“Mom!”
Wang Yumei was unconscious for more than ten seconds. The moment she regained consciousness, the first thing she did was slap Zhou Jiayue across the face.
Zhou Jiayue stood there in a daze and took the slap without resisting. She lowered her head and did not move.
Yet the corners of her lowered eyes had already turned red.
Her mother had never hit her before, not even once throughout her childhood.
This time, her mother really had been driven to the point of fury.
Wang Yumei looked at Zhou Jiayue with a complicated expression. She seemed to want to say something, but after hesitating for a moment, she ultimately said nothing. With a solemn and exhausted expression, she left the room.
Zhou Jiayue felt uneasy. Several times, she opened her mouth, wanting to explain herself, but each time she held back.
She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth.
Inside, she kept saying sorry to Wang Yumei.
The apocalypse was about to arrive, and for the moment, she could not think of a better way to raise enough money. She could only use the excuse of taking out a high interest loan.
The reason she had said two million yuan was because she was not only after her parents’ savings, she was also eyeing the family home.
After the extreme heat came the torrential rains, which would turn most cities across the country into cities submerged beneath the water.
Buildings with fewer than ten floors would be completely uninhabitable.
Xing County was only a small county town. Its economy and transportation were both underdeveloped, and the tallest building in the entire county had only thirteen floors.
The residential community where her family lived was even lower, with only eleven floors at its highest point. Once the torrential rains arrived, apart from the top floor, the residents on all the other floors would have virtually no room to survive.
Her family lived on the eighth floor.
She did not know whether her parents and younger brother had managed to survive the period of torrential rain in her previous life. She did not even dare to imagine what would have happened to them during that period if they had not found another way to survive.
She could not take that chance.
She needed enough money, and she needed to move her entire family out of Xing County!
Zhou Jiayue opened her phone and canceled the ticket she had booked. Although ten percent had been deducted as a cancellation fee, she still got two hundred and ten yuan back.
Looking at the money that had been returned to her account, Zhou Jiayue let out a sigh of relief. She had actually booked a ticket back to school a long time ago, but this time, she did not intend to return to school.
Since she needed to stockpile supplies, every extra yuan would help.
Next, Zhou Jiayue did the same thing with her online purchases. She returned everything she had bought on Taobao that had not yet been shipped and would basically be useless after the apocalypse. She also went through several other platforms and disabled every automatic membership renewal.
There was no way she was going to let them secretly take another penny from her!
After finishing with all those platforms, Zhou Jiayue opened Tieba and began searching for posts about how to prepare supplies for different kinds of natural disasters.
In both her previous life and this one, she had only ever been an ordinary person. Although she had survived in the apocalypse for three years, the things that remained most deeply etched in her memory were hunger and cold.
Now that she had been reborn, apart from knowing that she needed to stock up on more food and things to keep warm, she still did not know much about the more specialized preparations.
The light from the phone screen illuminated Zhou Jiayue’s face as she skimmed through the relevant posts. An hour later, combining what she had learned with her own experience of surviving the apocalypse, she filled three entire sheets of A4 paper with the supplies she needed to prepare.
She could not afford some of the more specialized items at the moment, but she still wrote them down anyway. It was better to be prepared than caught off guard.
After putting away the papers listing all the supplies, Zhou Jiayue opened a rental app.
She searched for information about high rise buildings in Fu City.
After looking around for quite some time, Zhou Jiayue finally found one she was fairly satisfied with.
A room on the top, twenty seventh floor of Tiancheng Residential Community, located in the center of Fu City, was available for rent!
Zhou Jiayue opened a private message with the landlord.
During their conversation, Zhou Jiayue learned that the landlord would be going abroad next month to look after their grandchild and would not be returning for a short period of time. That was why they wanted to rent out the house and collect some rental income.
There were shopping malls and large supermarkets near the residential community, the transportation was convenient, and the location was excellent.
The rental property was more than one hundred and fifty square meters, with three bedrooms, one living room, two bathrooms, and one kitchen. The rent was two thousand three hundred yuan per month, with a minimum rental period of three months.
