Guan Yunhua came back to the ward and saw her daughter’s blank face. After thinking it over, she told her daughter, “Your dad is fine, they’re already operating. The doctor said it was caught in time. You eat first, I’m going to wait outside the operating room.” Yin Shan came back to herself, saw her mother’s white hair, and decided to go and wait outside the operating room together with her mother. On the way to the operating room, Yin Shan asked her mother, “Mom, all these years, has it been tiring?” Guan Yunhua was surprised by Yin Shan’s question. All these years she had struggled and earned money for this family without stopping, only so they could live without being short of money, but she had neglected keeping her daughter company. Yin Shan had been in poor health since childhood, yet in all these years she had never complained that she and her father had not doted on her to the extreme the way other parents did. On the contrary, before she started working, they had been very strict with her, and they demanded that she be driven and independent. Yin Shan had never complained, but she had also never asked a question like this. Guan Yunhua told Yin Shan, “Tiring, but with you and your dad, it’s worth it.”
Yin Shan fell silent. After she woke up she had checked the time, and there were only two months left before the apocalypse. In her previous life, during this period, she had been busy with promotions and busy playing the simp, and had never cared about her own parents, but there was still a chance now. Yin Shan silently made her plans, and thinking that a rebirth or anything like it was too shocking to say out loud, she decided to keep it hidden, and to first work out a plan and stockpile supplies.
Yin Shan took stock of her family’s assets and found that apart from the real estate there were four million yuan in liquid funds, all of it her parents’ blood and sweat money over the years. So she opened her phone, first asked her boss for extended leave, saying her illness was serious and she needed time off, and then opened her notes app and reckoned up the supplies she needed to prepare. First was rice, flour and oil, seasonings, fish, meat, all kinds of instant food products, compressed biscuits and so on. Next was clothing, and to cope with the extreme weather later, it had to be mainly summer and winter clothes. Then there was medicine, and although Zero Degree Space said that after taking a Marrow-Cleansing Pill you would not get sick, medicine would be a scarce supply after the apocalypse and could be traded for a lot of supplies. And then there were cars and gasoline, diesel, generators, seeds, sanitary pads, charcoal, space heaters, flashlights, LED lamps and so on.
With the rough list made, Yin Shan opened a certain Bao and a certain Duo to check prices and found that four million was nowhere near enough, and the real estate was all in her parents’ names. If Yin Shan wanted to get the supplies she needed ready before the apocalypse, she needed a large amount of money, but if she raised the apocalypse with her parents out of the blue, they would definitely go after her boss with a kitchen knife, thinking she was under so much pressure that she was hallucinating. So she could only buy the necessities first, and as for the rest, she would go do zero-yuan shopping (líng yuán gòu, 0元購, Slang: looting, jokingly framed as free shopping) after the apocalypse arrived.
Once Yin Shan had finished all this, she found that Guan Yunhua had been staring at her the whole time. Yin Shan was startled, knowing her little maneuvers had been noticed, and she was just thinking about how to explain when Guan Yunhua finally asked the question she had wanted to ask for the past few hours. “Shanshan, what’s wrong with you? Why are you buying these things, and why are you counting up how much money our family has? Have you gotten into trouble, the kind you get sentenced for? Are you going to run? Tell Mom the truth, Mom will help you.” Yin Shan was slightly stunned, and seeing Guan Yunhua’s face full of worry, she thought of how the two of them, mother and daughter, often used to discuss mystical things, so Yin Shan said seriously, “Mom, I had a dream. I dreamed the apocalypse was coming, and you and Dad both died protecting me. I want to sell all the houses and buy supplies to stock up.” Guan Yunhua frowned, convinced her daughter’s trouble was no small thing but that she did not dare tell her about it, so she told her daughter, “Our family has 6.2 million in liquid funds altogether and four properties. Two of them are in your name, your dad and I never told you, and you can decide about those two yourself. If you don’t want to say, Mom won’t ask. Your dad’s health is bad, so Mom will keep 200,000 as money to get by on, and the rest I’ll all give to you. See if you can settle the matter, and if you can’t, Mom will send you abroad.”
