The Villa Was Secured

After confirming that all the modification functions were working properly, the work robot returned. Ming Jiu felt that she had rested enough and continued her online shopping spree.

The time on her phone screen ticked from 23:59 to four zeroes.

January 26th. Twelve days until the blizzard, nine days until the Spring Festival.

She had to complete ninety-nine percent of her preparations before the twenty-ninth day of the lunar New Year, or there would be no one delivering goods or doing work for her during the holiday.

She stayed busy until three in the morning and completed nearly three-quarters of the supplies she needed to buy online.

Exhausted to the extreme, Ming Jiu had no energy left to farm or sell vegetables. She lay down in bed and fell into a deep sleep within minutes.

At seven in the morning, Ming Jiu was awakened by her phone alarm. After turning it off, she immediately opened her phone memo to check today's schedule.

The transfer of Apartment 2501 and the household registrations for her and Ming Rong could be completed in one morning with the help of the trust company.

Buy the house from Sister Bai—she had asked yesterday, and a temporary household registration would not be a problem at all.

There was no rush to get the villa's property ownership certificate. It could be handled slowly, and Sister Bai would follow up on it.

All of this had to be completed before one in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, the furniture and appliances would be moved into Apartment 2501 at Dragonview Garden. Conservatively speaking, she would be busy until evening.

She could reply to customer service messages while the workers installed everything and try to finish the last quarter of her online shopping tasks.

After confirming the task list, Ming Jiu was fully awake. She got up, washed up, ordered breakfast, and glanced through the small notebook on the bedside table while calling Ming Rong out of bed.

The notebook was filled with all kinds of lists written in Ming Rong's neat elementary-school handwriting. There were items related to hobbies she wanted, but even more were daily necessities and kitchen appliances the household would need.

It was obvious that she had already completed nearly half of them. Many items had bright red check marks behind them.

Ming Rong did not linger in bed. She rubbed her eyes and climbed out from under the covers to wash up, while Ming Jiu took the chance to prepare fruit.

At six thirty, the sisters sat at the table in the suite's living room eating breakfast. Ming Rong pointed at the blueberries on the table and quickly typed on her tablet.

[Sis, only a few of the cherry tomatoes are sweet. The rest are sour. That fruit shop isn't good.]

Ming Jiu nodded solemnly. "I'll pick more carefully next time. These were bought through delivery, so I had no way to choose."

Ming Rong switched to sign language. [I can help.]

Ming Jiu hesitated for several seconds before finally speaking.

"Xiao Rong, when do you think would be a good time to see a doctor?"

There were twelve days until the blizzard began and only nine days until New Year's Eve. Psychologists definitely would not see patients during the New Year holiday, even if they used the Zuo Family's connections.

On top of that, she had far too many things to do—Xiao Rong's window of choice was very limited.

To Ming Jiu's surprise, Ming Rong showed neither resistance nor hesitation this time. She lowered her head to type, then turned the tablet toward Ming Jiu.

[Whenever Sis is free, just take me. I'm fine with anything.]

"Okay. I'll tell you once I've made an appointment."

Ming Jiu only wanted to make one more effort before the disaster struck. Even if it still did not work, she would accept it. It would be even better if she could get some precautions from the doctor.

Right, later she would have Sister System download more psychology-related materials from the internet.

After breakfast, Ming Jiu and Ming Rong packed their luggage. When they had come to City B, they had only brought one backpack, and even their thick clothes had been bought after arriving. They had not accumulated much luggage over the past few days, so a twenty-six-inch suitcase was enough to carry it all.

Ming Jiu checked out and drove straight to Dragonview Courtyard.

There happened to be a chain hotel across from the residential complex. Ming Jiu took Ming Rong to check in and once again chose a family suite with two bedrooms.

Ming Rong stayed in the hotel room to organize their luggage while Ming Jiu went alone to Apartment 2501, where she inspected the results of the renovation workers' reinforcement of the windows and roof waterproofing yesterday afternoon.

The system scanned it for her. The workers had done their job properly, and there were no issues at all.

The three doors and doorframes she had ordered had also arrived. Ming Jiu stored the doors piled on the living room floor, along with the smart fingerprint locks and spare keys, in the spatial warehouse and immediately placed a modification order.

Modifying the doors was much cheaper. The three doors, locks, and keys cost twenty-seven gold coins, and the job was completed in less than twenty minutes.

The door modifications were simple. They only needed a layer of transparent, high-strength coating. The important part was the locks and keys.

