The boss handed the invoice to Qiao Xin, telling her to look it over at her leisure while he rushed to organize the loading. They used forklifts, so the process was quick, though verifying the items took a little longer.
Qiao Xin checked the final figure. Her heart did a little flutter: 489,590 yuan. The boss kindly struck the 590 off the total, leaving her with an even 489,000 to pay.
Qiao Xin had never been reckless enough to spend hundreds of thousands in one go, but when she reminded herself this was their future security, the hesitation vanished. She called the boss over and transferred the first 200,000 yuan, agreeing to pay the remainder after she returned from her delivery run.
The boss had no objections; many of his clients settled their tabs only after the goods had been fully utilized.
The truck was a 7.2-meter vehicle. Fortunately, Qiao Xin had driven one once before. Once loaded, and following the hand signals of the owner and his staff, she slowly pulled out of the market.
She drove toward the outskirts, searching until she found a quiet rural road an hour later. Pretending to get out to inspect the load, she reached into the cargo bed. In a blink, the entire haul vanished into her space. Qiao Xin returned to the driver’s seat, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.
While she sat in the cab “resting,” she was actually diving into her consciousness. She wanted to try digging a pond. She chose a spot near the foot of the mountain—it wouldn’t take up any of the fertile farmland. A quick test confirmed it worked perfectly.
She carved out a pond twenty meters deep and thirty meters wide, then used her mind to guide the stream water into the basin.
She fetched the fish and shrimp she had placed on the land. The ones in the oxygen bags were still alive. Qiao Xin carefully opened the bags and tipped them into the pond. As the fish touched the stream water, they darted off instantly, joined by the blue shrimp and crayfish, all swimming happily.
Seeing them thrive put her mind at ease. If they could adapt to this, she could bring in more varieties later—she would never have to worry about running out of seafood again.
After completing the task, Qiao Xin withdrew from the space, feeling a wave of exhaustion. It seemed she had overused her mental strength. She ate a quick snack, rested for ten minutes, and headed back to the market.
It took five grueling round trips to transport everything. She ate a serving of dapanji and sipped milk tea in the cab—her only “rest”—before returning the truck to the grain wholesaler. She paid the balance, hopped into her own small delivery van, and set off to collect the adorable chicks, ducklings, and goslings.
She successfully released the little creatures onto the mountain in her space. She left the ducklings by the pond, and since the mountainside was lush with grass and woods, she let them forage for themselves—she simply didn’t have the time to baby them.
She even set up a mental barrier at the foot of the hill; the animals could go no further than the pond, ensuring they wouldn’t wander into her fields.
By the time she drove home, the sky was already dark. She wolfed down a bowl of oil-splashed noodles outside her complex, grabbed twenty more to-go, and waddled her way upstairs.
As soon as she walked in, she collapsed onto the sofa. Being alone was truly exhausting. She lay motionless for five minutes before forcing herself up to wash, then dove right back into her chores.
The funds from the sale of her public housing unit had arrived that afternoon. As she cleaned up, she sat on the sofa to tally the damage: 884,840 yuan spent today. Deducting yesterday’s expenses, she still had over three million in her account.
She dove back into her online shopping marathon. First on the list: her favorite sugarcane starts—enough to cover two acres. Then, she ordered five saplings each of every tree she could find: orange, various mandarins, honey tangerine, durian, banana, mango, cherry, waxberry, kiwi, persimmon, walnut, chestnut, honey peach, nectarine, yellow peach, and several grape varieties.
After placing the order, she bombarded the sellers with messages, begging them to prepare the goods for shipment by tomorrow.
Feeling that yesterday’s snack order had been too light, she dug through the listings and bought nearly a hundred more varieties. She added ten more solar lamps and ten more solar power banks to her cart.
Then came the endless cycle of: order, order, and order again. Cling film, disposable chopsticks, bowls, plates, and every type of glove imaginable—cloth, knit, plastic, heat-resistant, non-slip.
Suddenly spotting various packaging materials, she picked out white and black sacks, ordering five hundred bundles of each. She even bought a thousand of the old-fashioned urea bags they used to use in the village—you never know what might come in handy.
She kept brainstorming what else she might need, clicking “buy” whenever something useful popped up, until she eventually drifted off to sleep. The room fell silent. After a while, a sigh seemed to drift from a distant corner of space and time. The thin blanket draped over the sofa side flew up on its own, tucking itself gently around Qiao Xin’s shoulders.
She slept through the night, dreamless and deep.
