After leaving the hospital, Yao Tao found a small noodle shop nearby and ordered a bowl of deboned-meat noodles, two tea eggs, a beef patty, and a plate of cold appetizers.
When the steaming bowl of noodles was set down in front of her, Yao Tao leaned in and breathed in the aroma deeply.
Once the apocalypse arrived, decent food would be hard to come by.
Even with her spatial stockpile, Zhu Hua’s team cost a fortune to run, the only reason people followed a man with no real ability like Zhu Hua was that joining his team meant they got fed. She hadn’t been willing to touch her spatial supplies, always thinking she could save a little more for Zhu Hua.
What a joke, Zhu Hua never gave her credit for any of it, and had even framed her for embezzling the team’s supplies.
The rest of the team had no idea she had a spatial ability; they’d genuinely believed she’d stolen from everyone, and every last one of them had wanted to slap her.
Yao Tao drained the last of the broth in one go, wiped the corner of her mouth, and let out a satisfied breath.
Not in this lifetime, never again would she shortchange herself for anyone’s sake.
Wasn’t eating alone, just for yourself, wonderful?
Besides, she was actually a good cook. Supplies were scarce during the apocalypse, forget stir-frying, people couldn’t even bring themselves to add a sausage to instant noodles.
Once home, she checked her space first.
Before anything was placed inside, her space was pure emptiness, with no boundaries, and she was the only one who could take things in and out of it.
Time inside the space stood still, whatever was put in was sealed away in time, and would remain exactly as it was when it went in. In other words, if she put a piece of ice into the space and took it out a year later, that piece of ice would still not have melted.
Very convenient for keeping food fresh.
The only drawback was that living things couldn’t be stored inside.
In her past life, she’d once tried keeping live poultry in the space, thinking she’d raise them later for eggs, the chickens, ducks, and geese all came out dead.
After checking the space, she went through everything in the apartment, tossing what she planned to take with her into the space ahead of time.
She didn’t plan to bring the furniture, once the apocalypse hit, furniture and the like would be a low priority; no one would bother with it in the early days anyway. She could just as easily grab plenty of new furniture from any furniture store.
Right after she’d put something into the space, she noticed it flicker faintly.
She thought she’d imagined it, so she put in another item, the space flickered again.
What was going on?
She remembered her space hadn’t had this “feature” in her past life. Had it, after her rebirth, somehow evolved a “fridge light” function?
She tried several more times but still couldn’t figure out why the space was glowing. Whatever she put in and took back out showed no change at all.
She puzzled over it for a good while and still had no idea.
Just then her phone buzzed with a text message, from Zhu Hua: “Yao Tao, I got so busy at work today I forgot you were going to the hospital to pick up your medicine. What time do you get off tonight? I’ll come pick you up.”
Pick me up from work?
Ha!
Yao Tao glanced at the text and tossed the phone aside, not even bothering to reply.
She’d already taken leave from her part-time job, for the stretch of time before the apocalypse arrived, she wouldn’t be going back to work at all. But she had no intention of telling Zhu Hua that.
As much as she hated him, she wasn’t about to let a moment of hot-headed impulse send her running off to confront him.
Something had always felt off to her about the whole thing.
She had no money, no status. Both her parents had died of illness, and she herself was a chronically sick patient. If the hospital hadn’t let her join a surgical trial program, she never would have gotten a liver donor at all, let alone been able to afford the exorbitant surgery costs.
So what exactly had Zhu Hua seen in her, to go after her so eagerly?
She put her phone on silent. Zhu Hua’s calls came one after another; she simply ignored them all.
A few days later, the mortgage loan finally came through. She did the math, altogether, she had roughly 350,000 yuan to her name.
In novels, the female lead always had tens of billions in savings, why couldn’t she even scrape together one small goal’s worth?
She silently complained to herself.
Well, at least the lack of money wouldn’t stop her from stockpiling, worst case, she’d just have to go looting for free later.
