Chapter 2: The All-Purpose Livestream Room

---

With a spoonful from her “good mother,” Zeng Yan reluctantly drank some milk. It tasted genuinely good, with a pure milky flavor that was in no way inferior to the imported powdered milk from Australia or Holland she’d had in her past life.

Though resources were scarce in this era, the food was simple and pure, unlike in her time, where the absence of additives became a selling point.

A concussion was no joke. The slightest movement made her dizzy and nauseous. Seeing her discomfort, Sun Jiazhi was considerate enough to remain silent.

This suited Zeng Yan perfectly. Feeling so unwell, she had no energy to perform an act of mother-daughter affection, so she simply closed her eyes and pretended to doze.

With her head throbbing as if it would split open, she tried to distract herself by recalling the book’s plot. Luckily, she had read it just a week before her transmigration, so most of it was still fresh in her mind.

It was July 1969. The timing was unfortunate. If it had been the late seventies, she could have used her prior experience to either go to university or ride the wave of economic reform to get rich. But now, with the world in chaos, there was virtually no room for maneuver. Her only option was to stay inconspicuous.

The heroine, Xiao Banxia, would come to the Xiangyang Brigade this autumn as a sent-down youth. Unlike Zeng Yan, a poor little country flower, Xiao Banxia came from a prominent family. She had been forced to take refuge in the countryside after a family tragedy. Her childhood sweetheart’s military unit was in the same city, so she would only stay in the brigade for two years before marrying him and leaving with the army.

Xiao Banxia had a strong foundation in traditional Chinese medicine, having studied with her grandfather since childhood. After her marriage, she continued her studies with a senior army doctor. When the university entrance exams were reinstated, she got into a top-tier university. Not only was she a brilliant doctor, but she also had a knack for pharmaceuticals, achieving remarkable success in both fields. With a loving husband and accomplished children, she was the epitome of a life well-lived.

The heroine was a native of this world, with no transmigrator or reincarnator background. Her success was a product of her hard work, talent, and family connections. A person’s background was important in any era; this period simply represented a temporary inversion of that truth.

Her head was throbbing too much, and Zeng Yan’s thoughts began to drift.

The reality was, even if she remembered the book’s plot, it was told from the heroine’s perspective. It was of little use to her, an “early death” with no interest in medicine. The major events were the only parts she could leverage.

As for stealing the heroine’s opportunities—this was a period piece, not a cultivation novel. There were no great opportunities to steal. Zeng Yan would forge her own path and wouldn’t stoop to taking from others.

Still, staying inconspicuous was a secondary concern. The primary problem was survival. Though she hadn’t seen her reflection, one look at her dark, chapped, chicken-claw hands was enough to imagine what the rest of her body looked like.

She didn’t care about looks, but the original owner was fifteen and hadn’t yet started her period. In modern times, it was normal to start at eleven or twelve with good nutrition. The girl’s body was already weak, and this major injury had depleted her even further. If she continued to do heavy labor, she might very well die young again.

But what could she do to change her fate? Lie around at home and not earn work-points? Or escape the countryside and seek opportunities elsewhere?

Even with Zeng Yan’s countless strategies, none were feasible in this era.

Reality was too harsh. How about a little magic on her side?

The heroines in other transmigration novels always brought a “space” filled with resources. She would even settle for an empty one!

Sun Jiazhi saw her daughter’s body suddenly tremble and thought the brain injury was getting worse. She hesitated for two seconds, then went out to find a doctor.

Zeng Yan couldn’t stop her. That tremor had been an involuntary reaction to a startling discovery. She had found it!

Her newly renovated, never-before-used 100-square-meter livestream room had transmigrated with her! She had never been this lucky in her life! Could transmigration actually change her luck?

The doctor arrived quickly. Eager to explore her new “space,” Zeng Yan lied, saying she had a bad dream. She finally managed to get the doctor to leave.

The livestream room was summoned with her consciousness, and she figured she could probably enter it physically. But with Sun Jiazhi still nearby, she had to settle for a mental exploration. The layout seemed unchanged. The 100-square-meter space was divided into three main functional areas. To the left of the entrance were two rooms: a 15-square-meter office facing south and a reception room of the same size to the north.

The central livestream area was the largest at forty square meters, with a small section partitioned off for an open kitchen to make cooking videos.

To the far right, from south to north, were three ten-square-meter rooms: a lounge, a storage room, and a bathroom.

The windows facing the sun were a dreary gray, and the administrative building of the industrial park outside was nowhere to be seen. If the livestream room now existed in another dimension, would anyone in the real world notice its disappearance?

Zeng Yan couldn’t figure it out. This was not a problem for a patient with a concussion to be thinking about.

The room had water and electricity. The lights were on, and the rice noodles in the pot were still bubbling away.

This particular livestream was a collaboration with a supplier from Yunnan, and the various foods meant for display—chrysanthemum chicken soup with rice noodles, griddled tofu, rose petal pastries, and more—were still piled on the tables.

The charger that had killed her, however, was gone.

Her consciousness scanned the computer screen on the table, where a headline was prominently displayed: “A Million-Follower Food Blogger Dies of Electrocution in Her Livestream Room; Fire Hazards Are Everywhere, Never Let Your Guard Down!”

Zeng Yan: “…” To think my entire reputation would be reduced to a cautionary tale after I died.

It was a product quality issue! What did it have to do with fire hazards?

Wait! Zeng Yan suddenly realized. The news was a real-time feed, which meant the livestream room was connected to the real world’s internet!

She tried to use her mind to control the computer, and it worked. The internet connection was indeed live. However, her QQ account, her livestream platform accounts, and all other accounts linked to her identity were completely unusable.

The platforms couldn’t have reacted so quickly as to shut down all her accounts in less than a day. The only explanation was the livestream room itself. Could it be that a system was supporting this space from behind the scenes? Zeng Yan’s heart pounded with excitement.

She tried various methods to communicate, but the system didn’t respond. It seemed she would have to figure out all the rules on her own.

Zeng Yan took another careful look at each room and soon made a new discovery. The ten-square-meter storage room next to the bathroom seemed to have an expanded capacity.

The floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the three walls were the same size, but the sample boxes sent by the manufacturers on the shelves had shrunk. Based on the proportions, the boxes had been reduced by about 50 times.

The livestream room’s ceiling was 4.5 meters high. The original storage capacity of 45 cubic meters had now become 2,250 cubic meters.

It wasn’t infinite, but 2,250 cubic meters was still a massive amount of space. Zeng Yan was not greedy; she was more than content.

She wondered if it could preserve things. Zeng Yan tried to use her mind to move the pan of rice noodles. The pan didn’t budge.

Was it too heavy?

She tried a different approach. She found a paper cup, scooped some steaming soup from the pot into it, and placed the cup in the storage room. This time, it worked.

She understood now: her consciousness couldn’t move anything too heavy.

Half an hour later, she checked the results. The soup was still scalding hot, and the smell hadn’t dispersed.

It was a truly all-purpose storage space. She had hit the jackpot!