The next morning, Song Yue informed her parents that various deliveries would be arriving and asked them to inspect and sign for them before rushing out the door.
It was still raining. Though the drizzle was light, the overnight downpour had left the streets pockmarked with puddles.
A sedan tore down the road, its tires splashing through a puddle and sending a spray of muddy water over pedestrians. Thepassersby grumbled in anger.
Song Yue watched the car speed away, her expression calm.
I’ll avoid people like that, she thought. Whether in real life or a Instance.
In peaceful times, a rude driver was just a nuisance. But in a chaotic world, who knew what such people would be capable of?
Of course, if she ever truly crossed paths with them, she wasn’t afraid. Six months of apocalyptic survival skills hadn’t been for nothing.
The fresh fruit market was already filled with the sweet scent of produce by the time she arrived. Song Yue walked in and began her shopping.
Apples, pears, bananas, watermelons, grapes, seedless grapes, dragon fruit, mangoes, lychees… She bought fifteen pounds of every common variety.
For a wholesale vendor, fifteen pounds per variety wasn’t much. Initially, the merchant was reluctant to sell such small quantities. But after seeing the diverse array of fruits Song Yue selected, he figured she might be preparing fruit platters for a business and could become a long-term customer. He agreed to the sale, offering her a 5% discount and his business card.
After paying and filling out the delivery address, Song Yue headed to the fresh meat section. A specialty steak shop caught her eye, and she dove right in, selecting filet, ribeye, sirloin, New York strip, and T-bone steaks.
“You’re my first customer of the day,” the shopkeeper said. “Consider this a lucky start.”
She gave Song Yue a 12% discount.
Song Yue was pleasantly surprised and thanked her with a smile.
She continued her shopping spree, buying a large quantity of pre-cut chicken, pork, and rabbit. It seemed her luck was holding—every vendor she encountered offered her some kind of discount.
As she passed the lamb section, the vendor tried to persuade her to buy some. Song Yue offered an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, we don’t eat lamb.”
It wasn’t that she was being picky. In her past life, when food was scarce, she’d eaten spoiled meat just to survive. Lamb was the one thing she couldn’t stomach.
Every time she ate lamb, she threw up until she was retching bile. Now that she had the means, she refused to ever touch it again.
The vendor could only shrug in regret.
Next, Song Yue headed to the seafood section and went straight for the freshwater fish. She ordered twenty each of yellow croaker, hairtail, grass carp, crucian carp, and hailer fish. She bought only a few squid, crabs, and sea shrimp—just a token amount. Her parents weren’t fond of seafood, and she only ever ate it occasionally with friends. There was no need to overstock.
Vegetables were just as essential. She loaded up on Chinese cabbage, bok choy, carrots, daikon, tomatoes, celery, lettuce, potatoes, green peppers, lotus root, celtuce, bamboo shoots, pumpkin, winter melon, cucumber, cauliflower, green beans, and scallions, ginger, and garlic. She bought ten kilograms of each.
Though it seemed like a modest amount, an adult typically consumes 300 to 500 grams of vegetables daily. Ten kilograms—10,000 grams—would last her family of three six to eight days if they ate only one type of vegetable. With dozens of varieties, they were set for a long time.
After all, time stood still in her space. No matter how long food stayed there, it would never rot. The only things limiting her were the space’s current size and her remaining funds—otherwise, she would have kept buying everything in sight.
All the items would be delivered to her door. Delivery would start in an hour and arrive around noon. Song Yue knew she wouldn’t be home by then, so she called her parents to tell them to be ready to sign for the packages.
The fruits, vegetables, and meat had cost her 50,000 yuan, leaving 80,000 on her bank card.
Determined to drain the card, she rushed into a nearby superstore to stock up on everything she’d missed.
Grains and oils!
She grabbed ten bags each of Northeastern rice, pearl rice, fragrant rice, all-purpose flour, high-gluten flour, medium-gluten flour, and low-gluten flour. She also got ten kilograms each of glutinous rice, millet, black rice, purple rice, and job’s tears.
Next, she took twenty bottles each of rapeseed oil, soybean oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, olive oil, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, yellow soybean soy sauce, seafood soy sauce, oyster sauce, aged vinegar, white vinegar, cooking wine, bean paste, and chili sauce.
