novelraw Chapter 328: (Extra 2)
Chapter 328: (Extra 2)
Thingyan: Unfortunately the deal with the potential proofreaders all fell through. I don’t understand why (っ- ‸ – ς)
So, instead of continuing to wait, I’ll just post the chapters without proofreading. They shouldn’t be too bad (ര ‿ ര )
…
The next morning, the first thing Yu Xi did when she woke up was send her consciousness into the space.
The red box was still there, resting next to the bagged rice. Its lid was open, and the ten neatly arranged gold bars were still inside, untouched.
Her enhanced physical abilities hadn’t frightened her. The sudden appearance of a storage space and a prize-drawing digital watch hadn’t shocked her either.
But ten gold bars materializing out of thin air—that had genuinely startled her.
She’d already looked into it online. The stamps and serial numbers on the gold bars were real. They originated from a long-established gold shop in H City, and based on the serial numbers, she could even roughly trace the years the bars were sold.
In other words, these gold bars were entirely legitimate. She could walk into any gold shop and sell them for cash.
Ten gold bars—at the current buyback price of around 400 yuan per gram for pure gold, each 100-gram bar was worth about 40,000 yuan. With ten of them, that came to 400,000. That meant she had just gained 400,000 out of nowhere.
To Yu Xi, the changes in her body and the appearance of the space were strange, yes—but they were still limited to her personally. But these gold bars, which were fully traceable, entirely reasonable in the real world, yet appeared through such an extraordinary means—that was something on an entirely different scale.
After all, if something truly beyond her understanding did exist, it was one thing for it to change her. But to make gold appear out of thin air and still fit seamlessly into the world’s logic—that was far harder to process.
Yu Xi felt she couldn’t keep thinking about it. Ever since yesterday, she had this subtle, growing sense of unease.
She got out of bed and pulled back the curtains. The rain, which had lessened overnight, was now pouring again, drumming hard against the glass. Looking out from the eighth floor, the entire city was shrouded in gray.
On her phone was a message from a dormmate: due to the heavy rain, all military training was canceled today. The school would announce later when it would resume.
After passing on the update, the dormmate also sent a message full of envy. Apparently, when it had just started raining yesterday, their devil of an instructor had said the summer rain was perfect timing—and insisted on doing endurance training in the rain to toughen up the students’ willpower and resilience.
They were made to run in the rain for over half an hour. Everyone ended up completely soaked. It was only when the downpour intensified and the sky turned pitch black that the instructor finally reluctantly let them go.
That very night, several students came down with colds. One even developed a high fever. The school didn’t dare delay and rushed them to the hospital immediately.
That student happened to be local. When the parents found out their child had been forced to run in a downpour for half an hour, resulting in a high fever, they were furious. They immediately confronted the school, demanding to know how it could so blatantly ignore student health.
So the school, seeing that it was still raining today and that the forecast predicted several more days of storms, suspended all military training and told the students to rest in the dorms. They also allowed local students to take leave and return home. Once the typhoon passed, the school would issue another notice on when to return.
Yu Xi was pretty happy about this—because it meant she didn’t have to go back to campus today. She still hadn’t fully adapted to her enhanced body. Day-to-day life was fine, but if she had to do drills or running, it would be too easy to slip up and expose herself.
But not going back to school didn’t mean she was staying in all day. She changed out of her pajamas and into a light, comfortable outfit—T-shirt and jeans—then left her room.
Yu Zhenzhen was already up and in the kitchen cooking porridge. The door to the other bedroom, the one facing south, was slightly ajar. Tianbao was still asleep inside.
This apartment had a horizontal layout with the main entrance in the center. Right past the door was an open-plan kitchen and dining area against the wall, and the living room with a fully enclosed balcony faced south.
The master and secondary bedrooms were on either side of the living room, both also facing south. They weren’t much different in size—just that one was closer to the bathroom.
Yu Xi hadn’t lived here for very long, and after Yu Zhenzhen moved in, she cleared out the room near the bathroom for her sister and took the other bedroom herself.
The overall decor of the apartment was a mix of gray-pink and natural wood tones, accented with black glass surfaces. Paired with stylish handmade light fixtures, the design was simple yet trendy.
