Chapter 13
The first hurdle was being blocked at the elevated ground floor.
The blizzard had long since blocked the first floor. To get out, one had to break through the snow layer themselves.
Ji Yang carried a hiking backpack for cover. Even though she knew the power was out nationwide and cameras were useless, she still cautiously took out a foldable entrenching tool from her backpack and shoveled the snow away, one scoop at a time.
Seeing her actions, Xixi let out a yowl and pounced into the snow layer.
Ji Yang saw it playing happily and paid it no mind. After digging a hole big enough to pass through, she went in, then threw the snow behind her, quickly blocking the hole again.
After that, she took out an oxygen tank, dug only a small opening for air, and used the entrenching tool as a medium, tossing clumps of ice and snow into her space with each scoop. Her efficiency immediately soared.
Xixi, meanwhile, darted around in the snow layer, occasionally appearing in front of Ji Yang.
It was adapting well to the extremely cold climate.
However, after half an hour, Xixi couldn’t take it anymore. It lost the energy to frolic and snuggled close to Ji Yang, its legs trembling.
Ji Yang understood. It had never been outside, staying in the warm indoors, so its fur hadn’t grown thick enough. She reached out and sent the little dog into her space.
This wasn’t Xixi’s first time in the space. It went to the sheep pen as usual. It was very familiar with these things, almost as if it were ingrained in its bones. After recovering from the cold, it immediately strutted around the four sheep, as if inspecting their condition.
Confirming that there was no use for it at the moment, Xixi found a corner and lay down.
On Ji Yang’s side, with the help of her space, she had moved far away from Jiafu Community and arrived at her first stop—the supermarket one kilometer away.
The supermarket was on the second floor; the first floor was home to major gold, silver, and jade jewelry stores.
Breaking through the snow layer to get in, she found that the main entrance of the supermarket was already shattered. Snow had spread inside, and because of the people coming and going to hoard supplies, it was trampled and messy, looking very dirty and chaotic.
However, due to the heavy snow, the jewelry store staff hadn’t been to work for a long time. All the shops were closed. For safety’s sake, Ji Yang didn’t act immediately. Instead, she first explored the entire mall.
It wasn’t until she reached the top floor and found no one that she returned to the snow layer and let Xixi out.
With the sudden change of scenery, Xixi immediately stood up warily and observed its surroundings. Upon seeing Ji Yang, it wagged its tail and rubbed against her.
Ji Yang rubbed its head. “Guard here. Bark if someone comes, understand?”
“Woof!” Xixi responded with a low bark.
Ji Yang was relieved and took out her prying tools to open the door.
The alarm systems had long since lost power. In just a minute or two, she had pried open the first door, all thanks to the experience she had accumulated in her previous life to survive.
But the next second, Ji Yang’s heart sank.
The first time she did something like this, she was greeted by empty display cases!
Ji Yang almost went berserk!
Is my space destined not to be upgraded in the early stages?!
But the next second, she suddenly remembered something. She didn’t give up and looked around, finally locking onto the cabinet behind the cashier’s counter. She didn’t have a key, so she directly chopped it open with an axe. The cabinet opened to reveal several safes inside.
The safes were even built-in.
She tried to pull them, but couldn’t. Fortunately, she had considered a similar situation before and directly took out the cutting machine she had prepared. She put on her tools and got to work.
“BZZZZ—” A piercing sound rang out.
Ji Yang’s whole body trembled. Fortunately, the safe wasn’t that indestructible. A cut was quickly made, revealing the contents inside.
Boxes and boxes of neatly stored jewelry!
To save time, Ji Yang had chosen a store that specialized in selling jade jewelry. Now, without even looking, she directly stored them in her space, and immediately the space… showed no reaction.
Ji Yang fell silent.
It seemed that the batch she had taken was not of good quality.
No matter, there’s still a bunch!
Next, Ji Yang didn’t stop for a moment. She cracked a safe almost every three to five minutes, opening all of them.
Finally, when the last safe was opened and its contents were stored in the space, the space expanded again… by fifty square meters.
It was right next to the breeding area.
Just like before, it was all dark brown soil, and nothing else.
Fortunately, she had enclosed the breeding area with a fence before, so now that the space had expanded, they couldn’t run out.
This mall only had one store that specialized in selling jade. The other shops sold a mix of gold, silver, and jewelry. Ji Yang chose not to pry open the other doors; it would be too troublesome, and she would get very little jade.
She decided to head directly to the next destination.
But it was too cold now. After all this work, Ji Yang’s hands and feet were already freezing. So, she took out a cassette stove and a small milk pot from her backpack and cooked herself a bowl of instant noodles.
It was the most convenient and quickest way to warm her stomach.
The instant noodles were from the Tang Daren brand. The taste was light, but the aroma was enticing. Ji Yang finished the noodles and soup, and a few beads of sweat appeared on her nose. She quickly wiped them away, put the things back in her bag—actually, into her space—and then put Xixi back into the space as well. She threw a white cloak over herself to conceal her figure and then took out a snowmobile.
Having not used these things for a long time, Ji Yang was a bit rusty and had to study it for a bit before she could start it smoothly.
With a roar, the snowmobile shot forward, kicking up countless snowflakes.
—
When it comes to zero-yuan shopping, the first time is awkward, the second time is familiar.
With the snowmobile, her efficiency was much higher this time. In just ten minutes, Ji Yang arrived at her second destination.
The cutting machine was taken out, and Xixi stood guard.