She added ten bags each of salt, chicken bouillon, monosodium glutamate, chili powder, white pepper, thirteen-spice powder, cumin powder, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon, and fennel. Finally, she grabbed ten kilograms each of white sugar, brown sugar, and rock sugar.
Then came the rest. Milk and yogurt—buy! Cookies, chips, drinks, bottled water—buy! Ham sausages, instant noodles, instant rice—buy! Dried wood ear, white fungus, mushrooms, soybeans, black beans, mung beans, red dates—buy, buy, buy!
Oh, and feminine hygiene products. Fifty packs of overnight pads, sixty packs of daytime pads, and thirty packs of panty liners. She’d also add some tampons. She’d seen them trending online long ago but had never tried them. Still, considering the possibility of being forced into the floodwaters, she decided to buy thirty packs just in case.
Song Yue pushed three overflowing shopping carts to the checkout, ignoring the bewildered stares of other shoppers. She paid the total—43,402.12 yuan—with remarkable calm.
A security guard, seeing a young woman with such a massive haul, hurried over to help her carry the bags. Song Yue thanked him with a smile and took the opportunity to warn him about the coming disaster.
“Uncle, I saw the weather forecast for heavy rain. You should stock up on supplies at home.”
The guard chuckled and waved her off, saying he was fine. Song Yue didn’t press the issue. With his help, she hauled all the supplies down to the underground garage.
The supermarket had a three-level underground garage. The P1 and P2 levels were well-paved and crowded with private cars. P3, however, was bare concrete, sparsely occupied and lightly monitored.
Song Yue had chosen this spot specifically. Once the security guard left, she found a secluded corner and touched the plastic bags. The items vanished into her space.
All that remained were the medications.
Song Yue decided against visiting a pharmacy in person. This wasn’t the apocalypse yet, and buying too much at once would attract unwanted attention.
Large quantities of food and household goods could be explained away as stock for a restaurant or a small grocery store. But a massive haul of pharmaceuticals? That was impossible to justify.
Instead, she planned to use a delivery app, ordering small amounts from multiple pharmacies to build her stockpile without raising suspicion.
On the way home, she tapped away at her phone.
For headaches, colds, and fevers: Ban Lan Gen, Lianhua Qingwen capsules, Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid, 39 Cold Relief, aspirin, Gankang, ibuprofen…
She placed the order at Pharmacy A.
For external wounds: medical alcohol, sterile gauze, povidone-iodine, Yunnan Baiyao bandages, amoxicillin capsules, erythromycin ointment, Dongcangkang frostbite cream, Jingwanhong burn ointment… Order placed at Pharmacy B.
For digestive issues: Shuanghuanglian oral liquid, montmorillonite powder, omeprazole, Kangfuxin liquid, levofloxacin, Renshen Jianpii pills, digestive tablets… Order placed at Pharmacy C.
She then moved on to health supplements—calcium, fish oil, vitamins A, B, and E—ordering from a different pharmacy each time. By the time Song Yue reached home, she had nearly completed her pharmaceutical stockpile, all scheduled for delivery within ninety minutes.
The total came to 14,000 yuan. With 22,000 yuan remaining in her account, the ever-frugal Song Yue felt a strange pang of defeat. She hadn’t even spent it all.
Standing in her cluttered living room, Song Yue began to mentally list what else she needed to buy.
The next moment, she looked up and met her parents’ complicated expressions.
“Xiao Yue, buying all this must have cost a fortune, right?” Song Tianyuan was even more frugal than his daughter. Seeing the mountain of supplies she’d bought for the house, his heartache was written plainly on his face.
“Exactly!” Lin Xiaojuan chimed in. “Where are we going to put all these fruits and vegetables? They’ll rot in a few days. What a waste of money!”
The family had little savings left. Most of it had gone toward Song Yue’s apartment, and the rest—meant for their own retirement—had been drained by the cost of caring for her grandmother. After a fall that left her paralyzed, her grandmother had been hospitalized for two months and suffered several other illnesses before passing.
To Lin Xiaojuan and Song Tianyuan, the sight of all these supplies screamed waste.
“Dad, Mom, don’t worry about the food spoiling,” Song Yue said. “Let me show you something.”
