“Whatever it is, just say it. Uncle will definitely do it,” Wen Jianshu said. Seeing Tang Mo push the card back again, he knew she would never accept it, so he picked it up and put it into Lin Yi’s hand instead.
“The first thing is this: I’d like you to reinforce the supermarket at home and replace the door with the strongest fingerprint anti-theft door you can find. Also, please take down the supermarket sign. The shop won’t be open anymore, but this place is still my home—it’s where I grew up. Mom and I won’t be living here anymore, but I hope it can be well protected.”
Tang Mo’s home was a small two-story building. The first floor was the supermarket, and the second floor had two bedrooms. She had been born and raised here, so her attachment to the place ran deep.
But only she herself knew that the most important reason for reinforcing the supermarket was to preserve these supplies for her mother.
The items in the supermarket might not seem very valuable now, but once the apocalypse arrived, they would become an enormous fortune.
In the first half year of the apocalypse, many people starved to death. She didn’t dare gamble on the certainty that Wen Jianshu would always treat her mother well.
If one day the two of them were to part ways, at least her mother would still have a fallback option—returning to this reinforced house and guarding the supermarket. Even without going outside, she could survive for a long time, long enough to last until Tang Mo graduated from school.
Taking down the supermarket sign was also for the sake of protecting the supplies. In the apocalypse, people’s obsession with food was something Tang Mo understood all too well.
“Alright,” Wen Jianshu agreed readily. “Uncle promises I’ll protect your supermarket properly.”
“My second request is… could you help me get a good knife? Even one that doesn’t meet regular market regulations is fine.”
Tang Mo spoke indirectly. What she really meant was that she hoped Wen Jianshu could use his connections to get her a high-quality knife that couldn’t be bought openly on the market.
She believed Wen Jianshu would understand what she meant.
“All these years, it’s only been Mom and me living here. If I had a knife like that, it would feel as if someone were always protecting the two of us…”
Tang Mo lowered her head slightly.
She knew very well how to strike a balance—when to be firm and when to show weakness—in order to achieve her goals in the simplest way possible.
Her words successfully made Wen Jianshu and Lin Yi’s eyes redden. How pitiful and insecure must this child have been over the years to think of such a way to protect herself and her mother?
It really hadn’t been easy for Lin Yi all these years. From now on, he resolved to protect her well and never let her live such an insecure life again.
Wen Jianshu’s gaze toward Lin Yi grew even more tender, while Lin Yi stood up directly, sat beside her daughter, and tightly held Tang Mo’s hand.
Feeling the warmth in her mother’s palm, Tang Mo—who had originally been acting—suddenly felt a real urge to cry.
Good knives were hard to buy. The ones available on the market were of average quality, and she couldn’t afford the truly good ones anyway.
But during her half year at school, she needed something to defend herself. After graduating, she would have to face mutated beasts everywhere. She urgently needed a good knife.
Although the story about the knife was partly fabricated, the fear she had felt over the years—trembling alone at home—was real, and so were all her emotions.
Tang Mo’s requests were almost effortless for Wen Jianshu, so he naturally agreed at once and promised to handle them properly.
Of course, Wen Jianshu understood that the girl in front of him was not as weak as she appeared, and that wanting a knife surely had deeper intentions behind it.
But through their interactions, he could tell that Tang Mo was a sensible child who knew her limits.
And since things had been said to this extent, he really couldn’t bring himself to deny her this wish.
After the family of three finished eating at home, Wen Jianshu reluctantly drove back first. They agreed that Tang Mo and her mother would pack their luggage that day, and he would come pick them up the next day to move them into his villa.
The following days passed quickly. Tang Mo moved with her mother into Wen Jianshu’s villa. He had long lived independently, so there were no complicated relatives to deal with, which made Tang Mo quietly breathe a sigh of relief for her mother.
She understood her mother well—she seemed gentle on the surface, but was actually tougher than anyone inside. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to raise Tang Mo so well all by herself.
Tang Mo’s room was on the second floor of the villa. It was decorated in simple, elegant light blue tones, perfectly matching her aesthetic. It was obvious that Lin Yi had been consulted and that real thought had gone into the design.
The bedding and bathroom toiletries were all fully prepared; it was ready to move in immediately.
However, Tang Mo didn’t move her packed luggage into the room. Instead, she directly stored it in her spatial storage. She was going to live alone at school for half a year, so naturally she had to carry all her belongings with her.
The doors and windows on the first floor of the villa were very sturdy. Outside, there was a small courtyard surrounded by iron fencing. The residents of the neighborhood were either wealthy or influential, and the security was extremely strict.
Tang Mo nodded in satisfaction. For the first half year of the apocalypse, her mother and Uncle Wen would probably live here. The higher the safety, the more at ease she felt.
Tang Mo’s university major was biological sciences. In casual conversations over the past few days, she had deliberately mentioned to Wen Jianshu that her professor said the recent climate and environment were extremely abnormal, and that it would be wise to prepare more food just in case.
Wen Jianshu didn’t dismiss her words as childish nonsense. Instead, he thought about them seriously.
The very next day, Tang Mo discovered large quantities of food supplies being delivered to the villa, filling several rooms.
Lin Yi kept saying that the two of them were making a fuss, but she had always been gentle by nature. When it came to the two people she loved acting recklessly, she didn’t stop them.
After all, food would never go to waste.
