Seeing this scene, Bai Bai knew her opportunity had come.
When the time reached 11:15 AM, the boss decided not to wait any longer.
“Come here, you.”
The boss beckoned to Bai Bai, who had been waiting outside the shop the entire time.
Bai Bai flashed over in a split second.
Holding the delivery invoices, the boss led Bai Bai to take the goods, explaining clearly which invoice corresponded to which bag.
Bai Bai immediately pulled out a permanent marker and drew matching marks on both the bags and the delivery invoices. For the five group meals, she drew five distinct symbols: circles, squares, triangles, and so on.
“The customers all prepay. Bring the invoices back to settle the account after you finish delivering.”
“Got it, Boss.”
Bai Bai packed away the meals, duplicated each group meal once, and set off immediately at her fastest pace toward the residential complex on the next street, where three of them needed to be delivered.
Knocking on the doors one by one, the recipients’ first reaction upon seeing a stranger was full of vigilance.
Bai Bai patiently explained that she usually handled freelance individual orders, but today’s regular delivery person hadn’t shown up, so the boss had waited 15 minutes before sending her instead.
The reason was sound and very easy to verify. The group meals were finally accepted, and the recipients signed the invoices.
The remaining two group meals required walking a bit further. According to the address, they were to be delivered to an office building available for rent.
Rushing all the way, she finally delivered them. The building stood seven floors high, with the two recipients located on the sixth and fifth floors respectively. There was no elevator—climbing stairs it was.
Upon delivery, another round of explanation ensued, as expected.
Coming out after finishing the deliveries, just as she descended two floors, she heard someone in the corridor delivering goods.
Bai Bai’s ears twitched. She immediately pulled a random bag of meals out of her space, pretended to be a food courier, and walked down the corridor.
Not far ahead, a spatial delivery courier was indeed standing in the corridor handling a handover with a small company.
Nobody pays attention to a courier carrying food.
The exact moment Bai Bai brushed past behind the courier, she successfully waited for the other party to open their spatial storage to retrieve goods.
She wanted it, and so she got it.
With the copy secured, she hurried away, pretending she hadn’t found the room number and exiting via the staircase at the far end of the corridor.
By the time she returned to the street, the meal serving acting as a prop in Bai Bai’s hands had long since been stowed back into her space.
As she walked, she divided her focus to inspect her own space.
13 cubic meters.
“Heh, that courier’s space is pretty big.”
Bai Bai paused her steps for a moment before continuing on, her face rigidly suppressing her joy, the corners of her mouth twitching in a half-smile that looked like a facial muscle spasm.
Her luck today was truly fantastic, running into someone with a relatively large space.
It was still the result of inexperience; the real goldmines were office spaces. Couriers transporting office supplies and commercial samples were precisely the ones who gained the biggest advantage from having larger spaces.
Pulling out paper and a pen, Bai Bai jotted down this lesson right there on the street, and then returned to the restaurant to settle accounts with the boss.
When calculating the payment, Bai Bai keenly sensed that the boss was in a rather poor mood. It was currently the peak noon operating hours, yet the boss wore a drooping expression as if suppressing anger.
Taking note of it, Bai Bai asked nothing. She was merely a freelance worker who happened to appear here today; she couldn’t care less why the boss was angry.
The boss settled the payment with Bai Bai, returned the Source Crystals, and glanced at her once more.
That look left Bai Bai bewildered, prompting her to look down and check if she had gotten any dirt on herself.
“Are you from this neighborhood?”
“No, I came across districts, walked for over an hour.”
“Want to come try again tomorrow?”
“Can I?”
Bai Bai’s eyes lit up. There was no reason to turn away a work opportunity delivered right to her doorstep.
“Come at this same time tomorrow. If there are any individual orders, I’ll give them to you.”
“Alright, Boss. Thank you, Boss. I’ll definitely be here tomorrow.”
“You need to be as clean as you are today.”
“No problem, Boss.”
