Jiang Ning's first panic came when the timer hit zero.
For one terrible second, she thought the space had swallowed everything.
She swept through it with her mind.
The space was still there. The supplies were still there. She tried to take something out, and a coal ball appeared in her hand.
Only then did she understand.
A person could stay inside for only two hours a day.
Two hours was not much.
But it was better than nothing.
After midnight, the timer refreshed. A new two hours appeared.
She lay awake for a long time, then swallowed melatonin and forced herself to sleep.
The nightmares came anyway.
Rusty blades. People chasing her. The sound of metal cutting into flesh.
She woke at five, drenched in cold sweat, and went into the space just to look at the supplies. Only then did her heartbeat calm.
There was no point sleeping.
She drove to the largest agricultural wholesale market before dawn.
Winter melon, pumpkin, lotus root, carrots, eggplants, beans, bitter melon, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes. She bought by the hundred jin. Ginger and garlic too. In extreme cold, a bowl of ginger soup might keep someone alive.
Rice came next.
One hundred fifty-jin bags. Fifty bags of flour. Noodles, rice noodles, sweet-potato starch, soybeans, red beans, mung beans, black beans, peanuts, and barrels of soybean oil, peanut oil, and sunflower oil.
The grain alone could feed her for decades.
Then she bought soy sauce, vinegar, white liquor, spices, sugar, and three thousand jin of salt.
Salt was not heavy in the space, but in the apocalypse it could be worth more than money. In her third year, she had seen someone trade one bag of salt for thirty jin of grain.
At the frozen section, she ordered steamed buns, flower rolls, red-bean buns, custard buns, shumai, and two hundred jin of dumpling skins. At the dry-goods stalls, she took mushrooms, kelp, seaweed, red dates, dried vegetables, melon seeds.
At the meat market, she found the stall that supplied the school cafeteria.
"What do you need, Xiao Jiang?"
"Everything."
Pork belly, lean meat, ribs, beef, lamb, rabbit, chickens, ducks, geese, offal.
The owner stared at her. "Are you serious?"
"A relative is holding a wedding banquet. Cheap is fine."
He gave her a relationship discount. Jiang Ning accepted and added one more request.
"Two bone cleavers and a slaughter knife."
The owner was startled. "What do you need those for?"
"Don't worry. Not murder or arson."
For profit and friendship, he agreed.
She bought fish, eggs, fertilized chicken and duck eggs, a household incubator, vegetable seeds, pots, hoes, shovels, soil, fruit saplings, and a pair of breeding rabbits.
Meat would disappear first. If the disasters lasted, even powerful people would not have fresh meat.
Rabbits ate greens and multiplied fast.
That was hope with fur.
By the time the last batch of goods entered the space, Jiang Ning's bank balance had almost been burned clean.
Then the second rule of the space appeared.
The timer could accumulate.
At midnight, it showed 130 minutes instead of simply resetting to two hours.
Jiang Ning nearly laughed.
Every extra minute could become a life in the extreme cold or during an earthquake. From now on, unless there was no other choice, she would not enter the space. Time had to be saved.
The next morning, workers came to install stainless-steel doors and explosion-proof glass.
"Miss, you're really installing a steel door inside a rented apartment?"
"There have been thefts in the neighborhood. I want the best."
The master laughed helplessly. "Heaven-and-earth locks require drilling into the ceiling and floor. Aren't you afraid of damaging the apartment?"
"Safety matters more."
The landlord worked in another city. In Jiang Ning's previous life, the building had collapsed in an earthquake before the landlord ever appeared. She was not worried.
To avoid complaints, she sent red packets to the building group. The drills howled for two hours.
When the door and glass were done, her apartment finally looked like a bunker.
Then Yang Weicong called.
"A-Ning, it's my birthday party today. When are you coming?"
His voice was warm and sunny, surrounded by laughter.
Jiang Ning sneered. "Fine. Wait for me."
He liked Su Mengyao, but kept Jiang Ning dangling because he liked her gifts and Su Mengyao wanted to get close to her pendant.
Even through the phone, Jiang Ning could hear Su Mengyao's soft, sweet voice.
Something in her went alert.
How had Su Mengyao known the pendant contained a space?
Judging from Yang Weicong's tone, he probably did not know. The call had to be Su Mengyao's idea.
Jiang Ning took her keys and went downstairs.
Yang Weicong lived on the eighth floor. Laughter spilled from his room.
Jiang Ning kept walking down.
The typhoon's advance wind had already arrived. The street howled. A new alert said landfall would come at nine that night.
Early.
It had moved early.
She rushed to the university library and collected medical books, martial-arts manuals, survival manuals, and mental-health books. In her previous life, the library had been submerged. So many books had vanished under floodwater.
She could not save them all.
But what she took, she would return one day if the world ever recovered.
Yang Weicong called again.
She blocked him.
At home, she downloaded offline maps, films, music, cooking guides, disaster first aid, medical references, and anything else that might be useful.
Then the delivery app reminded her that the polar suits had arrived at the pickup station.
The typhoon was already outside.
If the station flooded, those suits would be gone. Without them, she would not survive minus seventy.
No ride accepted the order.
Jiang Ning gritted her teeth, ran downstairs, scanned a shared bicycle, and pedaled into the wind.
The two-kilometer ride felt like crossing a battlefield. Garbage and cardboard flew through the air. Rain slapped her face so hard she could barely open her eyes.
She found the enormous package after ten minutes of digging through a mountain of parcels.
When she stepped outside with it in her arms, a violent gust hit.
The box tore free.
Her feet slipped.
For one instant, she thought the typhoon would take her too.
Then a stranger's hand closed around her wrist.
In her previous life, no one had reached for her.
So who was this man, and why was he standing in the storm before the apocalypse had truly begun?