Chen Xiaolin had been intelligent since childhood. Though she didn’t possess a photographic memory, she could basically memorize an entire book after reading it two or three times. After years of hard work, she became proficient in four languages: German, Russian, English, and French. Starting from university, she began taking on various translation jobs. At present, her bank account still held over ten million yuan, and her stock investments were worth nearly a hundred million more.
Chen Xiaolin planned to sell off all her stocks and withdraw the cash. Combined with her savings, she would have more than two hundred million yuan—more than enough for stockpiling supplies.
She first made a list of what she needed to buy, covering clothing, food, housing, and transportation.
For clothing, Chen Xiaolin planned to buy plenty of fabric. She also needed to prepare lots of underwear, thermal wear, and various types of shoes—cloth shoes, sneakers, and a small number of low-heeled leather shoes.
For food, she planned to buy more cooked food. As for rice and flour, buying some for backup would be enough, since the space had land where she could grow crops herself. She also needed to buy cooking oil. Then it occurred to her—she hadn’t tested yet whether the space could preserve freshness.
“Enter.”
Chen Xiaolin arrived at the villa inside the space. Earlier, she had been too excited to properly explore it. The villa had two floors. The first floor had a living room, a kitchen, and a warehouse. The entire villa was empty. When she walked into the warehouse, Chen Xiaolin discovered that although it looked small from the outside, it was actually boundless inside.
She didn’t understand the principle behind it—perhaps some kind of spatial formation.
Inside the warehouse were ten huge vats. Chen Xiaolin discovered that these vats were also spatial containers—each one could hold a hundred tons of rice.
After checking out the first floor, she went upstairs. The second floor had three rooms: a bedroom, a study, and a training room. The bedroom was empty, but the study contained a bookshelf and a desk. The bookshelf was filled with books. On the desk lay a single letter, which explained the origin of the space.
This space had been refined by a powerful cultivator for his daughter. Unfortunately, before he could give her the bracelet, his daughter died unexpectedly. The cultivator casually discarded the bracelet into the mortal world. Later, it was picked up by an ancestor of Chen Xiaolin’s grandmother. Because the bracelet’s material wasn’t particularly valuable, it gradually became a family heirloom passed down through generations. After years of war and turmoil, by Chen Xiaolin’s grandmother’s generation, Chen Xiaolin was the only descendant left—so the bracelet eventually ended up in her hands.
The bookshelf contained many martial arts manuals and cultivation techniques. Sadly, this was the End of Dharma era, with spiritual energy extremely scarce, making cultivation techniques useless. Fortunately, there were still plenty of martial arts manuals. Chen Xiaolin decided that after she finished stockpiling—if she hadn’t transmigrated yet—she would start practicing martial arts.
Only the warehouse inside the space could keep food in a permanently fresh state; nowhere else could. The space also had a time formation: ten days inside the space equaled one day outside. The fertile black soil inside the space required hands-on labor—she couldn’t plant crops with just her mind. Chen Xiaolin planned to buy some agricultural machinery the next day; otherwise, with so much land, she’d never finish planting it all.
After leaving the space, Chen Xiaolin began shopping online like crazy. It just so happened to be the 6.18 shopping festival, with many stores offering discounts. Seeing that sanitary pads were buy-one-get-one-free, she bought one hundred boxes each of daytime and nighttime pads—twenty packs per box—enough to last her until menopause. She also bought one hundred boxes of overnight pull-up pants. Seeing tissue paper on sale as well, she bought one thousand boxes each of toilet paper and facial tissues.
She also purchased one hundred enamel cups, one hundred enamel basins, and one hundred toothbrushes. As for shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, laundry soap, and bar soap, she chose fragrance-free versions and bought ten boxes of each. All her online purchases were marked for expedited shipping via SF Express.
As for the rest, Chen Xiaolin didn’t plan to buy them online. She intended to rent a warehouse the next day and then buy directly from wholesale markets.
