It was absolutely essential to buy enough lighters and matches. During a future evacuation or when forced to stay in a public square, being able to light a match to cook a small meal or make a fire for warmth would be very convenient, a tiny piece of normalcy and survival.
After the apocalypse hit, for several brutal years, public water, electricity, and gas were completely cut off for civilians. Everyday scavenged supplies like a simple lighter or dry wood became precious commodities, all exchanged for tiny portions of food and other essentials. Starting a fire from scratch without tools became extremely difficult.
Many small, mundane things in life only reveal their true, critical value once they're completely lost.
Like basic kitchen knives and machetes.
If in her previous life her family had had a few proper kitchen knives for defense, they might not have been so easily killed by people wielding nothing but sharpened sticks and broken glass bottles. The six months of widespread riots and chaos right after the initial collapse were truly terrifying, with countless people dying over scraps.
Meanwhile, during that period, the government introduced new, pragmatic laws. All kitchen knives, machetes, iron scissors, and iron rods could be voluntarily exchanged for half a portion of coarse grain per item. The state needed these metals to make specialized materials for the national artificial sun project.
Practically every household lined up to exchange their knives for the promised grain. Even collapsed houses in the flooded areas were later picked over by official teams searching for any scrap of useful metal.
Within three months, ordinary kitchen knives were almost extinct from civilian hands.
If anyone asked who Jing Shu admired most about the Chinese government after the apocalypse, it was this strategic foresight. While other countries descended into calls for war and internal chaos, China, under the Iron Blooded Government, maintained a fragile but critical peace. As for murder and robbery, you still needed a weapon. Guns were always strictly regulated. Now knives had been traded for food. Sticks and wooden tools were largely used as fuel.
You could theoretically take a broken chair leg as a weapon, but you might be reported by a neighbor before even reaching your target. Reporting someone for suspicious behavior or hoarding potential weapons earned the informant a reward of one centimeter of coarse grain per report.
Even if you wanted to rob someone, or commit a worse crime. Everyone hadn't bathed or changed clothes in years. If you could tolerate their stench, they would probably cooperate just for human contact.
Robbery for food. Those desperate enough to go out scavenging for rotten roots and bugs often had almost nothing worth stealing to begin with. It was faster and safer to find bugs yourself than to risk attacking someone, being reported, and having your entire family sent to a forced labor re education camp.
The state had ingeniously taken away both your easy weapons and, to a large degree, your compelling reasons to use them. Surviving day by day like a listless salted fish was already considered lucky.
In this life, determined to be prepared, Jing Shu bought many sets of high quality machetes and large, sturdy kitchen knives, storing them in the Cube Space.
She also secretly spent 50,000 yuan through obscure channels on some prohibited multi shot crossbows and several hundred arrows. This was to prepare for the dark, lawless half year of pure human depravity she knew would follow the initial collapse. She briefly considered trying to buy a couple of real guns, but there were no reliable, safe channels available to her yet. Perhaps she could find an opportunity to steal one later from a fallen security post. The thought was filed away.
She bought seven high end, banned military grade tents, fully waterproof, windproof, and breathable, each weighing 3.5 kilograms, with a one pull setup for easy, rapid operation, spending a total of 120,000 yuan. Even during a major earthquake, sleeping in a public square in one of these would be relatively comfortable.
Other essential outdoor gear she acquired included large internal frame backpacks, extreme cold down sleeping bags, moisture proof foam mats, professional windbreaker clothing, full seal lightweight spacesuit style outfits, waterproof and thermal mountaineering boots, climbing ropes, harnesses, ascenders and descenders for post apocalypse climbing and escape scenarios, snow shoes and boards, high altitude goggles, expedition down suits, compact cooking utensils, portable stoves, and multifunctional insulated water bottles. These were not luxuries but essential tools for outdoor survival after the world ended.
She also bought several cases of stable fuel canisters. Kerosene could be used to heat food and warm a small, sealed space. Jing Shu sighed, realizing that serious outdoor adventurers were all rich. Just a good professional windbreaker cost over a thousand yuan, and a single full set of high quality gear could easily cost over 100,000 yuan.
The outdoor supplies alone ended up costing another 500,000 yuan and were stored in the large walk in storage room off the second floor master bedroom because of their sheer quantity and variety.
She bought the latest model gasoline generator, advertised as low noise and long lasting.
She then carefully bought 10,000 liters of 95 octane gasoline in small batches from multiple different stations to avoid suspicion, costing 45,000 yuan. She used 10 dedicated cubic meters of Cube Space for this, knowing that 1 cubic meter could hold 1000 liters.
