Jiang Wanning lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as she tossed and turned, calculating her savings over and over again.
After seven years of work and a monthly income of just over ten thousand, she had managed to save four hundred and thirty thousand yuan through careful spending.
It was neither a large nor a small amount. Under normal circumstances, it would be enough for her to live comfortably for a while, but once she thought about the supplies she needed to buy to survive the apocalypse, the money felt like a cup of water poured into the sea, too little to make even the slightest splash.
She had considered borrowing money from various platforms, but what if she did not transmigrate after all? How would she ever repay those debts?
She could only rely on herself.
Four hundred and thirty thousand yuan had to cover food, medicine, tools, seeds, and so much more. She opened the memo app on her phone and began making a list, but the longer she wrote, the more her head began to ache.
There was too little money and too much to buy. She was unfamiliar with wholesale markets, and if she went there without knowing what she was doing, she would probably not even understand how to begin negotiating.
After turning over in bed, she suddenly thought of somewhere.
Pinduoduo!
That was right. Things were cheap there. Although the quality varied, food was food, and as long as it had not gone bad, it could still be eaten. She sat up and opened the app, but just as she was about to tap the search bar, her finger stopped.
What delivery address was she supposed to use?
She lived in a one bedroom apartment in an old residential complex. The parcel lockers could not hold large deliveries, and the security office did not allow packages to be piled up there either.
A few dozen kilograms would be manageable, but if hundreds of bags of rice were stacked in the hallway, she would probably end up on the local news the very next day.
Jiang Wanning put down her phone and thought for a moment before suddenly remembering that Aunt Wang, who lived next door, had a warehouse.
The warehouse had originally been used by Aunt Wang’s late husband to store tools and miscellaneous items. After he passed away, it had remained empty. Just last month, Jiang Wanning had heard Aunt Wang talking to Aunt Li downstairs about renting it out to earn a little extra money for groceries.
She threw back the covers and got out of bed. After searching beneath the coffee table, she found a plastic bag and placed several apples and oranges inside. Then, feeling that it was not enough, she went back to the refrigerator and added the unopened box of cherries.
When asking someone for a favor, the gift could not be too modest.
Aunt Wang lived directly across from her. The paper character for good fortune on her door had already faded, and its corners had curled up. It was still the one that had been put up during last year’s Spring Festival.
Jiang Wanning knocked three times. The sound of slippers slapping against the floor came from inside, and soon the door opened a crack, revealing Aunt Wang’s round face.
“Oh, it’s Little Jiang.” When Aunt Wang saw the fruit in her hands, she said, “You silly girl, you came over, so why bring anything with you?”
“Aunt Wang, I wanted to discuss something with you.” Jiang Wanning smiled and handed her the fruit. “Has your warehouse been rented out?”
“The warehouse?” Aunt Wang accepted the bag and stepped aside to let her in. “Not yet. A lot of people have asked about it, but they all think the yearly rent is too expensive.”
“I’d like to rent it for half a month. Would that be alright?”
Aunt Wang paused, then led her into the living room and sat down on the sofa opposite her. Resting her hands on her knees, she thought about it for a while.
“Little Jiang, it’s not that I don’t want to help you, but I’ve always rented the warehouse out by the year. Even half a year feels too short. Half a month…” She pursed her lips awkwardly. “What can you even do with it in half a month?”
Jiang Wanning knew she was making an unreasonable request, but she still tried to persuade her. “Aunt Wang, I just need somewhere to store some things. I promise I won’t touch anything inside. When I’m done, I’ll clean the place thoroughly. You can charge me by the day or for half a month. Just name your price.”
Aunt Wang fell silent for a while. Jiang Wanning did not urge her and simply sat quietly on the sofa, waiting.
“Alright.” Aunt Wang finally relented. “It hasn’t been rented out anyway, so you can have it for half a month. If someone else wants to rent it, I can explain that it’s only unavailable for half a month.”
“Thank you, Aunt Wang!” Jiang Wanning immediately took out her phone. “How much?”
“Just give me five hundred.”
Jiang Wanning transferred the money without hesitation. After chatting for a little longer, she said goodbye and returned home.
Once she closed the door, she took a deep breath, sat cross legged on the sofa, and reopened Pinduoduo.
She would start with food.
She typed rice into the search bar and browsed through several pages before her attention settled on one particular store. A fifty kilogram bag was listed for one hundred and seven yuan.
She opened the product page and checked the details. The reviews were decent, and the photos appeared to be genuine. The grains looked plump, with very little broken rice.
Jiang Wanning opened the customer service chat window and typed:
“Boss, can you offer a discount if I buy a large quantity of the fifty kilogram bags of rice?”
The customer service representative replied quickly.
“How many bags would you like?”
After thinking for a moment, Jiang Wanning gave a tentative number.
“One thousand bags.”
The other side went silent for quite a while. The typing indicator flashed repeatedly before a message finally arrived.
“Are you serious???”
“Yes! What’s the lowest price you can offer?”
After waiting a little longer, Jiang Wanning guessed that the representative had gone to speak with a supervisor. A reply finally came back.
“We can offer ninety five yuan per bag and cover the shipping costs. That’s our lowest price.”
Ninety five yuan.
Twelve yuan cheaper than the original price. One thousand bags would cost ninety five thousand yuan.