Awoken again by her alarm, Qiao Xin headed to a breakfast shop a bit further away. She ordered five hundred steamed buns, five hundred plain rolls, three hundred cups of millet and black rice porridge, and two hundred cups of soy milk.
This reminded her that she hadn’t stockpiled legumes or grains. While she drove to a different grain and oil shop, she mentally mapped out the rest of her shopping list.
Red beans, mung beans, soybeans, kidney beans, speckled beans, black beans, millet, black rice, glutinous rice, corn kernels, cornmeal, and starch—she ordered two thousand jin of each. She also bought five thousand jin each of brown and white sugar.
For baking and cooking, she took fifty cases of yeast, fifty of food-grade alkali, twenty of baking soda, twenty of baking powder, and another twenty cases of dough leavening agents for youtiao (fried dough sticks).
She also cleared the shelves of sweet potato starch, wide glass noodles, Guangdong rice noodles, Xinjiang-style rice noodles, soup-style vermicelli, dried bean curd sticks, wood ear mushrooms, vegetarian chicken, dried bean curd skins, and more—five hundred packs of each.
Seeing some less common seasonings, she grabbed plenty of barbecue powder, barbecue sauce, cumin powder, pepper powder, Orleans-style marinade, soybean paste, and jars of pickled vegetables.
It took three trips with her small delivery van to haul it all, but eventually, she moved to the next station.
At the seed shop, she bought one jin each of every vegetable she could find—green beans, cabbage, radishes, tomatoes, winter melon, pumpkin, chili, and more. A jin of seeds was more than enough. Watermelons, strawberries, muskmelons, and cantaloupes were her top priorities; she grilled the owner on growing tips before buying a jin of each variety.
She also purchased one hundred jin each of rice, wheat, corn, fruit-corn, black rice, sesame, sunflower, rapeseed, cotton, and various bean seeds. The shopkeeper looked at her strangely but kept his questions to himself, likely assuming the girl was just buying them for a hobby. When he asked if she needed fertilizer or pesticides, Qiao Xin shook her head—she’d be growing these in her space, where such things weren’t necessary.
Then, a second thought struck: Once I’m settled elsewhere, I’ll definitely have to farm outside. She ended up buying twenty cases of pesticide. As for fertilizer, she didn’t bother—there was never enough, and she could always use manure later.
She bought every kind of watering can and spray bottle, along with a thousand meters of both soft and rigid hosing—she could cut them to size later.
Next door was a tool shop. She bought five to ten of every shovel, hoe, and rake available. She even spotted a small, diesel-powered rotary tiller that one person could operate by hand. She bought five of those, plus five sets of spare parts for each.
She also found semi-automatic weed whackers—the kind you strap to your body for quick trimming. The blades were incredibly sharp and looked useful, so she bought five of those and five accessory kits. She rounded out the equipment run with five sets of small seeders, harvesters, home-use mills, and flour grinders.
Outside the shop, there was a sea of large white plastic barrels for storage. She had the owner count them: fifty-five large, sixty medium, and one hundred and three small ones. Qiao Xin waved her hand—she’d take them all. She even went to the two shops next door and bought out their entire stock of barrels.
Moving to the next street, she tackled household goods. Iron woks, portable stoves, barbecue grills, winter coal stoves, matching chimney pipes, charcoal, stainless steel pots in every size, clay pots, chef’s knives, small braziers, wire racks, spatulas, ladles, rice paddles, chopsticks, basins, bowls and dishes of all sizes, plates, and seasoning jars…
She bought, bought, and bought until the quantities ensured they would never run out for the rest of their lives.
She couldn’t spare a moment to rest. She hit the snack and beverage district next. She bought nearly every variety of carbonated drinks, juices, and milk from the brands she and Lin Qing favored. She ordered five hundred crates of bottled water and five hundred of the massive 19-liter jugs—she had water in her space, but she felt it never hurt to be over-prepared.
She picked up two hundred boxes each of every flavor of instant noodle—cup, bag, hot-pot style, snail noodles, spicy sour noodles, ham sausages, meat sausages, and starch-based sausages.
She bought three hundred bottles of 120-yuan baijiu and two hundred bottles of the 200-plus-yuan variety. Since they rarely drank red wine, she bought a hundred bottles of various brands to stock up. She also grabbed eighty cases of the cheap, clear-glass bottled spirits (twenty-four per case), and ten massive earthen vats of bulk high-proof baijiu.
Finally, she ordered five hundred crates of beer and Dayao soda, both bottled and canned—enough to keep Lin Qing drinking for a long, long time.