Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Now that she had the Star House warehouse with time suspended, Yuxi decided to stock up on items she previously couldn’t.
While 180 cubic meters of space isn’t huge, it’s not small either. Since items suspended in the warehouse can be stacked and organized efficiently, she could store a significant amount.
To escape L Island and survive for three months, she estimated she’d be in the apocalypse world for about a hundred days. Surviving on instant food alone would likely make her sick of it.
She needed to stock the warehouse with fresh vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, fish, and shrimp—as long as conditions allowed—to make her stay more comfortable.
With six days left, she was unsure if she’d be able to stock up once in the apocalypse world, so she had to prepare in advance. There were many items to get, so she made a shopping list before bed.
For clothing, she referred to equipment used for Antarctic expeditions, focusing on windproof, waterproof, and thermal items rather than aesthetics. She already had camping equipment like tents, sleeping bags, wind lanterns, windproof solid alcohol stoves, and camping pots at home due to her love for outdoor activities.
For self-defense, she planned to buy several bottles of pepper spray. Blades were not suitable given her skill level, as she feared they might be turned against her. However, she considered getting a few extendable batons and possibly two stun batons.
The next day, she got up early to pick up the rental car, an SUV with one-way window film, ideal for her stockpiling needs.
After filling the car with clothing, she went to a warehouse-style supermarket, parked in a hidden corner of the underground garage, and quickly stored the clothes in the Star House warehouse.
This warehouse supermarket differed from regular large supermarkets in that each item was sold in quantities five to ten times larger. Shoppers here were either lazy people or wealthy individuals who didn’t shop often, buying enough supplies to last a long time.
In this environment, buying in bulk wouldn’t seem strange.
Since she already had enough convenience foods at home, she focused on perishables: pork ribs, spare ribs, pork bones, belly, loin, and shredded pork; steaks, oxtail bones, and beef rolls; lamb chops and rolls; chicken wings and legs; various freshwater fish, shrimp, and crabs; scallops, oysters, crabs, and clams; hotpot ingredients like duck blood, tripe, noodles, and konjac; various leafy, mushroom, and root vegetables.
She also bought canned and bottled seasonings: salt, chicken essence, pepper, cumin powder, soy sauce, vinegar, yellow wine, green onions, ginger, garlic, and chili peppers; pickles, meal accompaniments, preserved vegetables, salted duck eggs, fresh milk, eggs, sausages, yogurt, noodles, frozen dumplings, hand-pulled pancakes, apples, bananas, and pears.
Additionally, she bought 5 kg bags of rice, 5-liter bottles of cooking oil, 24 packs of instant noodles, and 24 cups of instant noodles.
For drinks, she bought two boxes of 5-liter bottled water, two boxes of 500 ml bottled water, several boxes of bottled coffee, and several boxes of 40-pack tissues and 20-roll toilet paper.
For cooking, she bought two more windproof solid alcohol stoves and a griddle to use with them.
Yuxi got carried away with shopping, filling the specially designed two-tiered shopping cart. Despite its large size, it couldn’t hold all her purchases, which helped bring her back to reason.
She had to ask a store employee to help her load heavy items like water, drinks, rice, and oil into the car, which they did willingly.
After leaving the supermarket, she parked in another quiet corner and transferred all the items to the Star House warehouse.
Sitting in the car, she felt more secure with the growing stockpile, though it had cost her a lot of money. Compared to her life, it was worth it.
At a beef noodle shop, she got inspired and packed five servings each of spicy beef noodles and fragrant beef noodles, with extra beef and cilantro, and stored them in the warehouse.
Then she ordered takeout: five cups each of coconut herbal jelly, black brick milk tea with pearls, and honey pomelo tea; five orders each of boneless chicken bites, chicken legs, and wings; ten boxes each of duck wings, duck feet, and pig trotters from a braised food shop; ten boxes of crispy roast duck from a roast duck shop; five portions each of thick-cut salmon, assorted seared sushi, seafood cheese rolls, shrimp avocado rolls, salmon seafood rice, and king crab Caesar salad from a sushi shop; and two each of ten-inch bacon stuffed crust pizza, roasted beef stuffed crust pizza, creamy spinach chicken pizza, fried squid, potato wedges, and grilled wings from a pizza shop.
She skipped ordering crayfish, realizing it would be too difficult to eat in an apocalypse.
Yuxi tried to control herself, ordering ten more dishes from her favorite Sichuan restaurant: pickled fish slices, spicy hot pot, spicy beef pot, spicy chicken, spicy bullfrog, mapo tofu, sour potato strips, dry cabbage pot, dry green beans, rice, and tomato egg soup.
She felt a strange hesitation from the Star House system, which she ignored, thinking it was just a central processor and shouldn’t have emotions.
On her way home, she bought common medications, antibiotics, cooling oil, alcohol, iodine, disinfectant gauze, Yunnan Baiyao, and warm patches from a pharmacy.
She scheduled her takeout deliveries at different times to avoid delivery riders running into each other.
After receiving each delivery, she stored it all in the Star House warehouse.
Living in an apartment building with many busy single professionals meant no one cared about her numerous deliveries.
That night, Yuxi sat on the cold floor of the Star House, opening the warehouse entrance and organizing the space. She didn’t want to mix different categories of items, preferring to keep things separated and orderly.
Fresh meats went in one storage box, seafood in another, vegetables and mushrooms in another, fruits in another, and dairy and frozen foods together in one box. Stacked boxes made the space neat and accessible with telekinesis.
The stockpile gave her a sense of security.
In the following days, she spent half her time learning to swim and the other half practicing self-defense at her dojo. She had been learning Aikido for over a year, a suggestion from her father for self-protection after she moved into her own apartment. Aikido’s joint techniques and small movements suited her well.
Every morning, she ordered breakfast takeout, and in the evenings, she accepted various food deliveries: Sichuan, Cantonese, Suzhou, Northeastern dishes, sushi, pizza, fried chicken, desserts, and milk tea, storing everything in the Star House warehouse.
She arranged for aluminum shelving units to be custom-made to organize her growing stockpile, making it easy to see and access everything.
Every night, she researched tsunamis and cold temperatures, finished her latest illustration draft, and submitted it for a 30% advance payment, covering her recent expenses.
Half an hour before midnight on the sixth day, Yuxi entered the Star House, ready to begin.
The system notified her of the world opening in five minutes. She confirmed the warehouse’s functionality in the apocalypse world and asked why she had to complete tasks, but the system only promised answers after completing a certain number of tasks.
Feeling the cold handle of the Star House door, she lost consciousness as it transformed into star points.
She awoke in a seaside buffet restaurant, surrounded by relaxed tourists. Checking the information in her mind, she found herself in a parallel world, slightly behind her original world’s development level. She was an office worker from S City on a team-building trip to L Island.
Knowing she had five hours before the tsunami, she decided that her best chance of survival was to return to L Island and then head to the airport. However, the flight schedules and potential delays made this plan risky. She needed to find a safe place to avoid the tsunami and survive the upcoming cold disaster.