Bai Bai nodded repeatedly with delight, walked out of the restaurant, and left the street.
After walking several hundred meters, her excitement subsided into calmness. Thinking of that missing regular courier, although she didn’t know what had happened to that guy, the boss clearly had thoughts of replacing him.
Bai Bai couldn’t help narrowing her eyes into a stealthy smile.
If she was given the chance to take individual orders tomorrow and managed to stick with it, she might even secure a long-term, fixed job.
Right now, however, she needed to find a place to eat.
If she delayed any longer, the hot food in her space would grow cold.
Walking and walking, she reached the edge of the district. A couple more steps would take her into the wild brush, yet she still hadn’t found a suitable open space.
Reflecting on how prosperous this district seemed, Bai Bai walked right into the wilderness dominated by anomalous plants.
Eating surrounded by plants it was, then.
Stepping into the anomalous plant thickets didn’t draw attention. The Tier-1 and Tier-2 Source Crystals sold in various Anomalous Markets mostly came from anomalous plants in these wild areas—this was also a measure to keep anomalous plants from running rampant and to maintain a human-versus-plant tug-of-war over land.
Higher-tier Source Crystals required leaving the city, which was a completely different topic.
The anomalous plants grew in sprawling, claw-like shapes. The ones closer to the street were relatively sparse, but the deeper she went, the more it resembled stepping into a primeval forest.
As she walked, Bai Bai attempted to practice the Earth-element superpower she had copied from the road maintenance worker yesterday, wanting to see which category it belonged to—combat or support.
This trial revealed that the ability was quite weak, limited entirely to moving dirt and digging holes. Earth spikes, rocks, and the like were completely out of the question; she could gather dirt, but simply couldn’t form it into shapes.
Anxious to eat, Bai Bai didn’t have time to grind away at it. Being able to move dirt was fine too, so she continuously moved soil to press down the wildly growing anomalous plant branches, carving out a narrow path for herself to walk easily.
After penetrating a certain distance inward, Bai Bai finally found a spacious little clearing where she could sit down.
After moving dirt to level the ground, she laid a plastic bag on the floor, topped it with a dirty outer jacket, and finally sat down. Filled with eager anticipation, she pulled out the group meals she had collected today to see what dishes they contained.
The moment she took them out, the heat radiating from each bag left Bai Bai momentarily stunned.
The bags were hot.
Hot.
From the time she picked up the orders, delivered them, returned to the restaurant, and up until now—over an hour had passed, yet the bags were still piping hot.
The temperature was roughly the same as when she delivered the last two meals at the office building.
“The space can now retain heat and keep things fresh?”
Bai Bai set eating aside for a moment and hurriedly tried to recall what had happened.
“My space expanded to 13 cubic meters—how did that happen?”
“That courier?”
Bai Bai instantly thought of the courier from the office building. Her original 9-cubic-meter space had expanded to 13 cubic meters precisely because she had copied that person’s 4-cubic-meter space.
“Holy crap?! A space exceeding 10 cubic meters can retain heat?”
Being rigorous, Bai Bai didn’t dare claim it kept things fresh just yet, but heat retention was already a certainty.
“I can stockpile hot food now!”
Bai Bai let out a joyful monkey shriek and hurriedly opened the bag.
The dishes were mostly similar, differing only in quantity, with balanced meats and vegetables, along with two types of soup.
Bai Bai sorted the food, categorizing them into vegetarian, mild meat, heavy meat, and soup. She kept out one pack containing vegetables, mild meat, and heavy meat, while stowing the rest back into her space to continue testing the heat-retention duration, planning to check whether they were hot or cold when she returned home tonight.
Holding the rice in her left hand and picking up a glistening, oil-slicked piece of braised pork with her right, before she even took a bite, her instinct activated her enhanced sense of smell, capturing that complex and alluring aroma.
It was the richness of animal fat combined with the mellow depth of soy sauce, accompanied by a faint, elusive hint of unfamiliar spices. Though she lacked the original owner’s memories, it smelled wonderful.