Making Money

On the way home, Ming Rong looked downcast.

Ming Jiu had no intention of wasting time cooking. She bought some takeout on the way home and spent the entire trip thinking about how to explain what she was about to do to her sister.

Ming Rong was an exceptionally well-behaved child, a genuine little angel. She had been Ming Jiu's little tagalong since childhood, the kind of "homegrown kid" people joked was both handy and reassuring to order around.

When the disasters struck, the life they had only just managed to rebuild after their parents' deaths was turned upside down again. But Ming Jiu did not collapse, and neither did Ming Rong.

They had only depended on each other in the apocalypse for a year and a half, yet her little sister had been so sensible it broke Ming Jiu's heart.

After getting home, Ming Rong took out her phone again.

[Sis? Are you really taking me to City B to see a doctor? Are we going to Uncle's house?]

Ming Jiu said, "Yes, we're going to City B to see a doctor."

She had had a similar plan at this point in her previous life. A famous psychologist had returned to the country, and she had wanted to take her sister to give it a try.

Unfortunately, the blizzard arrived before they could set off.

"But we're not going to Uncle's house. You don't need to go, but I have to make a trip there. I want to see Grandpa."

And use the excuse of offering incense to Grandpa to enter the Zuo Family and get hold of the spatial ornament.

Ming Rong had never met the old master of the Zuo Family. He had passed away when she was two or three years old, so she had no memory of her grandfather at all.

Ming Rong nodded and signed: Do I really have to see a doctor?

She did not like seeing doctors at all. She had even made Ming Jiu promise to pause her psychotherapy sessions in exchange for learning sign language.

Ming Jiu said, "We'll just give it a try, okay? If you feel uncomfortable, we'll talk about it then. How does that sound?"

Ming Rong nodded, then asked: When are we leaving? When are we coming home?

Ming Jiu said, "We'll leave tonight. We... we won't be coming home for the time being. We'll stay at our home in City B first."

She had prepared several backup plans—if the space worked, there would be two possibilities: it could either only store supplies, or it could store farmland modified by the system.

If it was the former, she would stockpile enough daily necessities, then take her sister to settle down in some remote, sparsely populated countryside. At least before the mutated animals and plants and the strange species appeared in the third year, she could farm and level up without restraint.

Of course, if she could not use the space, this plan would still work. Without the space, she could spend some gold coins to buy inventory slots and store supplies in the system inventory.

If that happened, she would use standard shipping containers to pack the supplies and stack them up to ninety-nine in her inventory slots.

But if the space she acquired could store farmland modified by the system—that would be absolutely perfect.

There was no absolutely safe place in the apocalypse. Severe disasters would destroy houses and buildings, mutated animals and plants would claim territory, and vicious strange species would hunt and prey on humans... There was no such thing as a perfect place to settle. Humans could only survive by banding together.

If the farmland she modified with gold coins could be temporarily stored in the space, she could move whenever she wanted and maximize her mobility.

When the mutations broke out, she could take her sister into a safer, more orderly official base...

As Ming Jiu was thinking, Ming Rong reached out and tugged at the corner of her clothes.

Ming Rong looked puzzled: Do we have another home?

"We can buy a new house in City B and make it our new home."

Ming Jiu's expression turned solemn.

"From now on, I may do many, many things that you can't understand yet. I need you to trust me. No matter what happens, I'll protect you, okay?"

Ming Rong froze for a few seconds, then nodded hard.

She felt as though something about her sister had changed. The house had changed a great deal too. Ever since the accident, their parents' bedroom door had remained tightly shut, but today it had been opened a crack. Her sister's eyes had changed as well—not sorrowful anymore. Though she still occasionally drifted off into a daze, they were unusually resolute.

It was as if her sister had decided to do something extraordinary.

But no matter what, her sister was still her sister—the sister she trusted and relied on most. That would never change.

The sisters opened the takeout boxes. Ming Rong was more familiar with the kitchen than Ming Jiu, and quickly set out the bowls and chopsticks. The two of them finished lunch.

Ming Jiu ate quickly, her mind completely off the food. She only wanted to fill her stomach.

"I need to go out this afternoon, Xiao Rong. Can you stay home by yourself this afternoon?"

Ming Rong nodded.

