After leaving the frog and fish restaurant, Jiang Ci browsed around the area some more.
At a nearby lamb noodle shop, she also ordered ten servings of lamb rice noodles and ten servings of lamb wheat noodles a day for six months, paying a 50,000-yuan deposit, with any excess to be refunded and any shortfall paid later.
Those 3,600 servings of lamb rice noodles and lamb wheat noodles would last her alone seventy years if she ate one serving a week.
Two doors down from the frog and fish restaurant was a barbecue shop. She ordered 1,000 yuan's worth of assorted barbecue a day, packed into ten portions with the skewers left in, for six months.
Barbecue tasted best eaten straight off the skewers.
Jiang Ci did the math. Those 1,800 portions of barbecue would last her alone thirty-five years if she ate one a week.
It was already very late. Jiang Ci wandered around a little more to help digest her food, felt she had done enough shopping for the day, and headed home.
The first thing she did when she got home was take out a blank notebook and record all the supplies she had bought that day, item by item.
She even took out the receipts the shop owners had given her and checked them over. Only after confirming everything was correct did she feel at ease enough to shower and go to bed.
The next day.
The instant the alarm rang, Jiang Ci sprang upright in bed.
During natural disasters, she had to stay alert at all times and flee quickly to survive, so she could not adjust to such a comfortable life all at once.
The days when she could laze in bed and go back to sleep were already far out of reach for her.
Besides, she was pressed for time now. She needed to stockpile supplies, exercise, and prepare more ways to stay alive. She had no time to waste on sleep.
She quickly got up, washed, and did her skincare. Now that her circumstances allowed it, she hoped to look pretty rather than dark and skinny like a monkey, as she had in her previous life.
After changing, she took her phone and keys and went downstairs for breakfast.
The breakfast shop downstairs in her residential complex sold absolutely amazing sauced pork buns!
The Joyoung red date and walnut soy milk was also wonderfully thick and delicious.
She ate a whole basket of eight small sauced pork buns and drank a cup of soy milk in one go, then had a bowl of millet porridge with the shop's pickles before she was satisfied.
The bite-sized buns cost one yuan each, the Joyoung soy milk three yuan a cup, and the millet porridge one yuan a bowl. The pickles were free.
Breakfast cost her twelve yuan.
Once she had eaten and drunk her fill, Jiang Ci set her sights on the breakfast shop's owners.
The owners were a middle-aged couple, honest and down-to-earth, with a son attending university nearby. They had bought a home in Jiaxing Residential Complex with the money they earned making breakfast.
Jiang Ci spoke to the owners. She wanted large buns rather than the little ones.
She ordered large buns with four different fillings: sauced pork, beef, pickled cabbage, and glass noodles with tofu.
She wanted one hundred sauced pork buns and one hundred beef buns a day, at three yuan each.
She wanted one hundred pickled cabbage buns and one hundred glass noodle and tofu buns a day, at one yuan fifty each.
She also wanted fifty cups of Joyoung soy milk a day, at three yuan a cup.
That made four hundred large buns a day, allowing her to accumulate roughly seventy-two thousand buns over six months.
Assuming she ate three large buns a day, they would last her alone about sixty-six years.
After paying the owners a 100,000-yuan deposit and putting away the receipt, Jiang Li went to the rice noodle shop downstairs in the complex.
When she had eaten rice noodles here yesterday, she had thought how wonderful it would be if she could still eat such delicious rice noodles whenever she wanted after the natural disasters struck.
Her space was incredibly useful and could keep food fresh. Now, she could count that wish as fulfilled.
Tomato and shredded pork rice noodles, tomato and squid rice noodles, and tomato and shrimp paste rice noodles.
Pickled mustard stem and shredded pork rice noodles, pickled mustard stem and squid rice noodles, and pickled mustard stem and shrimp paste rice noodles.
Jiang Ci chose her six favorite flavors, at twenty yuan a serving.
She ordered sixty servings a day from the owner, ten of each flavor, for six months, and paid a 100,000-yuan deposit.
