Chapter 16 Planning

She needed to stock up on cleaning and personal care supplies. The refrigerator in her new home was empty. To make eating on the go easier, the first batch of food Bai Xiao had stockpiled consisted of ready-to-eat processed goods. However, if she was going to stay in the real world, there was no need to eat those; she still needed to buy some fresh items.

Fruits, vegetables, grains, oils, non-staple foods, meat, eggs, milk, and seasonings could all be settled in one stop at a large warehouse-style Supermarket.

The new home was in the city center, with a large shopping mall not far away. Other supplies could be picked up at the mall upon her return. It just so happened that Bai Xiao also wanted to buy some sports and leisure clothes and personal items.

Calculating her recent expenses, aside from the 700,000 spent on food and water, today's supplies cost about 300,000. After deducting the renovation costs from the house sale money, and adding her own savings and the private funds left by her grandmother, her bank card only had a bit over 500,000 left.

Money was flowing out like water. Spending so much at once was a bit painful, but more than that, she felt a sense of security—a peace of mind knowing she had no worries for the future.

Bai Xiao even thought that if she had more empty storage slots, she could spend twice as much money.

Besides these, there was also daily water. How could she put that in a storage slot? Water isn't like food that can be held in boxes; it's formless and must be placed in a container before it can be stored.

She would look for a place selling water storage containers tomorrow.

Having planned out the general course of action for the next day, she finally fell into a peaceful sleep.

...

The next day was Friday, and there were too many things to do. Bai Xiao got up as soon as it hit seven o'clock.

In fact, over these three days, she discovered that her recovery ability had improved significantly compared to before. On the first night after the game ended, she only slept for over two hours, but she didn't feel particularly groggy or tired the next day; her body and mind seemed to have mostly recovered.

On the second night, she slept for six hours, and her fatigue was completely swept away. Her mind was exceptionally clear, her thinking was active, and she even felt as if her whole body was a few pounds lighter.

Last night she slept for over four hours. Her physical state felt similar to how seven hours of sleep used to feel; not as light as when she got a full six hours, but her energy was fully restored.

The first thing she did after getting up was open the curtains. Bai Xiao wanted to know if the fog outside had dissipated.

If the previous two days were just light or small fog that basically didn't affect driving, after two days of brewing, today it had turned into a fog that truly affected activities.

She checked the weather on her phone: July 3, 2092, Friday, temperature 27°C, Fog.

The national meteorological standards for fog are light fog, fog, heavy fog, dense fog, and strong dense fog. The weather app clearly showed today was 'Fog,' with visibility below one kilometer.

Bai Xiao opened several social media apps to see how the weather was in other cities. After scrolling through several news items, she found that some other cities across the country also had this kind of weather, but most cities were still sunny, cloudy, or rainy, with no fog appearing.

It seemed like nothing was abnormal, and she didn't find any other valuable information, so Bai Xiao could only suppress the doubts in her heart and stop thinking about it.

...

She took her two hours of game courses as usual. After training, she thought about the water container issue before heading out. She called the boss from whom she had previously ordered food to ask if there were such things in the wholesale market.

The food wholesale boss didn't deal in that, but since Bai Xiao had ordered several hundred thousand worth of goods at once, she was already marked as an important customer in his eyes. Just helping to ask if any merchants in the same park sold such equipment was something the boss was naturally very willing to do.

Before long, the boss gave her a phone number.

Bai Xiao dialed the number and asked what specifications of water containers they had. The other party mentioned several types.

Bai Xiao eventually chose 50-liter plastic square buckets. She calculated that an 8-cubic-meter storage slot could hold at most 130 buckets. If this water was only used for cooking and bathing every day, it wouldn't be a problem for it to last over half a year.

If it could be taken into the game, she wouldn't be bathing and cooking every day, so this water could last even longer.

Now that the fog had thickened, cars were driving slowly. The delivery location was still set at that abandoned park, which would waste a lot of travel time.

Bai Xiao simply gave the address of her original apartment and paid an extra shipping fee, asking the boss to deliver 65 water tanks to the apartment at 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM respectively.

She figured that although the apartment's elevator lobby and the space in front of her door weren't very large and she couldn't completely occupy the hallway, they wouldn't fit if they were all delivered at once.

If they could fit, she wouldn't have split it into two trips. After all, she had already moved out; even if someone found it strange, it wouldn't have any impact on her.

The only slight trouble was that when the goods arrived, she would need to move them into the apartment trip by trip, while actually putting them into the game storage slots to hide them from others.

By the time she actually left, it was already past nine o'clock. There were two hours until eleven when the first batch of water tanks would arrive, but Bai Xiao didn't plan to go there yet. She planned to go at 3:30 PM to collect the tanks, move them into the storage slot, and then wait until 4:00 PM for the next batch.

If she went twice, the time would be too fragmented, making it impossible to do other things and wasting all her time on the road. This way was better; there were still over six hours of shopping time before 3:30 PM.

The most convenient part of living in the city center was being close to any large mall. Today's fog was slightly heavier than yesterday's, already affecting traffic a bit, but it was past the morning rush hour and there weren't many cars on the road. In about half an hour, Bai Xiao arrived at the nearest large warehouse Supermarket.

There weren't many people in the Supermarket on Friday. Bai Xiao found a staff member and had him lead her through the product selection.

She bought the most of various fruits, vegetables, chicken, duck, fish, meat, eggs, milk, non-staple foods, rice, flour, and oil, basically buying ten boxes of each. Adding in various snacks and seasonings, there were too many varieties, and she quickly filled up one storage slot space.

Bai Xiao felt a bit of regret; if the storage space were sufficient, even a few more slots wouldn't be enough to hold everything if she picked out a full selection.

As it turned out, the last two storage slots were also filled.

Now, out of the ten storage slots, only two were not completely full. One was the slot for clothes and shoes; after clearing out all the packaging bags yesterday, there was still quite a bit of space left. Bai Xiao planned to put the clothes, personal items, towels, bath towels, and bedding she was buying today into it.

The other was the slot for medicine and other general merchandise, which still had a little less than half its space. Bai Xiao estimated the storage area and had the clerk help her select various toiletries, cleaning supplies, and bath products.

After recording all the selections and quantities, the clerk took Bai Xiao to the lounge and then went to report the large order to the manager. The manager was so happy he immediately sent two more people to count the goods.

Between selecting and waiting, it was 2:00 PM by the time Bai Xiao finished paying. She had the clerks push the carts and follow her to the underground garage.

The back seats of the rented car provided a lot of space when folded down. Under the clerk's strange gaze, Bai Xiao declined the home delivery service. Using the same method as before, she moved the supplies into the storage slots in three trips.

By the time she finished the last trip, it was already past three o'clock. Bai Xiao hurried to the apartment.