Ji Yang moved quickly. In just an hour, she had cleared out this store as well. This time, the space expanded by another fifty square meters.
Ji Yang frowned in dissatisfaction. The quality of these was still not good enough. The better ones were probably in deeper warehouses. After all, when she bought jewelry herself, she would buy pieces worth tens of millions. The jewelry left by her grandparents was worth even more.
But under normal circumstances, most of the jewelry in these shops was worth a few thousand to tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands was already very expensive, and pieces worth millions might not even be in stock.
There was also brand premium and craftsmanship premium.
So, the stock in one store only added fifty square meters at a time.
Given the circumstances, she could only work a little harder herself.
Ji Yang comforted herself and continued to the next destination.
She had noted down these places during her last few days of hoarding cooked food, so she was familiar with the routes. By five in the afternoon, when it got dark, she was also getting a bit too cold to bear, so she quickly drove the snowmobile back.
Along the way, she didn’t see a single person.
When she was near Jiafu Community, Ji Yang found a corner, stored the motorcycle, and went back in through the passage she had opened on her way out.
All the way up to the fifteenth floor, she still didn’t run into anyone.
It was too cold. Even if someone heard a noise, they wouldn’t be willing to come out and check.
When she got home and opened the door, a blast of warm air made her feel alive again.
She quickly added some more firewood to the two fireplaces and let Xixi out. It had been a hard day for it, so she gave it a large basin full of meat for dinner, letting it eat its fill!
Ji Yang herself went into her space to take a bath.
Originally, she would have bathed in her room, but now her space had expanded to three hundred and fifty square meters. One hundred square meters were used for raising poultry, leaving two hundred and fifty. This was more than enough to place the mobile house she had bought earlier; her house only occupied one hundred and twenty square meters.
The house had water and electricity installed. There was a special water tower on the roof for storing water. She had deliberately chosen a large water tower at the time, which could store one thousand liters of water at once. There were even larger ones, but she was afraid the house couldn’t bear the weight, so she had compromised.
The only problem was that there was no underground drainage.
Ji Yang was still a bit hesitant, so she didn’t use the water tower directly. Instead, she took a bath in a tub.
The temperature in the space was suitable. The only downside was that it was too quiet. Although there were the sounds of the poultry, that was it. There was no sound of wind, no birds, no other sounds.
Ji Yang actually didn’t like staying here for long periods. It always gave her the fear that she was the only person left in the world.
And as it happened, she was in a disaster-stricken world. This situation might very well come true, which made her dislike it even more.
Therefore, Ji Yang only planned to bathe here. The water pipes at home were frozen, so she couldn’t use the shower. The temperature was too low, and bathing was very cold. The space was the most suitable place.
As for other things like eating and sleeping, she wouldn’t do them in the space. Even though this world was very dangerous, she still liked it.
After taking a hot bath, Ji Yang didn’t put the house away this time. From now on, she would bathe and do other things here.
As for using the toilet, the water in the toilet had frozen long before the water was cut off, so it couldn’t be flushed. Therefore, Ji Yang very decisively switched to using cat litter.
The other people in the community probably just poured it outside, but most had a sense of public decency and didn’t pour it right in front. And with the snow falling from time to time, it was quickly covered and not an eyesore.
It was just that when the snow melted, only those living on the lower floors would truly experience how disgusting it was.
There was still some meat left in Xixi’s food bowl. Looking at its belly, it was round and bulging. It probably couldn’t eat anymore.
The little one had never gone hungry, so it wouldn’t eat itself to death.
Ji Yang didn’t bother with it. It would eat on its own when its stomach had digested. She was exhausted and too lazy to blow-dry her hair. The air was dry anyway, so it would be dry in a while.
She curled up on the sofa, her consciousness sweeping through the space, and then brought out a steaming hot bowl of tomato and beef brisket rice to eat.
She poured the savory and slightly sour soup over the rice, mixed it, and when it touched her tongue, her mouth began to water, and her appetite soared.
Taking another bite of the tenderly stewed beef and feeling the warm food slowly reach her stomach, she finally relaxed.
Nothing is more important than eating.
Food represents survival.
While eating, Ji Yang pondered how to plan the newly freed-up space.
The breeding area definitely needed to be expanded again; otherwise, it wouldn’t be enough when these creatures were fully grown. And she had recently been reading up on some breeding knowledge and learned that pigs could reproduce at six months, but for their health, farmers usually waited until they were eight months or a year old to start breeding.
This meant that the males and females of these little ones had to be separated for a while.
Ji Yang thought for a moment, then sowed pasture seeds on another one hundred square meters and enclosed it with a fence. There were still thirty square meters of open space left, which could be used for planting.
She selected Chinese cabbage from a pile of seeds, and with her consciousness, she controlled the seeds to be sown. Following the instructions, she covered them with a thin layer of soil and then left them alone.
She actually wanted to make a pond.
That way, she could raise some fish and shrimp, especially hairy crabs and crayfish, as well as various freshwater fish, which she was quite fond of. But unfortunately, she had just tried pouring her bathwater on the soil, and it was absorbed instantly, leaving nothing behind.
The soil that had absorbed the water was a bit moister than before, but that was it.
Under normal circumstances, such a large basin of water would have at least left a small puddle, which the soil would then absorb completely after a while.
So, Ji Yang speculated that it might not be possible to make a pond in this space, or that it might produce its own freshwater or even seawater areas.
She could only feed it as much jade as possible.
Ji Yang was quite looking forward to it. She wondered what this space would eventually evolve into.