An empty room, yet surrounded by rows of cabinets.
She carefully groped around inside for a while before finally mustering the courage to pull open one of the cabinets. Seeing it completely bare, Jin Qianqian nearly laughed out of sheer frustration. It was set up so mysteriously, yet there was absolutely nothing inside.
She casually pushed the door shut and checked a few more. The result was the same—nothing but empty space.
"Desire brings sorrow, desire brings fear. Without desire, what is there to grieve or fear?" she silently recited the Buddhist proverb to herself. "Getting such a massive stroke of luck is already a huge gain. I can't afford to be greedy."
She had read plenty of novels featuring magical dimensions before, and there were certainly ones far worse than this. She was satisfied.
Appearing back in her living room, Jin Qianqian's heart hammered in her chest. According to the novels, getting this kind of miraculous opportunity meant you were either about to face the apocalypse or transmigrate to another world. If that was truly the case, she needed to be prepared.
Before doing anything else, however, Jin Qianqian decided to run an experiment. She poured a cup of boiling hot water and placed it into the spatial dimension, then did the same with an ice cream she had stored in the fridge. She placed one portion in the red room and another in the outer circular hall.
While waiting, she didn't sit idle. She grabbed a pen and began calculating all her current assets.
She had two houses left by her parents, plus savings and compensation money totaling around seven million yuan. There was also an old ancestral home in her hometown, but her grandfather had left that to her. It was her roots, so she couldn't touch it.
As for her own income over the three years since graduation, apart from obligatory social gifts, she hadn't made any extravagant purchases. With her bonuses and commissions, she had another seven to eight hundred thousand yuan in her bank card.
Right, the most important sum came from her great-aunt: a nine-figure deposit that had just hit her account, a foreign estate, and some corporate stocks. All of these could be liquidated as needed. Fortunately, she had majored in economics during university and occasionally dabbled in the stock market, so handling this wouldn't be difficult.
However, it seemed she would have to make a trip abroad for the estate. She also wanted to see the environment her great-aunt had lived in and pay respects at her grave.
Now that she possessed such massive wealth, her new concern was running out of room in the spatial dimension. Even if she filled all the cabinets and stacked things on the open floor, she would have to calculate her usage meticulously.
She pushed open the door to her parents' old bedroom. This place held painful memories she usually dared not touch. Aside from routine cleaning, it took courage every time she stepped inside.
Tilting her head back to blink away her tears, Jin Qianqian pulled back the dust sheet over the bed. It used to be brand new, but after years of sitting unused, the paint had started peeling in many places. Closing her eyes, Jin Qianqian directly transferred the bed into the dimension. Immediately after, she started packing up the clothes and quilts from the wardrobe.
Finally, clutching the jewelry box her mother had left behind, she entered the space.
She carefully placed the jewelry box into the first cabinet she had opened earlier. But then, to her shock, the box shrank! It looked just like a miniature Mili resting at the bottom of the shelf.
Jin Qianqian narrowed her eyes but quickly snatched the jewelry box back out. Seeing it revert to its normal size in front of her, she finally understood—these cabinets were actually pocket dimensions. Their capacity was not to be underestimated!
Her previous worries about the limited floor space were instantly resolved. She raised her hand and glanced at her wristwatch, only to find the hands completely still. "Is time frozen in here?"
She hurriedly ran over to check the hot and cold items she had brought in earlier. It was incredibly unscientific. The cup of water was boiling hot, yet there wasn't a single wisp of steam rising from it. She then looked at the ice cream. The ice crystals on its surface were exactly the same as when she first brought it in. Even the slight indentation from her finger was still perfectly preserved.
It had been an hour or two since she placed these items inside. This was practically a natural preservation vault!
Jin Qianqian sat in her living room, rejoicing for the better part of the day, until a sudden ringtone broke her out of her stupor.
"Jin Qianqian! You said you were taking half the morning off to deal with family matters, but it's already three in the afternoon! Why aren't you at the company yet?" Manager Li, who was also her university senior, Li Tian'ai, roared from the other end of the line.
Jin Qianqian looked at her watch, which had resumed ticking, and finally realized what she had forgotten.
"Manager Li, I still have a few things I haven't sorted out yet. I'm afraid I have to ask for the rest of the day off." Jin Qianqian's face was full of apologies, completely forgetting that the other party couldn't see her expression over the phone.
Li Tian'ai had always taken great care of her back in university, and she was the one who helped Jin Qianqian land her current job. Otherwise, as a fresh graduate with zero experience, there was no way she could have established a foothold in a foreign enterprise so quickly.
"Is it very troublesome?" Li Tian'ai immediately grew concerned. After all, it was supposed to be resolved in half a day, yet it was still dragging on. "Do you need me to come over and take a look?"
"No, no," Jin Qianqian hastily declined. "You're already so busy all day. Please don't run back and forth just for me.
"Besides, I'm almost done wrapping things up here. Wait until Ming Tian goes over. I'll tell you then."
Li Tian'ai didn't insist. She offered a few words of concern and hung up. In just that short span of time, several more people were already waiting for her to handle business.
Jin Qianqian stared blankly at the ceiling, mentally reviewing everything she needed to process over the next few days. She also started doing her homework for the incoming supply run.
The next day, after arriving at the company to complete her resignation procedures and placating Li Tian'ai, Jin Qianqian became so busy her feet barely touched the ground. She rented an entire floor in a newly developed commercial building, publicly announcing that she was preparing to open a new supermarket there.
If the apocalypse or transmigration she envisioned never happened, she could continuously rotate and update her supplies through the supermarket, keeping a trump card up her sleeve.
With a legitimate cover, she began tirelessly searching for manufacturers across various websites. She sourced her stockpile evenly, half domestic and half international.
Clothing—regardless of the season or style, from loungewear to outdoor gear—she prepared them all. Toiletries were absolutely essential. With her mild germaphobia, she couldn't bear the thought of living without proper personal care products. Rice and white flour were hauled back truckload by truckload, along with every kind of coarse grain imaginable. None of it could be left out.
As for the cliché of traveling directly to the source to buy goods, did people really think she was stupid? If massive quantities of items suddenly vanished in unfamiliar territory, it would definitely draw suspicion. Now, with such a massive supermarket acting as a front, everyone just assumed it was advance inventory storage.
She ordered a batch of every single type of snack available, completely undiscriminating whether she had tried them before or not. Large commodities, small trinkets, household goods, and kitchenware—ranging from massive pieces of furniture down to simple toothpicks—she didn't miss a single thing.
When her funds ran low, she sold off her stocks. Once the stock money cleared, she immediately began purchasing all sorts of blades. She even paid extra to have various machetes professionally sharpened. Naturally, all of this was done in secret.
On top of that, there were electronics, medical supplies, hygiene products, and much more.