After returning to her rental car, the first thing Lin Lu did was call work and request leave.
Yesterday had been the weekend.
Today was not.
She worked as a forensic examiner for the Municipal Public Security Bureau. Although the job sounded rather creepy, to be honest, if it weren’t for her years of professional experience, she probably wouldn’t have dared do what she did the previous night.
The call connected.
It was Captain Zhao, her direct supervisor.
“Hello, Captain Zhao…”
“It’s me, Lin Lu.”
“My house was broken into last night, and my fiancé was stabbed…”
The person on the other end was shocked.
“What?! A home invasion robbery? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken up. I hit my forehead and got a minor injury.”
“So I’d like to take a few days off to recover…”
“It’s good enough that you’re okay!” Captain Zhao replied repeatedly.
“Don’t worry about work. I’ll approve a week’s leave for you.”
“Get some proper rest!”
“Thank you, Captain Zhao.”
With her leave successfully arranged, Lin Lu started the car and headed straight for Dongsheng Wholesale Market, the largest comprehensive wholesale market in City A.
Before going there, however, she made a detour to an industrial park on the outskirts of the city.
The park was about five kilometers from the wholesale market.
It had been largely abandoned for years, with very few people around and almost no surveillance cameras.
She smoothly bribed the elderly gatekeeper with five hundred yuan and rented a temporary warehouse.
It didn’t need to be anything special.
It just needed to conceal her activities and provide a place where large trucks could unload their goods.
After securing the warehouse, Lin Lu stepped on the gas and drove straight to Dongsheng Wholesale Market.
Unlike the bright and polished appearance of supermarkets, the roads here were rough and uneven.
Under enormous blue canopies, sacks of rice and flour were piled into mountains.
Trucks of all sizes moved constantly through the area while workers shouted as they loaded and unloaded cargo.
This was the city’s true granary.
Lin Lu knew exactly what she wanted.
Skipping the retailers who catered to ordinary customers, she went directly to the wholesalers with the largest inventories.
“Rice. I want newly harvested Wuchang rice from Northeast China. Five hundred bags to start with. Fifty pounds per bag.”
“Flour. Both high-gluten and low-gluten. Five hundred bags of each.”
“Cooking oil. Peanut oil, corn oil, and rapeseed oil. I want the large commercial-sized containers. Five hundred barrels of each.”
“And salt! Sugar! Soy sauce and vinegar… All the basic seasonings. Give me one hundred cases of each in the largest available packaging.”
The owner looked her up and down, convinced he had misheard.
“Miss, are you joking?”
“What do you need all this for? Opening a cafeteria?”
Without changing expression, Lin Lu replied:
“My family runs a restaurant chain. We’re stocking a central kitchen.”
“We need the first shipment urgently. Do you have inventory available for delivery today?”
She sent him the warehouse address and paid the entire amount upfront.
The moment the owner saw the money arrive, he immediately broke into a wide grin.
He stopped asking questions altogether and repeatedly promised that everything would be delivered before the end of the day.
After leaving the grain and oil section, Lin Lu headed straight for the processed foods area.
“Self-heating hotpot meals and self-heating rice meals. Five hundred cases of each, in the largest packaging available.”
“Compressed biscuits. Every brand and every flavor. Five hundred cases each.”
“Coca-Cola, Sprite, orange juice… Any beverage with a long shelf life. Five hundred cases of each!”
To an ordinary person, these quantities would seem absurdly large—enough to last ten years.
But in a first-tier wholesale market that handled hundreds or even thousands of tons of goods every day, her orders were barely worth mentioning.
Lin Lu sat on a small folding stool borrowed from the gatekeeper and watched truck after truck arrive.
Unload.
Leave.
Unload again.
Leave again.
Following her instructions, the drivers stacked box after box neatly in the center of the warehouse.
Only after the final driver happily collected his delivery fee and drove away did Lin Lu close the warehouse doors.
Looking at the mountain of supplies before her, she felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction.
Rice.
Flour.
Oil.
Salt.
Sugar.
Canned food.
Snacks.
Drinks.
Everything she could possibly need.
These supplies alone would allow her to live comfortably for five or even ten years in the apocalypse.
With a single thought, the mountain of goods vanished.
Silently, it appeared in a corner of the white space within her consciousness.
