Early the next morning, Li Xi rented a small cargo van for two hundred yuan per day.
The moment she stepped into the slaughterhouse, she nearly turned around and fled.
The overwhelming stench of blood and raw flesh hit her like a physical blow. She hurriedly layered three masks over her face before the nausea became unbearable.
After locating the pork vendor’s relative and presenting their signed agreement, the workers finally dragged out the five slaughtered pigs. Right in front of her, they chopped the carcasses into standard cuts and thoroughly cleaned the internal organs.
Since ribs, pig trotters, and pork intestines were her favorite parts, she deliberately bought extra.
Once the remaining payment was settled, the workers loaded everything into the back of the van.
Li Xi escaped the slaughterhouse at top speed.
After driving a short distance and confirming nobody was nearby, she immediately transferred all the meat into her storage space.
Next came the poultry market.
She collected the slaughtered chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, and fish she had ordered the previous day.
While passing through the meat section, she noticed a vendor selling particularly fresh beef and mutton. Although the prices were much higher than pork, she still bought two hundred jin of each.
Then she suddenly remembered eggs.
Without hesitation, she purchased:
Three thousand chicken eggs
Two thousand duck eggs
Five hundred goose eggs
Since goose eggs had a stronger flavor, she bought fewer of them.
She also stocked up on preserved eggs and salted duck eggs by the tens of thousands.
Using the same routine as before, Li Xi drove to a secluded alley with no surveillance cameras and transferred everything into her space.
Afterward, she headed straight to the fruit and vegetable wholesale market.
For common fruits like apples, pears, bananas, oranges, and mandarins, she bought ten large crates of each.
She added five crates of lemons for cooking purposes.
Although peaches and honey plums were currently out of season and painfully expensive, she still indulged herself and bought several crates anyway.
Then came strawberries, cherries, and all sorts of premium grapes she couldn’t even identify by name.
Once the fruit section was finished, Li Xi charged into the vegetable market.
Since this was a major wholesale distribution center, vendors sold produce in massive quantities.
She started with daily essentials:
Two hundred jin of green onions
Two hundred jin of ginger
Two hundred jin of garlic
Two hundred jin of cilantro
Then she purchased another two hundred jin of fish mint.
As a native of the Southwest, Li Xi absolutely loved fish mint despite its notoriously divisive flavor.
Whether mixed into cold salads, stir-fried with cured pork, dipped into hot pot, or added to dipping sauces, she found it delicious no matter how it was prepared.
As for regular vegetables, she bought roughly one hundred jin of each type since she already had plenty of seeds stored away.
To prepare for future hot pot cravings, she also stocked up on frozen hot pot ingredients:
Meatballs
Beef tripe
Duck intestines
Duck gizzards
Dried lily flowers
Tribute greens
Sea lettuce
Thick kelp ribbons
Originally, she had wanted to buy fruit tree saplings as well.
Unfortunately, her storage space still refused to support any living thing besides herself.
A pothos plant she had cared for over several years had died within minutes after entering the space, completely crushing her dreams of farming inside it.
Realizing that eating only rice and flour long-term would be unhealthy, Li Xi also purchased a large variety of coarse grains:
Corn
Millet
Red beans
Mung beans
Soybeans
She finished by buying large quantities of cookware such as pots, pans, bowls, and ladles.
At this point, her food preparations were mostly complete.
She drove the cargo van to the warehouse she had rented, then quietly emptied everything into her dimension once she confirmed nobody was watching.
On her way home, she passed a pharmacy and suddenly froze.
Medicine.
She had completely forgotten about medicine.
Unfortunately, many important medications required prescriptions and couldn’t easily be bought in large amounts.
Li Xi briefly considered opening a pharmacy herself.
After searching online, however, she discovered that obtaining the necessary licenses would take at least a month.
That was far too slow.
After a moment of thought, she walked directly into a large pharmacy and discreetly handed one of the employees a five-hundred-yuan red envelope.
“Hello,” Li Xi whispered. “I’m preparing to open my own pharmacy, but my paperwork is still being processed. My storefront renovations are already finished, though, and I urgently need inventory. Could you perhaps place a wholesale order under your store’s name and sell the supplies to me directly?”
The young clerk looked nervous.
“I… I can’t really make that decision…”
“You’d earn a huge sales commission,” Li Xi coaxed softly. “My store is far away from yours, so there won’t be any competition. It’s beneficial for both of us.”