Once the apocalypse hit and the world fell into chaos, plenty of supplies would end up buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. At first everyone would laugh at the idea of looting for free; by the later stages, everyone would be doing it.
After careful planning, she marked the supply locations on a city map with codes, and kept a little notebook on her at all times recording what each code corresponded to.
Once the apocalypse arrived, plants would grow rapidly, and before long the city would be swallowed by forest. People would find themselves reduced to primates once again, living in a jungle.
To search for supplies, people would have to climb up and down enormous plants every single day.
The pipelines underground would be severed by the plants’ root systems, cutting off power and communications.
Water, though… wouldn’t be in short supply.
Once the underground water pipes burst and went unrepaired, they’d form rivers, and low-lying areas would flood. In the early stage of the apocalypse, the water wouldn’t yet be contaminated; later on, the authorities would sell water-purifying tablets that could be dropped straight into the water to solve the contamination problem…
Right now, the most urgent thing to stockpile was ordinary food.
Yao Tao went to a wholesale market and placed an order for a truckload of supplies, asking the owner if he could deliver such a large order.
Seeing such a big customer walk in, the owner naturally agreed, and after asking for the delivery address, Yao Tao handed him her shopping list.
She didn’t buy much of the basics like rice, flour, and oil. Cooking would be inconvenient during the apocalypse, a waste of time, and living alone, she had no reason to fuss over a meal.
So instant food became her top priority for stockpiling.
Quick-cook rice, instant noodles, frozen dumplings and wontons, tangyuan for the Lantern Festival, frozen filet steaks, ice cream, yogurt.
All kinds of canned goods: canned meat, canned fish, canned fruit.
Various pickled vegetables, preserved mustard greens, sauces, braised chicken feet and necks, jam, salad dressing, sea salt and black pepper.
Self-heating hot pot, all kinds of sausages, frozen fries, pork chops, beef patties.
All kinds of biscuits, sandwich, soda crackers, buttery, chocolate… a hundred boxes each of raw chicken, duck, goose, and quail eggs, a hundred boxes each of salted duck eggs and preserved eggs…
The owner’s heart bloomed with joy. “You’ll need to pay a third as a deposit first, and settle the rest once the goods are delivered… will you need an invoice?” he asked, smiling obsequiously at Yao Tao.
“Of course. My company needs it for reimbursement,” Yao Tao said, putting on an act.
“Then I’ll write it up a bit higher for you,” the owner said happily.
Yao Tao didn’t bother explaining further and headed to the meat wholesale market.
She didn’t want her stockpiling to arouse suspicion, so she’d temporarily rented a warehouse. Once the goods were delivered there, she’d move them from the warehouse into her space, so as not to draw too much attention.
At the meat wholesale market she ordered fresh meat, vegetables, and seafood.
She ordered a dozen or so baskets each of cabbage, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplant; pork, beef, and mutton were all essentials.
Gutted freshwater fish, saltwater fish, various shellfish, shrimp, and crab.
Slaughtered chickens, ducks, and geese, along with all the poultry parts needed for grilling, chicken hearts, gizzards, feet, livers, she bought them all without restraint.
Beyond that, she also ordered ribs, pig trotters, oxtail, and other frozen cuts of meat. Although these were pricier, they were nutritious.
She’d had a liver transplant, and under normal circumstances would need to take anti-rejection medication long-term, using two or more drugs in combination.
But where would there be medicine in the apocalypse!
Even though her constitution had changed somewhat in her past life thanks to the spatial ability, she’d been fine without medication, she knew perfectly well that patients like her only had a 60-70% five-year survival rate after surgery.
Whether she’d live to old age was anyone’s guess.
In her past life, she’d guarded the supplies in her space for Zhu Hua’s sake, denying herself food and drink.
Now that she had a second chance, she was going to be twice as good to herself.
To hell with Zhu Hua. To hell with that dog of a man.
Even in the apocalypse, she was going to live in style!