“Ding! Alipay payment received: 100,000 yuan.”
With practiced efficiency, Uncle Zhang placed the three jade pendants into separate brocade boxes.
“You’re a thoughtful child. You remember your grandmother every year,” he said while packing them up.
“You’re a lot better than your heartless mother.”
“Sigh, as for your mother…”
“Xiao Lu, let me say a few extra words.”
“Some people’s hearts simply can’t be warmed, no matter what you do.”
“You need to learn to take care of yourself. Don’t keep expecting things from others…”
Lin Lu listened quietly and couldn’t help but wonder.
How would she have reacted to these words in her previous life?
She probably would have smiled awkwardly or made excuses for her mother’s difficulties.
But in this life, she simply replied softly:
“Mm. I’ll remember that, Uncle Zhang.”
If her mother didn’t love her, that was fine.
If her boyfriend didn’t love her, that was fine too.
She would love herself.
And she would do it better than anyone else.
After taking the bag, Lin Lu didn’t leave immediately.
Instead, she glanced at the gloomy sky outside and casually remarked:
“Uncle Zhang, this rain has been unusually strange lately. The weather bureau has issued several warnings already.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of it stopping.”
“If there isn’t anything urgent at your shop, you should stock up on rice, flour, cooking oil, and other essentials.”
“If the roads end up flooded, you may not be able to buy anything even if you want to.”
Upon hearing this, Uncle Zhang nodded in agreement.
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“This rain makes people uneasy.”
“I went to the supermarket yesterday, and even the vegetable prices had gone up.”
“Alright, I’ll take your advice. Once I finish your order, I’ll close up shop and buy some extra supplies for the house.”
Seeing that he had taken her words seriously, Lin Lu felt slightly relieved.
Good people were rare these days.
If she could save one, she would.
“However, I need you to be here this afternoon.”
She paused and lowered her voice.
“Actually, besides buying jade, I have another big business deal for you. I don’t know if you’re interested.”
“A big business deal?” Uncle Zhang froze for a moment before becoming intrigued.
“What? Did you strike it rich recently? Tell me, what do you want to buy?”
“I’m not buying anything,” Lin Lu shook her head.
“Someone else is going to hand you a pile of money.”
“Hand me money?” Uncle Zhang became even more confused.
Was there really such a fool in the world?
“The deal is simple.”
Lin Lu pointed at the now-empty tray.
“I want you to make replicas of these three jade pendants within the next few hours. The more convincing they look, the better.”
“Then this afternoon, sell them to my stepsister, Wan Yinyin.”
The moment he heard that name, Uncle Zhang frowned.
As one of Lin Lu’s grandmother’s old chess partners, he naturally knew all about the messy affairs of the Lin family.
While she was alive, Lin Lu’s grandmother had often been furious about Dai Ya—the daughter who never knew what was important—and the family of parasites she later brought into the household.
“That girl again?” Uncle Zhang said with visible disgust.
“She wants to buy them? I don’t even want to sell anything to her!”
But Lin Lu shook her head.
“That’s not the way to think about it. Why turn down money?”
A pure, innocent smile appeared on her face as she held up five fingers.
“When she comes, tell her these three jade pendants are the ones I had my eye on.”
“She wants them?”
“One pendant. Five hundred thousand yuan.”
“Pffft! Cough, cough, cough!”
The mouthful of tea Uncle Zhang had just swallowed sprayed straight out.
“How much?! Five hundred thousand?!”
“Isn’t that practically treating her like a fool and robbing her blind? Why would she ever buy them?”
“She will.”
Lin Lu’s tone was absolute.
“You only need to tell her that these are the jade pendants I planned to buy this year.”
“As for the price—even higher is fine if you have the skill to pull it off.”
Wan Yinyin had been reborn.
In her eyes, this was a priceless treasure capable of unlocking a spatial dimension.
It was a Noah’s Ark for surviving the apocalypse.
A mere five hundred thousand yuan?
Compared to a chance at survival in the apocalypse, it was absurdly cheap.
