Jiang Shengyue was sitting in her car when she saw the caller ID and hung up immediately, then blocked the entire family while she was at it.
She had slipped away long ago, while they were still packing their bags.
This time was just about collecting a little interest—otherwise, if her enemies lived too well, she couldn’t sleep soundly. There would be plenty more suffering in store for them!
Right now she was busy making money and had no time to argue with these people.
“Things like this are always more satisfying when you screw over some scumbag. Let me think…”
There were plenty of scumbags in the Apocalypse; she’d have to do some calculating to pick which one.
Jiang Shengyue’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one!”
At that moment, in the R&D department of Shengnuo Technology, a middle-aged balding man was sighing repeatedly.
The company’s executives had already given him an ultimatum: if he couldn’t find a suitable project soon, he could pack up his things and get out.
Bzzt—bzzt
Manager Zhang frowned at the unfamiliar number but pressed the answer button.
A few minutes later, his small, triangular eyes grew wider and wider, and the fat on his cheeks quivered with excitement.
“Ms. Jiang! Would you be available to meet this afternoon for a detailed discussion? Bring the materials with you, and we can talk specifics!”
A remarkably young female voice came through the phone: “Of course. Two o’clock this afternoon, at Mingxiang Teahouse.”
After hanging up, Manager Zhang wore a thoughtful expression. After a long moment, he called in his secretary to arrange an emergency meeting.
He hoped the other party was telling the truth. If she dared to trick him…
Mingxiang Teahouse.
At one fifty, the door of Jiang Shengyue’s private room opened.
A balding middle-aged man in a sharp suit, sporting a beer belly, walked in.
A dark glint flashed swiftly through Jiang Shengyue’s eyes.
“Hello, you must be Miss Jiang. My, you’re so young, haha!
I’m Zhang Maoping from Shengnuo Technology. We’ve already spoken briefly over the phone.”
“Hello, Manager Zhang. Please, have a seat.”
After the two exchanged warm greetings, the private room fell quiet once more.
Jiang Shengyue kept smiling as she sipped her tea, and an eerie silence filled the air.
After a long while, Zhang Maoping grew anxious.
He hadn’t expected such a young girl to be so composed. His eyes kept drifting toward the kraft paper document bag beside Jiang Shengyue’s hand.
Finally, Zhang Maoping spoke first: “Miss Jiang, based on what you described on the phone, if everything in these materials checks out, our company will certainly not treat you unfairly.”
He finished with an honest, good-natured smile.
Jiang Shengyue pushed the document bag over to Zhang Maoping. “No rush. Take a look first.”
Zhang Maoping opened the bag and pulled out a stack of paper documents, covered densely with theories and data.
The more he read, the stronger the excitement in his eyes grew.
“Miss Jiang, this is only part of the materials?”
Hearing this, Jiang Shengyue showed a look of regret and sighed.
“To be honest with you, I came across this by chance. But the project’s researcher has passed away, and before he died, this was all he left behind.”
Zhang Maoping’s face showed difficulty upon hearing this.
“Manager Zhang, you should be able to see that this portion alone has already solved the biggest challenge.
Besides, if it were complete data ready for immediate implementation, you and I wouldn’t be having this meeting today, would we?”
As Zhang Maoping was caught in an internal struggle, those words made his whole body tremble.
He knew she was right. Precisely because it was only a half-finished product—if it were a complete project, the price would be astronomical!
A small company like theirs wouldn’t deserve it.
Zhang Maoping’s turbulent emotions steadied, and he made up his mind.
“Miss Jiang, let’s discuss the price now.”
A cunning gleam of triumph flashed in Jiang Shengyue’s half-lowered eyes.
After some haggling, Jiang Shengyue ultimately got 30 million!
The money would arrive within five days.
Leaving the teahouse, Zhang Maoping got into his car and gazed thoughtfully at the scenery along both sides of the street through the window.
“Manager, should we…” the driver said with an obsequious smile, his tone carrying a hidden meaning.
Zhang Maoping no longer retained the honest demeanor he’d shown in the teahouse; his expression was arrogant and shadowed.
“Hmph, what’s the rush? The priority right now is launching the project. Even a cornered rabbit bites—this isn’t the time to stir up complications.”
“Just a little girl. Let her enjoy herself for a few days. She’ll have to cough up that money sooner or later…”
In the private room, Jiang Shengyue’s expression returned to its usual coldness as she continued drinking tea, her fingers tapping the table in a natural rhythm.
Zhang Maoping might have seemed warm and polite during the transaction, but it was all a facade.
The data had been compiled from the materials her parents left behind—and it was a complete set.
But only the portion sold to Zhang Maoping was correct; everything else was highly misleading.
If she’d given him the complete data, he would have seen at a glance that pushing the project forward would yield nothing but a wrong answer despite burning through enormous resources.
She wasn’t afraid of retaliation for selling Zhang Maoping such nonsensical data—by the time they discovered it, the Apocalypse would already be upon them.
After the Apocalypse, Zhang Maoping and several ambitious researchers with impure motives had used the Order Chaos to conduct human experiments.
When they accidentally discovered her tenacious vitality, they’d actually tried to take her back to the research lab for study!
Fortunately, Jiang Shengyue had escaped quickly and dodged that bullet.
Before her eyes, she seemed to see Zhang Maoping’s laboratory again—those grotesque, twisted human bodies and rotting organs, half-human monsters wailing as they soaked in unknown liquids.
The brown pupils in her amber eyes were tinged with an eerie, deep crimson blood color, flashing and vanishing in an instant.
