Walking a bit further, Bai Bai returned to the three-way intersection from earlier and turned onto the one leading straight to her destination street.
When she saw the entrance of the street, she specifically checked the name.
Tianrun Street.
Bai Bai headed straight for yesterday’s restaurant.
She looked up at the sign above.
Xiao Ma’s Stir-Fry.
She took off her rain hood outside the shop. Xiao Ma, the boss behind the counter inside, clearly saw her face, waved for her to come in, and let out an amused chuckle.
“You’ve got quite the complete set of gear.”
“Can’t afford to get sick; being sick costs even more.”
“Alright, as we agreed yesterday, put down a deposit of two tier-2 source crystals, and today’s freelance orders are yours.”
“Alright, alright, thank you, boss.”
Using spatial micro-control, Bai Bai took two source crystals out of her velvet pouch and placed them on the counter.
Xiao Ma was also fair-minded; she asked for Bai Bai’s name and issued a deposit receipt slip.
“Go play on your own, come back after 11 o’clock.”
“Got it.”
Bai Bai glanced at the clock inside the shop; it was just past ten o’clock. She packed away the receipt and left, wandering idly around the street district.
Only half of the area was populated with human activity; the other half remained in ruins left behind by the apocalypse, uncleared since work was halted.
Bai Bai ventured into the ruins, searching for dilapidated houses that hadn’t completely collapsed, and found a shelter from the rain among them.
Then she took a walkie-talkie out of her spatial storage.
The device had an antenna on the top left, a knob on the top right, a headphone jack in the middle, a large button on the left side, and a screen and keyboard on the front, looking somewhat like an old-school keyboard phone.
Bai Bai turned it over and over to study it, found the hidden latch on the back cover, pressed it down with her fingernail, and pried it open. Inside, it was indeed empty. She slipped in a lithium battery and snapped the cover back on just as it was.
Then, how do you turn it on?
Fortunately, Bai Bai wasn’t blind. After flipping it back and forth a bit more, her gaze finally caught the power symbol on the top knob.
She pressed it, but it wouldn’t budge.
She twisted it, and it turned.
After twisting it open, she kept turning it, feeling a tiny bit of resistance.
At the same time, she could hear a rustling white noise. Twisting the knob left and right, she realized that this was a combined power and volume control knob.
Next, she looked at the screen.
It was quite complicated.
There were two corners at the top: the time in the upper-left corner and the battery level in the upper-right corner.
The current time displayed was 18:27, and the battery level showed 56%.
The time was clearly wrong and needed to be reset.
Looking further down, there were upper and lower rows of channels, displaying only the current frequency number of the upper channel.
So how do you adjust it?
A weak point.
As someone who never read manuals when buying electrical and electronic products, she had no choice but to dig out the manual and read it carefully.
Following the manual, she set the time—not precisely, just setting it to 10:10 as a pure guess, since the time she saw in Xiao Ma’s shop was just past ten, and she had no idea how much time had passed since then.
She would leave it like that for now and readjust it when she got back to the shop and saw the time.
She also learned how to adjust frequencies: up and down frequency tuning, switching channels, and direct frequency input.
After exploring all the functions, Bai Bai switched to the frequency-scanning mode.
She wanted to listen first to see if anyone nearby was talking.
Yesterday she saw that Xiao Ma had a walkie-talkie; it would be great if she could scan her channel.
Patiently waiting until the frequency scan completed a full cycle without hearing Xiao Ma’s voice, Bai Bai didn’t dwell on it. Right now was the busy time rushing to prepare group meals before 11 o’clock, so Xiao Ma might not have time to hold a walkie-talkie and chat.
She wondered how that missing delivery person from yesterday was doing and if they would come today. If they didn’t, it would be great—she’d be more than happy to take over the job.
Thinking that she would soon be running errands, Bai Bai put the walkie-talkie back into her spatial storage and tested whether time still passed inside the space.