At the same time, she deliberately checked the steamed buns she had placed in the space that morning from the hotel.
Several hours had passed.
Yet they were still releasing wisps of hot steam, exactly as if they had just come out of the steamer.
“The space is actually frozen in time?”
Lin Lu was ecstatic.
That meant she could store cooked food indefinitely without it ever spoiling.
It was the perfect preservation warehouse.
Although she knew how to cook, her culinary skills were only good enough to keep herself from starving.
But if food could remain perfectly fresh…
Then of course she should buy ready-made meals.
She absolutely had to stockpile delicious food!
Lin Lu immediately drove back to the city and rented another small warehouse in a convenient downtown location.
Then she began frantically calling major hotels and restaurant chains.
“Hello, is this Quanjude? I’d like to order roast duck—the full set with pancakes and sauce. Five hundred ducks! Yes, complete sets, packaged and delivered to this address.”
“I want braised pork, preserved vegetable pork belly, and steamed pork with rice flour. Five hundred servings of each!”
“Boiled fish, pickled fish, spicy crayfish… Every signature dish you have. Make as many as possible!”
“KFC? I’d like five hundred family buckets! And another five hundred burgers!”
“Pizza Hut? I’d like a one-hundred-inch pizza… Oh, you don’t have one? Then give me your largest size. Five hundred pizzas!”
As for the reason?
That was easy.
Corporate team-building events.
Large wedding banquets.
Charity galas.
She could come up with as many excuses as needed.
As long as the deposit was paid promptly, nobody would ask questions.
In just two short hours, Lin Lu spent money like a wealthy benefactor scattering coins to the crowd.
Three hundred thousand yuan disappeared like flowing water.
And that was after receiving bulk-order discounts.
But Lin Lu didn’t feel the slightest bit of heartache.
Very soon, all that money would become nothing more than a pile of worthless paper.
The food she was ordering, however, would become luxuries worth their weight in gold during the apocalypse.
Next, Lin Lu didn’t overlook snacks, milk tea, desserts, and every other kind of treat imaginable.
Everything she loved to eat was continuously delivered to the warehouse she had rented downtown, waiting for the day she would collect it all at once.
It wasn’t until her phone alarm rang again that Lin Lu realized it was almost ten o’clock.
No good. I need to get back to the hospital.
If she stayed away too long, that family of parasites would start getting suspicious.
Lin Lu parked near the hospital.
As she walked, she happened to pass a bustling breakfast shop.
She stopped and bought two large meat buns, taking a bite out of one.
The skin was thin, the filling generous, and the savory juices burst into her mouth.
The taste was incredible.
“Boss,” Lin Lu said after swallowing her bite, “these buns are really good. For the next three or four days, I’d like to order one thousand buns every day, with all kinds of fillings. Can you make that many?”
The shop owner blinked.
One thousand?
For a moment, she suspected this young woman was joking with her.
Then, in the next second—
“Alipay payment received: 3,000 yuan.”
“Yes! Absolutely! Miss, we can definitely do it!” the owner immediately beamed with joy.
She had already decided that even if it meant making her husband work without sleep and dragging the entire family out of bed to help, they would produce those thousand buns every day.
After exchanging contact information on WeChat, Lin Lu carried the half-eaten bun and hurried toward the inpatient building.
As she walked toward the emergency ward, she continued calculating in her mind.
The supply problem was basically solved.
With the jade pendant’s storage space in hand, she no longer had to worry about food or necessities.
The next critical issue was the safe house.
In an apocalypse of endless torrential rain, her grandmother’s villa was the ideal shelter.
It sat on high ground.
It was a standalone property.
Easy to defend and difficult to attack.
The problem was that Pei Yanzhi and that entire family of parasites had already set their sights on it.
In this life, they would definitely do everything they could to move in.
They might even try to drive her out completely.
How should I deal with them?
Lost in thought, Lin Lu had already arrived at the door of Pei Yanzhi’s hospital room.
Just as she was about to push the door open, she suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice from inside.
“Mr. Pei, regarding last night’s incident, there are some details we’d like to verify with you.”
It was a police officer.
Lin Lu’s heart immediately skipped a beat.
Pei Yanzhi is awake?
The police are questioning him?
…What was he going to say?