"People had noticed something was off about the city wall long ago, but because Dr. B used a new type of material, nothing suspicious showed up during inspections. On the first day he disappeared, the higher-ups in Austin were panicking. After all, whether it was Luminite or the 'Water of Life,' everything depended on Dr. B to oversee it.
But two days later, when the Austin authorities finally finished their full investigation, the truth came out. It turned out this whole thing had been a conspiracy between Dr. B and Tis. We joined in later to help dig tunnels and smuggle out supplies. Otherwise, how could millions of kilograms of materials vanish overnight?
So it made perfect sense that they lumped all of us together and put bounties on our heads. The big shots of the black market—those slave-trading bastards—added extra money to the bounty too. One of them was furious. First his entire grain stock was stolen, then his rare minerals disappeared. He even swore he'd find us, chop us to pieces, and feed us to his pets.
The Austin incident had caused such massive fallout that Dr. B and Tis were, of course, top priority. But since we've got 'criminal records,' it'll be hard for us to ever enter the U.S. again. Our fingerprints and facial data are all registered now."
Once the story was clear, everyone fell silent. Jing Shu stared at the news on the screen. Her photo and personal info were right there.
The picture was from when she'd been wearing that thick cotton coat and a green helmet. She looked like some middle-aged woman, yet her features were still pure and delicate. Somehow, her wanted photo looked more like a professional portrait.
To think, in her previous life she'd been obsessed with beauty. But after ten brutal years in the apocalypse, after the rheumatism from year two, the frostbite scars from year five, and her malnourished frame, she'd long stopped caring about looks. Ironically, the thing she'd lost before had quietly returned to her in this new life.
Life's funny like that. You never know what twist it'll throw at you. Sometimes, Jing Shu even dreamed about her Rubik's Cube Space vanishing without a trace.
Those dreams always jolted her awake. She often thought about that fear—while it was almost impossible for the Cube Space to just disappear, she refused to put all her eggs in one basket. Every batch of supplies stored inside the Cube Space had backup copies in the villa, in her secret warehouse, and even buried in the back mountain.
She worked hard to upgrade the Cube Space so she could survive better in the apocalypse, but she refused to rely on it too much. If she had it, she'd be grateful. If she lost it, that was fate. She'd face whatever came next with a steady mind.
She looked back at the document, where bold letters read: Issued by Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.
The bounty notice, once translated, roughly said:
Issued by the Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.
Code Name B: Leader of a fraud syndicate. Invented a new type of Luminite with a radiation level exceeding 300, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Austin. Later developed the 'Water of Life,' deceiving kind and honest citizens into investing millions of kilograms of food and rare minerals, and even stole Austin's latest dehydration vegetable technology.
Code Name C (Female)
Code Name D (Tis)
Then Jing Shu found her own entry below:
[Code Name J: Used her pure and gentle appearance to gain the trust of kind citizens and lure them into investing. Falsified multiple test results during the 'Water of Life' trials to cover for Dr. B. Numerous witnesses stated that without Code Name J's persuasion, they never would've fallen for the scam. She and Dr. B worked together to smuggle all the supplies and rare minerals out of Austin through hidden caves, playing a decisive role in the entire fraud.
Note: Without J, that damned Dr. B could never have succeeded in transporting so much material, nor could he have brutally killed the brave men on-site. Therefore, J is hereby classified as an A-level target, and the bounty amount is doubled!]
"Pure and gentle appearance?" Jing Shu rested her chin on her hand, speechless. She hadn't expected the American government to hold her in such high regard. They'd even doubled her bounty. How flattering.
"Guess the U.S. really isn't an option anymore."
Unless she changed her face, fingerprints, and iris scans entirely—but who knew if there'd still be much left of the U.S. in a year or two? The place was already hanging by a thread.
No one objected to giving up on America. There were other regions rich in resources. The world would soon face an oil shortage anyway. If it came down to it, they could head to an oil-rich country and haul some back. After the fifth year's Ice Age began, anyone without fuel for heat was as good as dead.
Besides, they'd already taken America's best goods. Time to look for new treasures elsewhere.
After all, in the dead of winter, no one could survive in temperatures below minus seventy degrees.
The cargo ship No. 808 moved slowly toward its destination. Once it arrived, Jing Shu and the others would take Qian Duoduo's private luxury jet back to the Chinese capital. The cargo ships would continue their sea route, bringing the goods home about ten days later.
Jing Shu helped set Yang Yang's broken bone and even gave him some black pills she'd made from Spirit Spring, since she'd been the one who accidentally injured him.
Monkey's injuries were worse. Both his legs were crushed. Jing Shu flattened the Spirit Spring pills into paste and spread it over his wounds, then had him take more orally. Whether he'd fully recover was uncertain.
As for Hao Yunlai, he'd completely passed out. Considering the price he'd paid to save their lives, Jing Shu gave him a drop of the enhanced Spirit Spring and another black pill. But even after that, he didn't wake—he just started snoring.
The last time she'd used Spirit Spring, he'd woken up instantly. That could only mean this was serious. This kind of sleep wasn't normal—it was the kind that could easily turn into death.
Spirit Spring worked miracles on injuries, especially sword or knife wounds, but Hao Yunlai's body was mostly fine aside from a gash on his thigh. His life signs were stable, so the spring water didn't seem to help much.
"We'll take Hao Yunlai back to the capital and have the specialists check him out," Jing Shu said quietly. "If they can't fix him, I'll risk trying something else."
Her thoughts drifted back to that moment in the mountains when she'd almost died touching the entrance to the fourth dimension.
That pain had been unforgettable, like her body was being ripped apart from the inside out. Even though the crimson liquid from that fourth-dimensional space had reversed time and restored her, the body's memory remained. For over ten days, every nerve had screamed in agony.