Chapter 2
Ji Yang had scraped together a hundred million in cash. It seemed like a lot, but jadeite could cost anywhere from a few thousand to tens of millions.
The better the quality of the jadeite, the more it could expand the space. Ji Yang wanted to hoard supplies and upgrade her space simultaneously, so she definitely had to be frugal with her money.
Therefore, the obvious course of action was to find a way to acquire more jade.
One good thing about the space was that whenever Ji Yang got near or touched jade, she could feel the thumb ring heat up. This meant she could basically hit the jackpot with every single piece of jade.
As for whether the jade was valuable in the real world, that was up to luck.
With this ability alone, if the apocalypse hadn’t arrived, Ji Yang could have become a stone-gambling magnate—one with a perfect track record.
Ji Yang hired a guide in advance, expressing her desire to experience stone gambling. The guide in Myanmar was very savvy and arranged everything. The day after she landed, he took her to the largest raw stone market in the country.
Using the excuse of “beginner’s luck,” Ji Yang didn’t hold back. She spent the entire morning picking and choosing, buying over a million yuan worth of raw stones. She selected ten to be cut on the spot, and two of them revealed green right away.
She insisted on having them fully cut, turning a stone worth a few tens of thousands into a high-grade jadeite valued at twenty million.
The other one also netted her over five million.
The rest were just empty rocks.
Ji Yang was immediately surrounded by a crowd congratulating her and trying to rub off on her luck.
She sold the two cut stones on the spot and took the remaining uncut ones with her. Once back at the hotel, after confirming there were no hidden cameras in the room, she moved the raw stones into her space.
Instantly, the space expanded to over three thousand square meters.
The next day, Ji Yang found another guide. She disguised herself with makeup, ensuring even her own parents wouldn’t recognize her, and had the new guide take her to a different stone-gambling market.
She repeated the process, earning money while upgrading her space.
In ten consecutive days, she upgraded her space to ten thousand square meters, at which point it seemed to hit a limit. Although it could still absorb jade, the area of the space didn’t increase at all.
Considering she had already spent half a month here, Ji Yang decided to give up for now and focus on hoarding supplies.
Ten thousand square meters was equivalent to one and a half soccer fields, and with a height that Ji Yang had yet to determine, it was definitely enough to store everything she wanted.
Before leaving Myanmar for the next country, she made a quick trip back home. Taking advantage of the nighttime hours, she swiftly cleared out the warehouse, making room for more goods.
Her next stop was another country neighboring Xia Country—one rich in fruits and seafood.
Of course, besides this feature, it had another: its gun ownership rate was second only to the M-country.
This meant that a portion of the firearms and ammunition could be purchased here through certain channels.
As before, Ji Yang rented two refrigerated warehouses specifically for hoarding the various fruits she bought. Things were cheap here, and since she was buying in bulk, they were even cheaper. She could basically hoard without restraint.
Mangoes, durians, jackfruits, guavas, coconuts, longans, pomelos, lychees, lady finger bananas, loquats, watermelons, passion fruits, and avocados—she bought twenty thousand jin of each.
In addition, there were all kinds of seafood: common sea prawns, the famous Phuket lobsters, slipper lobsters, groupers, sea bass, salmon, mantis shrimp, scallops, oysters, flower crabs, mud crabs, and meat crabs… she also bought twenty thousand jin of each.
The quantity was enormous, but because of that, the process was simple. The seafood was caught, flash-frozen, and sent to the warehouse for storage, requiring no effort on her part.
These were the fresh goods. Ji Yang was also purchasing other products, especially ice. This was a tropical country, so ice production was huge and the price was cheaper. She bought it without a second thought.
The extreme cold was manageable; staying warm was enough. The period of extreme heat was the hardest to endure. For two whole years of extreme heat, the water shortage and drought were at their peak. Having lived through it once, Ji Yang had no desire to experience it a second time. She needed to have enough ice!
During the day, workers received the goods, while Ji Yang sought out channels to buy various firearms and bullets. At night, after the workers left, she would return to the warehouse and move all the goods into her space, ready to continue the next day.
The process was faster than Ji Yang had anticipated. She had originally estimated half a month, but because she had rented large warehouses—three operating simultaneously—the efficiency was high. It was mostly done in about eight to nine days.
So, in the last few days, Ji Yang bought a large quantity of staple foods like rice and flour. The rice here was also quite famous.
With the major procurement here finished, the third stop was a country with cheap oil. In truth, Ji Yang had no connections to guarantee she could buy enough gasoline, diesel, and fuel oil.
But she had to try.
She really didn’t want to burn wood and coal in minus forty or fifty-degree weather, constantly worrying about carbon monoxide poisoning.
If she had enough diesel, she could buy more diesel generators, supplement them with solar-powered batteries and other things, and with a multi-pronged approach, she could hibernate warmly at home through the winter.
Fortunately, perhaps because oil was cheap there and regulations weren’t very strict, and also because Ji Yang had been tempered by the apocalypse for so long—though she looked like a young girl, her expressionless face was unsettling, and anyone with a bit of perception could sense that her hands might have been stained with blood.
Therefore, when she discreetly made inquiries, someone quickly approached her, claiming to have what she needed.
Ji Yang placed an order without a second thought.
And it wasn’t just one person.
She bought several tens or even a hundred tons from each person. After all the hassle, her wallet was considerably lighter, but her space was now filled to the brim with all kinds of oil!