The property listing included both partial and panoramic photos of the house. Zhou Jiayue looked through them several times and thought it was quite decent.
After several rounds of bargaining with the landlord, she managed to bring the rent down to two thousand yuan a month.
The landlord would not be leaving until the beginning of next month, but to show that she was genuinely interested in renting the place, and because she was afraid the landlord might change their mind and rent it to someone else, Zhou Jiayue reluctantly sent over two thousand yuan first as payment for the first month.
There was no hurry to send the remaining two months’ rent. She could pay the landlord after she had actually moved in.
After securing the house, Zhou Jiayue decided to go to the supermarket and take a look around.
When she walked out of her room, she saw the tightly closed door across from hers.
It was still the National Day holiday, but her father’s workplace had suddenly notified him that he needed to work overtime, so he had not even come home for lunch.
Her younger brother was currently in his second year of high school, and his studies were relatively demanding. After lunch, he had already returned to school.
There were only Zhou Jiayue and her mother at home.
Zhou Jiayue stood silently in front of Wang Yumei’s door for several seconds before turning around and leaving. There was nothing she could say right now. All she could do was wait.
Wait until she had brought her family to a relatively safe place, wait until she had finished stockpiling the supplies, and wait until the apocalypse arrived. At that time, her mother would naturally understand everything.
With red eyes, Zhou Jiayue left the house.
Inside the room, Wang Yumei lay on the bed, tears continuously streaming down her face. The worry in her eyes was so deep that it seemed impossible to dispel.
Wang Yumei wanted to call the children’s father, but she did not want to disturb him at work at a time like this. In the end, she could only bury her worries deep inside and silently bear them alone.
Zhou Jiayue arrived at the largest supermarket in Xing County. She first went to the section selling grain, cooking oil, and other staples. Holding a pen and paper, she recorded the unit prices of the rice and cooking oil from every brand.
After finishing her records, she moved on to the other sections and carried out the same process of recording and comparing prices.
There was no other choice. She simply had too little money right now and could not afford to spend recklessly.
There were also far too many supplies she needed to prepare. She wished she could somehow make every penny stretch twice as far.
She did not need the best quality. She only needed large quantities and enough to fill their stomachs.
Zhou Jiayue spent the entire afternoon recording only half of the supermarket’s merchandise. It was not until her stomach began growling that she realized how quickly the time had passed.
The sales clerk beside her had already rolled her eyes countless times. Zhou Jiayue had not bought a single thing and had only stood there writing and comparing prices. The fact that the clerk had not driven her out already could be considered quite polite.
Zhou Jiayue rubbed her aching wrist and left the supermarket without expression, ignoring the sales clerk’s disdainful looks.
What kind of evil had she not witnessed during the apocalypse? A few dirty looks were nothing. They caused her no actual harm, so she simply did not care.
The sun had already set, yet the temperature outside remained extremely high. The current heat was only an appetizer, and it was already unbearable.
A wave of heat swept over her. Zhou Jiayue glanced at the cold drink shop beside her, and a trace of longing appeared in her eyes. She quickly suppressed it, however, because the first thought that flashed through her mind was how many kilograms of rice one cup of milk tea was worth.
With that calculation in mind, her gaze toward the cold drinks instantly became indifferent. She even shook her head as she looked at the young people gathered around the entrance of the shop.
They were wasting far too much money.
On her way home, Zhou Jiayue passed by the Xinhua Bookstore. Seeing the dazzling array of books inside, a trace of regret flashed through her eyes.
She had always been an excellent student. She had even been admitted to the best university in the province through the college entrance examination. Thanks to her parents’ careful upbringing and guidance, she also loved reading.
After the torrential rains, all the books in these bookstores would be ruined by the floodwater. But she was already struggling just to protect herself, so apart from feeling sorry about it, there was nothing she could do.
Just as Zhou Jiayue withdrew her gaze and was about to leave, she suddenly heard a strange voice.
The voice seemed to be ringing directly inside her mind.
【A strong attachment to books has been detected in the host. The system requirements have been met. Binding will now commence.】
【Ding! Congratulations, host. You have successfully bound the “Golden House” System!】