Tang Mo didn’t believe that Wen Jianshu would take such big action just because of her words alone.
In fact, his attitude that day had been rather strange—almost as if he had already been prepared for something like this.
That made sense. A powerful family like the Wen family, which would later dominate in the apocalypse, must have known something by this point.
That was even better. It saved her from having to explain things too clearly and risk not achieving her desired effect, because aside from her mother, she couldn’t trust anyone in this world.
Wen Jianshu worked quickly. In just two days, the supermarket at Tang Mo’s home was fully reinforced. The windows were replaced with sturdier metal ones, and the door was upgraded to a fingerprint-and-password lock that could hardly be forced open. The fingerprints registered were Lin Yi’s and Tang Mo’s.
With this supermarket, Lin Yi had one more layer of security in the apocalypse, which greatly put Tang Mo at ease.
As for the knife, Wen Jianshu also prepared it quickly and personally handed it to Tang Mo. The blade was not very long and was light and thin overall, with a dark bronze color that looked extremely sharp. The handle was wrapped in layers of red cloth strips, and faintly visible were ancient, simple patterns.
After giving her the knife, Wen Jianshu thoughtfully added a protective sheath with a long strap, making it convenient to carry on one’s back. Originally, he had only planned to get her a decorative, unsheathed knife—just a symbolic item—since he wouldn’t be able to explain it to his wife if Tang Mo got hurt.
But later, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, he felt that the days ahead wouldn’t be peaceful. In the end, he decided to get a real weapon for Tang Mo. Knowing she was careful and steady, he felt relatively at ease.
When Tang Mo saw the knife, she was utterly delighted. She recognized it!
After the apocalypse, once everyone was bound to ID wristwatches, big data statistics became increasingly simple and efficient. Tang Mo even felt that the true realization of the “global village” concept began with the appearance of those ID wristwatches.
The Alliance had also created many rankings to publicize information about powerful individuals in the apocalypse. If she remembered correctly, this very knife had once been wielded by a woman ranked in the top ten. That woman used this blade to kill countless mutated beasts, earning her place on the rankings and becoming a myth-like existence in the eyes of tens of millions of ordinary people.
Tang Mo couldn’t stop stroking the blade. The more she touched it, the more she liked it, and the more excited she became.
Without even needing to ask, she knew this knife must have an extraordinary origin. Even wealthy ordinary people couldn’t buy something like it. With it, she had gained yet another trump card for survival.
In the final few days before the apocalypse, Tang Mo spent all her time shopping, focusing this time on prepared foods.
During the first half year, although hunger was widespread, order had not yet completely collapsed, so electricity was still supplied normally.
Even so, major restaurants shut down one after another and could no longer operate. Eating one’s favorite foods became impossible.
Tang Mo had tested it before—items stored in her spatial space were in a static state, so storing cooked food posed no problem.
Thus, she swept through many of her favorite restaurants, packing dish after dish and placing them neatly on the shelves inside her space.
In addition to meals, she also stocked up on all kinds of snacks: roast chicken, roast duck, braised meats, rice noodles, spicy hotpot, buns and dumplings, twisted dough sticks, KFC, and various fast foods. These were for satisfying her cravings. After all, food was a treasure of humanity—she truly couldn’t bear to abandon it. Naturally, the more she could store, the better.
Just in case, she also bought several portable gas stoves, so that if she couldn’t cook anywhere outside, she could still use them.
In the end, only when the three-square-meter space was completely packed to the brim, towering high, did Tang Mo finally feel satisfied. There was only room left for two backpacks for emergencies. As for the knife, she had long since stored it safely in her space.
With her money almost entirely spent, Tang Mo’s heart finally settled. She no longer felt as anxious as she had at the beginning.
The jade pendant, the knife, and her experiences from her previous life were the most valuable assets she had in this life. Each of them was a life-saving trump card. The stronger one’s abilities, the firmer one’s confidence—and even one’s overall aura would change, becoming hard to ignore.
When there was only one day left before the apocalypse, Tang Mo told Lin Yi that she wanted to return to school early to participate in an experimental project organized by her professor. In her previous life, she had also returned to school using this same reason.
Lin Yi, unaware of anything, didn’t think much of it and agreed, giving Tang Mo a few reminders before transferring 5,000 yuan to her.
This time, Tang Mo didn’t refuse. Instead, she brought up another matter.
“Mom, buy some more food and medicine recently. My professor said the world hasn’t been very peaceful lately.”
“Oh? Didn’t your Uncle Wen already buy quite a lot recently?” Lin Yi said indifferently.
“It’s still not enough. These things won’t go to waste anyway. And Mom—maybe stock up on some baby formula too?” Tang Mo said, winking at Lin Yi.
This was the real point she wanted to make today. Although Lin Yi was already forty-two, and as a daughter she didn’t want her mother to have another child, many things were better safe than sorry.
After all, Uncle Wen was marrying for the first time and didn’t have any children yet…
She knew the Wen family was powerful, but baby formula would be priceless in the apocalypse. Rather than struggling to find it later, it was better to stock up now. Even if there were no children, it would still be an extremely valuable resource in the apocalypse.
She couldn’t say this directly to Uncle Wen, so she could only hint at it to her mother this way.
“What nonsense are you talking about?” Lin Yi said, her face slightly flushed.
At her age, she naturally understood the implication behind her daughter’s words.