Jiang Wanning slept in the space for ten hours.
When she woke up, she instinctively glanced at the cup of water on the bedside table. It had been steaming before she fell asleep, and now it was still steaming.
Ten hours had passed, yet the water hadn’t cooled.
Her mind began racing.
She already knew the space had a time flow difference—one hour outside equaled ten hours inside.
But if a cup of water sat for ten hours, it should have long gone cold. The fact that it hadn’t meant this space wasn’t just different in time flow, it had some kind of… preservation function. Or perhaps, time for objects was “frozen.”
No, that wasn’t entirely right. She herself had slept for ten hours, and her body had genuinely rested, her fatigue gone and her energy restored. Time flowed normally for her, but not for objects.
She looked at the cup again and suddenly thought of something. The rice and corn she had stored earlier, she hadn’t checked their condition. Jiang Wanning stood up and walked to the corner where the food was piled, reaching out to touch the outermost sack of rice.
Dry, at room temperature, exactly the same as when she had put it in.
She opened a bag and grabbed a handful of rice.
The grains were dry, with no sign of moisture, and smelled just as they should.
If this were outside, tens of tons of grain stacked together would at least carry some storage odor, even if it didn’t heat up.
But inside the space, there was no smell at all. It was eerily quiet, as though everything had been paused, and only she was alive.
Jiang Wanning poured the rice back into the bag, her thoughts settling.
This space could preserve freshness. Not like refrigeration, but something more absolute—the process of material decay was slowed, or perhaps completely halted.
Anything placed inside would remain exactly as it was at the moment it entered.
Hot things would not cool, cold things would not warm, and living things… she glanced at the pigs in the pen. The dozen or so piglets were huddled together asleep, their bellies rising and falling steadily.
She needed to understand the rules of the space, but now was not the time. There were still too many things to buy.
After washing her face, Jiang Wanning left the space.
Outside, it was still a deep night, so quiet she could hear stray cats crying downstairs. She picked up her phone and continued browsing Pinduoduo.
Food was already taken care of, but there was something even more important—salt.
Without salt, people would grow weak, fall ill, and die. In the apocalypse, salt was more valuable than gold. She knew that all too well.
Why had those people in her dream ended up like that? Hunger was part of it, but prolonged salt deficiency had been just as deadly.
She found a shop selling salt, large fifty-pound bags, and bought two thousand pounds for two thousand yuan.
After salt came seasonings. After some thought, she placed another order—hot pot base.
Then came tools.
Hoes, sickles, axes, saws, shovels, pickaxes… She swept through a hardware store on Pinduoduo, buying several of each, along with spare blades, whetstones, wire, nails, and other odds and ends. Altogether it cost less than two thousand yuan.
She also needed solar panels.
She found a shop specializing in outdoor power supplies and bought two foldable solar panels, one hundred watts each, spending over three thousand yuan.
Then she bought ten high-capacity power banks, five long-endurance flashlights, and two boxes of batteries—AA, AAA, and button cells.
As for kitchenware, she didn’t bother picking carefully. She found a clearance store and clicked through stainless steel basins, iron pots, pressure cookers, kettles, bowls, plates, and chopsticks. When she checked out, she realized it had only cost a few hundred yuan.
Looking at her order list, Jiang Wanning suddenly thought of something—she knew how to grow things, but she didn’t know how to make things.
How was cement made? Gunpowder? Soap? These would all be useful in the apocalypse, but she didn’t know how to produce them.
She searched online and found books for exactly that. Complete Guide to Cement Making, Gunpowder Formulas and Production, Handmade Soap Guide, Pickling and Cured Meats, Traditional Steelmaking… like a shopping spree, she bought every book related to “making.” New or used didn’t matter, as long as she could read them. In the end, she spent less than a thousand yuan and bought over forty books.
The time on her phone showed it was already past four in the morning.
Rubbing her eyes, Jiang Wanning scrolled through her orders and suddenly felt uneasy.
The money was disappearing too quickly. Two hundred thousand on grain, fifty thousand on medicine, two thousand on salt, two thousand on seasonings, over ten thousand on tools and solar panels… she did the math. Out of four hundred thirty thousand, less than one hundred seventy thousand remained.
She still needed fruit tree seedlings, more seeds, and so much more…
Closing her eyes, she told herself not to panic. Money could be earned again, but once life was gone, nothing remained.
After daybreak, she did two things.
First, she called her company to request a week’s leave. The team leader on the other end was clearly unhappy but didn’t say much, only telling her to submit a leave form later.
Then she got on her slightly worn electric scooter and headed to the largest agricultural market on the outskirts of the city.
The market was huge and crowded, as noisy as a boiling pot of porridge. Jiang Wanning pushed her scooter inside, scanning her surroundings.
The first thing she saw was chicks.
An old man squatted on the ground with several large bamboo cages in front of him, each packed with fluffy little chicks chirping noisily.
A crooked sign stood beside him: ten yuan per handful, grab it yourself.
Jiang Wanning crouched down and asked, “Uncle, how many chicks are there in one handful?”
The old man grinned, revealing a few yellowed teeth. “Miss, if your hands are big, you’ll grab more. If they’re small, you’ll grab less.”