After washing up in the bathroom, Yu Xi came out and sniffed the delicious aroma in the air, instantly feeling hungry. “Sis, what are you cooking?”
“Chicken, shrimp, and mushroom congee. Also made some potato cakes. Sit down, it’s almost ready,” Yu Zhenzhen said, then glanced at Yu Xi’s clothes. “It’s still pouring out. You guys still doing military training today?”
“Military training’s been paused. Everyone’s back in the dorms. I’ve got to drive out, though—need to deliver the stuff I bought yesterday to my classmates.”
She spoke while picking up a bowl and chopsticks to serve herself congee. Since she had other plans today anyway, it was perfect to keep using the excuse from yesterday—better to stay consistent with the act.
Yu Zhenzhen nodded. She knew most of the students’ families lived out of town. With the heavy rain making military training impossible, the students had nowhere to go and could only stay cooped up in their dorms. Even if they wanted to go out, the rain combined with unfamiliar surroundings would make it inconvenient.
At a time like this, Yu Xi—who had moved to H City early because of buying a home—was suddenly very useful.
“Go on then, just drive slow,” Yu Zhenzhen said, frying two more potato pancakes before sitting down at the table to eat. The remaining batter would be used to make fresh ones later once Tianbao woke up.
Yu Xi had gotten her driver’s license a year ago, and Yu Zhenzhen had taken her out to practice driving many times. She drove slowly but steadily, so Yu Zhenzhen wasn’t worried.
She was a big sister, not a mother—she took care of her and spoiled her, but when it came to certain things, she knew she had to let go and give Yu Xi the space to become independent. Even if the road ahead would be full of stumbles, it was the only way to grow.
“Oh right, don’t forget those fruits in the fridge and on the shelf when you leave.” There were sixty boxes across six types of fruit, completely filling both the fridge and the cabinets. The kitchen wasn’t that big to begin with, and just looking at it gave Yu Zhenzhen a headache.
Yu Xi nodded. Then Yu Zhenzhen thought of the boxed groceries delivered by the supermarket and asked if she should help carry them down later.
Of course, Yu Xi had no intention of actually carrying anything. She just wanted to quietly put them into the space. But she had to keep up appearances. So she shook her head and said she could handle it herself.
Yu Zhenzhen didn’t press the issue and only reminded her to eat a full breakfast.
Yu Xi did eat more than usual. Since her body had changed, her appetite seemed to have increased a bit as well.
Yu Zhenzhen was an excellent cook. The chicken-shrimp-mushroom congee was savory and full of flavor. The chicken, shrimp, and mushrooms were finely chopped, briefly boiled in water with julienned ginger, then scooped out and added to the nearly finished congee. This way, the ginger water eliminated any unpleasant odors from the meat but didn’t leave behind the strong ginger taste that Tianbao disliked.
Yu Xi had two big bowls of congee, two potato pancakes, and packed a small bag of washed sweet kumquats and cherry tomatoes to snack on during the drive. Then she carried two large bags of boxed fruit, left the apartment, and entered the elevator.
The residential buildings in this complex came in various types—some with large units, some smaller. Different layouts also had different numbers of floors, but most were between eight and twelve stories.
Yu Xi’s small apartment building had ten floors. The first floor was all garages—private ones for cars and separate garages for electric scooters. The rooftop was communal and could be used for drying clothes.
Because the complex had rules against hanging clothes outside balconies, larger households would often bring their laundry up to the rooftop when the indoor space wasn’t enough.
There were four entrance units in the building. Yu Xi’s home was in the second one, but the scooter garage was next to the fourth entrance.
She took the elevator down to the underground public parking lot, retrieved the car, drove it up to the surface, and looped around to the scooter garage. After parking, she grabbed an umbrella, got out of the car, and went into the garage to “move boxes.”
Yu Xi shut the door, turned on the small garage light, and in just one second, transferred all eleven boxes of food, seven boxes of drinks, four boxes of fruit, plus the rice, flour, oil, and eggs—all into the space.
She looked at the items in the space and used her consciousness to sense them. The boxes, big and small, shifted like building blocks, rearranging themselves and stacking exactly as she wanted—suspended in midair.
