Jiang Ci poured a cup of hot water, took a piece of pork out of the refrigerator, filled another cup with ice cubes, and entered the space.
Setting them on the ground, she first went to the house with three bedrooms, two living rooms, and two bathrooms. The doors and windows were all properly installed, the walls were coated with white latex paint, and it had faucets, squat toilets, and showers.
Aside from being empty of furniture and appliances, the house was fully finished.
Jiang Ci walked into the kitchen and turned on the faucet. There was actually water!
What an unexpected bonus. She hurriedly pressed the switch on the wall, and the kitchen light came on!
Jiang Ci was so excited that her palms began to sweat.
As though trying to confirm something, she stood in front of the stove that came with the space, drew a deep breath, and turned the knob. The stove had gas!
She no longer knew how to describe how she felt.
She gently patted her cheeks, truly afraid that all of this was a dream.
Then she steeled herself and pinched her arm hard. It hurt like hell!
It wasn't a dream! All of this was real!
Jiang Ci let out a soft breath. She was so lucky. Having an ancestral pendant turn out to be a portable space was already lucky enough.
Being reborn was an even greater defiance of fate, yet the space actually came with water, electricity, and gas too!
She even suspected she was Heaven's own daughter!
She surveyed the entire space again, already working out how to make full use of it.
The only regret was that her time inside the space was limited to six hours a day. The hours couldn't accumulate, and once the six hours were up, the space would kick her out.
Or, when midnight came, the space would kick her out whether she had used up her time or not, resetting the timer.
But compared with her previous life, this space was already an upgraded version, so she was very content and grateful.
After leaving the space, Jiang Ci picked up her phone and checked it.
Lin Jiahao was extremely efficient. The money had already arrived.
It was past three in the afternoon, and she decided to drive to the furniture mall.
Jiang Ci liked the natural wood style, so she ordered a set of furniture in that style.
A sofa, a coffee table, a wall-to-wall bookcase, a wardrobe, shelving units, a bed, bedside tables, a dressing table, a full-length mirror, and so on.
On top of that, she placed a separate order for a batch of solid wood shelving units.
She planned to put these shelves outside the house in the space, arranged in two long rows against two of the invisible walls.
Later, she could use them to sort and store her survival supplies.
After ordering the furniture, Jiang Ci paid the deposit and pretended to put the receipt into her bag, when she actually tossed it into the space.
She also wrote down her villa's address for them and left her contact information, then waited for delivery.
Jiang Ci didn't plan to buy any appliances. The ones in the villa and the house she currently lived in were already enough for her. When the time came, she would move them all into the space.
Leaving the furniture mall, Jiang Ci drove to a secluded, deserted spot and entered the space with a tape measure.
Following the method the furniture mall had taught her, she measured all the dimensions needed for the furniture and recorded them on paper.
Then she went outside to check the hot water, ice cubes, and pork she had casually left in the space at noon.
It was already past six in the evening, but the hot water she had put in at noon was still scalding hot. It hadn't cooled at all.
The ice cubes in the cup looked exactly as they had when she put them in, without the slightest sign of melting.
Even the piece of pork she had taken from the refrigerator was still frozen, completely unchanged.
Jiang Ci grew thoughtful. It seemed this was a time-stasis preservation space. Whatever condition something was in when brought inside, it would remain in that state forever without changing.
In that case, couldn't she stockpile lots of prepared dishes inside and take them straight out to eat after the natural disasters struck?
Haha, that would be amazing. I already can't wait to go order food from a restaurant!
She came out twenty minutes later and called the furniture mall to give them the appropriate dimensions for the furniture she had selected.
Jiang Ci found a large restaurant that catered wedding banquets, birthday banquets, hundred-day celebrations, and other feasts.
She went through their entire menu and drew up one of her own.
Then she found the owner and negotiated a big deal.
Two hundred portions of dishes every day for six months, packed in disposable containers. She would collect them at six every evening.
The owner was overjoyed and didn't ask why Jiang Ci was ordering so much food. After all, their restaurant sometimes catered two or three wedding banquets a day and prepared far more than two hundred portions.
The more she ordered, the better. Who ate it didn't matter.
She paid a deposit of 100,000, with further payments to follow in installments. If anything unexpected came up, they would notify the other party in advance.
Both sides were delighted.
The owner cheerfully escorted Jiang Ci to the restaurant entrance, looking at her as though she were the God of Wealth.
Jiang Ci went to another large restaurant that also catered wedding banquets and did the same thing, ordering another two hundred portions a day for six months.
Again, she paid a deposit of 100,000, with further payments to follow in stages.
The owner was so happy he all but swore brotherhood with Jiang Ci.
After all, business for the next six months was absolutely secured.
Jiang Ci did the math. Four hundred portions a day for six months amounted to 72,000 dishes.
Assuming she ate four dishes a day, that would last her fifty years on her own!
But she wasn't an orphan. She had a strict, strong-willed mother who loved her, as well as a stepfather who treated her better than his own flesh and blood.
She couldn't exactly kill her father and mother as sacrifices to Heaven...
If they had treated her badly, she might really have been capable of murdering her father and mother.
Thinking of everything in her previous life, she hadn't been reborn just to enjoy herself alone. She also wanted her mother and stepfather to live well.
The tragedy of her previous life would never happen again!
After a busy afternoon, Jiang Ci was hungry too.
She found a bullfrog and fish restaurant and ordered four jin of fish and six jin of bullfrog.
The middle-aged waitress quickly looked over the pretty, finely featured girl sitting straight at the table and checked, "Miss, it's just you, right?"
Jiang Ci nodded firmly and confirmed, "Yes, just me."
After a pause, she added an explanation. "I'll take whatever I can't finish to go."
Only then did the waitress understand and go to put in her order.
The restaurant was crowded, and the food probably wouldn't be ready anytime soon, so Jiang Ci took out her phone and started playing Happy Xiaoxiaole.
She had no idea how many levels she had cleared before the food finally arrived.
The spicy, numbing fish and the firm, tender bullfrog meat burst with flavor in her mouth.
The flavor lingered on her tongue. It was absolutely delicious!
Jiang Ci didn't eat a single bite of rice, using it all to soak up oil instead. She filled up on fish and bullfrog.
The fish and frog bones on the bone plate had been picked completely clean.
Before she knew it, she had finished everything. There was nothing but oil left in the pot, with nothing else to fish out.
Jiang Ci rubbed her round, bulging stomach and smacked her lips.
She had eaten so much that she felt she couldn't even stand up.
Only after sitting and drinking two cups of barley tea to recover did Jiang Ci go to the counter to pay.
She had intended to turn and leave, but after thinking it over, she doubled back.
She couldn't pass up food this delicious!
She found the owner and negotiated another deal with the bullfrog and fish restaurant.
They would make ten portions of bullfrog and fish every day for six months, and she would collect them in the evening. She would pay a deposit of 100,000 first and add more if it wasn't enough.
She calculated that, if she ate bullfrog and fish once a week, eighteen hundred portions would last her thirty-five years on her own.