Recently, Qi Ziyue had been trapped in the same recurring dream.
In the dream, she was surrounded by a sea of flames, while beside her a little child kept crying and calling her “Mom.”
Her body burned endlessly in the fire. The pain was unbearable. In the end, she watched helplessly as the flames completely consumed her.
She died.
Then the dream shifted.
She saw the little child constantly being bullied, often starving, chased by vicious dogs, living a miserable life.
What was strangest was the environment around the child who kept calling her “Mom.” Everything was gray and bleak. The people nearby were painfully thin, like they had spent years without enough food or warm clothing. Worst of all, she often saw the child kneeling before her grave, crying and calling for his mother.
It was terrifying.
…
Qi Ziyue jolted awake from the nightmare, drenched in sweat. She had been having this exact same dream for many nights in a row.
She couldn’t understand it.
She was only twenty-two or twenty-three years old and didn’t even have a boyfriend. Where would a child calling her “Mom” come from?
Still, the setting in the dream was horrifying. Everything was dull and gray, the people skeletal from hunger, the whole place desperately poor. It looked like the famine-stricken decades of the seventies or eighties.
The little child in the dream never had enough to eat either. He was so skinny it hurt to look at him.
Just thinking about starving—and dying in a fire no less—made Qi Ziyue feel awful.
She sat up, unease lingering in her chest.
Dreams weren’t necessarily real, of course. But Qi Ziyue herself had always been a little unusual. She came from a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, yet her body had always been weak and frail—the kind doctors could never fully fix.
Later, someone at a temple had said that her soul was “missing something,” which was why she had been weaker than normal since birth.
Qi Ziyue naturally didn’t believe that. How could someone survive while missing part of themselves?
Even stranger, her maternal grandfather came from a distinguished scholarly family. He claimed that when she was little, she somehow obtained a peach blossom jade pendant—a pendant supposedly bound to her since birth. The story sounded ridiculous.
But there was one thing she had never told her family.
Once, after she fell down, the peach blossom jade pendant had transformed into a brush. With it, she could draw anything she imagined—and whatever she drew became real.
The experience scared her so badly that afterward, she returned the pendant to her grandfather.
Now, though, these recurring dreams had truly frightened her. With her fragile body, if she ever found herself starving, freezing, or trapped in a fire, she definitely wouldn’t survive long. No wonder she died in the flames in the dream.
Qi Ziyue: ?
Cursing herself like that probably wasn’t right either.
Still, because of the dreams, she called her grandfather and told him she would visit tomorrow.
Since the dream involved a fire, Qi Ziyue decided to prepare emergency supplies: fire extinguishers, fire blankets, gas masks—anything that might help someone escape a blaze.
But to store all those things, she obviously needed space.
When she accepted the peach blossom jade pendant back from her grandfather, she relaxed after sensing that the small storage space she had once drawn still existed.
Her grandmother told her again that the pendant had been beside her when she was born. Since wearing it improved her energy and spirit, it was considered her personal belonging, and she should keep it on at all times.
Qi Ziyue absentmindedly nodded while eating the noodles her grandmother made, but her thoughts were already focused on the tiny space inside the pendant.
She had created that space back when the pendant transformed into a brush. Somehow, she instinctively knew she could draw anything she wanted, so she copied the storage spaces often found in fantasy novels.
She had only been playing around. Who would have thought it was real?
The only problem was that the space was tiny—barely the size of a single room. It couldn’t hold much, and creating it had cost her days of headaches and unconsciousness.
Resting her chin in her hand, Qi Ziyue thought: once the fire safety supplies were stored, there wouldn’t be much room left. Could she draw an entire house instead?
“Yueyue, have you been feeling unwell lately?”
Her grandfather was a famous calligrapher who doted on her endlessly. Since her mother was his only child, Qi Ziyue had become one of the family’s few remaining heirs. Fortunately, there was still her older brother—otherwise the family line might truly have ended.
Looking at her grandfather’s graying hair, Qi Ziyue felt reluctant when she thought of the recurring dream. After finishing her noodles, she hugged his arm and acted spoiled.
“Grandpa, I’ll stay with you and Grandma this afternoon, then head back tomorrow. I’ve been okay lately. You two need to take care of yourselves too.”
“Alright, alright. As long as Yueyue is here, your grandmother and I can live several more years.”
After returning home, Qi Ziyue bought every kind of fire safety equipment she could think of.
Dry powder extinguishers, foam extinguishers, carbon dioxide extinguishers, water-based extinguishers—twenty of each.
She also bought twenty gas masks, twenty fire blankets, and fifty large towels.
To protect herself from the flames, she planned to store extra water too. If she wrapped a wet towel around her mouth, maybe she wouldn’t burn to death in a fire.
By the time she finished shopping, she had spent nearly twenty thousand yuan.
Looking at her dwindling savings, Qi Ziyue frowned.
She was a teacher. Teachers didn’t earn much. If she still wanted to buy daily necessities later, her money definitely wouldn’t be enough.
So she called her older brother and asked to borrow money.
“How much?” he asked.
“Whatever you can spare.”
Her brother first video-called to confirm she hadn’t been hacked, then transferred fifty thousand yuan to her.
“Once your brother makes more money, I’ll send you extra spending money too. Just focus on taking care of your health.”
