The slight dizziness from that single bottle of beer vanished instantly.
Li Xi stared blankly at the endless white mist surrounding her.
Where was she?
More importantly, how was she supposed to get out?
The moment the word leave surfaced in her mind, her vision blurred, and in the next second she found herself standing back inside her cramped rental apartment.
“…!”
The transition felt bizarrely smooth.
Heart pounding, Li Xi tested it again.
Enter.
In an instant, she reappeared inside the mysterious white realm.
Holy crap.
This was the legendary pocket dimension that only main characters in web novels ever received!
First she won the lottery jackpot, then she awakened a supernatural storage space.
She really was fate’s chosen daughter.
But after the initial excitement faded, anxiety quietly crept into her chest.
Why had such a miraculous space suddenly appeared?
Could it mean that some terrible disaster was approaching?
In recent years, natural disasters have become increasingly severe. Earthquakes, floods, blizzards, terrifying heatwaves, mutated viruses, all of them appeared one after another without pause.
And according to every apocalypse novel she had ever read, once the protagonist awakened a storage space, the world would immediately descend into chaos.
Either zombies would erupt everywhere, or an endless winter would freeze civilization solid. Sometimes it was extreme heat capable of cooking people alive. Then the protagonist would start hoarding supplies, fighting monsters, collecting crystal cores, building safe zones, and eventually becoming some powerful overlord.
Li Xi had absolutely no interest in becoming a warlord.
If the apocalypse really came, her plan was simple.
Fill the space with supplies.
Hide somewhere safe.
Survive as long as possible.
During the lockdown years, she had personally experienced the misery of running out of vegetables, fruit, and meat. At one point, she had even been unable to buy sanitary pads, a memory so humiliating she still didn’t want to think about it.
Whether disaster came or not, she had already decided.
She was going to stockpile until her storage space was completely full.
Before starting, however, she needed to confirm one important thing.
Did the space preserve freshness indefinitely?
In other words, would food remain frozen in time after being stored inside?
Li Xi immediately pulled a popsicle from her refrigerator and tossed it into the misty space.
Then she opened her phone and searched online for apocalypse stockpiling checklists.
Apparently, many people had developed survival-hoarding habits after enduring long lockdown periods. Some enthusiasts had even compiled detailed survival preparation guides and uploaded them online.
Li Xi downloaded one immediately.
The checklist categorized survival necessities into four major areas:
Clothing.
Food.
Shelter.
Transportation.
Food naturally came first.
Without hesitation, Li Xi contacted a real estate agent and rented a remote warehouse on the outskirts of town.
As someone with mild social anxiety, she strongly preferred online shopping whenever possible. Sitting in her apartment, she opened several shopping apps and started placing massive orders.
First came rice.
She selected a highly rated brand of Wuchang fragrant rice. A twenty-five-kilogram sack cost 149.9 yuan retail, but after spending nearly half an hour bargaining with customer service, she managed to negotiate the price down to 140 yuan per bag.
Then she directly ordered two hundred sacks.
Next came noodles.
Although people in her region mainly ate rice, noodles were still essential survival food.
She purchased:
Five hundred jin of handmade dried noodles
Two hundred jin of pea vermicelli
Two hundred jin of sweet potato noodles
Five thousand jin of flour
Remembering how much flour people consumed during lockdowns for homemade cold noodles and rice cooker cakes, she felt that amount was entirely reasonable.
The flour merchant was so thrilled by the enormous order that they even included several bags of dry yeast for free.
Then came condiments.
As a native of C Province, Li Xi had grown up addicted to spicy food.
She immediately searched for her favorite hot pot soup base brand. Normally, a single 238-gram package cost nearly twenty yuan, painfully expensive in her opinion.
After another intense bargaining session, she lowered the price to sixteen yuan each and instantly purchased two thousand packets.
Because everything was being shipped directly to the remote warehouse, she didn’t have to worry about attracting suspicion.
This first wave of shopping alone cost over seventy thousand yuan.
Li Xi suddenly understood why apocalypse protagonists always seemed to run out of money.
Stockpiling supplies truly burned through cash at terrifying speed.
Since she loved cooking, she couldn’t stop at the hot pot base alone.
Cooking oil was essential.
She bought:
Five hundred drums each of rapeseed oil, soybean oil, and peanut oil
Five hundred jin of sesame oil
One thousand bags of iodized salt
Two hundred bags of non-iodized salt
Several boxes of coarse salt for pickling vegetables
Then came soy sauce, vinegar, MSG, chicken bouillon, white pepper powder, Sichuan pepper powder, chili flakes, and countless other spices.
She also purchased massive quantities of:
Braising seasoning packets
Dry-pot sauce mixes
Barbecue spice rubs
Boiled fish seasoning packs
After exhausting the things she could easily buy online, Li Xi decided to rest briefly before heading out in person to inspect fresh produce markets.
Thirty minutes later, she woke from her nap and immediately retrieved the popsicle from her space.
The moment she opened the wrapper, cold white frost drifted into the air.
The popsicle remained perfectly frozen.
Li Xi nearly cried from relief.
If the space couldn’t preserve freshness, then all the fresh meat and produce she planned to buy would spoil long before she could eat it.
She carefully explored the visible area of the space again.
Dense white fog surrounded everything, making the true boundaries impossible to determine. Still, the currently accessible clearing alone was at least the size of a football field.
That was already more than enough storage space for unimaginable quantities of supplies.
An hour later, Li Xi parked her little electric scooter outside the city’s largest agricultural wholesale market.
The vegetables here were fresh and cheap, while meat prices became far more affordable when purchased wholesale.
She approached a pork stall and nervously greeted the burly butcher.
“Hello, boss. My family runs a cured meat business, and we’re looking to buy in bulk. Could you offer us a better price?”