At one serving a day, they would last thirty years.
After breakfast and her visit to the rice noodle shop, Jiang Ci drove to a food processing factory in the suburbs that produced Zihaiguo.
She signed a contract with the factory and ordered 400,000 boxes of Zihaiguo in five flavors: classic sliced beef Zihaiguo, spicy dry pot Zihaiguo, tomato beef brisket Zihaiguo, spicy fish Zihaiguo, and pickled cabbage fish Zihaiguo.
Eighty thousand boxes of each flavor.
Even if she ate twenty boxes a day, they would last ninety years.
Buying them online would work out to thirty yuan a box, but she was buying in bulk and sourcing them directly from the manufacturer.
After some bargaining, the manufacturer finally agreed to charge her twenty yuan a box.
Her requirement was that the portions had to be larger and more generous than those sold on the market.
The 400,000 boxes came to eight million yuan.
After both parties signed the contract, Jiang Ci paid a four-million-yuan deposit. She would pay the other half after inspecting the goods and confirming they met the requirements.
Once everything was settled, Jiang Ci saw that it was about time and went straight to her stepfather's house instead of going home.
Yesterday, she had promised Wen Qianyue that she would come over for lunch today.
Her stepfather, Si Jianhua, lived in Fragrant Orchid Cottage in the city.
The residential complex had a very elegant name, and it was indeed a villa community for the wealthy.
Not only was its name refined and elegant, but its residents were all either rich or influential.
Ever since Wen Qianyue had remarried Si Jianhua, Jiang Ci could count the times they had met on one hand.
Wen Qianyue was a very domineering woman and extremely strict with her. Jiang Ci had grown up under her mother's prodding and surveillance.
She had grown into what her mother wanted her to be.
Her mother demanded that she excel in everything and get full marks in every subject. Her life had truly felt stifling.
That was why she hated Wen Qianyue. As she grew older and began to understand things, she found it even harder to control herself and opposed Wen Qianyue at every turn.
The mother and daughter could barely exchange two sentences without ending up in an argument.
When her father had been alive, he could still put in a good word for each of them and soothe them both.
After her father died, her relationship with Wen Qianyue hit rock bottom.
The two were like fire and water. Wherever Wen Qianyue was, Jiang Ci absolutely refused to go.
Then Wen Qianyue had remarried another man six months ago, leaving Jiang Ci inexplicably furious.
She also felt abandoned, left utterly alone. It hurt, and she hated Wen Qianyue even more.
In her previous life, she had never visited Fragrant Orchid Cottage.
Just as she did now, Wen Qianyue had called every weekend to invite her over for a meal, but she had never agreed. Every time, she had made a few cutting remarks before hanging up.
Si Jianhua, on the other hand, had often visited her at home, buying her piles of food and daily necessities, pressing bank cards into her hands, and bringing her meals Wen Qianyue had cooked.
But she had never appreciated any of it and had never treated Si Jianhua kindly.
Yet the man had acted as though he could not see her hostile expression. He was always gentle and smiling, accepting and understanding her, never taking offense.
Wen Qianyue was truly lucky. Both men she had chosen in her lifetime were such gentle, good-natured souls.
Without an awful daughter like her, she probably would have lived a better life, and she would not have died because of her in their previous life.
The security guards at the complex did not recognize Jiang Ci. They only let her in after calling the homeowner to confirm.
By the time Jiang Ci reached the villa, Wen Qianyue and Si Jianhua were already standing at the entrance waiting for her.
Wen Qianyue was beautiful, but she was far too stern when facing Jiang Ci.
Mainly, it was because she had always played the role of a strict mother as her daughter grew up.
And now this daughter was defying her more and more.
So she had grown used to being stern and strict, and could not change all at once.
Si Jianhua was a handsome middle-aged man, with neither a bald spot nor a beer belly, standing as straight as a pine.
He wore a smile and looked at Jiang Ci with anticipation in his eyes.
What was he looking forward to?
Jiang Ci wondered, Could he be hoping I'll call him Dad?