A massive fissure had also suddenly appeared at Huaimeng Market. On top of that, several vendors who regularly set up stalls there had reportedly come down with some kind of vomiting illness. They had been vomiting so violently that it seemed as if they were about to throw up their intestines. In any case, Mo Fei was no longer short on money.
Over the next week or so, Mo Fei left early every morning and returned late every night. Forget coming home for meals, her family barely saw her at all.
There were even a few nights when Mo Fei did not come home at all.
This infuriated Mo Zhicheng.
One night, a little after midnight, Mo Fei finally dragged her exhausted body home and discovered that the living room lights were still on.
“Dad? Mom? Why are you two still awake?” Mo Fei asked in confusion. “Are you hungry? I’ll make you a late-night snack.”
She rolled up her sleeves and was about to head into the kitchen when Mo Zhicheng stopped her.
“Come here.”
Seeing Song Yi lowering her head without saying a word and Mo Zhicheng wearing a grim expression, Mo Fei was completely baffled. She obediently sat down on the couch. “What happened?”
Mo Zhicheng had been holding back his anger. “Tell me the truth. Where have you been these past few days? Did you get back together with that beast again?!”
“Huh?” Mo Fei did not understand what he meant. What beast? She did have a pile of plucked livestock in her space.
Song Yi frantically winked at Mo Fei.
Mo Zhicheng slammed his hand on the table. “Don’t play games with me right under my nose. Mo Fei, answer me. Are you still in contact with that bastard?”
Only then did Mo Fei understand why her parents had stayed up in the middle of the night waiting for her to come home.
So they thought she had gotten back together with Jianian and Jiayue’s biological father.
Well, Mo Zhicheng was not wrong. That man really was a beast.
“Nothing like that. I cut off contact with that bastard ages ago. Even if he stood right in front of me now, I probably wouldn’t recognize him. There’s no way I’d get back together with him. If I actually did something that stupid, I’d have to be out of my mind,” Mo Fei explained immediately after realizing the misunderstanding.
Seeing the expressions on her parents’ faces soften, Mo Fei took out the purchase agreement. “Actually, I’ve been busy with this these past few days. I bought a villa.”
The moment the words “bought a villa” left her mouth, Song Yi and Mo Zhicheng both stared at her with wide eyes.
Those three words had nothing to do with their retired working-class family.
Property prices were climbing every day. Even the cheapest villa cost at least ¥2.5 million.
Mo Zhicheng and Song Yi skimmed through the contract. They discovered that the detached villa covered 200 square meters of land, and with its private garden and garage, the usable floor area exceeded 300 square meters. Yet the price was only ¥900,000, and it even supported installment payments.
“Feifei, you weren’t scammed, were you?” Song Yi asked worriedly.
Mo Fei explained everything from beginning to end, omitting the fact that it was a haunted house. She simply said that the owner believed the feng shui was bad and was in a hurry to move to the Imperial Capital, so she had managed to buy it at a bargain price.
Finding a hidden bargain was hardly uncommon in this world.
After hearing Mo Fei’s explanation, the elderly couple put on their reading glasses and carefully reread the contract. Only then did they reluctantly believe her.
Mo Zhicheng asked, “Didn’t you just rent this place for a year? Why are you buying another house already?”
The top-floor apartment, with its more than one hundred square meters of living space, was far more comfortable than the old run-down apartment in their former neighborhood.
Although they had struggled to figure out some of the appliances at first, they had already grown accustomed to living there.
He had never expected his daughter to be so decisive. Buying a house was such a major matter, yet she had acted first and told them afterward, and she had bought an entire villa.
Mo Fei knew the time had come. She explained that natural disasters were approaching. Song Yi had heard about it from Mo Fei before and already believed her, so she was not surprised. To convince Mo Zhicheng, however, Mo Fei had to spend quite a while explaining everything.
Fortunately, both children spoke up beside her and backed her up.