“That depends on how much you’re buying,” the butcher replied.
Despite his intimidating appearance, his tone softened noticeably when speaking to her.
“Three whole pigs… no, actually make it five. How much would that cost?”
It sounded absurd for one person.
But if disaster struck and food supplies collapsed, fresh meat would become priceless.
It was better to overprepare.
“My family owns a pig farm,” the butcher said excitedly. “If you’re taking five whole hogs, I can sell them to you at live-market price, twelve yuan per jin.”
Since she didn’t own a vehicle yet, Li Xi planned to rent a covered cargo van the next morning.
After signing a simple agreement and leaving behind a five-thousand-yuan deposit, they arranged to meet directly at the slaughterhouse the following morning.
Next came poultry.
Using the same excuse, she purchased:
One hundred chickens
One hundred ducks
One hundred geese
Unfortunately, her space could not store living creatures besides herself, so she requested that everything be slaughtered and cleaned beforehand.
She also bought fifty rabbits from a nearby stall and ordered thirty large grass carp fish from the seafood section, asking the vendor to gut and clean them before pickup.
Fresh fruits and vegetables could be acquired gradually later.
For now, Li Xi headed toward the agricultural seed stores.
If the supply chain truly collapsed one day, she could always return to her old countryside home and grow food herself.
“Boss, do you have heirloom rice and wheat seeds?” she asked after entering a small shop.
The middle-aged owner reluctantly looked up from his phone.
“Heirloom varieties are rare nowadays,” he replied. “Most farms only use hybrid commercial seeds now.”
Li Xi accidentally caught sight of his phone screen.
The CEO’s Reckless Love: The Fox Wife Flees with His Child.
“…?”
She blinked in surprise.
Who knew middle-aged men had such advanced literary tastes these days?
“Please help me look,” Li Xi said, struggling not to laugh. “My older brother works at an agricultural university. He’s researching traditional crop strains.”
“Oh! Academic research?”
The owner immediately exited his melodramatic romance novel and began making calls.
In the end, he managed to source one hundred jin each of heirloom rice and wheat seeds from an official seed reserve.
Although the price of eight yuan per jin felt slightly inflated, Li Xi didn’t bother arguing further.
Truly authentic heirloom seeds were difficult to find.
She also bought large quantities of vegetable seeds:
Erjingtiao peppers
Spiral peppers
Millet peppers
Lantern peppers
Wild mountain chilies
Eggplants
Green beans
Potatoes
Pumpkins
Winter melons
Loofahs
Leafy greens
Green onions
Cilantro
The total came to several thousand yuan.
After paying, the kindhearted shop owner helped carry the heavy sacks onto her tiny scooter.
With both the cargo and her own body weight combined, the poor vehicle was carrying over three hundred jin. The tires flattened visibly beneath the pressure.
Li Xi smiled awkwardly.
Meanwhile, the shop owner had already buried himself back into his romance novel.
Carefully maneuvering the overloaded scooter into a secluded alley without surveillance cameras, Li Xi immediately transferred all the seed bags into her storage space.
At this point, buying a car had become an urgent necessity.
Trying to prepare for the apocalypse with only an electric scooter was pure suffering.
By the time she returned to town, it was already past five in the afternoon.
Exhausted from running around all day, Li Xi didn’t feel like cooking at all.
She entered her favorite noodle shop and sat quietly in the corner.
“Boss, one small bowl of beef rice noodles, and add a fried dough stick too.”
“Coming right up!”
Soon, a steaming bowl arrived at her table.
After eating the few small pieces of beef, she tore the fried dough stick into chunks and soaked them thoroughly in the rich, spicy broth.
Once the dough had absorbed all the soup and oil, she took a huge bite.
Absolute happiness.
This had always been her favorite way to eat noodles.
After dinner, she returned to her apartment and continued shopping online.
She searched for the fictional “temperature-regulating survival suits” often described in apocalypse novels, but naturally found nothing.
In the end, she settled for practical alternatives.
She purchased enormous quantities of:
Thick cotton clothing
Sweatpants
Cooling gel packs
Ice-making machines
Portable fuel generators
For winter, she ordered:
Thermal underwear
Fleece-lined pants
Polar parkas
Wool socks
Snow boots
Rain boots
Hiking boots
Work shoes
Gloves
Winter hats
Hot-water bottles
Electric hand warmers
Cotton quilts
Down comforters
Bamboo cooling mats
And naturally, she also stockpiled mountains of underwear and sanitary pads.
Finally, she entered the flagship store of her favorite skincare brand and purchased two hundred complete skincare sets.
Face wash.
Lotions.
Serums.
Creams.
Eye creams.
Makeup removers.
Cosmetics.
Lipsticks.
She especially bought dozens of tubes of her favorite autumn shade, maple-leaf red.
The customer service representatives were so alarmed by the size of the order that they personally called to confirm it wasn’t a prank.
For the old Li Xi, luxury skincare products were things she could only buy through installment payments.
Now she could purchase them by the box.
By the time she finished her shopping spree, she had already spent over one million yuan.
Yet after reviewing her apocalypse checklist again, she realized she had barely completed anything.
Ten million yuan suddenly didn’t seem like very much anymore.
At last, she opened an automotive forum and started researching vehicles.
The requirements were simple:
Large cargo capacity.
Excellent fuel economy.
Reliable performance.
Eventually, her eyes settled on a white hybrid SUV.
Including insurance and registration fees, the total price came to just under four hundred thousand yuan.
Before winning the lottery, a car like this would have remained an impossible dream.
Now?
She decided to buy it immediately.
Still, that would have to wait.
Tomorrow morning, she still needed to collect the mountain of fresh meat she had ordered.