The modifications eliminated hidden dangers such as abnormal unlocking of the smart fingerprint locks, technical cracking, data leaks, and the inability of the upper and lower bolts to link together. The lock batteries had also been replaced with special interstellar-version energy cells.

In the system's words, the lock energy would last thirty or forty years of continuous use without any problem.

Ming Jiu put the modified doors back exactly as they had been, then returned to the hotel to pick up Ming Rong. With all their documents in hand, they headed straight for the housing administration department.

The sisters waited in the service hall for less than ten minutes before the person in charge rushed over with the paperwork and certificates.

With an appointment made in advance and their early arrival, all procedures were completed before nine o'clock.

The property certificates for Dragonview Court 2501 and the two-hundred-square-meter Unit 602 could be collected in two days or mailed out. Ming Jiu decisively chose mailing.

Both her name and Ming Rong's were written on the new property certificates.

With the documents in hand, Ming Jiu took Ming Rong and the person in charge to the police station near Dragonview Court to handle their household registrations. An interprovincial household transfer would take some time, but she successfully obtained temporary household registration certificates.

After leaving the station, Ming Jiu signed the documents presented by the person in charge, and the inheritance handover procedures were officially complete.

When she checked the time, it was only a little past ten in the morning.

Ming Jiu did not waste any time. She immediately took Ming Rong to the real estate agency to meet Sister Bai and swiftly signed the villa purchase contract.

Sister Bai had kept her word. The villa's sale price had been negotiated down to 5.5 million, with a 2% agency fee split equally between buyer and seller.

5.61 million was directly deducted from Ming Jiu's "inheritance card."

Holding the purchase contract and other documents, Ming Jiu finally felt completely at ease.

Sister Bai found a document pouch and helped Ming Jiu put the contract inside.

"Actually, you could have bought it with a loan. There's no first-home buyer discount, but it still wouldn't be a loss. You have fixed assets, so the bank wouldn't reject your application. Mortgage interest rates are pretty favorable right now."

Ming Jiu took the document pouch from Sister Bai and smiled.

"Paying in full is more convenient. It saves me the trouble of running through procedures, and having monthly repayments would be annoying."

More importantly, housing would be severely insufficient during the early stages of City B Base. She could make her own decisions about a house purchased in full, but mortgaged houses would have to obey centralized management. Not only would they have to be forcibly rented out, but the rent would also be very low.

This policy was still in effect when Ming Jiu arrived at City B Base in the fourth year.

For the future quality of life for herself and Xiao Rong, she would not save money in this area.

She was now a major property owner with three homes inside the future base. Once the base was officially established, the rent from Unit 602 alone, with its two hundred square meters, would be enough to support her and Xiao Rong.

The villa was secured, but there was still some preparatory work to do.

The vacation villa came with finished interior decoration. Like Apartment 2501, all it needed was furniture and appliances before they could move in with their bags.

However, Ming Jiu did not intend to handle this work herself. She planned to directly hire someone to supervise it, while she only needed to complete the final step—replacing the doors and locks.

[Sister System, help me find an interior designer who doesn't have much work on hand and is reliable, okay?]

[Okay, Host.]

In less than two minutes, Ming Jiu received the list provided by the system. There were five options in total, three of whom were women.

Ming Jiu randomly chose one of the three women and saved her number.

Just as she was about to call, Sister Bai returned with the invoice. Ming Jiu took it and put it into the document folder for safekeeping.

Sister Bai spoke with a smile in her voice.

"You really have a good eye. Right after you bought yours, I got word that the two villas to the left of yours were sold too."

Ming Jiu paused while organizing the documents.

"Really? Were they sold through this agency too? I remember those two villas are much larger than mine. Congratulations on making a fortune."

Sister Bai smiled. "We won't be earning the agency fee. The buyers have quite a background and know the developer. Those two villas had never been sold, so they were still new homes."

"But now I think Yunjing Scenic Area is pretty good too. The money I have could buy me a home there in full, while I'd need a mortgage in the city center. The pressure would be too much. I'm considering buying a place myself."

Perhaps because she was in a good mood after closing the deal, Sister Bai could not seem to stop talking once she started.

"Even wealthy people like you are buying homes, so I think I can follow the trend. Once I buy a house, I'll work for a few more years and then retire directly. The environment over there really is nice. Opening a little shop and retiring there wouldn't be bad either."

Perhaps she had imagined her plan to lie flat, because Sister Bai's eyes shone even brighter than usual.