The sense of satisfaction was deeply reassuring.
—
Having completed her mission here, Ji Yang returned home once again to empty the refilled warehouse. The countdown to the apocalypse had now reached sixty-three days.
Ji Yang was terrified that her rebirth might cause the apocalypse to arrive ahead of schedule, so she wished she could get everything done in a single day. She pushed herself to her limits every day, occasionally using her spare time to shop online with her phone.
For instance, water resources.
She directly bought potable water like mineral water, but she couldn’t buy too much at once. So, she would buy a portion first, then get the manufacturer’s contact information from the seller and place a direct order.
It was cheaper, and the quantity was larger.
And to avoid attracting attention, she didn’t just order from one manufacturer; she would find multiple manufacturers to place orders with simultaneously. This way, the combined quantity from several manufacturers was very substantial.
Toilet paper, sanitary napkins, disposable face towels, extra-large plastic barrels, and other items were all planned in this manner.
Next was the fourth stop—countries with abundant grain.
Here, naturally, she purchased various types of rice, flour, grains, and oils, as well as meat, eggs, and milk, with the exception of pork and chicken.
Ji Yang still preferred the taste of pork from castrated pigs and free-range chickens from her home country.
Of course, she was very fond of the chicken feet, duck feet, and chicken wings that nobody wanted here, so she bought a lot of them. She also took a lot of fish and crawfish that weren’t eaten abroad.
Along the way, she also bought weapons.
She already had many weapons. Although she didn’t have heavy-duty ones like rocket launchers, she had plenty of various guns and bullets. But this was the apocalypse; no one would complain about having too many weapons.
Especially not Ji Yang!
If she could, she would have loved to get her hands on a tank.
That was naturally impossible, but in the Su Country, using her feigned obsession with all kinds of military equipment as an excuse, she managed to acquire a retired armored vehicle.
Even if it was retired, it was still usable, and very effective.
Except that it was a gas-guzzler.
But now, a fully equipped Ji Yang wasn’t the least bit afraid of this drawback.
With weapons and defensive gear secured, it was only logical for Ji Yang to set her sights on life pods, yachts, jet skis, snowmobiles, snowcats, and helicopters.
Having experienced the apocalypse once, her courage had grown. She directly asked the person who had connected her with the armored vehicle if they had military versions of these items.
If not, so be it. If they did, she would buy them, and the price was negotiable.
The person hesitated for a while but quickly succumbed to the power of money. After all, selling a few of these wouldn’t make a difference in a war, so it was fine.
After buying these, there were also things like coal, firewood, alcohol, and solid alcohol fuel blocks, all of which were essential for the extreme cold. Naturally, she bought as much as she could.
So, by the time she left the Su Country, Ji Yang’s pockets were completely empty.
This was the result even after the money from selling her properties had come through.
But there were still many things Ji Yang hadn’t finished buying. She had no choice but to go to Myanmar again. This time, she didn’t stay long. Posing as a novice, she bought a few raw stones, exchanged them for over ten million, and left quickly.
With this money, she mainly purchased various medicines and vaccines.
Tetanus vaccines, rabies vaccines, hepatitis A and B vaccines, and even HIV-blocking drugs… she bought every kind she could find.
In the apocalypse, these were all desperately needed.
No one knew if they might, through sheer bad luck, be targeted by those retaliating against society and become an unfortunate victim.
In her past life, Ji Yang had seen many such things. As the apocalypse descended and survival became increasingly difficult, even normal people were driven to extreme madness by the disasters. A small portion of them began to hate the world, to hate those who were living well.
Some people would suddenly approach others and slash them with a virus-contaminated knife. Even if the attacker died, the person who was cut wouldn’t live much longer and would follow them to the grave. It was considered having company in death, so it wasn’t a loss.
This situation only eased up three or four years into the apocalypse.
Because… by that time, those who were sick, without medicine, and lacking food and clothing were mostly dead.
And even setting aside the post-apocalyptic world, such incidents often made the news in the current society, though now they used needles instead of knives.
Once the extreme cold began, society would enter a state of medical shortage. With plants and animals freezing to death in large numbers, it would be difficult to continue producing medicine. Therefore, these things had to be prepared before the cataclysm.
After buying the medicine, she still had a lot of money left, so she bought a large quantity of staple foods like rice, flour, corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Even if she couldn’t eat it all, she could trade it for other things. It was no loss, especially since it wasn’t domestic grain.
After this massive shopping spree, Ji Yang, with her last five hundred thousand-plus, used a phone she had bought abroad to carefully compose some messages about the impending disasters. She sent them to every email address she could find on the market, then smashed the phone and threw it into a public toilet before returning home, satisfied.
At this point, it was thirty-five days until the apocalypse.
It was the end of December in the year 2500.
New Year’s Day was approaching.
The streets and alleys were already being decorated with red lanterns and red stickers, the festive atmosphere growing stronger by the day.
Ji Yang had been so busy lately that her feet barely touched the ground, and she had hardly touched her phone. Now, taking out her domestic phone and turning it on, she found that she had received many new messages.
Some were asking where she had been all this time, as she had been completely out of sight. Others were asking about her plans for New Year’s Day. Did she want to go to the XX fashion show? Did she want to go to the XX concert?
Looking at these messages, Ji Yang felt as if a lifetime had passed.
In her previous life, the snowstorm had come suddenly.
Everyone was caught off guard, and it wasn’t long before they lost contact. She had never seen these friends again.