After hesitating for a long time, the clerk finally gave in to temptation.
Once Li Xi left behind the warehouse address, she walked out of the pharmacy in an extremely good mood.
She truly was a genius.
Her next stop was the car dealership.
Without hesitation, she paid full cash for the white hybrid SUV she had chosen earlier.
The saleswoman spent nearly thirty minutes trying to convince her to take out a loan instead, and when Li Xi repeatedly refused, the woman’s smile became visibly strained.
Li Xi didn’t care in the slightest.
She happily drove her brand-new car home while humming to herself.
Over the next several days, enormous waves of online deliveries began arriving at the warehouse.
Li Xi tipped the couriers generously and asked them to stack everything neatly inside.
Then, once they left, she immediately swept all the supplies into her space.
The warehouse would go from overflowing with mountains of goods to completely empty in seconds.
One evening while heading home, she passed a braised snack shop and suddenly craved something spicy.
“Boss, forty yuan of hot-and-sour chicken feet, ten yuan of sea lettuce, ten yuan of duck hearts, and twenty yuan of duck intestines.”
Li Xi preferred spicy and sour flavors.
The sweet-spicy style popularized by chains like Zhou Hei Ya had never suited her taste.
The owner quickly packed everything and placed the bag onto the scale.
“That’ll be 125.9 yuan.”
Li Xi glanced at the number with a blank expression.
“I only have eighty yuan left in my digital wallet. If you want to give me the rest for free, I won’t stop you.”
This particular shop was notorious for intentionally overpacking orders to force customers to spend more.
Today, Li Xi refused to play along.
The owner’s face immediately darkened.
Muttering unhappily under his breath, he reopened the containers, removed portions one by one, and repeatedly reweighed everything until the total finally matched her budget.
Satisfied, Li Xi paid exactly eighty yuan and left.
Back at home, she happily gnawed on spicy chicken feet while reading web novels on her phone.
The title of the novel was The Farm Girl’s Road to Prosperity.
Li Xi had always loved peaceful farming stories.
In the middle of exhausting city life, reading about quiet agricultural living brought her tremendous comfort.
That was also why she loved countryside content creators like Li Ziqi and Dianxi Xiaoge.
Unfortunately, after reading several chapters, Li Xi’s expression gradually soured.
Why had some prince suddenly appeared as the male lead?
Couldn’t farming novels just focus on farming?
If she wanted political intrigue and palace romance, she would have chosen a court drama instead.
Suppressing her frustration, she kept reading while silently vowing never to purchase an entire novel upfront again.
From now on, she would only pay chapter by chapter.
As night fell, brilliant neon lights illuminated the city skyline.
Standing by the window, Li Xi gazed quietly at the bustling streets below.
Cars flowed endlessly like rivers of light, while pedestrians rushed around like busy ants.
Just days ago, she herself had been trapped in that same exhausting rhythm.
She still didn’t know what kind of future awaited her.
But ever since obtaining the pocket dimension, an unshakable sense of unease had settled deep inside her heart.
Still, as long as she remained alive, she believed she could survive well with her space.
The following morning, the pharmacy employee called her.
The medicines had arrived at the warehouse.
Since many of her online orders were also being delivered that day, Li Xi decided to collect everything together.
Reviewing her apocalypse checklist, she realized she had already completed more than eighty percent of her preparations.
The remaining survival equipment needed to be purchased in person.
So she visited an outdoor supply store and bought:
Five premium all-weather tents
Ten heavy-duty waterproof tarps
Compasses
Tactical flashlights
Survival candles
Hunting knives
Windproof lighters
Waterproof matches
Then came daily necessities.
Wholesale markets were much cheaper than supermarkets, so she bought industrial quantities of:
Toilet paper
Wet wipes
Toothpaste
Toothbrushes
Towels
Shampoo
Body wash
Soap
Laundry detergent
Dishwashing liquid
Disinfectants
Used carefully, these supplies could last decades.
She also purchased fifty cases of instant noodles in different flavors.
Concerned about potential water shortages, she ordered another five hundred large barrels of purified water.
After reviewing her list several times, she couldn’t think of anything else she urgently needed.
If she remembered something later, she could always buy it then.
Checking her finances, she discovered she still had 4.26 million yuan remaining.
Li Xi immediately deposited three million into a fixed-term savings account.