Yin Shan knew her mother was convinced she had gotten into trouble, and that no matter how she explained it she would not believe her, but since her mother was willing to hand the money over to her, that counted as her goal achieved. So Yin Shan went along with Guan Yunhua’s words. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll fill the hole, but I might have to lie low for a while. Don’t you and Dad worry. Once Dad’s surgery is over I’ll leave first, and when I’ve settled somewhere I’ll call to say I’m safe.” Hearing Yin Shan say this, Guan Yunhua knew the matter was urgent, so she pressed on. “How much is needed altogether? I’ll go borrow some. A house can’t be sold all at once, a month at the fastest.” Yin Shan knew Guan Yunhua would definitely be opening her mouth to her friends to borrow money, and she could even guess who they were. Thinking of how, after the apocalypse, those people had humiliated her and her mother to the utmost when they came to their door for help, she decided to get a small taste of revenge and deal with them properly once the apocalypse arrived, so she opened her mouth wide. “Ten million at the very least.”
Guan Yunhua silently linked ten million with the criminal code and felt that if she could not come up with it her daughter might be pedaling a sewing machine for the rest of her life (cǎi yībèizi féngrènjī, 踩一輩子縫紉機, Slang: prison slang for a life sentence at hard labor), so she got up at once to borrow money. While Guan Yunhua was off borrowing money, Yin Shan thought of Lu Yunchao. At this point in her previous life, Lu Yunchao knew her parents had a bit of clout and had been working hard to curry favor. If she now said her parents needed money for a turnaround and promised to repay double afterward, then with his greedy nature he would definitely agree. So she called Lu Yunchao. “Yunchao, my parents are doing a big deal and their funds are tied up. Do you have any way to help? A bank loan takes two months to be approved. My parents said that once it comes through they’ll give you an extra 500,000 as a commission.” When Lu Yunchao first heard Yin Shan asking to borrow money from him, his first reaction was that the Yin family was going under, and he was about to refuse, but then he heard Yin Shan say she would give him a 500,000 commission, so he agreed at once. “Shanshan, your family’s business is my business, no commission needed. Tomorrow at twelve noon, the same coffee shop, I’ll bring it to you.” Listening to Lu Yunchao, Yin Shan sneered inwardly, knowing he said this deliberately to score points with her, so she still insisted. “Mom and Dad said to give you an extra 500,000, so just take it. Anyway the two of us are going to be married. Think of it as 500,000 more in bride price, what’s wrong with that? You think of me, and I have to plan for our future too! See you at twelve tomorrow then, I’m going into a meeting, love you~” She hung up and Yin Shan almost threw up. Lu Yunchao could not possibly come up with one million, he would definitely go to Wang Yun for the money. Wang Yun, a textbook rich second generation, with money and connections. In her previous life Lu Yunchao had used Wang Yun’s money to pretend that he and Yin Shan were “a good match,” which had let her drop her guard around him. After the apocalypse, he had joined with Wang Yun to sell her to the cannibal village. Thinking of all the suffering she had gone through, Yin Shan swore she would make them pay in blood.
Guan Yunhua finished her phone calls and saw the light outside the operating room go out, so she hurried over, first telling Yin Shan she would hand her the money shortly, then asking the doctor about the operation. The doctor told Guan Yunhua that Yin Zhiwen’s surgery had gone very well, and that if all went smoothly he could be discharged in two weeks, so Guan Yunhua’s mind was at ease and she quickly pulled Yin Shan along back to the ward.
Two hours later, Yin Zhiwen came to. Seeing that he was all right, Guan Yunhua took the chance while Yin Shan was out buying food to tell Yin Zhiwen that Yin Shan had gotten into a lawsuit and needed at least ten million, and that she had already scraped it together, but from her daughter’s expression it did not seem to be quite enough, because she had heard her daughter on the phone borrowing money from her boyfriend. Hearing Guan Yunhua say this, Yin Zhiwen knew ten million was definitely not enough, so he immediately called his own friends and forced together another three million. When Yin Shan came back, she found both her parents looking at her, and then Guan Yunhua handed Yin Shan several bank cards, telling Yin Shan to be careful, not to worry about home, and to call and report she was safe once she had settled in, then waved her off to go pack her things and not come back.
Yin Shan looked at the bank cards in her hand with mixed feelings. Thinking that with what she was doing, the two of them would probably worry over these two months about her getting sick again, she took out the Marrow-Cleansing Pills. “This is a new medicine, it strengthens the constitution. You two take it, don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Guan Yunhua, afraid that Yin Shan would worry, fed Yin Zhiwen one even though she did not know whether the medicine did anything, and took one herself, then waved her off. “Go on, come back when it’s safe, the two of us will be waiting for you!” Yin Shan looked at her parents, who believed her unconditionally, thought back over everything from her previous life, took two steps back, and knelt down and kowtowed. “Dad, Mom, wait for me to come back!”