Chapter 3
But Ji Yang was no longer the Ji Yang of her past life.
After a fleeting moment of nostalgic reverie, she calmed down again. She selectively replied to the people she remembered having a better relationship with in her previous life, declining all invitations to go out. She couldn’t bear to waste even a single moment now.
She greedily wished she had a teleportation skill.
Go shopping in the east side of the city in the morning, the west side in the afternoon, and then move on to a different city tomorrow.
It wouldn’t be good to keep exploiting the same place.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have such an ability, so she could only waste a little more time on the road.
Her refusals made a few of her friends a little unhappy; Ji Yang hadn’t joined them for a long time.
To this, Ji Yang could only express her regret.
Just then, a message popped up: [Are you really not coming? Your stepsister has been living it up lately, using your dad’s name. Now everyone’s confused about who the real heiress is.]
The sender was Zhao Xing, Ji Yang’s childhood friend.
The two were close, and their parents’ relationships were similarly troubled. However, Zhao Xing’s parents hadn’t divorced and still maintained a superficial harmony, though things weren’t much better. Because of this, she particularly detested third parties.
Coincidentally, the catalyst for Ji Yang’s parents’ divorce was her father having an illegitimate daughter.
From a young age, Ji Yang had hated this half-sister, believing that she and her mother had destroyed her family. She had always opposed her, never changing her ways even when her father criticized her every time.
The only time she had relented was later, during the severe snow disaster. When she fled to her father’s side, she had bowed her head to this illegitimate daughter for the first time in order to survive.
It was much later that Ji Yang understood. It wasn’t her fault that she had ended up unloved by her father and mother; it was her father’s fault.
If he had been faithful, everything would have been wonderful.
Especially now, Ji Yang had no expectations for either of them and certainly wouldn’t let them affect her emotions.
So, seeing this message now, Ji Yang was calm: [It’s fine, I don’t care anymore.]
After all, when the apocalypse arrived, money would become worthless foam. Supplies were king. Back then, the Ji family couldn’t even accommodate her, simply because they didn’t have enough supplies.
Other wealthy and powerful people had already sensed something was wrong in the early stages of the snow disaster and began to consolidate their resources, which was why they were able to live comfortably. The Ji family’s business wasn’t in manufacturing, and their information was a step behind. By the time they realized what was happening, the situation was beyond their control. Consequently, the Ji family did not have an easy time at the beginning. As for what happened later, she didn’t know.
Seemingly exasperated by her lack of fight, Zhao Xing fumed: [Fine, fine, I’m just being a busybody!]
Ji Yang typed seriously: [No, thank you for telling me this.]
It was actually quite useful.
Because Ji Yang forwarded this news to her father with the caption: [I remember that before Grandpa and Grandma died, they forced you to sign a document stating that the Ji family’s assets would all be mine. How is it that someone else is now the Ji family’s heiress?]
Her father immediately flew into a rage and sent two 60-second voice messages.
Ji Yang couldn’t be bothered to listen and simply put her phone in her pocket.
By the time she drove from the airport to the warehouse, a new transaction notification had arrived—a certain someone with a guilty conscience had transferred ten million to her.
Perfect. She had just been worrying about how to find an excuse to get more money.
—
After more than sixty days of hoarding, working both domestically and abroad, Ji Yang had become thinner and tanner from all the running around. Now, her space was filled with sufficient supplies.
For clothing, shelter, and transportation, she had bought enough of everything she could think of—all kinds of cold-proof suits, heat-insulating suits, clothes for all four seasons, and medical protective suits, with quantities starting in the thousands.
For food, she had five thousand jin of various types of rice, flour, grains, and oils; twenty thousand jin of various fruits; five hundred jin each of common seasonings like Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and cinnamon; and at least two thousand jin each of beef, lamb, duck, and goose.
As for housing, Ji Yang had also bought a small, mobile two-bedroom, one-living-room house abroad. If she were to live alone and away from groups in the future, she could live there.
In addition, she had ordered two RVs with extremely high levels of protection, two off-road vehicles, five snowmobiles, five regular high-temperature-resistant motorcycles, ten bicycles, roller skates, skateboards, and had also bought all the frequently needed replacement parts, tires, and so on.
For replacement instructions, she had the sellers compile them into a document and send it to her email, which she then saved on a portable hard drive for future reference.
Medical supplies were also plentiful, with only traditional Chinese medicine being a missing component.
In terms of tools, Ji Yang hoarded based on the inventory of hardware stores and various equipment shops, increasing the quantity of some items according to her needs, but never reducing it, ensuring she had enough for the better part of her life.
The remaining items needed to be hoarded domestically.
It was already very late when Ji Yang arrived at the warehouse.
The worker in charge of guarding the warehouse had already left for the day. Ji Yang skillfully opened the warehouse door, went inside, and quickly shut it behind her. Then, as usual, she took out various instruments to check for cameras and the like. Finally, she turned off the power before starting to collect the goods.
This batch mainly consisted of various canned goods, plastic-sealed snacks, instant noodles, and insecticides.
After the extreme cold, the massive amount of melting ice and snow, coupled with the subsequent torrential rains and rising temperatures, led to a plague of rats, cockroaches, and other pests. They had become even more venomous than before. A bite from what looked like an ordinary mosquito could cause a festering sore.
Not to mention parasites, bacteria, and other things.
So, insecticides and disinfectants were necessary. Ji Yang had a deep-seated hatred for these things; she would even dream about them at night after her rebirth. Therefore, she bought them in huge quantities, determined to exterminate these disgusting creatures.
