Chapter 15 New Home

The procurement had to speed up. On the way, Bai Xiao intentionally detoured down a small path, found a corner with no people or surveillance, and stored a carload of medicines and other supplies into her storage slots.

According to the agreement, she was to pick up clothes at the underground garage of the mall where she bought clothes yesterday at 1:00 PM. After arriving, Bai Xiao called the store managers and agreed on a parking spot.

Before long, shop assistants arrived one after another pushing carts. With their help, it took over an hour and two trips to finish collecting all the goods.

Next, only various tools and some miscellaneous survival supplies remained unbought.

Bai Xiao opened the map and found the location of the city's largest small commodity wholesale market, which was about a twenty-minute drive from her current position.

It was already past two o'clock, with over four hours left until seven. It would take nearly half an hour to drive from the small commodity market to the abandoned park in the old city area.

Subtracting nearly an hour for travel time meant she only had a bit over three hours for shopping.

Time was too tight. Bai Xiao felt spread too thin, wishing she could create a clone to split the work.

Entering the small commodity market, Bai Xiao looked for several large shops that had stock according to the categories on her list.

After listening to the merchants' recommendations and testing the items, she ordered over ten of each type of tool. She bought more lighting supplies, purchasing them by the box, and stockpiled varying amounts of other categories based on their durability.

After finishing a purchase at each shop, Bai Xiao had the clerks follow her to deliver the goods directly to her car. Once full, she would drive out, find a secluded corner to move them into her storage slots, wait a while, and then return. After three round trips, everything was finally prepared and bought.

By the time the main procurement was done, it was almost time to collect the food. At past six o'clock in summer, it should have been bright, but due to the fog, there were already signs of it turning dark.

This coincided with the evening rush hour. Between the weather and poor visibility, the roads were even more congested. By the time Bai Xiao reached the pickup location, a truck had already arrived.

Bai Xiao parked the car and hurried over to apologize to the driver.

"Miss Bai, are you alone? Where should we unload the goods?" the driver asked dubiously. He had never met a buyer who wanted to unload in such a desolate place, and with the girl being alone, how could she unload so much cargo?

"Yes, just unload here. Please wait a moment; the workers I hired will be here soon, and they'll help unload then."

When purchasing yesterday, Bai Xiao had already thought about the unloading issue. She had asked the wholesale market owner, who said they were only responsible for transport, not loading or unloading, but could introduce some familiar workers.

Upon hearing this, Bai Xiao simply entrusted the owner to hire workers based on the cargo volume and arrange for them to come at the time of delivery. To speed things up, she gave double the hiring deposit and asked the owner to book a few extra workers.

Sure enough, after a short while, a van and several small delivery trucks from other shops also drove over.

With everyone and all the goods present, unloading began. Many hands made light work; ten workers spent two hours organizing the goods on the ground by category.

Once the work was done, Bai Xiao paid the remaining balance to the merchants and settled the final payments for the workers.

The lead worker looked at the piles of goods and asked in confusion, "Miss Bai, are these goods just going to be left here?"

Bai Xiao had prepared her excuse long ago and replied, "These are supplies donated to the Hope Nursing Home. I don't have a large enough space to store them, so they're temporarily unloaded here. In half an hour, specialized personnel will load them onto a large truck to be transported out of town."

The workers nodded repeatedly, praising her kindness, and then took their money and drove away.

She waited until they were far away and their taillights were out of sight before she began moving the supplies into different storage slots by category.

The items on the procurement list were basically all bought. On the way back, due to the fog and the total darkness, driving was difficult, so Bai Xiao drove very slowly the whole way.

A thirty-minute trip took nearly an hour, and she arrived home after ten o'clock.

Now, food occupied four storage slots and water occupied two; all six slots were packed full.

Clothes were placed in a separate storage slot. Originally, several hundred pieces of clothing wouldn't have filled the 8-cubic-meter space, but because each item had its own packaging, they took up quite a bit of room. Later, when she had time to remove the packaging, she could free up another third of the space.

Medicine, protective gear, hygiene products, various tools, and survival supplies occupied another storage slot.

Now eight storage slots were occupied, with two still empty. Bai Xiao thought hard about what else she needed to buy.

Outside the window, fog shrouded the night, and the entire world looked as if it had been splashed with ink. The once-prosperous city's night view was now submerged in the night mist, with only faint glimmers of light visible. The more Bai Xiao looked, the more she felt it was an ominous omen.

She couldn't move house slowly anymore. If the fog persisted tomorrow or even thickened, driving would no longer be convenient or fast, and traffic would definitely be affected.

She would pack her essentials tonight and move part of them to the new home first.

No sooner said than done. Anyone who has moved knows that even for a small apartment, if a girl really starts packing seriously, there are so many things that it's impossible to finish in a short time. They need to be categorized and boxed up; it's impossible to complete without at least half a day.

But the changes in the world left Bai Xiao with little time for this. She only chose necessary daily necessities, discarding all pretty but impractical dresses and skirts, and only packing casual and comfortable clothes for all four seasons.

She also added toiletries, personal items, cookware, tableware, kitchen supplies, and other miscellaneous things.

After finishing, Bai Xiao looked at the toiletries and suddenly remembered that to save space, she hadn't originally planned to stockpile these categories because the cleaning ball items from the mall could replace them.

But now there were still 2 empty storage slots left. Besides, buying things in the game cost points, and points were too precious; she should avoid spending them if possible.

It would be better to go out and stockpile a batch tomorrow. It would also be best to buy some containers for tap water to solve the problem of bathing or wiping down.

With the storage slots available, she didn't need to buy cardboard boxes for packing, nor did she need to drive back and forth herself, saving even the effort of carrying things upstairs.

Bai Xiao put everything in all at once and drove to the new residential area overnight.

The new house was Unit 1, Room 1201, Building 5 of Binhe Mansion. It had two elevators serving four households, with a large corridor between the east and west units. The house was 142 square meters with a three-bedroom, one-living-room layout.

The decoration style was Italian minimalist. Since she lived alone, her parents rarely visited, and she had no close relatives, Bai Xiao had only furnished one bedroom. The master bathroom had been converted into a walk-in closet, leaving one guest bathroom for showering.

Of the other two bedrooms, one was converted into a study, and the other was left empty, containing only some fitness equipment and miscellaneous items.

Bai Xiao hadn't visited the new house since the cleaning was finished. The furniture and appliances were all there, but daily necessities hadn't been placed yet. Bai Xiao entered and turned on the main power; after switching on the lights, the entire space brightened up.

Finding an empty space in the living room, Bai Xiao took everything out of the storage slots and began categorizing and arranging them. She worked until 3:00 AM before finally putting everything in its proper place.

Having broken another sweat, she took a shower and changed into clean clothes. Bai Xiao lay on the soft new bed and let out a long sigh of exhaustion.

After a busy day, she was exhausted both mentally and physically. She really wanted to sleep, but she couldn't rest easy without planning tomorrow's specific schedule. So, she closed her eyes and began to calculate silently.