Jiang Wanning bit her fingernail as she did the calculations. Then she glanced at her account balance, hardened her heart, and typed:
“Alright. Ship them in batches. I’ll provide the delivery address separately.”
The moment the payment went through, her fingers trembled.
Ninety five thousand yuan. Several months of her salary had disappeared just like that.
But she did not stop.
She found another store selling corn in fifty kilogram bags for eighty five yuan each. Using the same method, she negotiated the price down to seventy five yuan per bag for one thousand bags, spending another seventy five thousand yuan.
She did not know much about high yield seeds, so she searched online for the most practical seeds for surviving the apocalypse. In the end, she bought sweet potatoes, potatoes, pumpkins, corn, wheat, and rice, choosing varieties labeled as high yielding and disease resistant. Altogether, they cost around twenty thousand yuan.
She also bought one thousand jin each of potatoes and sweet potatoes for less than ten thousand yuan. They stored well, were filling, and could also be eaten as vegetables.
She calculated everything on her phone. Ninety five thousand yuan for rice, seventy five thousand for corn, twenty thousand for seeds, and ten thousand for potatoes and sweet potatoes.
Exactly two hundred thousand yuan.
Two hundred thousand yuan.
Half of the money she had saved over seven years was gone in the blink of an eye, and she had not even finished buying everything she needed.
Jiang Wanning leaned back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, suddenly finding the whole situation absurd.
She was just an ordinary office worker earning ten thousand yuan a month, living in a rented apartment in an old residential complex and eating takeout that cost a little over ten yuan per meal. Yet now, she was acting like a madwoman, spending two hundred thousand yuan on Pinduoduo to buy food.
What if that dream was fake?
The thought flashed through her mind, but she immediately extinguished it.
She remembered the scenes from the dream: her grandmother’s twisted fingers, the young person’s badly injured knee, and the young woman’s final words, “Don’t come out.”
Everything had felt far too real. So real that she had awakened from the dream drenched in cold sweat.
Even if it was all fake, the food would not spoil overnight.
At worst, she could eat it herself over time.
Taking a deep breath, she continued scrolling through her phone.
Medicine!
This was another major expense, and she could not afford to be careless. She did not dare buy medicine from Pinduoduo. If she ended up with counterfeit drugs, someone’s life could depend on it at a critical moment.
She switched to a major online pharmacy and began adding items to her cart one by one.
She bought a batch of antibiotics, including amoxicillin, cephalosporins, and levofloxacin, twenty boxes of each. For fever medicine, she bought thirty boxes each of ibuprofen and acetaminophen.
Painkillers, hemostatic medicine, anti-inflammatory ointment, povidone iodine, alcohol, gauze, bandages…
She counted each item and added them one by one, as though she intended to empty out an entire small pharmacy.
There were also medicines for chronic illnesses. She did not know whether any elderly members of the family would need them, but it would not hurt to keep some on hand. She added blood pressure medication, diabetes medication, and emergency heart medication as well.
Cold medicine, cough medicine, antidiarrheal medicine, allergy medicine…
She kept adding more and more. The number in the upper corner of her shopping cart soon became 99+, while the total price continued climbing at an alarming rate.
When it was finally time to check out, she closed her eyes briefly and tapped the payment button.
Fifty thousand, three hundred and eleven yuan.
Added to the two hundred thousand she had already spent, that brought the total to two hundred and fifty thousand yuan.
Jiang Wanning placed her phone against her chest and let out a long breath.
Money really did not last.
Of her original four hundred and thirty thousand yuan, only one hundred and eighty thousand remained. She still needed to buy tools, clothes, daily necessities, and…
She did not even dare think about what else she needed.
What else should she stockpile?
She picked up her phone again. The list in her memo app was still long: salt, sugar, cooking oil, compressed biscuits, dehydrated vegetables, canned food, matches, lighters, candles, flashlights, batteries, knives, rope, waterproof cloth, water purification tablets…
Every single item cost money, and every single item needed somewhere to be stored.
She only had the warehouse for half a month, so she had to make the most of her time. She needed to receive the deliveries, transport them, and then secretly store everything inside the Realm of Ningyuan.
No one could know about the Realm of Ningyuan, not even Aunt Wang.
Her temples suddenly began throbbing as though someone were tapping them with a small hammer.
She looked up at the clock on the wall.
Exactly ten o’clock.
Jiang Wanning froze for a moment before standing up and walking to the bed. She gripped the edge with both hands, took a deep breath, and with a thought…
The one and a half meter bed, along with the mattress, blanket, and pillows, vanished into thin air.
The floor was completely empty, with only a few clumps of dust and a forgotten slipper left behind.
Standing in the empty bedroom, her heart raced, but a smile slowly spread across her face.
The Realm of Ningyuan could store anything except living creatures. She had only tested it with small objects before, but she had not expected even such a large bed to fit inside.
That made things much easier.
She needed more time.
Between going to work, receiving deliveries, transporting them, and secretly storing everything away, the few hours available during the day were simply not enough.
Since the Realm of Ningyuan could store objects, she could put her bed inside and make use of the difference in the flow of time within the Realm.
Jiang Wanning went out and poured herself a cup of hot water before placing it inside the Realm.
She needed to find out whether the Realm could preserve things.
After finishing all of this, Jiang Wanning flopped onto the bed and went straight to sleep. She needed enough rest. Only by sleeping well could she think clearly about what to do next.