7:50 PM.
High-tech district on the outskirts of the city.
An abandoned giant logistics warehouse park.
The night hung over the barren land like a massive sheet of black velvet. Because of the remote location, there wasn’t even a single streetlight nearby. The entire industrial park was swallowed by deathly silence and thick darkness.
Lin Qi stood quietly before the massive rolling steel door of the fifty-thousand-square-meter elevated warehouse, the brim of her black baseball cap pulled low. The early summer wind carried a trace of heat, yet it couldn’t disperse the chilling aura around her—the kind forged from mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
That afternoon, she had thoroughly inspected the area. The middleman fatso had done his job efficiently after taking the money. Not only had every single person been cleared out of the entire park, but all the surveillance lines had been cut cleanly. Even the backup storage cards from the monitoring systems had been removed.
This place was now an absolute blind spot. Even if she detonated a bomb inside, it would take a long time before anyone outside noticed.
“Rumble rumble—”
Suddenly, from the ruined highway in the distance came a low, dense roar of engines.
At first the sound was distant, like muffled thunder at the horizon, but it rapidly merged into one overwhelming wave. Even the concrete beneath Lin Qi’s feet began trembling slightly.
She raised her head, her deep gaze piercing through the darkness.
At the end of the road, two blinding headlights tore through the night like sharp blades. Then four. Eight. Dozens. Hundreds!
It was a steel dragon made up of five hundred heavy-duty semi-trailer trucks!
The enormous convoy stretched endlessly from head to tail, winding through the darkness like a monstrous metallic beast. Roaring, thundering, carrying an unstoppable momentum, it surged toward the abandoned logistics park. The air instantly filled with the pungent smell of diesel and burnt rubber.
At the front was a black Mercedes G-Class. Before the vehicle had even fully stopped, the passenger door was violently shoved open.
Wang Fatty came tumbling out, drenched in sweat and clutching a thick stack of freight manifests. He jogged all the way toward Lin Qi, his already plump face flushed bright red from sheer excitement, looking like an oversized braised meatball fresh out of the pot.
“L-Lin Boss! I, Wang Fatty, kept my word!” he panted heavily, trembling with excitement as he pointed behind him at the endless truck convoy. “The first batch is here! Twenty thousand tons of Wuchang rice, ten thousand tons of premium flour, plus the hundred tons of dried spices and five hundred thousand packs of Haidilao hotpot base you wanted! It’s all here!”
Looking at the vast convoy, the corner of Lin Qi’s lips finally curled into a deeply satisfied smile beneath her cap.
Five hundred thousand packs of hotpot base. Twenty thousand tons of rice.
The visual impact of such enormous, mountain-like quantities of supplies was absolutely terrifying. Memories from her previous life flashed through her mind—people slaughtering each other over half a moldy steamed bun. Compared to those scenes, this “mountain of gold and silver” about to belong solely to her made dopamine flood her brain wildly. An unprecedented sense of absolute security instantly enveloped her.
“Well done, Boss Wang.” Lin Qi nodded calmly, though her eyes carried unquestionable authority. “Tell the workers to start unloading. Before midnight, I want every shipment stacked neatly inside the warehouse.”
“You got it! Don’t worry!”
Wang Fatty spun around and pulled a loudspeaker from his waist, roaring toward the truck drivers and loaders waiting behind him:
“Brothers! Get your asses moving! Forklifts all running! Assembly-line unloading! Tonight, whoever unloads the fastest and stacks the cleanest gets an extra one-thousand-yuan bonus from me personally on top of your wages! UNLOAD—!”
Where there were heavy rewards, there would always be brave men.
At Wang Fatty’s command, the abandoned logistics park instantly exploded into activity.
The cargo compartments of hundreds of heavy trucks swung open simultaneously. Dozens of large forklifts beeped shrilly in reverse, weaving back and forth between the trucks and the giant warehouse like worker ants.
“Bang!”
The first pallet—two full tons of Wuchang rice—was steadily lowered into the center of the warehouse. The thick moisture-proof vacuum packaging bags were stacked tightly together, radiating a reassuring heaviness.
Then came the second pallet. The hundredth pallet. The thousandth pallet…
The originally empty fifty-thousand-square-meter warehouse rapidly filled at a speed visible to the naked eye.
“One, two, three—lift!”
Thousands of laborers shouted in unison. Sweat drenched their backs, but excitement burned in everyone’s eyes. In their entire lives, they had never seen such an outrageous scene. This wasn’t buying rice—this was emptying out a city’s strategic grain reserve!
Bag after bag of fifty-pound premium flour piled into endless white mountains. Barrel after barrel of tightly sealed non-GMO soybean oil formed golden walls.
Most shocking of all were the trucks loaded with hotpot bases and dried spices.
As workers unloaded the bright red boxes printed with labels like “Haidilao Extra Spicy Beef Tallow” and “Qiaotou Old Hotpot,” the air itself began filling with a faint spicy beef-oil aroma that made mouths water uncontrollably.
Five hundred thousand packs of hotpot base were stacked into a crimson “Wall of Sighs” over five meters high and dozens of meters long!
“Good lord… what kind of business is this rich boss running? Even if the entire city ate hotpot every day, this would last half a year!” a young loader clicked his tongue while carrying a box.
“Shut up. What do you know about rich people? Hurry up and move the goods. Get your bonus and leave!” the foreman smacked him on the back of the head.
