Cheng Sinian ultimately failed to stop Qiao Yu. After grudgingly completing her discharge procedures, he sent her home. Before leaving, he repeatedly urged her to rest well, warning that if they met again, it might be in his hospital room.
Qiao Yu smiled and agreed, but the moment she got home, she slashed her own palm.
It wasn’t that Qiao Yu deliberately intended to harm herself—it was just that, if her suspicions were correct, the jade pendant her mother had left her could only be activated with her blood.
That jade pendant was something Qiao Yu had discovered while sorting through her mother’s belongings, and she had been wearing it on her wrist ever since. The pendant was small, no larger than a thumb joint, but its shape was rather peculiar. An outer ring of dark green, square-round jade encircled a slightly smaller round emerald-green jade bead. In the center of the bead was a hollow square opening, within which intricate emerald-green veins were interwoven, looking as though countless vines were tangled together.
In her previous life, Qiao Yu had heard rumors of someone who had obtained a treasure from somewhere—an object capable of storing dozens of square meters of goods. Moreover, no matter when or where, one could retrieve items from within at any time, much like the Universe Bag described in xianxia novels. Such treasures were called portable spatial dimensions.
Back then, she had assumed it was merely a rumor spread by those with ulterior motives to stir up conflict. Little did she expect that, at the very end of her life, she would truly witness a space independent of reality. Unfortunately, by then she no longer had the chance to investigate it.
Qiao Yu clenched the jade pendant tightly in her bleeding palm, her face betraying not the slightest trace of pain, as if the palm that had been cut open wasn’t her own at all.
Since heaven had shown her favor and granted her a second life, she was determined to investigate whether this jade pendant was truly the kind of treasure she had heard of in her previous life. If it really could store items and allow retrieval at will, it would become her greatest asset for survival in the Apocalypse.
Qiao Yu hadn’t been clutching the jade pendant for long when she felt a piercing pain shoot through her palm. She opened her hand and discovered that the wound had completely healed—no scar, not even a trace of blood remained. Only a small red mole had been left near the base of her thumb. As for the jade pendant, only the outermost square-round ring of jade remained; the bead in the center had vanished without a trace.
Just as Qiao Yu was marveling at this, a flash of white light suddenly appeared before her eyes. By the time she regained her senses, her consciousness seemed to have separated from her physical body, and she found herself in a bright, open space. Looking around, all she could see was translucent emerald green.
The space was completely empty, with nothing at all—except, at the very center, stood a colossal tree that was entirely emerald green.
The tree was semi-transparent, with a trunk so thick that it would likely take over a dozen adults joining hands to barely encircle it. Above the trunk stretched countless emerald-green vines, upon which hung many enormous leaves and giant teardrop-shaped fruits.
These vines were gnarled and intertwined, extending outward in tangled complexity, yet they happened to stretch across the space in perfect left-right symmetry, like a layer of jade flooring laid across the air, dividing the space into an upper and lower level.
Thus, with the Jade Tree as the central axis and the vines as dividing lines, the entire vast space was evenly partitioned into four sub-spaces, which from the front looked just like the grid of the Chinese character ‘Tian’.”
Although the space was divided into sections, each level was interconnected, and each of the four compartments was quite spacious, covering roughly 2,000 square meters with a height of about two stories.
Qiao Yu couldn’t see where she herself was, yet somehow she could perceive the entire layout, instinctively knowing its dimensions as if the knowledge were etched into her mind.
She examined the giant tree closely. Neither its vines nor its trunk bore the rough, cracked texture of ordinary trees; instead, they appeared as smooth and lustrous as jade.
Qiao Yu furrowed her brows slightly. In her previous life, she had heard that the spatial dimension was supposedly an object—one that people fought over. But how was it that this jade bead seemed to have merged with her?
A flicker of unease stirred within her. To verify whether this was truly the portable space she had heard about in her past life, Qiao Yu placed her hand on the tea table and silently commanded, “Collect.” Sure enough, the next moment, the table vanished from its spot and reappeared in the space with the jade tree, standing quietly in a corner.
It truly was a portable space! Qiao Yu let out a relieved breath, her eyes gleaming with surprise and delight. Steadying the turmoil in her heart, she slowly extended her hand toward the empty spot where the table had been, testing whether she could bring it back out. The thought had barely formed when the tea table suddenly returned to its place before the sofa in the living room.
Joy flooded her chest, and Qiao Yu’s hands trembled with excitement. In her previous life, the space she’d heard about had only spanned a few dozen square meters, yet it had been enough to spark envy and contention. Now, her space was over 8,000 square meters! She hadn’t been wrong—this jade pendant was truly a tremendous asset.
Riding the wave of exhilaration, Qiao Yu began storing all the usable items from her home into the space one by one. She thought to herself: since the space had originated from the jade bead and contained a verdant jade tree within it, she might as well call it the Yushu Space.
But then… since the jade bead had already merged with her… Qiao Yu turned her gaze to the other part of the pendant—this ring-shaped jade. What could it be?
She picked up the jade ring and examined it closely for a while, noticing something odd—had its color faded? It had been a dark green before, but now it was a vivid emerald, seemingly matching the color of the jade bead.
But why had it changed color? And what did the change signify? With questions swirling in her mind, Qiao Yu tentatively clasped the jade ring in her palm, closed her eyes, and focused her senses.
At that moment, in a place she couldn’t see, the red mole on her palm and the jade ring both brightened slightly, and Qiao Yu finally glimpsed another space.
This space was also entirely emerald green, but it lacked the jade tree—it was purely a storage space. It appeared as though one of the four compartments of the Yushu Space had been singled out, its area roughly a quarter of the Yushu Space’s size. Though not as vast as the Yushu Space, its 2,000-plus square meters were still hundreds of times larger than the space she’d heard about in her previous life.
Qiao Yu’s heart swelled with joy once more. Hastily, she threaded the jade ring back onto the red cord and slipped it onto her wrist. This way, A-Zhan could have a storage space of his own as well.
Qiao Yu sat quietly for a while. She still couldn’t be certain whether the Apocalypse would descend in this lifetime as it had in her previous one, so for now she didn’t plan to tell Jiang Zhan about this situation. She could quietly make preparations on her own first.
If there was no Apocalypse in this lifetime, then naturally it wouldn’t affect Jiang Zhan’s normal life; but if the Apocalypse did still arrive, at least she would have her reserves.
After organizing her thoughts, Qiao Yu first turned on her computer. Although food was the most important thing during the Apocalypse, grain could be purchased gradually, but a vehicle needed to be ordered well in advance.