She was terrified of being thrown back into that abyss of endless suffocation.
In reality, Bo Zhiya was simply waiting for new instructions from Shen Ruoran. As an exemplary employee who followed his boss’s orders with absolute obedience, he would never take unauthorized action. Even his facial expression was controlled to perfection.
After some consideration, Shen Ruoran sent her decision to Bo Zhiya. Simultaneously, Zhou Qing received yet another job reassignment.
She was moved from the supermarket back to the restaurant. Her salary remained the same, but her working hours underwent a slight adjustment.
Previously, with so few people, Shen Ruoran hadn’t bothered to standardize the restaurant’s operations. However, with the addition of a new employee, the restaurant’s rules needed to be formally established.
Zhou Qing’s shift schedule was set independently: 6:30 AM to 9:00 AM, 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM, and 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM.
At a glance, it seemed her working hours had increased. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Including Shen Ruoran, there were only four people in the building. She only had to cook for a few people and clean up afterward; she could spend the rest of her time resting.
In modern society, frequent job reassignments might signal cruel layoffs. However, Shen Ruoran was no heartless capitalist; she was simply a newcomer who didn’t quite know how to manage an entire building yet. She was still in the learning phase.
Zhou Qing, however, didn’t see it that way. Having ventured into society alone at a young age, she understood what such frequent rotations usually implied. Her brow furrowed, and her heart sank.
Relentlessly reflecting on her behavior over the past few days, she began to work in the restaurant with even more ferocity. She mopped the floors three times a day and wiped the stove ten times.
Seeing Zhou Qing’s hyper-diligent work attitude, the odd-job boy, Bo Zhiya, and the newly appointed clerk, Jia Feifei (whose duties involved registering and collecting utilities and rent), felt pressured by the “internal competition.” They poured 200% of their effort into their roles, working with intense vigor.
The building, as a whole, began to show signs of a thriving, positive atmosphere.
Rotting garbage floated haphazardly in the water. Shen Ruoran sat in her submarine, circling Qing University. She discovered that aside from the Experimental Building, every other structure was packed with people.
In the most crowded building, students stood in noisy rows; she estimated there wasn’t even enough space for them to lie down.
She found it quite strange. Are there monsters in the Experimental Building? Why were only Lu Chuan and the professor’s rescue team staying there? It clearly looked like the best shelter, yet it remained empty while people avoided it.
Shen Ruoran’s target was unoccupied high-rise buildings. Clearly, Qing University no longer had any places that met her requirements.
She turned the submarine around, steered it out of the campus, and headed for the B City People’s Hospital.
The five-story outpatient building was deserted, while the twenty-five-story inpatient department was overflowing with people.
After the first four floors were submerged, patients originally residing on those floors had squeezed into empty rooms or corridors on higher levels, making do as best they could. The doctors and nurses had also moved entirely to the inpatient department to care for the massive number of patients and for their own safety.
Shen Ruoran immediately passed on the crowded inpatient building and went to the outpatient building first.
The fifth floor of the outpatient building happened to house the hospital’s surgical suites, and the sixth floor was the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) section.
The operating rooms were still in a sterilized state, with disposable surgical tools neatly arranged on racks. Shen Ruoran was very pleased with the layout and took the entire area into her space, perfectly intact.
The TCM section contained more than just medicine; it also held classic medical texts like the Compendium of Materia Medica, the Treatise on Febrile Diseases, and Records of Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in Combination. These works, passed down for millennia, remained well-preserved.
After collecting the herbs and cabinets from the pharmacy, she took every book she laid eyes on.
Her sharp eyes caught sight of a coded door within the TCM pharmacy, requiring an eight-digit password to unlock.
Operating on the assumption that the hospital likely trusted its own internal security, Shen Ruoran carefully examined the walls and floor near the door. Eventually, she discovered a string of numbers behind a red honorary banner that looked suspiciously like a password.
She pressed them in. Sure enough, they were correct.
A scent of Chinese herbs—richer than that in the outer area—greeted her, opening the door to a new world for Shen Ruoran. The herbs were stacked in an orderly fashion by category; they were numerous, varied, and dense, but not messy.
Shen Ruoran collected to her heart’s content.
Once she finished with the TCM section, she took a shortcut between floors and visited the fifth floor of the Emergency Department.
Collect, collect, collect. Shen Ruoran’s eyes grew red with excitement. The joy of hoarding expanded ten-thousand-fold in her heart.
As the sky darkened, the wild night winds howled, performing a fierce rhapsody alongside the relentless rain. The powerful winds significantly hampered the submarine’s navigation. By the time Shen Ruoran returned to Xinju Garden, it was nearly midnight.
The corridors were silent. The first floor had been mopped so clean by Zhou Qing that it was bright enough to reflect light.
Shen Ruoran hurried back to her bedroom, took a hot bath, put on a face mask, and began a new round of binge-watching.
This time, she chose a medical idol drama centered around the male and female leads (both doctors) saving lives, with their romance as a secondary plot. As the highest-rated drama of the year, every episode ended on a cliffhanger that left the viewer itching for more. Shen Ruoran was hooked, watching one episode after another, unable to stop.
At five in the morning, she grew hungry. She pulled steaming hot fried skewers and a chilled milk tea from her space.
A bite of a beef skewer, a sip of a caramel macchiato—she was beyond satisfied.
“Burp…”
“Refreshing!”
This was the first time Shen Ruoran had indulged herself like this since her death from overwork in her previous life. She hummed happily, her feet—clad in cute slippers—dangling and swinging cheerfully as she enjoyed the dual pleasure of taste and sight.
The following afternoon.
Inside the restaurant, Zhou Qing was stir-frying green beans. Beside her, a pressure cooker hissed with steam as it stewed bamboo shoot and old duck soup.
Zhou Qing plated the green beans and turned the other stove to low heat, letting the soup simmer for another five minutes.
The off-duty Bo Zhiya and Jia Feifei held their chopsticks with anticipation, unable to resist the urge to take a taste.
“How should we divide the meat and vegetables? Large portions or small portions?” Zhou Qing asked, tapping a bowl with her spatula.
The restaurant’s pricing was determined by the dish type (meat or vegetable) and portion size. A large portion was double the amount and price of a small portion.
Having worked all day, Bo Zhiya was starving. “Large portions! I want large portions! Auntie, give me more meat, please!” After saying this, he licked his lips in anticipation.
Jia Feifei’s internship salary was 2.5 Wealth points per day.
Paying for the youth hostel on a daily basis, she had rented the cheapest bunk in a multi-person room, which cost 0.1 Wealth points per day. She had gone to the supermarket’s daily necessities section and bought a pair of underwear for 0.5 Wealth points and a cheap dress for 1 Wealth point.
The dress had actually been a free gift Shen Ruoran received when she bought socks in bulk at a wholesale market.
Jia Feifei’s remaining funds were only 0.7 Wealth points.
To save on expenses, she only ordered a small portion of vegetables and didn’t even ask for rice. However, she ate with great satisfaction; these were steaming, fresh vegetables, after all.
Bo Zhiya finished every grain of rice in his bowl and let out a satisfied yawn, feeling a bit sleepy. Just as he was about to let out a second yawn, Shen Ruoran walked in, wearing a short-sleeved top and capri jeans, looking casual and natural.