Ever since her rebirth, she hadn’t found the right moment to explain her space to them. Now was the chance.
She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and drew the curtains shut. Then, moving to the coffee table, she reached for a large bag of potatoes.
The bag vanished instantly.
Song Tianyuan and Lin Xiaojuan froze, staring in disbelief.
Song Yue remained calm. She reached for the other vegetables—lettuce, spinach, carrots—and one by one, they disappeared into thin air.
Turning to face them, she explained patiently, “Dad, Mom, I have a space inside me. You can’t see it, but I can enter it. Everything I just touched is now stored inside.”
“Also, in three months, money will be worthless,” Song Yue explained. “It will just be a pile of scrap paper. That’s why I spent it all on supplies—some to store here, and some in my space.”
Song Yue knew the magnitude of what she had just said, but she also knew her parents. Their love for her was unwavering. Even if the truth seemed absurd, they would trust her without question.
To her relief, Song Tianyuan and Lin Xiaojuan processed the news faster than she had expected. They were elders who had faced the hardships of several decades; they quickly pieced together the reality of their situation.
Soon, workers arrived to install tempered glass windows and a security door. Song Tianyuan took charge as the supervisor. He had been a senior electrician at a factory in his youth and had run his own repair shop for years after the company went bankrupt.
He was an expert in these things and oversaw the subsequent installation of radiators, air conditioners, small heaters, and air purifiers.
With nothing to do, Lin Xiaojuan stood idly by. Song Yue decided to give her a task: cooking.
“Mom, while the electricity is still on, you should make dumplings and tangyuan. Pan-fry some guokui and scallion pancakes, too. We can just reheat them later.”
“That’s a great idea!” Lin Xiaojuan exclaimed, slapping her thigh. She tied on an apron and marched into the kitchen.
Song Yue watched her parents, their movements busy yet orderly, and felt an indescribable ache in her chest.
It’s so good to see them again.
She sniffed her nose and quickly composed herself. Opening a food delivery app, she began ordering ready-made dishes: shredded pork with garlic sauce, mapo tofu, fish with pickled greens, poached pork slices, steamed pork with rice flour, sweet and sour pork, pork stew with vermicelli… She ordered every home-style dish on the menu.
Desserts were next: tiramisu, mango pie, wife cakes, egg tarts, mung bean cakes, mango pomelo sago, stockings milk tea, specialty coffees, fruit teas… She clicked “order” on every single item.
After placing countless orders, her 22,000 yuan was finally gone. Only then did Song Yue feel a sense of relief.
A few hours later, the appliances, water tanks, winter gear, daily necessities, fresh produce, meat, medicines, and sweets had all arrived. Song Yue, Song Tianyuan, and Lin Xiaojuan gathered around the dining table to divide the supplies.
The appliances and water tanks were too bulky to move, so they stayed in the house. Most of the winter gear remained as well; Song Yue only took a deflated kayak, a lifebuoy, and a life jacket into her space.
She left seventy percent of the medicine behind, taking only the emergency first-aid supplies. Her parents were older and needed the medication more than she did.
She took half of the daily necessities. The house already had some, and Lin Xiaojuan wanted her to live comfortably in the Instance. Song Yue started to speak but stopped herself, eventually agreeing and neatly organizing the items into her space.
As for the food, she took the vast majority. It wasn’t that she was greedy; it was just that fresh food wouldn’t last long in the real world.
Her space, however, could preserve everything indefinitely. Song Yue left her parents with a full year’s supply of grain, oil, flour, and dried goods, six months’ worth of frozen meat, and three months of fruits and vegetables. The rest went into the space. She would bring it out once she completed her mission and returned to reality.
If I’m unlucky and die in the first Instance, she thought, at least they’ll have enough food to survive for a year without having to fight others for a meal.
Of course, that was the worst-case scenario.
Song Yue believed that after surviving half a year in the apocalypse, she wouldn’t fail a Beginner Instance . Her goal wasn’t just to survive—she intended to bring all the resources from the Instance back to the real world.
***
The next morning, the third day after her rebirth, the vibration of her phone woke Song Yue.
She glanced at the caller ID. A chill settled over her.
Zou Chen. So, you finally showed up.