Even she herself didn’t notice…
[Ding! Dixiacheng expansion complete!]
[Dixiacheng Level 1 unlocked!]
“It’s finally here!”
Jiang Shengyue rushed back to Banshan Villa at top speed and arrived in front of the storage room.
There had originally been a door here, but now it had completely become one smooth, seamless wall.
Jiang Shengyue felt a strange power sweep over her.
The spot where the storage room door had been suddenly rippled like the surface of water, rings of waves spreading outward.
Without the slightest hesitation, she stepped into the halo of light—it was an elevator!
Beside the door was a row of numbers, from eight floors underground to three floors above.
Jiang Shengyue’s brow twitched.
She tentatively pressed all the buttons, and sure enough, only the number 1 responded.
After about three seconds of weightlessness, there was a ding—the elevator doors opened.
Even Jiang Shengyue, someone who had experienced the strange event of rebirth, widened her eyes in shock!
Before her was an enormous cylindrical Space, its boundaries almost impossible to see.
She looked utterly tiny inside.
What met her eyes was a blend of pure, soft white and the silver of cold, hard metal.
The snow-white walls on all sides were interwoven with dark silver metallic sensor strips that refracted a cold light whenever someone passed.
Jiang Shengyue stepped out of the elevator and looked back—the elevator doors had vanished.
On either side of her were two extremely large compartments.
The partition walls were all made of frosted glass, making it impossible to see what was inside, but each room had a label on its door.
They read: Treatment Room and Refurbishment Workshop.
On one side of the wall was a large gate, 5 meters tall and 3 meters wide.
Connected to this gate on the inside was a glass chamber, with spray devices on all four sides. Anyone entering or exiting had to pass through this glass chamber.
After observing it, Jiang Shengyue concluded that the glass chamber must be a quarantine decontamination zone.
But the glass chamber’s gate was completely sealed.
Insufficient clearance?
Jiang Shengyue walked forward.
On the open ground to the left of the gate, neat metal lines had been painted—like a parking lot.
Because on the ground there were also 10 charging stations and 5 fuel pumps.
Jiang Shengyue’s eye twitched slightly. With this many stations and parking spots, it really thought highly of her!
How many vehicles would she need to get…
Directly across from the gate were three enormous metal elevators, also in a locked state.
Walking to the center of the hall and looking up, she saw a giant display screen.
“This hall is quite spacious—perfect for a base assembly point.
I wonder what the other floors are like. If they’re all this practical, it would save a lot of manpower and resources.”
Jiang Shengyue closed her eyes and mentally simulated the structure of this Space.
In the end, she reached a surprising conclusion—this hall was inside Banyue Mountain, the very mountain where Banshan Villa stood!
“Looks like the three above-ground levels of Dixiacheng are this mountain, and underground… it must truly be deep beneath the earth.”
At this moment, a flicker of anticipation genuinely rose in Jiang Shengyue’s heart—
What would it look like once every floor was unlocked?
It was as irresistible as collecting a complete set of Little Bear trading cards.
She thought for a moment, then took the experimental equipment and supplies her parents had left in the Space and placed them in the hall, emptying out her Space.
The moment the supplies landed, Jiang Shengyue heard the system’s voice again.
[Ding! Detected supplies x1000. Dixiacheng private warehouse access granted!
Please head to Floor 2 to take a look, dear~]
Jiang Shengyue: …
The system suddenly being this affectionate was a bit hard to get used to.
She still preferred the system’s old, rebellious attitude.
But this change also proved that she had truly earned the system’s recognition!
She put everything on the ground back into her Space and took the elevator.
As soon as Jiang Shengyue entered Floor 2, she received a notification from the system—
[Time in this warehouse flows at 1/100th the normal speed]
“So things with a one-day shelf life can last 100 days in the warehouse!”
The walls here had 7 levels of extended platforms, with a wide staircase in the middle for walking or transporting goods.
Jiang Shengyue arranged the supplies in the warehouse. The large quantity of supplies took up only a tiny corner of a single platform!
She gazed at the empty space with burning eyes and made a silent resolution—
One day, she would fill this place completely with supplies!
At seven in the evening, Jiang Shengyue arrived at the western suburbs warehouse. Wang Cheng and Wu Zechuan had already finished their work for the day.
She collected the first day’s supplies, along with four portable hard drives full of data the two had left behind, plus a clear inventory list of the goods.
Jiang Shengyue nodded in satisfaction. Truly professional—first-class work capability and efficiency.
So she took out ten more hard drives she’d bought that day and placed them on the warehouse table.
With this kind of work efficiency, she had to give them more to do!
Just as she locked the warehouse door, Jiang Shengyue felt something wrong with her body—her vision went black.
She could clearly sense the Plant-type Energy around her surging into her body.
An Ability Awakening!
A full year ahead of schedule!
Jiang Shengyue made her way back to Banshan Villa with her head throbbing.
Barely holding on to her crumbling consciousness, she transferred the remaining payment in full to the merchants.
She sent a message to Wu Zechuan, the other person, and the construction crew, saying she had to travel out of town for a couple of days and that work should proceed as usual, per the standard.
After confirming nothing was missed, she dragged a blanket with her and swayed into the elevator, heading down to the main hall on the first level of Dixiacheng.
She wrapped herself up tightly and curled into a corner.
In the instant before losing consciousness, she was still thinking:
Thank goodness I had some time to react—otherwise, if the payments had been delayed, all those supplies would have been gone…
By the time I wake up, the money from Shengnuo should have arrived too. I can splurge again…