[edited]

Jiang Ning was startled and quickly checked with her consciousness.   

The space was there and so were the supplies. She tried to retrieve the items with her mind, and she ended up with a piece of coal in her hand.   

Scanning with her consciousness, she found the light shadow timer was at zero.   

Jiang Ning suddenly realized that the space could only stay open for two hours.   

Two hours… Well, it’s better than nothing!   

After taking a shower, it was already past midnight.   

Jiang Ning glanced at the space. The new two hours had been added, and she breathed a sigh of relief.   

She had trouble getting to sleep for a long period of time, so she decided to use melatonin to help her sleep.

Her sleep was restless and she was dreaming again that she was being chased and attacked by those people, with their rusty knife stained with blood aimed heavily at her.   

Jiang Ning was startled awake and covered in cold sweat.   

It was five in the morning, and it’s still dark outside. She checked the stockpiled supplies in her space to calm her nerves and only then did she feel relieved. 

Without continuing her sleep, she grabbed her car keys and headed to the largest agricultural wholesale market.   

The sky was just beginning to brighten and the area outside the wholesale market was bustling with activity.   

Jiang Ning went to the vegetable section to purchase fresh produce that was still covered with dew. Winter melons, pumpkins, lotus roots, radishes, eggplants, green beans, bitter gourds, celery, tomatoes, etc., all in quantities of 100 cats each, and 200 cats each of potatoes and sweet potatoes.   

She also got 100 catties each of ginger and garlic, which could be used for both planting and seasoning. In extremely cold weather, a bowl of ginger soup might just save her life.   

She bought everything while looking at it. Except for green leafy vegetables, She didn’t skimp on anything else and spends around 4,000 yuan in total.   

Having breakfast at around nine, the flow of people in the wholesale market had decreased significantly.   

Jiang Ning compared prices at three different stalls for staple foods. She bought 100 bags of 50 kilograms of rice, 50 bags of 50 kilograms of flour, and 500 kilograms each of white flour, egg noodles, rice noodles, and sweet potato flour. She also purchased 200 kilograms each of soybeans, red beans, mung beans, black beans, and peanuts, as well as 50 barrels each of bulk soybean oil, peanut oil, and sunflower seed oil.   

This cost her around 20,000 yuan, and she negotiated with the boss’s wife to throw in three bags of rice at a discount.   

With just these, she could eat for 30 years.   

While the boss was packing up, she walked over to the condiment section next door.   

She bought 10 barrels each of soy sauce, vinegar, and white wine; 30 catties each of star anise, fennel, cinnamon, and peppercorns; and 300 catties each of brown sugar, white sugar, and rock sugar. She also bought 3,000 pounds of table salt in one pound packages.   

In the apocalypse, food is very important, but salt is even more vital since the body cannot sustain itself without replenishing some salt. 

In the third year of the apocalypse, she witnessed someone exchanging 30 kilograms of grain for just one pack of salt.   

3,000 kilograms does not take up space at all and can be replaced when resources are scarce. If there was limited space, she truly want to store dozens of supplies. 

After loading the goods, she drove to a secluded, unmonitored corner and transferred the supplies to the refrigerated section of the space.   

She bought 10 large boxes each of steamed buns, fried buns, bean paste buns, custard buns, brown sugar buns, and shumai, worrying that the ones with meat might use poor ingredients. She also got 200 kilograms of frozen dumpling wrappers, planning to pass the time during floods.  

Next, she went to the dried goods section: mushrooms, deer antler mushrooms, tea tree mushrooms, fungus, kelp, seaweed, red dates, dried vegetables, various flavors of melon seeds, and so on, spending over 10,000 yuan.  

In the meat section, Jiang Ning found the stall that supplied the school cafeteria. The boss was particularly enthusiastic about seeing her. “Little Jiang, what can I get for you?”  

Before the arrival of the typhoon, it was unusually hot and humid, and there wasn’t much meat left at the stall. It wasn’t fresh anymore at this time, but the prices were fair.  

She bought 200 catties each of pork belly, lean meat, ribs, beef, mutton, and rabbit meat, 100 ducks and chickens each, and 50 geese, as well as pig and beef offal and sausage.  

The boss was astonished. “Little Jiang, are you serious?”  

His wife worked at the slaughterhouse, and Jiang Ning had introduced many clients to him, earning him a commissions. “Relatives are hosting weddings, and the cheaper the price, the better.”  

“Do we even need to talk about our relationship? I’ll give you a 30% discount on this transaction!”  