Mo Jianian, in particular, directly gathered all kinds of news reports he had collected online and showed them together to Mo Zhicheng.
They included the increasingly frequent meteorological and geological disasters, mysterious ground fissures, forecasts warning that temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, the recent epidemic of fever and vomiting that had first begun spreading among the elderly and children, the sudden increase in pet attacks on people, and withered old trees suddenly growing several meters taller overnight.
Mo Zhicheng fell into a rare silence for a long while before finally trying to argue. “News like this is just clickbait. It’s not like we’ve never seen it before.”
In truth, he already believed about half of it. Recently, all his relatives’ group chats and his social media feed had been filled with people complaining that they could not buy food anywhere.
Meanwhile, Mo Fei had stocked up on so much food at home as though she had known everything in advance.
Ever since the incident involving Mo Qiujin, however, Mo Zhicheng had become much more cautious. He still looked at social media, but he never posted anything himself.
Even when people messaged him to complain, Mo Zhicheng never mentioned a single word about his own family’s situation.
“There have been stories like this before, but never this many, and never all at once. Dad, trust me this once,” Mo Fei said firmly. “But even if you don’t believe me, that’s okay. The villa will be finished in another five or six days. We’ll move there next weekend. I’ll keep stocking up on supplies, and I need you two to help me take care of the children for now.”
Mo Fei paused before emphasizing once again, “Dad, Mom, there’s one thing you absolutely have to promise me. Before I come to pick you up and take you to the villa, don’t go outside under any circumstances. Also, don’t tell our relatives, friends, or your former coworkers where we’re moving. The natural disasters are about to arrive. The only thing I can do is isolate us from potential dangers as much as possible and protect our family of five. Haven’t you heard the saying? The human heart is more frightening than ghosts or gods.”
The whole family nodded.
At that moment, as Mo Zhicheng looked at his daughter, he suddenly realized that over the past eight years, she had truly grown up.
She had grown from a little girl into the pillar supporting an entire family.
She honored her parents, loved her children, had learned how to piece together the truth from the smallest clues, and prepared in advance before danger arrived.
Whatever his daughter wanted to do, as her parents, they could not become a burden.
Mo Fei wished them good night and was about to return to her room when she heard Mo Zhicheng say, “Actually, your mother and I planned to spend our retirement living in the apartment at Lotus Community. You bought a villa and still have to renovate it. With all those cooling, insulation, and security systems you’re talking about, you must be short on money. A relative of our upstairs neighbor has always wanted to buy that apartment. I think I’ll contact them tomorrow and sell it.”
Before Mo Zhicheng had even finished speaking, Mo Fei already understood what her parents meant.
She shook her head. “Dad, Mom, you’ve already given me ¥500,000 before. That was your retirement savings. I already considered that money a loan from you. I’ll figure out the money myself.”
People often said that raising children was insurance for old age. Previously, Song Yi and Mo Zhicheng had always thought that once they became too old to care for themselves, they would sell the apartment and move into a nursing home together.
But now their devoted daughter had come back. Their grandson and granddaughter were by their side, and the entire family would be living together in the future. Converting the old apartment into cash made far more sense.
This time, the elderly couple was staking everything they had, leaving themselves without any safety net. If their daughter were deceived by a man again like she had been eight years earlier, they truly would not know where to turn.
But both of them believed that, no matter what happened, their daughter would never again abandon her family for the sake of a man.
“The nearest and the farthest are east and west. The deepest and the shallowest is a clear stream. The highest and the brightest are the sun and moon. The closest and the most distant are husband and wife.”
Only family bound by blood would never betray one another.
Seeing that her parents insisted on selling the house and turning it into cash for her, Mo Fei hesitated for a moment before deciding not to refuse again.
The next day, after some hesitation, Mo Zhicheng sent a message to his younger sister, Mo Qiujin, and his niece, Chen Bingqing.