By the way, she duplicated those two rice balls she had heated last night—still piping hot—turning two into four.
She ate two to pad her stomach.
There were always two backup rice balls in her spatial storage.
You know, just thinking of these things as dry rations rather than staple food made her feel psychologically much better.
Once her break was over, Bai Bai took out the walkie-talkie to check the time.
Sure enough, time didn’t pass inside.
What hour and minute it was when put into the space, it was still that exact hour and minute now.
“The space can retain heat now. By deduction, time stands still inside the space, so not passing time is correct; if time passed, the rules would be chaotic instead.”
“Then what should I do if I want to check the time?”
“Buy a radio to listen to the national time signal?”
“Oh right, a radio is a disaster necessity. The original owner didn’t have one, but that doesn’t mean I can’t afford to buy one.”
Bai Bai packed away her things, pulled up her rain hood, walked out of the ruins, and returned to Xiao Ma’s Stir-Fry.
First, get to work.
She arrived at the shop right at eleven o’clock.
The kitchen sent out bags upon bags of tied group meals and placed them on the table.
Bai Bai looked around left and right; besides herself, there was no one else at the doorway.
Huh? Was that delivery person going to be absent today as well?
She looked inside the shop again.
Behind the counter, Xiao Ma had already folded her arms impatiently, her gaze darting between the doorway and the walkie-talkie.
In her heart, Bai Bai prayed that this delivery person wouldn’t come today either. In such heavy rain, delivering food was so exhausting; she wasn’t afraid of hardship and was willing to take over the shift to earn this money.
At 11:05, Xiao Ma finally picked up the walkie-talkie and initiated a call, and there was a reply from the other side.
Standing outside the door, Bai Bai couldn’t hear clearly, catching only a flurry of static noise.
She had no intention of eavesdropping on the conversation either, but being able to contact him meant he was presumably on his way.
At 11:10, someone finally came running in a rush, also wearing a two-piece raincoat, and dashed into the restaurant after pulling off their rain hood.
Xiao Ma cursed a couple of times and urged them to go grab the food cargo.
Bai Bai peeked in, watching, and the moment the other person opened up their spatial storage, she immediately duplicated it.
Her space instantly expanded by 5 cubic meters, reaching 37 cubic meters.
Bai Bai licked the corner of her mouth with utmost satisfaction.
The delivery person picked up the group meals and walked out, casting a glance at Bai Bai as he passed by.
Bai Bai was wearing her rain hood, keeping her head down, sitting on the ground in a corner outside the shop—completely curled up with an exterior appearance showing zero threat.
She was resting and entertaining herself, completely ignoring that glance, but her superior mental power allowed her to keenly catch a trace of malice.
Following the direction of that malice, she snapped her head up just in time to see the delivery person turning away, that thread of malice still trailing from him.
It wasn’t strong, but it was enough to trigger vigilance.
Bai Bai frowned slightly.
“Could this guy really harbor evil intentions?”
Bai Bai immediately entered a corporate workplace mindset.
Would an employee who was likely about to resign recommend their own acquaintances to take over their post before leaving?
Especially in this apocalyptic environment?
Bai Bai silently nodded to herself.
Highly likely.
If a threatening, unfamiliar competitor popped up right now, they definitely had to be eliminated, leaving not a shred of risk for an overturn.
Especially since it was the apocalypse now; methods could be much more direct.
Bai Bai took stock of her own methods and felt she had a huge advantage. As long as the other person didn’t pull a gun and shoot on sight, she would have a chance to pull off a counter-kill.
Of course, this was assuming malicious intent that the other person would definitely make a move—you could say it was a bit of paranoia. Normally, spatial awakened users who could only store items generally didn’t have such a murderous streak.
But this was the apocalypse now; what if? What if they brought backup?
Having experienced someone trying to rob her raincoat not long ago, Bai Bai was now sensitive to even the slightest bit of malice.