Apparently, in addition to time being frozen, the space also had no gravity. Even if the bottom layer held only a single egg, she could stack a dozen boxes on top without issue.
That meant every corner of the 500-cubic-meter space could be filled. And what she found herself thinking at that moment was—do I even have enough money to buy enough stuff to fill the entire space?
Yu Xi: ……
Oh no. What kind of illness was this?
**
Yu Xi drove off, first making a stop at the bank. Afterward, she went to a gold shop she had found online. Among similar stores in H City, this one offered a slightly higher buyback price—411 yuan per gram. That meant one bar would earn her over 1,000 yuan more, and ten bars would be worth more than 10,000 extra.
Of course, this was her first time selling. She wasn’t sure how it would go, so she only planned to take out two bars today.
Surprisingly, the buyback process went even more smoothly than Yu Xi had expected. She had originally come up with a whole story—something about how the gold was part of her sister’s dowry and now that the marriage had ended, they were looking to liquidate it, etc. But in the end, the staff just asked for her ID, made a copy of it, and that was it. No additional questions. They confirmed the price, inspected the gold, and directly transferred the money to her.
The account she gave them was linked to a brand-new bank card. Her old card sent text message alerts for every transaction, and she was afraid it’d be hard to explain to Yu Zhenzhen if she noticed a sudden surge in funds.
Moments later, Yu Xi looked at the 82,200 yuan in her account and practically floated out of the gold shop.
People say there’s no such thing as a free lunch—but right now it felt like the heavens were raining dumplings straight into her lap.
What kind of price was she eventually going to have to pay for all of this?
Yu Xi walked through the rain to the parking lot and got in the car. The rain was heavy, and the wind was strong. Even with an umbrella, one side of her pants had gotten soaked. She shut the car door quickly and sat there, staring out at the gray, rainy world, her mind drifting.
As a young woman, she’d read web novels, and she knew that space abilities were often tied to apocalyptic settings. She just hadn’t wanted to think in that direction before. But looking back now at everything that had happened, she had a feeling she might already know what was coming.
Stockpiling.
She needed to stock up like her life depended on it.
She’d been given both the space and the money. If she still didn’t start hoarding, she’d be a fool.
Yu Xi immediately pulled out her phone to search for nearby large supermarkets, but the search results also recommended a nearby agricultural product exhibition and sales center.
This particular event had just started last week. It was a traveling showcase featuring regional specialty goods and food from all over the country, held in city after city with direct sales and promotional campaigns.
She knew about events like this—hundreds of booths selling every kind of food you could imagine, and plenty you couldn’t.
Yu Xi instantly decided: that’s where she was going.
The rain had affected foot traffic, but luckily the event was being held inside an indoor stadium, so all the booths were operating normally.
The first booth she saw at the entrance was one selling highland milk tea, which was different from ordinary milk tea. It came in sweet and salty varieties, with ingredients like barley, sesame, and even meat jerky added in.
She stood there sampling every kind, and in the end, bought five large packs each of the original sweet and salty versions—each pack containing 40 individual sachets. She also bought five large packs of the barley-sweet and meat-jerky-salty variations. The vendor, delighted, praised her savvy and packed all twenty bags of milk tea into a large cardboard box for her.
Just as Yu Xi was about to pick up the box and leave, the vendor saw she was just a small young woman and quickly reminded her that there were rental trolleys at the entrance. They could hold more than ten boxes and were easy to push.
Yu Xi thanked him, paid for a trolley, and happily began shopping in earnest.
At the grassland beef and lamb booth:
– French-cut lamb chops, 8 pieces per bag—she got ten bags.
– Lamb skewers, 20 sticks per bag—ten bags.
– Whole-cut beef steaks, five per bag—ten bags!
– Pre-cooked shredded beef, both original and cumin flavors—twenty bags each!
At a booth from the northwest:
– One box of fresh yacon, two large bags each of almonds, raisins, whole cumin seeds, goji berries, and traditional pressed cakes.
At a desert oasis booth:
– Ten bottles of 1.5L fresh milk (one box), and five large bags each of milk tablets, milk candy, and cheese—Tianbao’s favorites.