The next day, Chen Xiaolin got up early. She planned to first order steamed buns from the alley entrance. Auntie Zhao’s buns were something she had eaten for twenty years—the taste was still just as good. If there was anything she couldn’t bear to part with after transmigrating, it would definitely be Auntie Zhao’s buns.
“Auntie Zhao, I’ll take all the buns today. Please pack them up for me—I’m taking them to the orphanage.”
When Chen Xiaolin arrived at the bun shop, Auntie Zhao had just opened.
“Linlin! That’s a good deed you’re doing,” Auntie Zhao said warmly. “I’ll pack them up for you first. Sit and wait for a bit.”
Auntie Zhao had watched Chen Xiaolin grow up and knew that her grandfather had recently passed away, so she assumed Chen Xiaolin was doing this to pray for his soul.
“I’ll go bring the car over,” Chen Xiaolin said.
That day, she planned to use her mother’s SUV for stockpiling, since it had the largest interior space among the cars in her garage.
By the time Chen Xiaolin drove the car to the shop entrance, Auntie Zhao had already packed up all the buns. Chen Xiaolin loaded them into the car and drove off immediately. Once she was far away, she stored all the buns into the space.
Since she had a lot to stockpile that day, she didn’t take a break and drove straight to the grain and oil wholesale market.
When she arrived, Chen Xiaolin didn’t make any purchases right away. She first walked around, asking about prices, and then chose a grain shop with the best value and decent quality.
“Boss, give me one thousand bags of this Wuchang rice, fifty pounds per bag. For the regular kind, fifty pounds per bag, give me two thousand bags. For this brand of flour, give me one thousand bags. And yeast—one hundred boxes.”
She asked the owner to note it down, then continued.
“For this peanut oil—both the ten-pounds and twenty-pounds bottles—give me one thousand barrels each. For rapeseed oil, also give me one thousand barrels.”
“As for these mung beans, red beans, soybeans, sweet potatoes, and potatoes—give me one hundred pounds of each. That’ll be enough.” The sweet potatoes and potatoes were mainly for use as seed stock.
“Rock sugar, white sugar, and brown sugar—one hundred boxes each. For dark brown sugar, five hundred boxes. Oyster sauce, chicken bouillon, chili sauce, Lao Gan Ma—one hundred boxes each. This ten-pounds soy sauce—one hundred boxes as well. And give me one hundred pound each of fermented black beans and dried tofu skin. Calculate the total for me first.”
For grain, oil, and seasonings, Chen Xiaolin planned to buy just this much for now. After all, the space could be used for farming, and she could buy an oil press to make her own oil. Buying too much would only lead to waste.
“That comes to a total of 2,258,323 yuan,” the shop owner rattled off after some quick calculations. “I’ll waive the odd amount—let’s just call it 2.25 million.”
“Alright. I’ll pay you 1.25 million first. I’ll pay the remaining one million once the goods arrive.”
“Where should we deliver the goods?” the shop owner asked eagerly, clearly wanting to keep such a big client. “Give me the address and we can deliver everything tomorrow morning.”
“Give me your phone number. I’ll send you the location later.”
Only then did Chen Xiaolin realize she hadn’t rented a warehouse yet. But that was easy to solve—her unlucky best friend just happened to have a large warehouse in the suburbs. She had even mentioned a couple of days ago that she wanted to rent it out.
After leaving the grain shop, Chen Xiaolin called He Lili.
“Hello, Lili. Has that suburban warehouse of yours been rented out yet?”
“Not yet. It’s not very big, so it’s hard to rent out. What’s up? Do you need a warehouse?” He Lili asked.
She had been worried about her best friend these past few days, but since she had to attend school, all she could do was call daily to comfort her.
“Let me borrow it. I’ll come over tonight to get the keys,” Chen Xiaolin said, never one to stand on ceremony with her best friend.
“Sure. Come have dinner at my place too—my mom’s been thinking about you,” He Lili replied.
He Lili’s mother was close friends with Chen Xiaolin’s mother. When she heard about Chen Xiaolin’s grandfather passing away, she had also been worried that Chen Xiaolin might be struggling emotionally.
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