Even if Wan Yinyin couldn’t come up with the money herself, what about Dai Ya? What about Wan Feng?
If the whole family pooled their resources together, they could definitely afford it.
Uncle Zhang had lived long enough to become sharp as a fox.
The moment he heard her explanation, his eyes rolled thoughtfully as he immediately grasped the underlying situation.
The two sisters were fighting a battle of wits.
Stroking his chin, he cautiously asked:
“Then… what if I use resin, glass, or maybe some leftover jade scraps…”
Lin Lu raised an eyebrow.
“Not bad, Uncle Zhang. You’re a real business genius—you grasped the essence of it immediately.”
“The authenticity of the jade doesn’t matter,” Lin Lu said leisurely. “What matters is that it has to be the one I wanted.”
“Good, good, good!” Uncle Zhang chuckled. He was an old hand in business himself.
Using fake jade would cost next to nothing.
If this deal succeeded, he wouldn’t have to worry about food or expenses for months.
Fortune favors the bold. This gamble was worth taking!
“Deal! I’ll do it!”
“If it really sells, we’ll split the profits fifty-fifty.”
Lin Lu smiled in satisfaction.
“Pleasure doing business with you.”
After leaving Yayun Pavilion, the rental car she had arranged arrived.
Lin Lu found the license plate number, got into the vehicle, and once again checked carefully to make sure there were no cameras or tracking devices.
Only then did she open the three brocade boxes.
The three jade pendants lay quietly inside.
Which one was it?
And how was it activated?
She recalled the classic plots from the novels she had read.
Should I try blood?
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she acted.
Without any tools nearby, Lin Lu simply bit her finger. A drop of blood immediately welled up.
She first dripped it onto the white jade pendant.
The blood merely stained the jade red.
Nothing happened.
“Not this one.”
Frowning, Lin Lu dripped blood onto the second pendant, the green jade.
This time, the moment the blood touched the jade, it was instantly absorbed.
In the next second, her vision blurred.
When it cleared, she found herself standing inside a vast expanse of white space.
“So this is the spatial dimension?!”
The place resembled a warehouse.
An enormous warehouse.
She couldn’t even see the boundaries.
There was no visible light source, yet the entire space was as bright as daylight.
“The important thing is… it’s this huge?!”
Lin Lu was genuinely shocked.
She had thought a few hundred square meters would already be impressive.
But this place was practically the size of an airport.
She estimated that even moving an entire Walmart supermarket into it wouldn’t be a problem.
What delighted her even more was the realization that her physical body hadn’t actually entered the space.
Her body was still sitting in the car.
She was still holding the jade pendant in her hand.
The space felt more like a projection connected to her consciousness. With a single thought, she could enter or leave it.
She fixed her gaze on a duck plush toy sitting in the passenger seat.
Store.
Whoosh!
The plush toy vanished and appeared inside the spatial dimension.
Retrieve.
Whoosh!
The toy instantly reappeared in reality.
“This is incredibly convenient!”
Lin Lu was overjoyed.
With this space, she could store supplies directly inside it and never worry about transporting them again.
So what was she waiting for?
She needed to get back to Yueji Hotel and collect all the supplies she had ordered.
By the time Lin Lu returned to the hotel, a mountain of packages had already piled up in the lounge area of the lobby.
They were all items she had ordered the previous night.
The stacked boxes were taller than a person.
The receptionist had been staring at the pile in distress. The moment she saw Lin Lu return, her eyes lit up and she hurried over.
“Miss Lin, you’re finally back! What would you like us to do with all these packages?”
Lin Lu put on an apologetic expression.
“I’m so sorry. Something unexpected came up last night, and I forgot to let you know in advance.”
“I’ll call a freight service to move them right away.”
She pretended to make a phone call, then casually pushed a hotel luggage cart and transported the packages in batches to a deserted corner of the underground parking garage.
After looking around to make sure no one was nearby—
And confirming it was a blind spot in the surveillance coverage—
She silently thought:
Store.
The packages on the cart instantly vanished without a trace.
Done.
Next stop:
The wholesale market.
She was going to stockpile supplies like crazy!