Thanks to the hush money from her father, Ji Yang still had over ten million. So, after collecting this batch of goods, she started another major shopping spree—this time for various electrical appliances.
She had already bought phones, computers, and tablets online, along with many portable hard drives, all of which she had the sellers fill with all the data and entertainment products they could find on the market.
So that when she was bored in the future, she wouldn’t have to read a tattered novel over and over a dozen times, each time getting to the part where the female lead has been tormented, the male lead is just starting to get his comeuppance, and then three chapters later, they’re back together, happy as ever. The ending made her liver ache with anger.
But she had nothing else to read.
So, the appliances she bought were mainly things like air conditioners, washing machines, electric fans, and ice makers.
Ji Yang also bought many tools, both agricultural and for repairing cars, motorcycles, and the like. She bought everything she could.
Next were various types of generators—diesel, solar, and even kinetic ones, like those powered by pedaling a bicycle. She bought more than ten sets of each.
After finishing her shopping, Ji Yang drove to Jiafu Community.
The feeling of being nearly buried by the heavy snow in her past life was not pleasant. This time, she wanted to live in a place with higher elevation and fewer people.
Excluding villas, the remaining options were residential communities.
After much deliberation, Ji Yang chose this place.
This community happened to have opened when she was twenty, so it was only a little over three years old. The prices were high, and it had the misfortune of opening during a real estate downturn, so the occupancy rate was not high. It was also quite a distance from the densely populated city center.
In short, there weren’t many people.
Ji Yang had chosen it carefully. She couldn’t stay far from crowds. The floods after the extreme cold, along with the torrential rains and the subsequent high temperatures, had spread numerous corpses and various viruses to every corner of the world.
As a result, after the floodwaters receded, epidemics broke out one after another. Even hiding in the mountains, one could get sick.
Ji Yang still remembered that not long after a cure was developed, a terrifying riot broke out at the base. The perpetrators were a group of mountain residents from the neighboring city.
The area where this group lived had been a hotbed for human trafficking before the apocalypse. For various reasons, they had never been completely rooted out. Now that the apocalypse had arrived, they mixed in with the ordinary people and came to the base seeking medicine. They had waited anxiously for the medicine to be released, but unfortunately, they didn’t have enough points to buy it. Seeing that they were about to die, they gathered the villagers in a rage and besieged the research institute, nearly destroying the research.
For various reasons, Ji Yang herself did not like living in the mountains. She had an innate fear and disgust for insects, so she still chose to stay in the city.
—
Before leaving, Ji Yang had already hired someone to reinforce the doors and windows.
While she was busy abroad, they had communicated via email. The work had been completed ten days ago, and the keys were left with the property management office.
Ji Yang got the keys with her ID and immediately went to check on the renovation of her apartment. The elevator went all the way up to the fifteenth floor and opened with a ding.
Before her was a spacious common area. This building had two elevators and two units per floor, directly opposite each other. Ji Yang’s apartment was 1502, and across from it was 1501. There were many things placed by the door of 1501, but at a glance, what impressed Ji Yang the most were two pairs of old, worn-out cloth shoes.
This household is mainly inhabited by two elderly people.
Ji Yang mused, then turned her attention to her own apartment.
The entrance door had been completely replaced. What appeared before her now was a somewhat clumsy and heavy-looking metal door. Ji Yang didn’t know much about metals, but she had chosen this model because the seller claimed it was impervious to knives and guns.
Since that was the case, she had to test it.
Ji Yang first went to knock on the opposite door, intending to give them a heads-up. But after waiting for a while, there was no answer. Logically, elderly people should be home around six or seven in the evening.
But there were exceptions. Since they weren’t home, it was easier for her to proceed.
She immediately took an axe out of the handbag she was carrying, gripped the handle with both hands, took a deep breath, and swung it at the door.
“CLANG—” A deafening noise erupted.
Ji Yang’s ears nearly went deaf from the shock.
The neighbor next door hurriedly opened their door, and a white-haired grandfather ran out. “What’s going on?!”
A voice from inside the apartment called out, “Was that an explosion? See if there’s a fire outside! Should we call the police?!”
Ji Yang: …
At this moment, the old grandfather also saw Ji Yang. He looked at her with suspicion, thinking she was an audacious thief.
Ji Yang said, “Sorry, I just wanted to test if my door is sturdy.”
The old grandfather: “…”
He didn’t say anything, still watching her warily.
Ji Yang paid him no mind. She had fought her way back from the apocalypse; why would she care about such stares?
The only slightly awkward thing was that water and electricity had been cut off early in the apocalypse, so she hadn’t used a doorbell in almost five years and had momentarily forgotten to look for one first.
Her knocking probably wasn’t loud enough, and elderly people tend to be a bit hard of hearing, so it was normal for them not to hear. They weren’t out after all.
She first examined the spot she had just struck. There was a scratch on the door. With the force she had used, it didn’t even seem to be dented.
Looking at the axe, the blade had actually curled…
Ji Yang confirmed it: This is the real deal.
Satisfied, she took out her key and opened the door. She had originally wanted to try picking the lock, but the stare from behind her was too palpable. She would save it for next time.
Seeing her use a key to open the door, the old grandfather’s wariness faded considerably, replaced by a strange expression. Young people these days were so odd, he couldn’t understand them.
He slowly closed his door and explained to his wife, “It’s nothing, just a kid about your granddaughter’s age, bored and hacking at her door for fun.”
The old grandmother: “?”