Buying meat was costly, and pork prices had only dropped in the last two years, but beef and mutton hadn’t. Therefore, getting goods from acquaintances was the most cost effective.  

It came to about 30,000 yuan. Jiang Ning didn’t haggle, but she made an additional request — two boning knives and a pig slaughtering knife.  

Defensive weapons were essential, but she had neither the time nor the means to acquire them properly, so she could only make a last minute decision.  

The boss was startled. “What do you need these for?”  

“Don’t worry, I won’t be murdering anyone.”  

Thinking about profits and goodwill, the boss readily agreed.  

Next, she went to the fish stall and ordered 100 fish, only gutted and not chopped, and asked them to prepare them after killing them.  

She bought 3,000 eggs, 1,000 duck eggs, thinking that disasters might end one day. She also ordered two boards each of chickens, ducks, and geese, as well as quail eggs, all fertilized, and bought a small home incubator.  

Thinking about her garden in the space, Jiang Ning went to the seed store for vegetable seeds, all with short growth cycles: lettuce, rapeseed, water spinach, and dozens of others.  

Seeds were cheap, and 500 yuan was enough to last for decades.  

With only 10 square meters of black soil, but the two balconies could be utilized. Jiang Ning’s gardening instinct was awakened, and she also bought plant pots, hoes, shovels, and potting soil.  

With hope for the future, she went to the fruit tree sapling area, where there were dozens of varieties of apple trees, grapes, oranges, tangerines, etc. She got three plants for each, all of which were old seedlings.

Meat was perishable, and as the disasters continued, not only ordinary people wanted to eat fresh meat, but even the big shots didn’t have resources.  

Jiang Ning bought a pair of breeding rabbits. Rabbits could be fed with greens and they reproduced quickly, definitely meeting her meat needs.  

Jiang Ning liked braised meat and cold dishes. She bought 200 catties of frozen chicken and duck feet, and 100 catties each of duck intestines, duck kidneys, and chicken hearts.  

Spending money like water, she felt extremely distressed, but considering the continuously growing supplies in her space, she felt a sense of satisfaction and confidence that was hard to put into words.  

She spent the whole day at the agricultural wholesale market. By the time she came out, the streets were brightly lit and bustling. The most exciting part of her day was just beginning.  

Jiang Ning went to a restaurant, ordering braised pork ribs, steamed meatballs, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and indulged herself. She packed up what she couldn’t finish and took it home.  

It was still early when she returned home. Jiang Ning spent time organizing the space, filling up the large room completely with supplies. She placed the vegetables and fruit tree saplings in the living room, and the breeding rabbits on the balcony.  

Jiang Ning played a slight trick. She exited the space when there were only 10 minutes left on the timer.  

Just as she left the space, the two breeding rabbits were kicked out and almost fell to the ground.  

Jiang Ning, “…”  

At first, she was displeased, but eventually she was delighted.

It seemed that the space not only had a time limit, but as long as she wasn’t inside, other living creatures couldn’t stay either.  

This meant that others couldn’t take away her resources.  

Feeling very good, she sat down to check for any missing items. She had bought everything she could think of, with a balance of about 20,000 yuan left in her account.  

Only the living room and bathroom were left in the space. To survive for extreme disasters, she still needed to prepare a lot more, but she didn’t plan to continue stocking up on items that took up a lot of space.  

She opened a food delivery app and ordered from restaurants with excellent reputations, dishes she had always wanted to eat but couldn’t bear to spend on before, such as braised prawns, Hakka salted chicken, stuffed tofu, Dongpo pork, and over twenty other dishes, each in quantities of 10.  

She also ordered dozens of items like deep fried dough sticks, steamed dumplings, pan fried dumplings, hand held pancakes, beef patties, pan fried buns, skewers, braised meats, roasted meats, and bubble tea.  

She spent over 10,000 yuan on these, opting for scheduled pick up at the restaurant to ensure their freshness.  

Although exhausted, she still wanted to witness the city’s final bustling moments…  

In the afternoon, she received a notification that the school would be closed for three days due to an impending strong typhoon, with the exact resuming date to be notified later.  

Students cheered and eagerly invited their friends to celebrate the night before the typhoon arrived.  

In the coastal regions of the south, where typhoons hit a dozen times every year, everyone always hoped for school closures and holidays. This time, their dream finally came true.  

Jiang Ning felt the same way, but little did they know that this time it was for real — they would never have to attend classes again.  

Enjoying her barbecue and beer with mixed emotions, she continued to pick up supplies everywhere.  

When she went back, Jiang Ning always felt like she had forgotten something important, but at the moment, she couldn’t recall what it was.