At the seafood booth:
– Vacuum-packed dried squid, dried abalone, dried cuttlefish, dried scallops, dried clams, dried fish maw, and marinated salted fish—five big bags of each!
The seafood was all large in size. Sometimes when Yu Zhenzhen didn’t have time to buy fresh seafood, she would rehydrate these dried ones, and with the right cooking skills, they were just as delicious.
At the candy booth:
– Chocolate coins, gold-wrapped chocolate balls, large slabs of dark chocolate, mini fruit candies, animal-shaped gummies, and all sorts of bubble gum…
She picked out an entire box of assorted sweets.
At every booth she bought from, the vendors praised her for having a good eye and knowing how to buy.
Yu Xi: ……
But at that moment, looking at the cart already piled high with boxes, Yu Xi knew she had to stop for the day. She casually asked one of the vendors how many days the product exhibition would continue, and upon learning there were still three more days, she decided she would come back every day until it ended.
Thankfully, the stadium had an underground parking lot, and Yu Zhenzhen’s car had a large trunk—it was a hatchback with lots of space, so these boxes could probably just about fit.
Putting on a slightly “struggling” expression, Yu Xi pushed the overloaded cart into the freight elevator, went down to the parking lot, and rolled it to her car to begin loading.
There were a total of eleven boxes, varying in size. Besides the trunk, the entire back seat was filled as well.
Afterward, she returned the rental cart and drove off.
As she headed home, she mentally reviewed the orders she’d placed on Taobao the night before. Since they had a child in the house, most of their food was bought at supermarkets, while daily necessities were more commonly purchased online.
Things like daily-use goods for three people, shoes, clothes, household cleaning supplies, and paper products—she’d already placed over a dozen orders yesterday, choosing shops based in the city or nearby areas. They’d arrive in a day or two, or at worst, in three or four if the rain delayed things.
In her residential complex, small packages went to the parcel lockers, while larger ones were left at the entrance for residents to collect after receiving a delivery notice. So Yu Xi wasn’t worried about Yu Zhenzhen noticing anything—as long as she picked them up promptly, she could quietly store everything in the scooter garage, then transfer it to the space.
What she did need to stock up on were Tianbao’s usual items: formula, supplements, nutritional biscuits, and noodles.
With that in mind, Yu Xi made a stop at a baby products store on the way home.
Tianbao’s formula was age-specific and wouldn’t be changing anymore, so Yu Xi bought three boxes—six cans per box.
She also filled a whole box with assorted supplements, biscuits, and noodles. Then, seeing the new autumn collection on display, she couldn’t resist picking out seven or eight sets of soft, cute outfits for Tianbao, a few pairs of shoes, and several types of toys. Altogether, it filled another large bag.
Good thing the passenger seat was still empty—once everything was loaded into the car, it was packed to the brim.
Yu Xi stared at all the items in the car and sighed. Then, while waiting at a red light, she suddenly remembered—the car windows were all fitted with one-way privacy film. With the doors shut, no one outside could see a thing inside!
So she made a quick detour to a parking garage and parked for about ten minutes. When she drove back out, the car was empty—everything had been moved into the space.
As she neared home, she spotted a water station across the street. Through the glass door, rows of large blue barrels filled with purified water seemed to wave at her.
Yu Xi: ……
She crossed the street and parked in front of the shop. A moment later, she stepped out with an umbrella, followed by the owner in a raincoat, who cheerfully helped her load five packs of bottled water into the car. Each pack contained 24 bottles, each bottle 550ml.
She also placed an order for twenty 18.9L jugs of purified water. Since the residential complex was right next door, the owner happily offered to deliver them for free.
To the average person, heavy rain wasn’t a big deal—making money was the real priority.
Half an hour later, Yu Xi saw off the delivery guy, shut the garage door, and transferred all twenty barrels of water into the space.
She closed her eyes and mentally scanned the contents of the space. That vague sense of unease she’d been carrying seemed to ease—just a little.
**
Over the next three days, Yu Xi visited the agricultural exhibition every day and stopped by various supermarkets along the way. She never bought excessive amounts at once—just filled a single cart each time, stacking items upward to avoid drawing attention.