"Can I ask you to do something? Do you see those storage boxes in the living room? Can you pack up your things and put them in the boxes?"

Ming Rong nodded again, her face filled with the devout conviction that her sister's words were imperial decrees.

"Tonight, I'll take you to the neighboring city first, then we'll return to City G and go to the airport to catch a flight."

Ming Rong did not quite understand the arrangement, but she simply kept nodding.

More than ten minutes later, Ming Jiu changed into inconspicuous sportswear and put on a thin down jacket—City G was located at the southernmost tip of China, where even the lowest temperatures were usually around twenty degrees Celsius.

But this year, the cold snap had come fast and fiercely. The temperature had already dropped into the single digits, and the weather was damp and freezing.

Ming Jiu took her car keys and opened a ride-hailing app to find a designated driver.

She had a driver's license. Her parents had bought her a car after she graduated from university, a fairly high-performance SUV, and she was not a bad driver.

But in the apocalypse, no one would deliberately follow traffic rules. Ming Jiu feared that her license would be revoked not long after she got on the road.

For her own safety and the safety of pedestrians, it was more reliable to hire a designated driver. She could also review the traffic rules on the way, since she would have to drive herself tonight.

She stared intently at the familiar yet unfamiliar roads and the driver the entire way. An hour later, they arrived at an urban village. After the driver left, Ming Jiu did not get out immediately.

She transferred the property deed and various documents from an inventory slot into the bag at her side. Then she pulled out her wallet, found all her bank cards, and checked the balances one by one through her mobile banking app.

Her usual card had 140,000 yuan in it. Another card held the pocket money and Lunar New Year money she had saved since childhood, a little over 200,000 yuan.

Then there was the family's money.

Compared to the family's fixed assets, their savings were not much. Her father and mother had both worked in the arts and were not the frugal, saving type. The money they earned each month from teaching painting and dance, plus the rent from one shop, was usually spent almost entirely.

The bulk of the family's savings had been given by her grandfather, amounting to roughly five million yuan.

After the car accident, compensation from the person responsible and various insurance payouts totaled around twelve million yuan. Adding the 200,000 yuan kept in the safe for emergencies, she had a total of 17.34 million yuan in cash at her disposal.

Even after subtracting the money for buying another house in City B, it was more than enough. The City B safe zone would not be in the city center, so she could easily buy a house in the outer suburbs beyond the ring road, or even in a neighboring city, where property prices were not so outrageous.

With the system, she and Xiao Rong would not lack food, and the system store could cover a large portion of the other necessities for dealing with disasters...

Ming Jiu typed several lines of numbers representing her savings into her phone's memo app, got out of the car, entered the urban village, and stopped before a four-story self-built building.

In her previous life, she had worked with City G's official rescue team for nearly half a year, following the team around every day to distribute supplies to residents. She had been to this urban village.

By then, it had been near the end of the snow season. Ming Jiu had heard her coworkers gossiping—there was a sizable civilian organization entrenched in this area. Its leader had been a loan shark before the disasters, and supposedly had powerful connections and considerable assets.

The reason she still remembered it so clearly after all these years was that the leader had a great deal of gold.

Before the snow season ended, that boss had traded a large amount of gold for the chance for himself and his men to enter the base and live there. Ming Jiu had been responsible for registering the families of Black Brother's subordinates at the time, so the impression had stuck with her.

After social order collapsed and was rebuilt in the apocalypse, gold's role as "currency" had weakened, but it remained an important resource for base construction and technological development.

Even in the interstellar world where the system came from, gold was still a relatively scarce and important resource. Otherwise, the system would not have allowed her to exchange gold for gold coins.

Likewise, silver coins and copper coins could not be exchanged.

Once the disasters began, gold, like other survival supplies, would become an important resource actively collected by the authorities. Even with the system as her advantage, Ming Jiu would find it difficult to amass it on a large scale under the authorities' watchful eyes.

In short, she was very tempted by the gold in his hands.

She only had half a month. Whether she sold the house or used it as collateral for a bank loan, it would be too slow. The paperwork alone would not be completed in time.

It would be best if she could exchange directly for gold. Even if she could not, private lending companies offered higher collateral loan ratios for real estate than banks. Either way, she would not lose out.

With that in mind, Ming Jiu adjusted the mask on her face and walked into the self-built building.