The diesel generator was incredibly loud, waking the sleeping bodyguards.
The guards on night watch peeked around curiously. Seeing the boss speaking privately with the captain, they tactfully returned to their posts.
Some of the others came downstairs grumbling, but the moment they saw the two of them together, they immediately shut up and hurried back upstairs as well.
Everyone wore strange expressions—
The boss was secretly meeting their captain in the middle of the night?
So the one she liked wasn’t No. 01 with the biggest chest muscles, but the handsome captain instead!
As expected, this was an era where looks mattered.
Tang Xiaoman rubbed her nose, showing she didn’t care about gossip.
In the apocalypse, who cared about rumors? They couldn’t truly hurt her anyway.
Zhou Yichen put away the diesel generator and formally asked, “Miss Tang, do you have any other instructions?”
Seeing how serious he looked, Tang Xiaoman couldn’t resist teasing him. “It’s inconvenient to talk here. Want to go to my room?”
The man immediately looked like he was facing a great enemy. “A lone man and woman alone together late at night… that wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Tang Xiaoman compromised. “Then how about your room?”
Zhou Yichen’s face instantly turned red. He took a step back, eyes full of vigilance.
Tang Xiaoman: “…”
She was only joking with him. It wasn’t like she was actually going to do anything to him.
Tsk. This guy was way too rigid—completely unable to take a joke.
Left with no choice, she asked for his opinion. “Then where do you think would be appropriate to talk?”
The two entered Tang Xiaoman’s private storage room. Only one ton of diesel was stored there, so the smell wasn’t too overpowering.
Tang Xiaoman turned on the light, instantly illuminating the storage room.
Zhou Yichen froze for a moment when he saw the huge pile of supplies.
Tang Xiaoman didn’t explain. She rummaged through the supplies and handed him a nail gun.
“Can you modify this gun? Increase its range and power?”
Zhou Yichen was a retired special forces soldier. He was extremely familiar with firearms and should be skilled at disassembling and assembling them.
After examining the nail gun several times, his tone turned serious. “This is already the nail gun with the farthest range. At ten meters, the steel nails can seriously injure a person.”
It was already a dangerous weapon.
But Tang Xiaoman’s demands were even higher. “Ten meters isn’t far enough. After modification, I want it to reach at least twenty meters.”
Zhou Yichen looked up at her.
Tang Xiaoman stared back at him and repeated, “You understand what I mean, right?”
After a moment, Zhou Yichen answered, “Understood, Miss Tang.”
Tang Xiaoman nodded in satisfaction and patted his shoulder. “Relax. I won’t use it to do evil. It’s only for self-defense. If people don’t provoke me, I won’t provoke them.”
But if someone did provoke her, she’d wipe them out completely.
By the time Tang Xiaoman fell asleep, it was already past midnight. When she woke up, it was after nine in the morning.
She let out a miserable cry like someone cutting flesh from her body and immediately rolled off the bed, rushing into the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, she came out feeling refreshed.
She didn’t even bother eating breakfast. In a great hurry, she ran downstairs and drove toward the nearest bank.
The gold bars, silver bars, gold bricks, and silver bricks in banks were far cheaper than the prices in jewelry stores.
Tang Xiaoman bought ten jin of gold bricks and ten jin of silver bricks in one go.
She wanted to test how much the space would expand after absorbing them.
If ten jin of gold and ten jin of silver expanded the space equally, then buying silver would obviously be more cost-effective.
Back in the car, Tang Xiaoman first stored the gold bricks inside the space.
Using her consciousness to inspect it, she found that the gold bricks had indeed been absorbed.
Living area expanded by 0.5 square meters.Storage volume expanded by 5 cubic meters.
She quickly tossed the ten jin of silver bricks into the space as well. After they were absorbed, the virtual display showed:
Living area expanded by 0.005 square meters.Storage volume expanded by 0.05 cubic meters.
The result was exactly what Tang Xiaoman had expected.
Looks like the space was pretty clever—it couldn’t be fooled by cheap materials.
Tang Xiaoman then visited jewelry stores and jade shops, buying all kinds of gemstones, diamonds, jade, and accessories.
She tossed items of equal price into the space and checked how much the living area and storage volume expanded.
In the end, she concluded—
Jadeite jade had the best cost-performance ratio.
Checking her bank balance, she saw less than sixty million remained.