During this time, she visited another gold shop and sold two more gold bars. Then she made trips to four different brand-name electronics stores, purchasing four laptops for home use, four large-capacity smartphones, twenty high-capacity power banks, and matching external storage drives for the laptops.
While waiting in one store for the staff to install software on the laptops, Yu Xi scrolled through her phone and suddenly came across a string of breaking news headlines, all marked with a red “BREAKING” icon.
— Flood disaster in T City!
— T City launches emergency relief!
— T City power outage!
— T City billboard collapse!
T City had never been a place heavily impacted by typhoons in the past, but within just two days, parts of the city’s roads had been completely flooded.
In some areas, due to the terrain, the rainwater had turned into rapid streams rushing across the ground like rivers. There were still many people nearby at the time, and several were swept away. Glass doors of shops along the streets were either broken by the flood or shattered outright by strong winds.
In the chaos, some people taking shelter on the roadside recorded shocking footage of what was happening.
One video showed an ordinary citizen bravely diving into the water to grab hold of a mother and child who had been swept away by the current. The mother had gone from helpless panic to stunned relief, as if she’d walked away from the edge of death. Shaking and tearful, she clutched the person who saved them and kept saying thank you.
Under that news post, everyone was praising the bravery of that everyday hero.
But another piece of news from T City struck a much heavier note. Due to the typhoon and torrential rain, a massive billboard had collapsed at an intersection—right as a car passed underneath it. The billboard crushed the small car.
The people inside were injured and trapped, unable to open the door. Bystanders nearby just kept filming, and no one stepped forward to help lift the sign or even call for help. In the end, the person inside the car regained consciousness on their own and called emergency services to be rescued.
The two stories formed a stark contrast. Some people were outraged, others sighed in frustration.
Yu Xi finished reading the news, her chest tight with emotion. She found two official T City donation platforms and donated 10,000 yuan to each, doing what little she could.
But the news of large-scale power outages in some areas of T City gave her a wake-up call. After leaving the electronics store that day, she looked up local suppliers and visited a shop specializing in small generators. She bought two small, gasoline-powered home generators.
Although these generators ran on gasoline and weren’t cheap to operate, they were compact, quiet, and fully capable of powering an entire household’s basic needs.
Of course, now she also had to figure out how to stock up on gasoline.
Later that day, just as she stepped out of the elevator at home, she heard Tianbao crying. Each floor of the building had four units per entrance, and hers was the one farthest in. She hurried down the hallway and saw that her front door was wide open—and inside the living room was an uninvited guest, clinging to Yu Zhenzhen and refusing to let go.
Yu Zhenzhen was clearly struggling and trying to break free, but the man clung to her shamelessly, begging and pleading.
Little Tianbao didn’t understand what was going on between her parents. Hugging her bear plush, she stood to the side crying, her face streaked with tears.
“Yu Jun, let go of me!”
“I’ll let go if you stop being mad! I know you’re angry, but I already apologized! And there’s really nothing between me and that woman…”
Yu Jun clearly thought women always meant the opposite of what they said—and that since he’d come all the way here to reconcile, Yu Zhenzhen would definitely soften. He didn’t notice the growing fury in her eyes and still refused to let go.
Yu Xi let out a cold laugh, walked over, picked up Tianbao, and kissed and comforted her before carrying her into the bedroom. She turned on a cartoon for her, gently shut the door behind her, and came back out.
Without saying a word, she walked up behind Yu Jun and, with one swift move, grabbed both his wrists and twisted them, yanking him off her sister. Then she gave one more sharp twist downward.
“AAAHHH—my hand—my hand’s broken!!” the greasy scumbag shrieked.
Yu Xi ignored him. Under Yu Zhenzhen’s stunned, speechless gaze, she dragged Yu Jun out the door and even kicked him hard in the back on the way out.
“Didn’t you see my sister was about to call the cops? Not mad? You gross sleazeball! Harassment during marriage is still a crime—especially when your cooling-off period’s almost up and the divorce is around the corner. Try laying another finger on her, and I’ll break you next time!”
Yu Zhenzhen: …………