The uprights used a gourd-buckle design, meaning the crossbars just needed to be buckled right in. For any spots that wouldn’t snap in, a few punches with a fist would do the trick, completely eliminating the need for a hammer.
This was still the advantage of coming home early; most of the surrounding neighbors were not at home, especially the ones downstairs.
The neighbors with families all lived far away, so she didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing the ping-pong banging sounds inside her room.
The shelves stood at a total height of 2.5 meters, including the baseboard, and featured four tier boards, with the height of each layer adjustable to her liking.
One turned into two, and two turned into four. She left one set of shelves completely empty, specifically to serve as a duplication template.
For the other three sets of shelves, after installing the baseboards, she placed the food, water, and oil on them. Comparing them according to their respective heights, she added the second-tier boards.
The bottled water, which had the smallest quantity, was also duplicated into a few more buckets by the way. The bucket currently in use was not put on the shelving; instead, it was placed in a corner of the spatial storage for easy access at any time.
Since she currently lacked the conditions to cook for herself, the cooking oil didn’t need to be messed with and was placed back just as it was.
The grain was also duplicated once to expand its quantity.
Compared this way, the cooking oil had the smallest quantity and also required the lowest height.
Consequently, the second tier of this cooking oil shelf was converted by Bai Bai into a wardrobe.
As for the clothes hanging rod, she duplicated one from her drying pole. Its length was even wider than the wardrobe, with both ends sticking out, making it just right to serve as a semi-clean clothing area specifically for hanging outer garments and pants taken off after returning home, or raincoats that had been dried.
The clean clothes wrapped in the new blanket were hung inside one by one using clothes hangers.
The clean clothing area and the semi-clean clothing area were thus realized on a single shelf-wardrobe.
The blanket was folded neatly and placed on the tier board, and a few large bags of the disposable underwear she needed to use every day were also tossed in.
She had duplicated too many disposable underwear yesterday in her excitement, leaving her with truly nowhere to stuff them. She had no choice but to take a few pieces from them, along with other sanitary supplies, to serve as duplication samples placed on the fourth shelf, while the rest were left in a corner of the space to be used slowly.
As for those new clothes and shoes that didn’t fit her size, they were also tossed onto the tier board of the third layer.
With this shelf all organized, she pulled it back into her spatial storage and placed it flush against the edge.
The 13-cubic-meter space happened to have one edge that was 2.5 meters high.
For the shelf holding the grain, after properly setting up the second-tier boards, Bai Bai placed those meals onto it.
When the first bowl of heavy meat dishes was taken out, the warm temperature almost made Bai Bai shed tears.
Her spatial storage truly retained heat; it wasn’t fake!
Fearing that the food would get cold, Bai Bai pulled this shelf back into her spatial storage the very next second, as placing food was a task best performed inside the space.
Her micro-control skills within her spatial storage were also quite reliable.
Identical meals were stacked in a pile, with food boxes spaced slightly apart from one another so they wouldn’t get mixed up or taken by mistake.
The group meals collected today couldn’t be accommodated on a single layer; they took up a full two and a half layers.
Fortunately, she didn’t lack tier boards; if she didn’t have enough, she would just duplicate them.
To make a distinction, the meal from yesterday that still had a few cold dishes left over, along with the two rice balls bought this morning—which were meant to be dry rations on the road but hadn’t been eaten at all and had turned completely cold by noon—shared the other half of the tier board, kept well away from the hot food.
The shelf holding the bottled water served as a complete miscellaneous rack, where all sorts of messy, small items were placed. If the tier boards weren’t enough, she just duplicated them; every layer in the middle was quite compact, and the top layer was piled high with large boxes.
After the four sets of shelves were successively stored into her spatial storage, the items that truly had nowhere to go were exposed.
The basins and buckets she had continuously duplicated while wiping down her body yesterday were simply too numerous in quantity.
Without dwelling on it too much, Bai Bai piled these basins and buckets into a corner of the space opposite the shelves.
Until she had an independent restroom, she would need to use these items every day.