Paying the final renovation balance and purchasing the escape pods would cost nearly ten million, and she still needed to continue stockpiling supplies.
The money she once worried she couldn’t spend fast enough suddenly wasn’t enough anymore.
She reserved ten million in cash and spent the rest on gold bricks and jade.
After feeding everything into the space, the jade bracelet’s quality improved further. It had originally been low-grade bean jade, but now it had become glossy glutinous jade with even greater translucence.
Entering the space, she discovered that the virtual display now showed a three-hour countdown.
This meant the amount of time she could stay inside the space every day had increased to three hours!
The living area expanded by thirteen square meters, bringing it to ninety-seven square meters total. It had changed from a two-bedroom apartment into a three-bedroom one.
The storage volume increased by another 110 cubic meters, totaling 290 cubic meters.
Looking at the space that had expanded by more than double, Tang Xiaoman immediately became excited as if injected with adrenaline.
After leaving the space, she planned to continue driving around stockpiling supplies.
But not long after driving off, one of her tires suddenly went flat.
She got out to inspect it, only for a group of burly men to appear out of nowhere.
Each of them was shirtless, covered in dragon-and-phoenix tattoos, and looked like vicious troublemakers.
Fearless, Tang Xiaoman raised an eyebrow and asked, “What do you want?”
It was broad daylight and the apocalypse hadn’t even begun yet.
She herself didn’t dare openly commit crimes, yet these people dared attack someone on the street?
“Heh, little lady. You offended someone you shouldn’t have offended. Somebody wants to teach you a lesson!” The leader had a vicious scar across his face, making his smile even fiercer.
The men behind him all carried baseball bats, waiting only for their boss’s command before attacking together.
Although the girl before them was beautiful enough to make them drool, unfortunately she had offended the wrong person.
For money, they could only follow orders—break her limbs and teach her a painful lesson.
Tang Xiaoman let out a cold laugh and leisurely said, “Wait a moment.”
Everyone: “…”
She opened the car door and used the motion of bending down as cover while pulling a chainsaw out of her space.
The chainsaw roared to life with a terrifying sound.
This was universally recognized as the ultimate criminal deterrent.
More than ten grown men instantly turned pale with fear. None of them dared step forward.
Tang Xiaoman immediately switched from defense to offense, thrusting the rapidly spinning chainsaw directly toward Scarface.
How could Scarface dare fight her? He turned and ran.
Once the leader fled, the rest immediately became a disorganized mob and scattered in all directions.
“Tch. Can’t you people come up with something new? So lame!” Tang Xiaoman gave the fleeing men a thumbs-down of contempt.
She put away the chainsaw, took a jack out of the trunk, and replaced the spare tire herself.
After four years in the apocalypse, there was basically nothing she couldn’t handle on her own.
Just after getting back into the car, Tang Xiaoman received a call from the owner of the outdoor water-sports equipment store.
The four escape pods and ten oxygen packs she had ordered had arrived.
Tang Xiaoman directly gave him the address of her rented garage and told him to deliver everything there.
The two team-version fifteen-seat escape pods filled the garage almost completely. The remaining two family-version escape pods and ten oxygen packs had to be left outside temporarily.
Tang Xiaoman settled the remaining payment with the owner and asked whether he could help her acquire fifty gas masks and twenty hazmat suits.
The owner immediately agreed. “I can ask some friends for help. I’ll get them for you very soon. The quality will definitely be guaranteed, though the price may be a little higher.”
“Money isn’t an issue.” Tang Xiaoman didn’t even blink before paying the deposit.
The owner left happily.
Tang Xiaoman entered the garage and waved her hand, storing the two team-version escape pods into the space.
She reorganized the supplies in the living area, stacking everything she could all the way to the ceiling to maximize space usage.
The bathroom and restroom had also expanded in size, so she stuffed the scattered supplies into them.
She cleared out the living room specifically to store the two massive team-version escape pods.
After leaving the space, she stored the two family-version escape pods and ten oxygen packs inside the garage before transferring them into the space as well, stacking them in the living room.
Having secured the most important survival supplies, she finally felt more at ease.
Tang Xiaoman excitedly examined the additional 130 cubic meters of space and suddenly felt the heavy pressure of the long road ahead.
She needed to continue to stockpiling supplies like crazy—
But what was she supposed to do if the money wasn’t enough?