She didn’t ask further and simply took out two hundred yuan and handed it over. The old man counted it and nodded.
Jiang Wanning cupped her hands together and reached into the cage, scooping up a handful. Between her fingers were warm, fluttering little bodies.
Carefully, she placed them into a prepared cardboard box. One handful, two handfuls, three… twenty in total. She filled three boxes, and when she counted, there were roughly three hundred chicks.
The chicks chirped noisily. Jiang Wanning glanced at them, the corners of her lips twitching slightly in what could be called a smile.
After leaving the chick stall, she went to a feed store. Chicks needed feed, and since she didn’t know the formulas, she bought ten bags of chick feed and some cracked corn, spending a few hundred yuan.
The pig farm was on the other side of the market. When she arrived, the owner was loading pigs onto a truck. She explained what she wanted, and the owner looked at her, asking how many she needed.
“A dozen piglets, and two slaughtered pigs.”
The owner paused, probably not used to such straightforward buyers. In the end, they settled on six hundred yuan per piglet, and she chose twelve. The slaughtered pigs were sold by weight, totaling over four hundred pounds, costing more than three thousand yuan.
After paying, Jiang Wanning told the owner she would pick them up in the afternoon and asked him to keep them there for now. He agreed.
After leaving the pig farm, she went to the grain and oil section. She bought one thousand pounds each of potatoes and sweet potatoes. Combined with what she had already ordered online, it would last a long time.
For seasonings—soy sauce, vinegar, cooking wine, oyster sauce, chili bean paste, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon bark, bay leaves, she swept through a spice shop, buying a box of each for over two thousand yuan.
She found a secluded spot and quietly stored everything in her space.
For the next three days, she worked nonstop.
During the day, she ran to markets, collected deliveries, and hauled goods from logistics points. At night, she stored everything in the space, farming, organizing, and planning.
She visited greenhouse bases in the suburbs and bought all kinds of fruit tree seedlings—orange trees, pomelo trees, loquat trees, persimmon trees, dozens of each.
When the owner asked if she was starting an orchard, she said yes. In reality, she didn’t even have land, but she had the space.
The ten mu of empty land inside it was still barren, and she had to turn it into something that could sustain life.
Deliveries arrived one after another.
Pinduoduo logistics was fast, taking about three days.
Ten hours passed inside the space while only one hour passed outside.
She had an abundance of time.
Jiang Wanning ordered a glass house online for twenty thousand yuan. Sleeping out in the open made her uneasy.
Inside the glass house, she placed furniture she had moved from her rented apartment—bed, wardrobe, desk, chair, sofa. It was cramped and messy, but it felt like a small home.
Every day she was busy. The soil in the space was ready-made, black and soft, like stepping on cotton.
Without farm machinery, she used her hands and a hoe, digging furrows one by one, planting seeds, then covering them with a thin layer of soil.
Potatoes were planted in chunks, sweet potatoes by vines, while corn, wheat, and rice were scattered. She didn’t know farming well, only imitating online tutorials, ending up with muddy hands and an aching back.
In ten hours, she planted two mu of land. The piglets and chicks were placed into the space, and she planned to get some ducklings as well.
The twelve piglets were kept in a pen. With no night in the space, they seemed unaccustomed, huddling together and grunting.
Jiang Wanning poured feed for them and added a basin of water from the space. The piglets hesitated before drinking, then began eating.
The chicks were kept in a small area fenced with bamboo, three hundred crowded together, chirping noisily.
She gave them water and feed as well, then crouched nearby to watch for a while.
They ate with lively energy, scrambling over each other.
Watching them, Jiang Wanning felt a bit more at ease.
She had food, salt, medicine, and now living animals. Even if she truly transmigrated, she wouldn’t be empty-handed.
She thought again of the Lightness Art.
She had practiced it for three days, training two hours each night in the space. At first, she couldn’t grasp it at all, her breathing and focus misaligned, her qi moving through her meridians as slowly as a crawling snail.
But time was plentiful, so if one attempt failed, she tried ten times, then a hundred.
On the third night, she suddenly found the feeling. Her body grew lighter, as though something beneath her feet was lifting her. She leapt lightly, rising half a foot off the ground before landing steadily.
Unable to resist, she tried again. This time, focusing more, at the moment her toes touched the ground, her body felt as light as a leaf as she sprang upward—
Three meters.
She rose three meters high and traveled two meters forward.
Landing, Jiang Wanning’s heart pounded with excitement. Three meters wasn’t much, but it was a beginning.
Being able to leap meant she could escape, climb trees, cross rivers, and reach places others couldn’t.
Standing in the space, she looked up at the eternal white sky, without clouds or stars, and suddenly laughed.
The sound echoed briefly in the empty space before fading.
In a corner lay the last batch of deliveries she had received today—solar panels, flashlights, batteries, books.
She crouched down and began unpacking them one by one, sorting everything carefully.
The solar panels needed checking for damage, the flashlights needed testing, and the books had to be flipped through to ensure no pages were missing.
These tasks were tedious, repetitive, even boring, but doing them brought a sense of reassurance.
When the last package was opened, Jiang Wanning stood up and dusted off her hands.
Inside the glass house, her bed was neatly made, the blanket folded tidily.
She took a shower in the space, changed into clean clothes, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes.