Lin Zhiyuan had taken Xu Lan and Lin Ran abroad yesterday to go shopping. Lin Ran had been in a “bad mood” because she had failed to get the house, and the three of them had still not returned.
In fact, given the Lin family’s current financial resources, although they were not among the top companies in Beijing, buying a house was certainly within their means. Unfortunately, Lin Ran was just that despicable. She insisted on competing with Lin Wan for everything, always thinking that anything she snatched from Lin Wan’s hands was somehow better!
Ever since Lin Wan returned, Lin Ran had tried to steal everything that belonged to her, whether people or possessions. She did it simply to provoke Lin Wan. She had stolen her brothers, her father, and even her boyfriend. She truly lived up to being the daughter of a homewrecker!
Thinking of her former boyfriend, Jia Ren, who was now one of Lin Ran’s many devoted admirers, Lin Wan felt as though she had swallowed a fly. Just thinking about him made her sick.
Fine, fine! Since you want them so badly, I’ll leave all this trash to you. I hope you love each other and stay together until death!
Lin Ran had never had a steady boyfriend, yet she relied on her pretty face to keep several young masters from wealthy families wrapped around her little finger. They all eagerly followed her around. Come to think of it, she did have a certain “talent.”
After the apocalypse, because she had abundant supplies, these men became even more eager to flock to her.
However, as far as Lin Wan knew, Lin Ran was extremely arrogant and looked down on all of them. She had always been most interested in Shen Mochi and wanted more than anything to marry him.
The Shen Group was one of the most prominent family-owned conglomerates in Beijing. Compared with the Shen family, the Lin family was nothing.
The first time Lin Wan met Shen Mochi was when she was eight years old.
That year, at the insistence of Old Master Shen, the Shen family suddenly acknowledged the illegitimate son that Shen Huaichian, the person in charge of the Shen Group, had fathered outside his marriage. They even held a grand recognition banquet to announce his return to the family.
At the time, the Lin family’s company was also thriving. Moreover, Lin Wan’s maternal grandmother had some connections with the older generation of the Shen family, so Tang Wanyun was among those invited.
That day, she took Lin Wan along.
Lin Wan sat beside her mother and saw Shen Mochi, who was already eleven years old.
At the time, she thought the handsome little brother standing on the stage was unbelievably good-looking. He was the most handsome person she had ever seen, which was why he had left such a deep impression on her.
However, his features were cold, and his beautiful eyes were filled with wariness and hostility. She did not dare approach him.
Later, while the adults were busy exchanging pleasantries and drinking together, Lin Wan grew bored and went to play in the courtyard behind the banquet hall. There, she saw Shen Mochi being cornered by the Shen family’s three sons.
At the time, the eldest, Shen Moxuan, was already eighteen. The second, Shen Moling, was sixteen, while the third, Shen Mojiang, was thirteen.
All three were tall and well-built. Lin Wan was much smaller than them, but when she saw the suppressed, devastated look in Shen Mochi’s eyes, she could not help feeling sorry for him.
Wearing a white princess dress and little crystal shoes, she hurried over, pushed the three boys away with all her strength, and stood protectively in front of him.
“Why are you bullying him? I’m going to tell Uncle Shen and Grandpa Shen!”
Shen Moxuan looked down condescendingly at the adorable little girl.
“This is a Shen family matter. It’s none of your business. He’s nothing but an illegitimate child. We can do whatever we want with him! Move aside!”
“That’s right! Hurry up and get out of the way! Don’t come crying if you get hurt!”
Lin Wan looked up at the three fierce boys and felt a little frightened. However, she had been stubborn since childhood, so she refused to budge.
“I won’t! Go ahead and try touching him!”
Seeing that their argument was attracting the attention of the people at the front, Shen Moxuan became worried that their father and grandfather might find out. He had no choice but to give up. After threatening them a little, he left with the second and third brothers.
Lin Wan remembered staying with Shen Mochi for quite a while that day. She could no longer recall what they had talked about, only those dark, obsidian-like eyes of his.
Not long afterward, Shen Mochi was sent abroad to study. Within a few years, the Lin family also underwent tremendous changes, and the gap between the two families became like the difference between heaven and earth. They never saw each other again.
It was not until ten years later, shortly after Lin Wan returned to the Lin family, that they met again.
One day, when she came back from outside, she saw Shen Mochi sitting in the living room, with Lin Ran beside him. Lin Ran was dressed up carefully and looking at him with an obsequious smile.
“Big Sister, this is Mochi. He’s the current president of the Shen Group and a good friend of mine.”
Lin Ran’s boastful and smug introduction left Lin Wan slightly surprised.
The little brother she had once protected had grown even more handsome. He was now surrounded by an air of nobility and possessed an extraordinary bearing.
Unfortunately, he had become one of Lin Ran’s devoted admirers!
At that time, Lin Wan hated everyone and everything associated with Lin Ran. Anyone who got close to her was an enemy in Lin Wan’s eyes.
As a result, her favorable impression of Shen Mochi immediately plummeted. Later, Lin Ran would often deliberately mention how well Shen Mochi treated her. She even claimed that she would definitely marry into the Shen family someday.
This made Lin Wan dislike Shen Mochi even more. She had even thought that she should never have helped him as a child. She should have just let those people beat him to death! Then he would not have repaid her kindness by helping her enemy!
Because of this, she always went out of her way to avoid Shen Mochi whenever she saw him.
But it was now obvious that she had truly been reborn.
There was no doubt about it. Shen Mochi had used his own system and even his life to exchange for her chance to live again!
There must have been something fishy about what had happened before.
She hated this feeling of being completely in the dark. Such an enormous debt of gratitude… She had to find Shen Mochi and get a proper explanation from him!
If that was the case, he might lose the system he was supposed to have when the apocalypse arrived.
Although he currently had the upper hand and had defeated the Shen family’s three sons in their struggle for power three years ago, successfully taking control of the Shen Group, Old Master Shen, the person who had protected him the most, had already passed away.
The remaining members of the Shen family were all watching him covetously! If he lost his system, then when the apocalypse arrived a month later and social order collapsed, he…
At that thought, Lin Wan felt a sudden ache in her heart.
He had really given her his own life!
Since he had done so much for her, she would make sure to protect him well in the apocalypse.
Lin Wan’s hands never stopped moving. She quickly finished collecting all the valuable belongings while thinking things through, then headed downstairs.
Zhang, one of the Lin family’s servants, had heard the commotion on the second floor early that morning. She had also seen Lin Ze and Lin Xu leave for the hospital with injuries, so she had already called Xu Lan to report everything.
She had been brought into the Lin family by Xu Lan herself and was the most loyal lackey serving the mother and daughter.
With the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, all the other servants had been given time off to return home. Only she had been left behind, which was enough to show how important her position was.
Hearing the deafening music upstairs, she curled her lip disdainfully.
Her mother was dead, her father did not care about her, and her brothers disliked her. What trouble could she possibly cause?
When Lin Wan came downstairs, Zhang merely nodded indifferently as a perfunctory greeting.
Lin Wan sneered.
In this household, everyone except her had been firmly manipulated by Xu Lan and her daughter. As expected of that old and young pair of green tea bitches. They certainly knew how to manipulate people!
Thinking about the now completely emptied villa, Lin Wan happily hummed a tune as she picked up her car keys and walked away.
Just you wait, you old hag! When they return and discover that everything has disappeared, you’ll be in for a treat!
When she arrived at the enormous underground garage, she saw a row of luxury cars parked there.
Lin Ran’s newly purchased Porsche, Xu Lan’s Mercedes-Benz, Lin Ze’s Bentley, Lin Xu’s Hummer, and Lin Zhiyuan’s Maybach.
There was also a Ferrari sports car parked nearby, along with the brand-new motorhome that Lin Ze had bought for Lin Ran last year after she casually mentioned wanting one.
Tsk, tsk, tsk. What extravagance!
Even if they were wealthy, they could not afford to keep spending money so recklessly! Besides, the company was gradually declining, and as far as she knew, they had quite a few loans under their names!
Lin Wan gave a mischievous smile and found the circuit breaker before cutting off the power.
Then she turned on her phone’s flashlight and began tapping away with her little fingers. She had already stored all the car keys inside her space.
“Hahaha! Hehehe… This feels amazing!”
As she drove away in her own Mercedes-Benz G-Class, all that remained behind her was an empty underground parking garage…
When she returned to her apartment in the city center, Lin Wan took the elevator straight to the top floor.
The building had twenty-five floors in total, and she lived on the twenty-fourth floor.
Shen Mochi lived on the top floor.
This was also why Lin Ran had gone to such lengths to get her hands on this particular property. Now that Lin Wan thought about it, Lin Ran had probably wanted to take advantage of living so close to him.
Standing outside his door, Lin Wan felt extremely nervous. She remembered an occasion when Shen Mochi had stopped her and asked why she kept avoiding him. She had responded with some particularly hurtful words…
After that, he never appeared in front of her again.
She bit her lip, gathered her courage, and finally knocked on his door.
Lin Wan’s heart was pounding. She even felt like running away, but her feet seemed rooted to the spot.
Forget it. She had never been afraid of anything. She absolutely had to get to the bottom of this…
“Who are you looking for?”
A woman wearing a uniform from a housekeeping company opened the door and asked.
“Hello, my name is Lin Wan. I’m looking for Shen Mochi.”
“Oh, the gentleman isn’t here. He went to Japan on a business trip yesterday. He won’t be back for another week.”
Lin Wan inexplicably felt relieved.
“All right. I’ll come back another time.”
She practically fled downstairs. After closing her own door, she took a moment to calm herself.
Forget it. There was no harm in waiting until he returned before asking him.
The food deliveries began arriving one after another. Lin Wan washed her hands, sat down at the dining table, and began eating heartily.
The aroma of the food stimulated her taste buds. Lin Wan temporarily pushed everything else to the back of her mind and transformed into a little glutton. She held a slice of steak in her left hand while using chopsticks with her right to slurp down mouthfuls of seafood noodles.
Every now and then, she would take a sip of the milk tea placed in front of her.
“Mmm. This really tastes so much better than the mutated insects in the apocalypse.”
With her cheeks stuffed full, Lin Wan happily narrowed her eyes.
She did not stop until her stomach could no longer hold another bite.
After letting out a satisfied burp, she touched her forehead.
Hmm, she was starting to sweat.
She checked her temperature.
36.7°C.
After a whole morning of running around, at least her fever had finally gone down.
After five years in the apocalypse, she knew that food was naturally what most people lacked the most.
As time went on, cannibalism even became a common occurrence, not to mention the mutated zombies and animals that appeared later.
She had finally managed to survive in such a brutal environment after meeting someone who had helped her, only to be killed by her own family.
How ridiculous!
However, she still did not know whether Uncle Wang was doing well…
She put the unfinished food into her space and looked over everything she had collected that day. Seeing the glittering piles of valuables made her mood improve even more.
After thinking for a moment, she directly purchased an afternoon flight ticket to Japan.
It was now twelve noon, and her flight was at three in the afternoon. She still had three hours, which was enough time to get quite a few things done.
The Lin family would certainly report the theft of so many belongings to the police.
Many of the pieces of jewelry and watches were one-of-a-kind items in the country, so selling them here would be too risky. It would be easy for the authorities to trace them.
She might as well sell them in Japan instead. She had lived there with her mother for several years before and had even attended university there, so she was quite familiar with the place.
Although she currently held the largest shareholding in the company, her mother’s painstaking efforts to protect those shares back then had come with one condition proposed by Lin Zhiyuan. She could only receive dividends and was not allowed to participate in the company’s management.
She had been away from the Lin family for ten years and had long since lost her influence.
The Lin Corporation only transferred one million yuan into her bank account each year. During the last three years, however, the amount had dropped to just a few hundred thousand yuan.
There was no way there wasn’t something shady going on.
It did not take much thought to realize that Lin Zhiyuan and the others had tampered with things.
After the divorce, her mother had fallen into a deep depression and suffered from both physical and mental health problems. Over the years, Lin Wan had been taking her for treatment, which had also been a considerable annual expense.
Lin Wan still had to attend school, and there were also their daily living expenses…
After all these years, she now had only a little over one million yuan left in her bank account.
Lin Wan had just graduated from university when her mother passed away. After returning to the Lin family, she had asked to work at the company, but Lin Zhiyuan had only given her an insignificant position.
Lin Ze and Lin Xu were both senior executives, and Lin Ran also worked at the company. All three of them were constantly on guard against her.
Originally, she had planned to take things one step at a time and fight Lin Ran and the others to the bitter end, eventually taking back control of the Lin Corporation…
But now…
Previously, she had thought that having a house, a car, some savings, and the shares in her hands would be enough to let her slowly carry out her plans.
But with the apocalypse approaching, there were far too many things she needed to buy. What she had was nowhere near enough.
Selling these belongings would bring in a considerable amount of money. She could also look around in Japan for anything else she might need.
And then there was Shen Mochi. He was also there, and she desperately wanted to find out the truth from him…
Unfortunately, back then, when he had stopped her, he had insisted on saving his private phone number in her contacts. He had even told her to call him whenever she needed anything.
But she had been so angry at the time that she immediately deleted it right in front of him…
Lin Wan felt rather dejected. Suddenly, she remembered that her phone might be able to restore deleted contacts.
She fiddled with her phone for a while. When she finally saw that string of numbers, she let out a long sigh of relief, and her eyes could not help turning red.
Shen Mochi, you gave me my life. I will cherish it, and I will protect you well, too!
Once Lin Zhiyuan returned, he would undoubtedly come looking for her very soon. She could no longer keep this apartment.
Lin Wan put all the valuable belongings in the house into her space and then listed the property for sale online.
She also owned a villa on a hilltop in the suburbs. She had been cautious back then and had never told anyone else about it.
Moreover, the villa was situated at a high elevation. During the major earthquake a month later, that villa community would be one of the few residential areas capable of withstanding the disaster.
When she returned then, she could settle there and stockpile supplies.
After finishing everything, Lin Wan took out a notebook and began writing her stockpiling plan.
She had one month. She absolutely had to make the most of every moment.
When the apocalypse arrived, cars, houses, and money would no longer matter. The person who could survive the longest in the apocalypse would be the ultimate winner!
And in this lifetime, she was determined to become that person who survived for a very, very long time.
The same went for Shen Mochi.
After filling several pages, she checked the time. Seeing that it was almost time to leave, Lin Wan set off by car.
On the way, she dropped off the house keys at a real estate agency before rushing to the airport and heading straight to the boarding gate.
The crowd was bustling, and she did not notice Lin Zhiyuan and the other two coming out through the exit at the opposite end.
Once aboard the plane, Lin Wan had barely settled into her seat when an overwhelming wave of exhaustion washed over her.
Ever since waking up that morning, she had not stopped for a moment. Although her fever had subsided, her entire body still felt weak.
Until now, the excitement of being reborn and her desire for revenge had kept her going. But the moment she finally sat down, her body began demanding rest.
A nap would be good. She would need her strength once she woke up if she wanted to get things done.
As sleepiness overtook her, she did not force herself to stay awake. She put on an eye mask and quickly drifted into a deep sleep.
While Lin Wan was sleeping soundly on the plane, the Lin family villa had already descended into chaos.