Chapter 80 – Homemade Crossing-the-Bridge Rice Noodles

Jiang Yuan was frantically packing things up, stacking the items from the packaging boxes neatly onto the floor.

As for the rest of the liquor and other drinks, she quietly put them away herself.

At the bottom compartment, there was a rather inconspicuous box.

Jiang Yuan’s eyes lit up. This must be where something important was stored. Today’s trip was definitely worth it.

Filled with excitement, she quickly opened the metal box.

Damn!

She cursed out loud in frustration. Such a hidden, discreet location—and instead of money or gold, it was filled with condoms.

This general manager clearly wasn’t up to anything good. It was infuriating.

After the initial disappointment, a thought struck her. She decided to take the whole box with her.

In the post-apocalyptic world, with men and women stuck at home bored, they’d naturally want to get intimate. This was actually a good thing—essential even, for women’s health and well-being!

She collected the solid wood table, chairs, and tea table. Then she carried out the mooncakes and tea gift boxes she had just found.

To avoid suspicion, she intentionally left two boxes of liquor as if she hadn’t cleaned the place out completely.

“Miànmiàn, how’s it going? Find much stuff?”

“It’s okay, Sister Yuan. Need any help?”

“No worries, I’ve got it. You do your thing.”

Seeing how much stuff Jiang Yuan brought out, Ye Miànmiàn was genuinely happy.

“I’m just heading to the restroom and the break room now. Almost done.”

Not wanting to waste time, Jiang Yuan headed straight for the boss’s office.

It was much simpler there. He obviously didn’t visit often, and there wasn’t much to find.

Nothing too special, but she still looked through everything carefully, taking anything of use.

“Miànmiàn, I’m done over here. Are you finished yet?”

“Not yet, Sister Yuan. There’s a ton of stuff in the break room!”

Ye Miànmiàn sounded excited, and Jiang Yuan didn’t doubt her. Good workplace benefits were normal here.

“I’ll head downstairs and check around. You can catch up with the others in a bit.”

Ye Miànmiàn seemed a bit anxious.

“No, wait, Sister Yuan. Let’s go together, okay?”

This girl was probably worried about her.

“It’s fine, nothing will happen. I’m just one floor down. If you’ve got time later, bring the rest of the stuff over.”

“Okay, Sister Yuan. Don’t worry. I got this.”

With that, Jiang Yuan quickly went downstairs. This floor was full of solid wood furniture—very expensive kinds like huanghuali, zitan, rosewood, and golden nanmu.

The people who shopped here were all rich. But now, everything was up for grabs.

The first shop on the left from the stairs sold imported ash wood furniture. While not extremely precious, it was more than enough for her.

The space upgrade system probably didn’t care about the exact type of wood—just that it was wood.

The showroom was quite large, around 200 square meters.

Beds, wardrobes, sofas, coffee tables, dining sets, sideboards, wine cabinets, vanity tables—you name it.

Jiang Yuan’s eyes gleamed. With this much furniture, she could definitely level up her space.

She got to work quickly. Time was of the essence.

As she moved through the store, she kept collecting items.

There were also lots of snacks, candies, chocolates, teas, coffees, and concentrated juice packets—offered to customers, and all very high-end.

The second store was filled with redwood furniture—intricately carved, exuding luxury. It was a visual feast.

Jiang Yuan felt like a spring breeze had washed over her—she hadn’t been this happy in a long time.

That vanity table even had a mirror behind it. Just thinking about it made her giddy.

“Eh?”

Suddenly, she felt like something was off—like things weren’t storing properly. She quickly used her consciousness to check and realized her storage space was full.

No wonder she couldn’t store more earlier—this was a huge problem.

Hiding behind a cabinet, she quickly entered her personal space.

“Oh my god, there’s not a single spot left.”

Finished furniture took up a ton of space.

Fortunately, she had gathered a lot of soil recently. She immediately started leveling up the space as fast as possible.

After about 30 minutes, she had done over 40 rounds of upgrades, unlocking more than 300 additional slots.

Including the previous space, she had around 1,000 square meters now—doubling the original size!

No time to admire her work, Jiang Yuan quickly exited the space. To her surprise, no one from upstairs had come down yet. That was very odd.

Just to be safe, she went up to check.

After collecting the rest of the store items, she headed back upstairs. Ye Miànmiàn was still busily moving things, and the other two had also arrived.

“Sister Yuan, you went downstairs?”

“Yeah. You guys finished? Whoa, Miànmiàn! Where’d you find all this stuff?!”

No wonder Jiang Yuan was excited—this was real grain, oil, rice, and flour! And even gift boxes of mooncakes!

“Brother Song, Sister Yuan, there’s a small storage room over there with a bunch of stuff.

Looks like it was Mid-Autumn Festival benefits. There were lots of fruits, too, but they’ve all rotted—such a pity.

There’s still more stuff inside, not sure if it’s usable though.”

Ye Miànmiàn was thrilled—she felt like a real MVP today and was loving it.

“That’s amazing! I was wondering why you were taking so long to come down.

There’s a lot of stuff downstairs too—every store had snacks. Look—”

Jiang Yuan opened her bag, and sure enough, it was full of goodies. Zhang Kaiyang couldn’t resist grabbing a small bag of dried tofu.

“Let me eat one—I’m starving!”

“Go ahead, there’s plenty. Let’s clean up a bit, then eat something.”

“Deal!”

With the men helping, transporting things became much easier.

Between the office area and the snack plaza was a fairly large open space with sofas for resting.

They moved everything there. Nearby were the stairs, which made it convenient for later.

Now that they had gas stoves, they could actually heat food. Jiang Yuan suddenly felt it was time to show off her cooking skills.

“Let’s cook some crossing-the-bridge rice noodles. The stove and pots are ready, and we’ve got some seasonings.”

“Sounds great! I’ll help.”

Everyone was hungry. Making one big pot was easy and efficient.

They had found a lot of food before, and though they didn’t have time to soak anything now, they just washed and boiled everything.

Plus, the small supermarket had tons of sausages and luncheon meat—perfect for throwing in.

Now that the weather was getting cold, this kind of meal was especially warming.

Ye Miànmiàn helped wash the food. Zhang Kaiyang opened a large bottle of mineral water they’d found, rinsed a few disposable food boxes, and got everything ready.

Song Yi wasn’t doing much, feeling a bit useless, so he went over to sort through the items by the entrance.

He opened the mooncake packages and threw out the rotten parts to save space.

“Brother Song, stop cleaning! Come eat the crossing-the-bridge rice noodles!”

Although they called it crossing-the-bridge rice noodles, they didn’t add many fancy ingredients.

A lot of the seasonings had additives and had been sitting around too long, so Jiang Yuan didn’t dare use them.

Luckily, they found a sealed bucket of mala hotpot sauce from a spicy stir-fry shop. She scooped out two spoonfuls to use instead.