.
Qin Sang wished she could stuff every marine creature into her spatial storage. Later, when the world recovered, she could release them back into the ocean. But she knew that was impossible.
This apocalypse wasn’t just for humans—it was for animals and plants too.
——
“Hey, brothers. So you’re the official spatial ability team? Here, have a cigarette…”
The man who had been complaining about the stench on the beach suddenly sauntered over and shoved a cigarette into Shen Zhu’s hand.
He had clearly mistaken Shen Zhu for the leader of their group. That made sense—Shen Zhu was big and burly, standing out conspicuously in any crowd.
“No thanks. And don’t go calling everyone ‘brother’ out here,” Shen Zhu said, his tone serious.
Having spent a day with him, Qin Sang knew he was irritated. That filthy conversation they’d been having—who could stand to listen to that? They called the beach smelly, but their mouths were even worse. If there weren’t so many people around, Qin Sang would have loved to slap them a few times.
Yesterday, Bald Old Wang had killed his wife over affairs with other women. Today, this group of sleazy degenerates was bragging about “schoolgirls.” Any normal person would be disgusted.
Qin Sang made a mental note to teach these scumbags a lesson when the opportunity arose.
Meanwhile, the middle-aged man who had offered the cigarette, seeing Shen Zhu reject him so bluntly, dropped his smile completely. But he didn’t dare actually cause trouble for official personnel. He had come over to cozy up to them, not to make enemies. He forced a grin, muttered a few “fines,” and slunk back to his group of degenerates without even a harsh word.
“Be careful. That man’s name is Li Laohu. He used to be a street thug and has connections around here. You embarrassed him like that, he’ll definitely try something.”
The voice was very quiet. Qin Sang turned to see a pale-faced middle-aged man. He wasn’t wearing an official red vest either, and a few young people stood behind him. He had probably been arranged by Dafa Ocean to help with loading.
Qin Sang walked over to chat. “Uncle, were you arranged by Dafa Ocean too?”
The pale-faced man nodded. “Yeah, just trying to earn a living.” As he spoke, he kept glancing sideways at Li Laohu.
That said it all—Li Laohu was clearly bad news.
“Afraid of what? I’ve been around for over a decade. I’ve seen plenty of trash like this. They wouldn’t dare cross us,” Shen Zhu said with absolute confidence.
Seeing this, the pale-faced man assumed Shen Zhu was some big-shot leader and eagerly started buttering him up.
Qin Sang: … That shift in attitude was a little fast. But since he had been kind enough to warn them, Qin Sang decided to keep an eye on the situation.
That was when she overheard that Li Laohu actually knew Bald Old Wang. Judging by their tone, this group of degenerates was planning to drive north together. They already had their vehicles ready. They would finish today’s job and leave. And they thought it was a shame Old Wang had been caught. They mocked him for being useless—couldn’t even handle his own wife.
Then came more garbage talk. Either demeaning women or fantasizing about how, once the apocalypse hit, they would use their spatial abilities to dominate, recruit underlings, and collect beauties.
Absolutely disgusting.
For people like this to have spatial abilities was a complete waste.
Admittedly, that was a bit of an overgeneralization. But Qin Sang felt that the fact that spatial abilities didn’t filter for character was deeply flawed. When Blue Star’s consciousness was handing out jade pendants with spatial powers, why didn’t it set up some kind of morality test?
Qin Sang grumbled internally for a bit, then made a mental note of these degenerates. She would find a way to teach them a lesson.
Just then, the fishing boats at the dock finally finished preparing to unload their cargo.
Team Leader Lin immediately organized everyone to line up. Together with the other teams, they formed an orderly queue, waiting to load the goods.
——
Once the cargo was unloaded, several dock workers began counting and conducting spot checks. Goods that passed inspection were sent directly to the area where the spatial ability teams were waiting. Then, one by one, they moved forward. Shen Zhu was first.
He loaded basket after basket of fish into his spatial storage. Team Leader Lin stood by, recording the data. The entire process was highly efficient.
As soon as Shen Zhu’s storage was full, the next person stepped up.
About half an hour later, it was Qin Sang’s turn. Since she was pretending to be a spatial ability user, Qin Sang had already set aside a dedicated area in her Roast Goose Space, matching the volume of her Jade Pendant Space. She wasn’t worried about being exposed. She kept loading supplies into the designated area until it couldn’t hold another thing. Then she stepped aside and waited.
The entire loading process went smoothly. No villains caused trouble. No dramatic confrontations happened.
But Qin Sang kept her psychic energy focused on Li Laohu’s group. She noticed they had been staring at their team the whole time. Their expressions weren’t friendly.
They wouldn’t dare directly cause trouble for the authorities. But they would probably pull some sneaky tricks.
Li Laohu’s malicious intent was too obvious. Qin Sang’s psychic energy was like a demon-revealing mirror. She stayed on high alert and quietly warned Shen Zhu.
By noon, all the designated fish had been loaded into their spatial storage.
“Let’s go. Straight to the vehicles. We’ll eat at the airport while we wait for the plane.”
As soon as the task was complete, the team leaders urged everyone to pack up and leave. They were racing against the clock—get back to Huashan City, unload the supplies, then return to Hainan Island to continue their previous tasks.
No one complained. They obediently followed orders and boarded the buses that had been prepared early that morning.
At midday, the bus wouldn’t go far. The plan was to drive for ten minutes to a nearby subway station, then take the subway directly to the airport.
Fortunately, most of the subway lines here ran underground. There were a few above-ground stations along the way, but they could bypass them and take an entirely underground route.
They boarded the bus and arrived at the subway station ten minutes later without issue.
The station was empty—just their spatial ability teams. They lined up and boarded the subway one by one.
The subway’s air conditioning was set quite low. The sudden temperature shift made Qin Sang shiver. She turned her head casually and noticed that among the people still waiting to board, there were two more teams of over twenty people who weren’t wearing red vests.
But Li Laohu’s degenerate crew wasn’t among them.
“Are these people going the same way as us?” Auntie Er said between sneezes. She was even more sensitive to the temperature change. She muttered a quiet lament about getting old, then curiously watched the people waiting to board outside.
“Probably,” Qin Sang said. She was curious too, but only briefly. Everyone knew that knowing too much was rarely a good thing.
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