If her Cube Space could upgrade to the fifth level before the apocalypse, she could potentially store even more gasoline, which would be priceless for running hybrid vehicles in the future.
Jing Shu spent a whole, exhausting day solely on buying frozen foods, filling all four commercial freezers and the villa's existing large refrigerator to capacity.
She had mostly avoided buying expensive frozen foods before due to the high cost and space requirements. But now, with funds and dedicated storage, she went all in.
She first bought her all time favorite, Yuqing brand sausages. At a wholesale price of 4.8 yuan per sausage, she bought 8,000 sausages, which came in 200 boxes, spending 38,400 yuan.
Once you've eaten genuine Yuqing sausages, she believed, you never want to go back to the cheap, flour filled 2 yuan sausages again.
She also bought 500 kilograms of premium compressed beef slices and another 500 kilograms of compressed lamb slices. After the apocalypse, she would slice them thin into perfect beef and lamb rolls for hot pot, to be dipped in sesame oil and garlic sauce. This cost another 100,000 yuan.
She bought top grade, imported pure beef steaks, T bone, ribeye, filet mignon, sirloin, and striploin. 8,000 steaks in total, costing a staggering 240,000 yuan.
Of course, in her mind, a proper steak needed a companion sausage and a sunny side up fried egg to be truly soulful. So the purchases complemented each other.
Ice cream, she knew, would be life saving morale in the first murderously hot year of the apocalypse. She bought Haagen Dazs 9 liter tubs at 1,300 yuan per tub. She purchased 120 tubs, filling 1 cubic meter of Cube Space and half of a standing refrigerator, spending 156,000 yuan.
While buying hot pot beef and lamb rolls, she naturally also needed all the side dishes.
Jing Shu bought wholesale boxes of various fish tofu, beef balls, shrimp balls, fish balls, rice cakes, wide noodles, and 200 small self heating hot pot kits at 30 yuan per box.
Want KFC in the apocalypse. Real KFC restaurants used specific frozen ingredients. Jing Shu went to a restaurant supplier and bought them all wholesale, frozen fries, popcorn chicken, wings, bacon, chicken strips, Colonel's original recipe chicken nuggets, and bone in chicken pieces.
Pizza Hut style frozen pizzas, frozen egg tarts, blocks of cheese, butter for frying steaks, all had to be bought, though they were very expensive per unit.
Finally, she added frozen tangyuan, wontons, dumplings, mooncakes, and frozen cheesecakes. Seeing over 1.2 million yuan spent already and only about 200,000 yuan left, Jing Shu forced herself to stop. She still had other necessary expenses coming for medicines and final preparations.
At one point, Jing Shu wanted to say to herself, "Are you some kind of demon. Buying this much stuff." But the fear of future hunger was a powerful motivator.
By November 21st, everything was finally stored properly and all major purchases were done. She couldn't plausibly add a pond full of mature fish one day and more chickens and ducks the next while her grandparents were now living there at the villa. She had to present a stable, prepared environment.
After the remodeling, the villa kitchen was much larger, a true chef's space. She stored the dry goods, flour, rice, and grains in the many 60 liter airtight boxes now lining the lower cabinets. On top of the cabinets were open containers of bulk spices. The four large commercial freezers stood in a row against the wall of the former dining area.
Chicken, duck, and quail eggs from the visible outdoor flock were neatly stored in three tall wire rack systems.
Next to them were 60 liter boxes of fresh red chilies, pickled mustard greens, cabbages, and radishes from the garden, taking up half the kitchen floor space but efficiently saving the more precious Cube Space for Jing Shu.
A new reinforced door in the corner of the kitchen led directly to the villa backyard boiler room, where two large traditional stoves were now installed and ready.
Even though the supplies were now in locked cabinets and freezers, she had also installed a solid security door for the entire 40 square meter kitchen area, making it a separate, secure room. In the apocalypse, no casual visitor would know what treasures were stored inside.
Early that morning, Jing Shu brought the last of the luggage and her excited grandparents to the villa, officially beginning what she called her "grand chili sauce and spicy cabbage production," or rather, her 2 million yuan live streaming investment. This was her cover business.
Her grandparents were thrilled and asked many questions about the process and the setup, though Grandpa Jing's concerns, as always, were a bit unusual.
"If I become really popular from your streaming and everyone in the country likes me, but you still don't, what will we do then?" he asked Jing Shu with complete seriousness.
Jing Shu stared at him for a long beat. "My grandpa is overthinking things a bit, isn't he?"