The middle area was always kept empty for receiving and dispatching goods.
To squeeze every drop of space, Bai Bai tried to readjust the placement of the shelves, packing them tightly against one another like track-mounted library bookshelves, and found that it didn’t affect retrieving items from any location at all.
Thus, she readjusted the shelf positions once more: since it didn’t affect anything, all items were placed tightly against one another.
Looking at the spatial layout again, she finally felt comfortable.
A sense of confinement still existed; 13 cubic meters was still too small, and she needed to continue expanding its capacity.
Finally, Bai Bai’s gaze landed on the knife inside her spatial storage.
She took the knife out, held it in her hand, and examined it closely.
It was just an ordinary fruit knife. It was unknown what it had cut in the past, but the blade was very dull, and having collided with the sink, even the tip was chipped.
A waste knife.
Bai Bai curled her lips in disgust, threw the knife back into her spatial storage, and decided to throw it away tomorrow.
As for that man.
Bai Bai cared even less about whether he lived or died.
Though she didn’t recognize him, since he had ambushed her with a knife, he must have been connected to the “All-Knowing” gang.
Fortunately, her spiritual power was stronger and capable of outward reconnaissance; otherwise, the one lying down at that moment would have been herself.
Could she really die a second time just on her third day of time-travel?
Did time-travelers have no pride?
As for not feeling lingering fear or other negative emotions after being attacked, Bai Bai directly attributed it to the strength of her spiritual power, which brought mental stability and clear thinking, preventing her from falling into pointless internal friction and torturing herself.
Once her spatial storage was organized, Bai Bai pulled off a section of toilet paper to start a fire in her stove, placed a small pot on top, took the bottled water out of her spatial storage, and practiced her water-control ability. She condensed the water into a thin stream and poured it from the bucket into the pot.
This was an urgent restriction she had deliberately set for herself; if her movements were slow, or her water control poor, the pot already sitting over the fire would be in big trouble.
She only had this one small pot.
Under such pressure, after the ground around the stove was splashed wet in a circle, she finally succeeded in pouring half a pot of water.
The pot, which was already heated, made a sizzling sound the instant the cold water was poured in.
The pot had almost been burned through.
Next, she threw the two rice balls bought that morning from her spatial storage into the pot to boil and heat up.
The rice balls were wrapped in plant leaves, so she just threw them into the water to boil like cooking zongzi.
Covering the pot lid, Bai Bai took out an iron bucket filled with dirty water and soap, and continued to practice her water-control ability, generating a continuous stream of water for herself to wash her hands.
This continuous stream of water was even harder to manage than getting half a pot of water just moments ago; it was always intermittent, like someone with a weak urinary stream.
Her hands were covered in soap bubbles that dried and were re-applied over and over. When she finally finished washing them completely, the water in the pot had already come to a boil.
Bai Bai was quite satisfied with this training efficiency; at least she hadn’t gone to lift the pot lid with a handful of soapy bubbles.
The pot lid was half-open, and she continued to boil the rice balls until they were hot and thoroughly heated through.
As for dinner, she would naturally continue eating today’s group meal bento boxes, along with yesterday’s leftover rice and dishes. Since they wouldn’t spoil anyway, she would save them to cook into mixed-vegetable porridge for breakfast.
Among yesterday’s leftovers, she had deliberately saved a few boxes of untouched heavy-meat dishes. Once cooled down, a layer of solidified meat fat could be seen right through the food box.
She couldn’t bear to cook this into porridge; Bai Bai took it out and set it aside, waiting for the rice balls to heat up so she could also place it in the pot to heat through via a water bath.
Right at that moment, a knock on the door suddenly sounded.
With a conditioned reflex, Bai Bai immediately put the food box back into her spatial storage, glanced around the room to ensure nothing exposed was lying about, and then gave a response.
“Who is it?”
“Xiao Bai, dear, it’s Auntie Wang from across the hall. Do you have any firewood left? Could you lend me two or three pieces, please? I’ll return them to you tomorrow.”