Even if no apocalypse ever happened, three million yuan was already enough to guarantee an extremely comfortable life in their small county.
She allocated another one million yuan toward demolishing and rebuilding her late grandmother’s old countryside home.
Still, before starting renovations, she decided to take a long vacation.
During the pandemic years, she hadn’t traveled outside her home province for over three years.
Partly because of lockdowns.
Partly because work had consumed her entire life.
Her first destination was Yunnan Province.
In videos from countryside bloggers she admired, Yunnan’s skies always appeared brilliantly blue beneath warm golden sunlight.
She desperately wanted to see it for herself.
Because she was terrified of airplanes after watching too many aviation disaster documentaries, Li Xi traveled entirely by high-speed rail.
That fear had become even worse after the domestic airline crash earlier that year.
She couldn’t even imagine the despair those passengers must have experienced.
Wearing a flowing bohemian dress, sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed sunhat, Li Xi wandered leisurely through the lively streets of an ancient town.
It had been so long since she’d allowed herself to relax like this.
Soon, the aroma of Yunnan-style pounded chicken feet drifted toward her from a nearby stall.
Watching the vendor toss ingredients into a large mortar before pounding them together vigorously, Li Xi’s mouth watered instantly.
The moment she took her first bite, her eyes widened.
Sweet.
Sour.
Spicy.
Fresh lime juice added a bright, sharp fragrance that ordinary vinegar could never replicate.
Crunchy green beans added texture, while fish sauce brought everything together with rich umami depth.
It was unbelievably delicious.
The people of Yunnan truly lived blessed lives.
Without hesitation, she ordered another hundred portions and had them delivered directly to the private courtyard residence she had rented.
Because the rental property was completely secluded, she didn’t need to worry about anyone noticing the absurd quantity of food deliveries.
Over the next few weeks, besides sightseeing, Li Xi spent most of her time eating.
Crossing-the-bridge rice noodles.
Steam-pot chicken.
Lemongrass grilled fish.
Wild mushroom hot pot.
Flower pastries.
Whenever she encountered something especially delicious, she immediately ordered dozens of portions for storage.
She even bought
One hundred jars of wild matsutake mushroom oil
Twenty whole Xuanwei hams
After growing tired of the ancient town, she traveled onward to Lugu Lake, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, and Kunming.
If she continued eating like this, she joked to herself that she might stay in Yunnan forever.
Afterward, she traveled to Guizhou Province.
Aside from enjoying the local cuisine, she quietly used her money to obtain a high-quality hunting crossbow and steel bolts from remote mountain craftsmen.
It was expensive, but personal safety was priceless.
From Guizhou, she traveled to Guangxi to eat authentic snail rice noodles.
Then she headed south to Hainan Island, where she wore beautiful bikinis and indulged in luxurious seafood feasts.
After spending over two months traveling around the country, Li Xi finally returned home to Sichuan.
The day she returned happened to be the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The city overflowed with warmth and celebration.
But for some reason, an overwhelming sense of dread suddenly gripped her chest.
Li Xi rubbed her sternum uneasily.
Did I drink too much milk tea today?
Fifteen minutes remained before her movie started, so she scanned a QR code and sat down in a massage chair at the shopping mall.
The rollers pressed painfully into her back.
Then suddenly—
“He’s killing people! Help!”
“Run! Everybody run!”
“My child! Somebody save my child!”
The peaceful mall instantly descended into chaos.
Screams and terrified cries erupted everywhere as crowds stampeded frantically through the corridors.
Li Xi’s instincts screamed danger.
Her trembling fingers immediately dialed emergency services and the police.
Amid the panicked crowd stood an ordinary-looking middle-aged man.
His appearance was so plain he could disappear into any crowd without notice.
But now his face twisted with terrifying madness as he swung a fruit knife wildly at fleeing shoppers.
Nobody dared stop him.
Everyone only wanted to escape.
In the chaos, a woman carrying a small child was shoved violently to the ground.
As she desperately shielded her child with her own body, the attacker suddenly appeared before them.
He stabbed the woman three times in rapid succession.
Even then, she refused to let go of her child.
The man slowly raised the bloodied knife again, aiming directly at the crying toddler.
Li Xi didn’t know where the courage came from.
Without thinking, she grabbed a heavy wooden stool from a nearby fast-food restaurant and swung it with all her strength straight at the attacker’s head.