Lin Ze glanced at the balance on Lin Ran’s phone and said worriedly, “Sis, this money really doesn’t last long. We still have so many things left to buy—what are we going to do?”
Lin Ran replied nonchalantly, “What’s there to be afraid of? We still have Mom and Dad, don’t we?”
“Sis, are you going to tell Mom and Dad? Will they believe us? What if they send us to a mental hospital? I don’t want to go to a mental hospital!”
Whack!
Lin Ran couldn’t take it anymore and smacked Lin Ze on the head. “What are you thinking? Would our parents really do something like that?”
Lin Ran thought about her mom’s fiery temper and her dad’s henpecked nature, then shook her head vigorously. Probably, maybe, possibly, they wouldn’t send them to a mental hospital, right?
After all, they were her parents. She couldn’t just avoid telling them out of fear.
After a moment’s thought, Lin Ran said, “Tonight, we’ll do this and that…”
Lin Ze nodded eagerly. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Let’s do it that way.”
Their second stop was a wholesale spice shop.
The owner was an old acquaintance. As soon as Lin Ran arrived, she handed over a purchase list: 100 cases of 500ml light soy sauce (12 bottles per case), 100 cases of 500ml aged vinegar (also 12 bottles per case), and 100 cases each of dark soy sauce, cooking wine, rice vinegar, and white vinegar in the same specifications.
She also ordered 100 cases of Pixian chili bean paste, 20 cases of soybean paste, and 20 cases each of various other sauces she liked—such as Lao Gan Ma chili sauce, mushroom sauce, meal-enhancing sauces, enoki mushroom sauce, beef sauce, and bibimbap sauce.
She wasn’t particularly fond of monosodium glutamate or chicken bouillon powder, but she knew they could enhance the flavor of dishes when used occasionally. Besides, monosodium glutamate breaks down into glutamic acid, an essential amino acid for the human body, so she ordered 20 cases of each.
Salt, however, was the most crucial item.
People can’t live without salt, and in the apocalypse, salt could be traded for many things—even Crystalline cores.
They definitely needed to stockpile a lot of it.
She ordered 1,000 cases of salt, each containing 100 bags.
She also got 100 cases each of five-spice powder, thirteen-spice blend, cumin powder, ground pepper, Sichuan pepper powder, and chili powder.
Then, she bought large quantities of various spices: 50 jin each of bay leaves, cardamom, star anise, patchouli, dried tangerine peel, and fennel seeds.
Next came hot pot base, green pepper fish seasoning, boiled fish seasoning, dry pot seasoning, soup stock bases, and all kinds of cooking mixes—100 cases of each.
Lin Ran used the same excuse as she had with Aunt Chen: their family was expanding their business scale and storefront. No one suspected a thing.
Since the order was large, the owner arranged to deliver everything to the warehouse the next day.
Lin Ran added the owner on WeChat and transferred the payment.
Spices were far more expensive than grains.
Even though the quantity was much smaller than their grain purchase, it cost Lin Ran 480,000 yuan.
After paying, the two of them didn’t have much money left.
“Sis, we only have 150,320 yuan left between us now. We’re really broke.”
“It’s fine. It’s about time anyway. Let’s take a quick look around the wholesale market, then head home for the day.”
Lin Ze wholeheartedly agreed. “Yeah, let’s go home. Tonight, we can start mooching off our parents.”
After all, their parents were loaded.
Walking through the wholesale market, Lin Ran wiped the sweat from her forehead and glanced up at the blazing sun.
It was already past 4 PM, yet the sun remained scorching hot, baking the ground until it felt fiery.
Lin Ran’s eyes caught sight of a wholesale ice cream shop, and she brought Lin Ze along to purchase a large batch of ice cream and popsicles.
The extreme heat in the apocalypse was no joke—buying some cool treats to beat the heat was the best idea.
After leaving the ice cream shop, each of them held a complimentary popsicle as they strolled over to a store selling vegetable seeds. They ended up wholesale purchasing some vegetable seeds and also bought some farming tools. Lin Ran planned to grow some crops in her Dimension that evening.
By the time they stepped out of the seed store, the siblings had only 5,000 yuan left between them.
Lin Ran sighed once again at how quickly money seemed to vanish.
Still, 5,000 yuan could still accomplish a few things. Lin Ran checked the time and drove with Lin Ze to Cloud Metropolis’s largest Jinlan Mall.
As they entered the mall, Lin Ze looked around curiously and asked, “Sis, what are we here for?”
This clearly didn’t seem like a place they could afford to shop at now.
Lin Ran blinked and smiled, “To buy you a phone.”
Lin Ze grabbed her hand excitedly, deeply moved. “Old sis, you really are my true sister! I knew you hadn’t forgotten about me.”
While the two siblings were joking around, they didn’t notice an exceptionally handsome young man observing them with curiosity from not far away.
Jiang Chen stared intently at Lin Ran’s back, his handsome brows slightly furrowed. This girl…
Why did she feel so familiar to him?
“Jiang Chen, what are you doing?”
Lu Yu walked over, curious about why Jiang Chen had stopped in his tracks.
“What are you looking at? A beauty?”
When Jiang Chen didn’t respond, Lu Yu teased him again.
Jiang Chen himself didn’t know what he was looking at. Only when that figure disappeared from his sight did he say, “No, I thought I saw someone familiar. Must have been mistaken. Let’s go, everyone’s waiting for us.”
“Alright.”
Jiang Chen turned and stepped onto the escalator, unaware of Lu Yu’s probing gaze behind him.
Who could this acquaintance be that Jiang Chen cared so much about?
This guy was usually cold-hearted and seemed to have no weaknesses. Perhaps the person who had captured his attention so intensely just now was actually his weakness.
It seemed he would have to check the surveillance footage later.
Unaware of what she had just missed, Lin Ran brought Lin Ze into a phone specialty store. Soon after, the two of them walked out.
“Sis, is this really what you’re buying me?”
Lin Ran replied, “What’s wrong with it? It’s the latest model from the Rice specialty store—256GB super large storage. It’s much better than your old phone.”
Lin Ze pouted and said, “But I thought you were going to buy me an Apple or a Huawei?”
“Apple? That’s an American thing. Even if we were to buy one, we should only buy the domestic Pineapple! Xiao Ze, even though we’re just ordinary citizens, we must always remember to support domestic products!”
Pineapple?
As in, “America has Apple, China has Pineapple”—that Pineapple phone?
Lin Ze shuddered at the thought of that meme. The Rice phone was definitely better.
Besides, this phone worked quite well—aside from tending to overheat a bit, it was decent and very fast, far superior to his broken old phone.
And they really were short on money now.
Why spend that kind of money on an Apple? It would be better to buy a few more bags of rice to store in the Dimension.
After convincing himself, the resilient young man cheerfully began playing on his phone.
“Sis, where are we going now?”
Lin Ran glanced at the time—it was almost 6:00 PM.
“Going home to have dinner with Mom and Dad.”