Day 36 of the Torrential Rain.

In the morning, Yu Xifeng was working out in the gym. After taking a shower, she decided to finally open the pile of deliveries stored in her space.

After all, there wasn’t much else to do.

As soon as she took out a delivery box, Little Orange pounced on it, clearly excited, scratching and rustling with its paws.

Yu Xifeng grabbed a pair of scissors and cut through the tape. The first package revealed a bunch of fresh flowers.

They looked like carnations—curled and layered petals. Yu Xifeng clicked her tongue, unimpressed.

Pretty, but useless.

She casually tossed them back in.

Little Orange dove into the box. Yu Xifeng left it alone and opened the second one.

A pair of jeans.

Size 3XL.

Useless.

One by one, she unpacked a Bluetooth speaker, an electric kettle, a blanket, a mug, and a jar of sour plum syrup concentrate.

By that point, Yu Xifeng got up to boil a pot of water.

The syrup concentrate melted into the water like jelly.

It tasted sweet and tangy. Holding the semi-homemade sour plum drink in her hands, Yu Xifeng felt noticeably better.

On gloomy days like this, you needed something to make you feel a little more comfortable.

Opening deliveries was a fun game.

Like opening blind boxes—you never knew what would be inside the next one.

Yu Xifeng decided to save the rest to open gradually.

Last time she went out, she’d cleared out an entire Cainiao pickup station—more than enough to keep her entertained for a while.

Little Orange toppled over a box, biting and kicking at it. Seeing how much he enjoyed it, Yu Xifeng stacked the cardboard boxes on the kitchen balcony and let him crawl in and out as he pleased.

These past few days, Yu Xifeng hadn’t entered the space.

Time in the space accumulated at the rate of one hour per day—she now had fifteen hours stored up.

The fruit saplings she planted in the garden bed had already grown tall and looked close to bearing fruit.

Yu Xifeng’s consciousness sank into the space. She looked at the live fish she’d collected from the supermarket, deep in thought.

She’d tossed them into the spring pond in the backyard at the time. With no fish food on hand, she hadn’t fed them in over two weeks, yet they were still alive and kicking.

They seemed even plumper than before.

She was craving grilled fish.

She’d have to save up more entry time for that.

The garden bed could be used to grow crops, and the pond could raise fish.

Thinking it over, Yu Xifeng pulled Little Orange out of a box. In the blink of an eye, the cat appeared in the space.

Startled, Little Orange puffed up, fur on end, nervously looking around the space.

Just like the fish, having a cat in the space didn’t consume Yu Xifeng’s accumulated time.

Little Orange cautiously circled the house, then crouched by the pond, eyes locked on the fish inside.

After watching for a while, he suddenly stretched out a paw and, in a flash, scooped out a fish.

The fish was half as big as Little Orange, its tail flopping back and forth.

Yu Xifeng had the cat exit the space.

The fish flopped wildly on the ground.

When Little Orange came out, he circled around looking for the fish, eyes filled with confusion.

Where’d my big fish go?

Yu Xifeng returned the fish to the pond with a thought and patted the fuzzy cat’s head.

To make it up to him, she picked out a can of food from her stash of pet supplies and handed it over.

Luckily, Little Orange dug in enthusiastically, forgetting the live fish in no time.

Yu Xifeng then remembered the batch of fertilized eggs she’d bought earlier and planned to section off a part of the backyard in the space to raise chickens, ducks, and geese.

She’d stockpiled quite a bit of wheat bran.

A simple fence behind the little house would do—as long as it kept them out of the front yard.

The incubator was brand new. Following the manual, Yu Xifeng placed the eggs inside and set the temperature and parameters.

Every day in the community group, someone would ask when help from the authorities might arrive.

Many families were already out of food.

At first, property management had offered to inquire on behalf of residents. But once too many people started tagging them, they simply played dead.

Yu Xifeng flipped the eggs in the incubator at the scheduled time and used the matching flashlight in a dark room to observe the fertilized eggs. Inside, the sticky mass was beginning to take shape.

For dinner, she had noodles in corn and pork rib soup.

She made the soup and noodles fresh, mixing them together so the noodles absorbed the broth. It gave them a touch of sweetness.

She took a moment to check the neighborhood group chat.

Someone had apparently found a way to get a kayak and was now organizing a team in the chat—2,000 yuan per person.

They said a Funing supermarket behind the neighborhood was still open and planned to go together to buy supplies.

The kayak could carry three people per trip.

The next day, Yu Xifeng looked down from the secondary bedroom balcony and sure enough, saw someone wobbling away on a kayak.

Half a day later, they came back with a boat full of food.

Aunt Liu squeezed into the stairwell entrance.

“Xiao Zeng, my grandson hasn’t eaten in two days. You brought back so much—could you spare us a little?”

Xiao Zeng grinned with a bandit-like air and pointed at the kayak. “Two thousand.”

He hefted a sack of rice. “Thirty-one jin.”

“Auntie, how much are you planning to pay?”

Aunt Liu looked glum. “Why’s it so expensive? Might as well let these old bones starve.”

Xiao Zeng walked around her with his goods, not even giving her a glance.

Seeing no one paying her any mind, Aunt Liu mumbled, “I’ll pay a hundred, can I buy five jin?”

No one responded. She didn’t feel embarrassed and just kept muttering to herself.

More and more people were braving the heavy rain to find ways out.

Some rented kayaks through connections, others floated out using wooden planks. Some, relying on their swimming skills, swam to the supermarket to bring back food.

People came and went through the building constantly.

And plenty, like Aunt Liu, went around half-begging, half-scamming for food.

As the days dragged on, fewer and fewer people were willing to share.

The forecast said the next two weeks would bring continued torrential downpours.

The grey skies offered no hope.

In the kitchen, Yu Xifeng soaked a basin of beans, planning to grow bean sprouts for a stir-fry noodle dish.

Then came a knock on the door—her monitor showed it was Sister Yun.

Yu Xifeng had a pretty good guess why she came.

After making sure there was nothing suspicious in the house, she opened the door.

Sister Yun didn’t enter. She glanced down the hallway and lowered her voice: “Xifeng, are you free right now? Come over to my place for a chat?”

Inside Sister Yun’s apartment was another person—Hu Qiangyong, a fellow resident on the same floor.

He had a shaved head and fierce-looking tattoos on his arms.

The apartment was tidy, with little cakes and snacks like sunflower seeds laid out on the table.

Clearly, she was still doing well.

“Before the typhoon hit, I went out in the rain just to pick up some condiments. But then you reminded me, and I thought, might as well stock up.”

As she spoke, Sister Yun closed the door behind them. “Thanks to your reminder, I hauled back twenty jin of rice and some snacks. That’s what got me through to now.”

Sister Yun was smart. Yu Xifeng smiled but didn’t say anything about her own situation. She waited for Sister Yun to continue.

“The news says the rain will keep falling for at least another half month. There’s a supermarket still open on West Third Road. I’m planning to go—want to come?”

Sister Yun had managed to get her hands on a kayak.

She clearly had her own connections. It made sense—a mahjong parlor was a gray-area business. It was hard for someone without backing to run one.

Yu Xifeng didn’t turn her down.

She wasn’t lacking food, but after a month of lockdown, there was no reason to refuse such an opportunity.

Rather than letting people speculate that she’d stockpiled a massive hoard, it was better to go out and pick up a few things openly.

Sister Yun added, “I borrowed this kayak from a friend. It’s 1,500 yuan per person—are you two okay with that price?”

A very fair deal. Hu Qiangyong agreed without a word.