He told them that he and Mo Fei had argued and that they had moved back to Lotus Community. He also said they had no food at home and had only managed to buy a bundle of dried noodles. He hoped they could help by bringing over some vegetables and eggs.
“Daughter, did you get the message your uncle sent?” Mo Qiujin called Chen Bingqing.
Chen Bingqing sneered. “I got it. Uncle’s pretty funny. The moment he argues with his daughter, he suddenly thinks of us. I bet he and Aunt have already been scammed out of all their money. I can’t be bothered with them.”
“They may not have any money left, but they still have that apartment. Once the two of them are gone, won’t it all belong to you? This is exactly the time for you to show how filial you are,” Mo Qiujin said as she calculated.
Chen Bingqing looked at the few bags of rice, two cases of instant noodles, and the frozen dumplings and eggs that her family had worked so hard to stockpile.
Those supplies were incredibly precious. She did not even have enough for herself, so there was no way she would give any to someone else.
She replied impatiently, “We’ll talk about it later. I’m busy.”
To gather enough cash, Mo Zhicheng even sold the car he had been driving for the past five years. According to Mo Fei, renting a car was the most cost-effective option now anyway.
Three days later, Mo Fei received two bank transfers. One was ¥80,000 from selling the car. The other was ¥1.6 million, representing the 50 percent down payment for the 100 square meter apartment in Lotus Community.
Mo Fei’s savings, which had nearly been depleted by purchasing all kinds of steel mesh, broken glass shards, insulation materials, cooling systems, and other renovation supplies, finally became substantial once again. By rough calculation, together with maxing out her credit cards, the money was barely enough to transform the villa into the basic version she had envisioned.
Dressed in a light blue sun protection jacket and holding an umbrella, she stood outside her villa, watching the construction workers constantly coming and going.
A few of the more talkative workers even asked whether she was planning to turn the place into a fortress.
Mo Fei smiled and explained that she wanted to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast with a post-apocalyptic themed murder mystery experience, which was why she was renovating it this way.
By now, a steel perimeter wall two meters high and fifty centimeters thick had already been built around the villa. Sharp shards of broken glass had been embedded along the outside and the top of the wall. In addition, electrifiable barbed steel wire fencing had been installed.
The entrance gate to the villa was a blast-resistant door that could be unlocked through facial recognition, a passcode, or remote control from a mobile phone.
After pouring in a huge amount of money, all these layers of protection had surrounded the entire villa like an impregnable fortress.
The villa’s roof had already been fitted with solar panels capable of withstanding both extreme heat and extreme cold, along with more than ten battery storage units. Under normal circumstances, solar power alone could supply electricity for the entire house.
The diesel generators served as a backup whenever solar power could not generate electricity, especially during prolonged periods of rainy weather.
The villa’s three aboveground floors and the basement level had all been equipped with insulation, a fresh air ventilation system, air conditioning, radiant floor heating, and more. Every door and window had been replaced with top-of-the-line security models.
Except for the bedrooms and bathrooms, surveillance cameras had been installed in every corner. The moment the system detected a face that did not belong to the Mo family or any moving living creature, an alarm would immediately sound.
In the villa’s courtyard, Mo Fei also installed a rainwater storage system and a wastewater recycling and filtration system.
Those upgrades alone had cost Mo Fei more than ¥2 million, several times the purchase price of the villa itself.
But she was extremely satisfied with the results of the renovation. The place had already been transformed into a small paradise hidden away from the world. If she had been able to obtain heavy firearms, she would even have wanted to mount a couple of cannons in the yard, though that remained nothing more than wishful thinking.
After the construction crew left, Mo Fei supervised the cleaning company as they thoroughly cleaned the villa from top to bottom before informing them that they would no longer need to come in the future.
Looking at the completely transformed villa, Mo Fei finally felt a sense of stability she had not experienced for a long time.
“Dad, Mom, have you finished packing? I’m coming to pick you up now.” Mo Fei started the rented seven-seater and drove off.