After a busy morning, she was tired and hungry.
She casually took out a meat dish, a vegetable dish, and a small bowl of rice for lunch.
Jiang Ci planned to catch up on some sleep.
She went upstairs to her room, lay down on the bed, pulled a light quilt over herself, and closed her eyes.
It was already two in the afternoon when she woke up.
She got up and washed her face.
Jiang Ci checked once again that the curtains throughout the three-story villa were tightly drawn.
Not even the slightest gap could remain.
After confirming everything was in order, she switched on some of the lights.
The villa's decor leaned toward a European style, rather than the natural wood style Jiang Ci preferred.
There were three bedrooms on the third floor: the master bedroom, a secondary bedroom, and a guest bedroom.
Jiang Ci put all the furniture from the three bedrooms into her space.
Three large beds, wardrobes, bedside tables, dressing tables, full-length mirrors, and more.
The wardrobes also contained some old clothes she and her parents had worn, along with down quilts, thick cotton quilts, and the like.
Her dressing table and her mother's also held quite a bit of jewelry, as well as a small amount of long-expired cosmetics.
There were three rooms on the second floor as well.
One was a workout room filled with sports equipment: two treadmills for exercise, dumbbells, an electronic stepper, an ab roller, push-up bars, jump ropes, hula hoops, and more.
One was a study where her father worked from home, with a large desk, a sofa for receiving guests, and shelves full of books on finance, management, psychology, and similar subjects.
But a closer look would reveal two or three cookbooks mixed in among them, belonging to her mother.
In a corner at the very bottom were a few children's books from her childhood.
The last room was her study.
There was an expensive white grand piano, a desk and chair, and a fluffy round rug on the floor.
A wall of bookshelves held every textbook and study material she had used from first grade through her final year of high school, all neatly arranged.
Her mother had organized them all for her.
The lower shelves held miscellaneous reading material: fashion magazines, classic novels, teen school-life magazines, illustrated manga books, required classics for each grade, and so on.
She put everything on the second floor into her space, leaving nothing behind.
The room near the stairs on the first floor was a maid's room, containing only a bed and a wardrobe, which she took.
A concealed little door beneath the stairs led to a storage room containing cleaning supplies and some basic repair tools. She took them all; they were all useful.
The living room was huge. She took the TV stand, the enormous LCD television, the projector, the large sofa, the coffee table, the tea table, the dining table, the display shelf, and everything else.
There was an enormous three-door refrigerator in the kitchen. This was a good one, so she put it in the kitchen of the house in her space.
An oven, an air fryer, an electric hot pot, a rice cooker, a dishwasher, a sterilizing cabinet, a clay pot, a wok, a stew pot, a frying pan, a nonstick pan, a microwave, an induction cooker, a pressure cooker, a high-speed blender, a meat grinder, a steamer, and other pots, bowls, ladles, and pans.
Every commonly used kitchen utensil was there, and she put them all into the kitchen of the house in her space.
Finally, she checked the entire villa again, taking the washing machine, dryer, and air conditioners as well.
The entire villa was now empty.
The kitchen of the house in her space, on the other hand, was packed full.
She had also placed the display shelf in one of the rooms, which would be dedicated to storing relatively valuable or rare items from then on.
For example, the antiques her father had bought at auction, porcelain vases, jade and jadeite, and some limited-edition models on the display shelf.
There were also the photographs she had taken of the prosperous world before the natural disasters.
The washing machine and dryer had also been placed in suitable spots.
Air conditioners, however, were unnecessary inside the space.
Apart from the refrigerator, washing machine, dryer, display shelf, and kitchen supplies, which went into the house in her space, Jiang Ci placed all the other items outside the house.
Once everything was sorted out, Jiang Ci opened the front door and stepped out, locked it again, and drove away.
She would be going abroad for a few days, and she wasn't used to the food overseas, so she felt that ordering from two large restaurants wasn't enough. She planned to find two more similar restaurants.
There were plenty of large restaurants in the city that catered all kinds of banquets.
Jiang Ci easily placed orders with two more restaurants, again ordering two hundred portions from each per day.
Next door to the last restaurant was a paper-wrapped fish restaurant.
Jiang Ci ordered a paper-wrapped fish and two sides: winter melon and instant noodles.
It was indeed delicious, and she ate her fill.
As she was leaving, she noticed that the restaurant sold charcoal-grilled fish as well as paper-wrapped fish, so she ordered fifty grilled longsnout catfish per day from the owner.
After leaving, she followed the same route as before.
First came the hot pepper soup shop, then the snack street, followed by the restaurants, the frog and fish restaurant, the barbecue shop, the lamb rice noodle shop, the breakfast shop, and the rice noodle shop.
Finally, she went home.
Lying on the living room sofa, she took out her phone and found an unread message and a missed call.
She opened the unread message.
Pharmaceutical representative: [The medicine is ready. Are you free tomorrow morning?]
Jiang Ci: [Yes. Meet me at the same car rental agency at ten tomorrow morning.]
The reply came instantly: [All right.]
Then she opened the missed call.
She tapped to call back.
"Hello."
"Hello, Miss Jiang. This is the Zihaiguo factory. We're calling to let you know that the four hundred thousand boxes of Zihaiguo you ordered are ready. Would you like to collect them yourself, or should we deliver them to a location you specify?"
"Yes, I'll pick them up at two tomorrow afternoon."
"Two tomorrow afternoon, correct?"
"Yes."
"All right. Someone will be at the warehouse to meet you tomorrow. Sorry for disturbing you. Goodbye."
After hanging up, she opened Happy Xiaoxiaole and played for half an hour before going to shower and sleep.
At six the next morning, Jiang Ci entered her space to train. She had put all the exercise equipment from the second floor of her villa into her space.
She had also set aside an area specifically for this fitness equipment, making exercise and training much more convenient.
She trained inside the space for two hours.
Sweat poured off her, and she was brimming with energy, feeling strength throughout her body.
She took a shower and changed her clothes.
After breakfast, she drove the van to the Linjiang Car Rental Agency.
It was only nine when she arrived, an hour before the agreed time.
Not wanting to sit there waiting, Jiang Ci drove around the neighborhood.
She spotted a milk tea shop and went inside to order a hundred cups of milk tea, to be collected at noon.
There was a square nearby, where someone was singing with a large crowd gathered around.
Carrying her camera, Jiang Ci went over to listen for a while and took a few photos.
A child brought out to play by their grandparents was clamoring for a sugar figurine.
Jiang Ci scanned the area and, sure enough, spotted a sugar figurine vendor in one corner of the square.
She walked over and ordered a Doraemon sugar figurine from the vendor.
While the vendor was making it, she raised her camera and took a photo of the sugar figurine stall, then another of the craftsman concentrating on his work, and finally a close-up of her Doraemon sugar figurine.
The child who had been clamoring for a sugar figurine came over holding their grandfather's hand and asked for a little rabbit sugar figurine.
After paying, Jiang Ci licked the Doraemon sugar figurine in her hand and wandered around some more before returning to the car rental agency.