Back home, the courtyard already had quite a few things piled up in it. Bao Taozi had decided to just live here for now, she’d have a moving company bring over her clothes and everything else from the old place later, all in one trip.
The villa in Biyuan was especially expensive, being right in the city center. Her family’s place had a white European-style fence running around it, a courtyard of average size, and on the right side there was a drained swimming pool and a swing her mother had once had built for her. The left side was an empty patch of lawn covered in fake plastic grass, nobody had bothered maintaining real grass, so everything just got dumped there.
Inside, the entrance opened straight into the main hall. Since they’d never had time to renovate after buying the place, it only had basic furniture. The villa had three floors total. The first floor had the living room, kitchen, dining room, and two staff rooms. The second floor had two guest rooms, each with its own bathroom, plus an empty room that had originally been meant for a mahjong room. The top floor had just the one master bedroom, complete with a walk-in closet, balcony, and bathroom, and one more room originally meant to be a gaming room.
Bao Taozi walked around and found the villa a fairly average size, but well suited for someone living alone. There was also an undeveloped backyard garden.
After the walkthrough, she went back to the front yard and called out to the system.
“System, system, how do I turn in a task?”
“Please address me as Yuan Gungun, thank you very much, I have a name! Just think ‘Task’ plus the number, and the task prompt will show up. Idiot.”
Bao Taozi gave an awkward laugh and silently thought: Task One.
A line of text appeared before her eyes: Confirm task completion?
She tapped yes, and all the qualifying task items in her courtyard lit up.
The text in front of her changed: Please select items to submit.
Bao Taozi just swept everything in at once. The materials in front of her vanished instantly.
【Items accepted: Cement x10, solid wood flooring x10, bamboo flooring x10, cork flooring x10, polished tile x10…】
【Items unlocked: Cement, solid wood flooring, bamboo flooring, cork flooring, polished tile…】
【Task One complete. Reward: Points-based air conditioner x2, Permanent Water Recycling System. These have been placed in the system storage space and can be retrieved by the host anytime.】
She’d guessed right! She’d guessed right!
Bao Taozi laughed wildly inside, she’d known those random building materials had to be up to something!
The system was already silently cursing Bao Taozi in its heart.
After celebrating, it was time to choose an address.
Bao Taozi felt a little not sure, so she asked the system.
“Gungun, my villa’s so small, if the address is set here, how am I supposed to expand later on?”
The system turned its back on Bao Taozi and said, “Idiot host, you’re underestimating me. I can expand the area.”
Relieved to hear that, even though she didn’t know how the expansion would work, she silently thought: Task Two.
【Please confirm whether to complete Task Two.】
Yes.
【Please mark out the hotel’s initial boundary. The range can only include areas you already own.】
Bao Taozi marked out the whole villa without missing a single corner, then hit confirm.
【Hotel boundary confirmed. Task Two complete.】
【Task reward: Hotel protective barrier, active for 3 months, activating at the start of the apocalypse.】
“That’s actually pretty considerate. Otherwise a whole month would’ve gone to waste.”
Yuan Gungun said smugly, “Of course! I’m a system with a conscience!”
Bao Taozi felt like rubbing its little head, so cute!
After turning in the task, since no new one triggered right away, she was happy to just tidy up the house, since she’d be living here for the time being.
Looking back at Task One, the system could apparently handle renovations, so Bao Taozi wasn’t in a rush to hire anyone. And with the protective barrier now in place, the reinforcements she’d been planning probably weren’t even necessary anymore.
Next was just stockpiling supplies of every kind. Over the following days, she raided several major malls, buying all sorts of things, even diapers, baby formula, and sanitary pads.
She spent about a million on that, then went and had 20 weapons custom-made, cold weapons only, of course, since Bao Taozi had no way to get her hands on firearms.
Within a week, she’d gotten just about everything ready. Meanwhile, Qi Heng had sold the cosmetics company at a bargain price to her father, Liu Zhengwei, conveniently emptying out his wallet in the process.
Even though the whole family had been kicked out of the villa and left dirt poor, buying the company still had Liu Zhengwei feeling quite pleased with himself.
When they’d been kicked out, the whole family had hated Bao Taozi bitterly. Now that they’d bought the company, her stepmother couldn’t wait to call and gloat.
“You little bitch, I heard you couldn’t keep the business running so you sold off your dead mother’s company?”
Bao Taozi frowned. Even though this wasn’t her real mother, she couldn’t stand hearing the original body’s mother insulted like that.
“Watch your mouth. You may be ‘Mrs. Liu’ now, but you’re still not fit for polite company, no wonder you raised a daughter like this.”
Bao Taozi’s calm tone, scolding like an elder, made Li Ping’s face flush red with rage.
“You little tramp! You still don’t know who bought it, do you? It was our family! Are you angry? Regretting it now, haha! Regret won’t help, you’ll be just as luckless as your jinxed mother, never getting to enjoy any good fortune your whole life! That company belongs to our Bingxin now! From now on, you and her aren’t even on the same level anymore!”
Bao Taozi calmly took a sip of the milk tea that had just arrived. “Oh, but we were never on the same level to begin with, I’ve always been the wealthy young lady. As for your family, a spineless man who married into money and the daughter he had with his mistress, isn’t that right, mistress?”
“You tramp!”
Bao Taozi hung up without another word, then turned on the TV and happily settled in to watch her drama while sipping her milk tea. Ahh, my beloved Emperor~
On the other end, Li Ping glared furiously at the dead phone as Liu Bingxin walked out of her room.
“Mom, who were you on the phone with?”
“Who else, that little tramp!”
Li Ping slammed her phone down, and Liu Bingxin came over to comfort her.
“Why get worked up over her? She’s a lost cause. She even sold off the company, what’s she going to compare herself to us with now? Mom, don’t wear yourself out over this.”
Li Ping stroked Liu Bingxin’s head. “You’re the sensible, capable one. Mom’s confident you’re better than her in every way. Let your father see that his choice was the right one, only you deserve to be his daughter!”
If Bao Taozi had been there, she’d have laughed so hard her mouth would twist sideways, who in the world cared about Liu Zhengwei’s “choice,” that spineless kept man. Pfft!
Liu Bingxin nodded and took Li Ping’s hand. “Mom, I want to go to a friend’s party today. I need to buy a gown.”
In the original novel, the original Bao Taozi had been weak-willed. Even after receiving her inheritance, she’d stayed under her father’s thumb.
Her father, Liu Zhengwei, had used her mother’s inheritance to buy Liu Bingxin the latest high-end designer piece of the season, letting her show off in style. That very evening had also been the first time the male and female leads met, the male lead, Long Ying, had assumed she must be the refined daughter of some prestigious family and had been quite taken with her. As for what came later, well, once the apocalypse hit, who was going to care that she was an illegitimate daughter! At that same party, she’d also made plenty of connections that would prove useful after the apocalypse began. She’d even leaned heavily on the Bao family name, marketing herself as a beautiful and clever young heiress. Combined with her space and spirit spring, everything had gone smoothly for her.
But this time, there was no way Bao Taozi would let things go her way, that was the butterfly effect. All the money was firmly in Bao Taozi’s own hands, and Liu Zhengwei didn’t have a single extra cent to spare.