“Brother, I’ll pay you back in a couple of days.”
He laughed. “No rush. Pay me back slowly. Are you trying to buy handbags or something? I’ll work hard and earn more money for you. Honestly, you might as well wait until I’m richer before repaying me.”
Her brother had only started making money from his business in the last two years, and he wasn’t wealthy yet.
Qi Ziyue didn’t explain how she planned to repay him. Instead, she visited markets selling meat, eggs, and dairy products, only to realize that fifty thousand yuan still wouldn’t buy much.
And there was another problem—eggs, milk, rice, flour, fruit… all of them had expiration dates. They couldn’t be stored for long.
In the end, she only bought two steamed buns to eat on the way home.
Once home, she focused entirely on the peach blossom pendant space around her wrist.
Right now, she lacked money.
The storage space was also far too small. She needed to expand it, and more importantly, freeze time inside it. Only then could food stay fresh.
But the peach blossom brush had strict limitations. She could only draw one thing per day, and every use severely drained her mental energy.
She took out the brush and decided to enlarge the space first, then later buy non-perishable food.
Pressing her finger against the peach blossom pattern and thinking “enter,” she instantly appeared inside the peach blossom space.
It was pitifully small—a single straw hut and nothing else. Half the room was already filled with firefighting supplies.
She picked up the brush and began turning the hut into a proper house. At the very least, a small three-story villa. But drawing consumed enormous mental strength; there was no way she could finish it in a single day.
After only adding two more rooms, dizziness overwhelmed her.
If she forced herself to complete the entire villa, her mind would probably collapse.
And another major problem remained: she desperately needed money. Her family was only middle-class and couldn’t provide large sums in a short time.
She planned to draw winning lottery tickets—undoubtedly the fastest way to get rich.
But because time inside the space still flowed normally, she also needed to freeze time before buying food. Which meant more drawing.
Qi Ziyue fell silent.
Her mind was on the verge of breaking already.
In the end, she walked to the innermost corner of the house and picked up the only peach inside the space.
The peach had existed ever since the pendant bonded with her, but she had never eaten it.
Eating it meant she would someday have to plant an entire peach orchard. Worse, it came with side effects, so she had always avoided touching it.
The peach belonged to the original owner of the space—a peach blossom spirit. Eating it would increase her mental power. Then, when her mind couldn’t withstand drawing expanded space, lottery tickets, or frozen time, she could recover by eating the peach.
But she would have to pay a price.
After eating the peach, she would automatically begin meditating to strengthen her spiritual power, effectively inheriting the peach blossom spirit’s cultivation method.
The side effects were strange.
Her body would develop a faint peach blossom fragrance. She would become more fertile. Men would find her irresistibly attractive.
As her soul became more similar to the peach blossom spirit’s, her skin would become increasingly flawless.
At the same time, her body would grow more delicate and unable to tolerate rough treatment of any kind.
In short, the peach blossom spirit specialized in an effortless “lie back and win” lifestyle.
Supposedly, once cultivated to the highest level, any man who slept with her—no matter how cold or difficult—would become hopelessly addicted afterward.
Better skin?
A delicate body?
Unable to tolerate rough treatment?
Qi Ziyue wasn’t tempted by any of it. She knew nothing in this world came free. Who knew whether the peach blossom spirit had been good or evil? She wanted nothing to do with it.
Besides, if she truly ended up in the bleak world from her dreams, surrounded by starving people, then a soft, fragrant beauty like her would probably die even faster.
But the endless dreams left her no choice. Right now, she had to freeze time inside the space first.
Only then could she safely stockpile food.
And if she really had to leave someday, she wanted to leave some money behind for her family. That meant winning the lottery first.
Thinking this through, Qi Ziyue looked at the huge peach in her hands, pink-white like a heavenly peach. She left the space, washed it carefully, and cautiously took a bite.
The moment she bit into it, sweet juice exploded across her tongue. The perfect balance of sweetness and tartness made her eyes close in bliss.
Damn. It was unbelievably delicious.
If she had known it tasted this good, only an idiot would have left it untouched this whole time.
After just one bite, she felt like Zhu Bajie eating a ginseng fruit. Saliva flooded her mouth uncontrollably, making her want to swallow her own tongue.
At the same time, warmth surged into her brain with the peach juice. The headaches that had plagued her for half her life suddenly eased. Strength filled her body for the first time.
She felt like she could even draw another entire space.
That was an illusion.
After eating half the peach, she couldn’t continue. She felt overstuffed, and sharp throbbing pain spread through her head. If she ate more, she might literally explode.
Seizing the opportunity, she hurriedly finished drawing the villa inside the space. She completed four rooms on the second floor and another four on the third.
Each level contained three rooms and one living room, connected by stairs—perfect for storage.
Then she forced herself to freeze the flow of time inside the space.
Now, once something was stored there, it would remain as fresh as the moment it entered. No time would pass at all.
After finishing all that, she also drew two winning lottery tickets based purely on instinct: one future-winning sports lottery ticket and one winning double-color ball ticket.
The moment she finished, darkness swallowed her vision, and she collapsed unconscious.
Before fainting completely, Qi Ziyue barely managed to shove the remaining half of the peach into her mouth.
Please don’t let me die like this. Wouldn’t that be unfair? I haven’t even bought the lottery tickets yet.