Time passed minute by minute.
11:50 PM.
With the relieved hiss of the final truck’s brakes, the first massive shipment was finally unloaded.
The gigantic warehouse was now packed to the brim. There was barely enough room left to walk. Rice mountains, flour ridges, spice walls… beneath the dim emergency lighting, they radiated a suffocating kind of beauty.
“Boss Lin, mission accomplished!” Wang Fatty’s voice was completely hoarse. Holding the thick stack of delivery receipts with both hands, he offered them respectfully to Lin Qi. “Want to check the goods?”
“No need. I trust Boss Wang’s reputation.”
Lin Qi took the receipts and casually tossed them into her backpack. Then she pulled out five bundles of cash she had prepared beforehand and threw them straight into Wang Fatty’s arms.
“Fifty thousand yuan. A bonus for tonight’s workers. Take your people and leave immediately. Same time tomorrow—I want the remaining goods delivered.”
“Boss is generous! Boss is gonna get rich!”
The loaders erupted into thunderous cheers. Wang Fatty bowed repeatedly in excitement. He had never dreamed in his life of meeting such a wealthy and straightforward client.
“Move out! Everyone, get in the trucks! No lingering here!” Wang Fatty shouted.
The convoy of five hundred heavy trucks rumbled away from the logistics park.
When the taillights of the final truck disappeared into the darkness, the abandoned logistics park once again fell into deathly silence.
Standing before the massive rolling door, Lin Qi reached out and pressed the close button.
“Rumble rumble—”
The heavy steel door slowly descended, sealing away all outside eyes.
With a click, Lin Qi pulled down the warehouse’s main power switch.
The entire fifty-thousand-square-meter space instantly plunged into absolute darkness. No light remained—only the rich scent of rice, flour, and spicy hotpot base lingering in the air.
Standing in the darkness, Lin Qi slowly closed her eyes.
Her heartbeat accelerated. Blood boiled through her veins. She could even hear her own breathing growing heavier from overwhelming excitement.
“Now… the real carnival begins.”
She abruptly opened her eyes and walked precisely toward the mountain of rice in the darkness.
Stretching out her pale slender hand, she lightly pressed her palm against the outermost rice bag.
The ancestral jade pendant hanging against her chest suddenly emitted a faint mysterious glow in the darkness, resonating intensely with her consciousness.
“Store.”
Lin Qi whispered inwardly.
The next second, a scalp-numbing miracle occurred.
“Whoosh—!”
There was no sound. No movement of air.
But the instant her will moved, the enormous rice mountain weighing twenty thousand tons vanished into thin air.
Not even a grain of dust remained.
Lin Qi’s consciousness instantly sank into the infinite space.
Inside that endless pure white-gray world where time did not flow, the previously empty void was now perfectly stacked with the twenty thousand tons of Wuchang rice.
The space itself seemed governed by some absolute law. The moment supplies entered, they automatically arranged themselves into perfect categorized grids according to type and size. She didn’t need to organize anything. It was as though an advanced AI butler had sorted them all neatly into their designated areas.
“Continue!”
Madness burned in Lin Qi’s eyes as she turned toward the next mountain of supplies.
“Store!”
Thirty thousand tons of premium flour vanished instantly, forming a second white mountain range inside the space!
“Store!”
Ten thousand tons of non-GMO soybean oil and ten thousand tons of premium peanut oil disappeared, transforming into golden matrices of oil barrels!
“Store! Store! Store!”
Lin Qi moved like a tireless cosmic black hole devouring everything. She darted through the dark warehouse. Every wave of her hand and every flicker of thought caused hundreds or thousands of tons of supplies to evaporate into nothingness.
Brown sugar, white sugar, moisture-proof iodized salt, five hundred thousand boxes of premium soy sauce, one hundred tons of star anise and cinnamon…
Finally, she stood before the crimson wall made from five hundred thousand packs of Haidilao hotpot base.
Looking at the ultimate luxury she hadn’t even dared dream of in her previous life, Lin Qi could no longer suppress the grin spreading across her face—a wild, bloodthirsty smile.
“Store!”
“Whoosh—”
The crimson wall vanished instantly.
In less than ten minutes.
The enormous warehouse that had previously been packed so full there was barely space to stand became completely empty again. Even stray packing straps and dust particles on the floor had been swallowed by the space’s terrifying suction.
The entire warehouse was so spotless it looked as though no one had ever entered.
Standing alone in the empty warehouse, Lin Qi immersed her consciousness inside her infinite space. Looking at the perfectly divided zones—the carbohydrate section, fat section, seasoning section—a feeling called “absolute safety” surged through her body like electricity.
But it still wasn’t enough.
The space currently held only raw ingredients and dead supplies. There were no steaming hot ready-made meals filled with the warmth of ordinary human life. Just thinking about having to painfully cook over a fire in the apocalypse after water and electricity were gone made her frown.
Her space was in a state of absolute stasis.
That meant a dish placed inside while freshly cooked would still be piping hot a hundred years later.
Opening her eyes in the darkness, Lin Qi’s gaze gleamed brightly as she pushed open a small side door beside the warehouse and melted into the night.
“The staples are secured. Next comes the carnival of ready-made meals and calorie bombs.”
Tomorrow, would the city’s famous Smokefire Alley night market be ready for her grand plundering?