The days started blurring together as I continued to check things off my list.
I checked my phone again, wishing the time away while at the same time, wishing that it would slow down... but no, it was April 3rd, and that dated wasn't going to change.
The apocalypse would begin on May 6th which meant that I had thirty-three days left. I had already been at this for four weeks, and my spatial storage was not showing any signs of becoming too full.
I had more than enough rice, canned goods, frozen foods, meats, sweets, snacks, and cooking oil to feed myself for years if not decades. It really depended on how well I could ration everything.
Then again, I still had over a month, and I wasn't done yet. After all, I had no desire to ration my food. What was the point of surviving if I had to eat like I was still scraping by?
No, I was going to take even more things. It wouldn't bother me at all if I didn't leave enough for the next person.
They should have been faster.
But the countdown was real. Every morning I woke up, checked the date, and felt the number shrink. Thirty-three days. Then thirty-two. Then thirty-one.
April was flying by, and I could feel it slipping away, each day disappearing faster than the last.
The initial phase—the planning, the first few runs—had felt manageable, but now it felt like I was racing against something I couldn't quite catch.
I wasn't panicking. Panic was useless. But I also refused to slow down.
Because the truth was, I'd filled most of my storage space so far with food, and I still had a list of things I needed that were significantly harder to acquire.
Medical supplies.
Weapons.
The kind of things that didn't just sit on grocery store shelves waiting for someone with a spatial storage ability to walk by and take them.
Thirty-three days. It sounded like enough time until it didn't.
So I kept moving.
The routine settled in quickly.
Every morning, I'd come downstairs, eat breakfast—usually something Xu Zhenlan's housekeeper had prepared, because apparently rich people didn't cook for themselves unless it was a special occasion—and then Zhou Chenghai would appear in the doorway, his arms crossed, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.
"Where to today?" he'd ask, his tone flat.
"Surprise me," I'd reply with a shrug, just to watch his jaw tighten.
He never did surprise me. He drove me to malls, grocery stores, warehouse clubs—places where a twenty-year-old girl with too much money and no supervision could wander around buying things without raising suspicion.
He followed me through the aisles, standing far enough back that it didn't look like he was babysitting me, but close enough that I knew he was watching.
I'd buy things. Normal things. Clothes, snacks, toiletries. Enough to make it look like I was just shopping, just being the spoiled niece everyone expected me to be. And then, when no one was looking, I'd take everything else.
Entire shelves of canned goods. Pallets of bottled water. Freezers full of meat. I'd stand in front of a display, pretending to read a label, and pull everything behind me into the spatial storage.
No one ever noticed. The cameras didn't catch it. The employees didn't see it. I was a ghost, and I was taking everything.
By the time we got back to the house in the evening, Zhou Chenghai would report to Xu Zhenlan that I'd "behaved normally," which was technically true. I hadn't caused a scene. I hadn't done anything illegal that anyone could prove. I'd just been shopping.
Xu Zhenlan would nod, go back to his calls or his paperwork, and I'd disappear into my room to update my lists.
The house was starting to feel familiar. Not home—I didn't believe in that anymore—but close enough that I almost considered fighting for it.
I knew which stairs creaked. I knew where the housekeeper kept the good snacks. I knew that Xu Zhenlan worked late most nights, and that Zhou Chenghai's shift ended at 10 PM, and that the security system had a blind spot near the east wing that I could exploit if I ever needed to.
The biggest problem I was having was that Zhou Chenghai was getting suspicious.
I could tell by the way he watched me.
Not obviously—he was too professional for that—but I'd spent ten years in an apocalypse learning to read people, and Zhou Chenghai was an open book. He didn't like me. He couldn't figure me out. And that bothered him.
Which made messing with him incredibly entertaining.
"Are you following me because you're bored?" I asked one afternoon, pausing in the middle of a department store to look back at him. "Because if you are, I can recommend some hobbies. Knitting, maybe. Scrapbooking. I hear lots of old men take up golf, you can try that, too."
His expression didn't change. "I'm doing my job."
"Your job is to make sure I don't get kidnapped," I replied with a grin even as I took more stuff into my space. "I'm in a department store in broad daylight. Who's going to kidnap me? The mannequins?"
"You'd be surprised."
I smirked at him and kept walking, deliberately taking a detour through the shoe section just to make him follow me. I picked up a pair of six-inch stilettos—bright red, completely impractical, the kind of thing I'd never wear in a million years—and held them up.
"What do you think?" I asked. "Too much?"
Zhou Chenghai stared at me. "You're not buying those."
"Why not? They're cute."
"You can't walk in those."
"You don't know that."
"I've seen you trip over flat ground."
I gasped, mock-offended. "That was one time. And there was a crack in the sidewalk."
He didn't respond, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Just barely. I counted it as a win.
I bought the shoes anyway, just to see his reaction. He didn't say anything, but the look he gave me as I handed them to the cashier was worth every yuan.
The thing about Zhou Chenghai was that he knew something was up, but he couldn't prove anything. I never did anything obviously wrong. I never acted surprised when things happened. I never asked questions I shouldn't know the answers to. I was just... calm. Unbothered. Like I'd already seen everything before.
Which, technically, I had.
But he didn't know that. He just knew that something about me didn't add up, and it was driving him crazy.
Good. Let him wonder.
Xu Zhenlan, on the other hand, wasn't annoying.
He didn't hover. He didn't ask where I was going or what I was buying. He didn't demand explanations or try to manage my decisions. He just let me exist, which was rare enough that I noticed it.
It was almost cute, in a detached way.
If he wasn't going to be dead in thirty some odd days, I might have actually enjoyed his company more. As it was, he was fine for the time being—low maintenance, undemanding, the kind of person who made waiting easier.
He'd also stopped bringing up Aspen, which helped.
I didn't know if he'd finally accepted that I didn't care, or if he'd just given up. Either way, it worked.
By the third week, I'd hit a problem.
Food was easy. I could walk into any grocery store, any warehouse club, any market, and take whatever I wanted. Spatial storage didn't care about weight or volume—it just swallowed everything I fed it, and I'd been feeding it a lot.
But medical supplies were different.
I needed antibiotics. Surgical kits. Disinfectant. Painkillers. IV supplies. Bandages. The kind of things that would keep me alive if I got injured, if I got sick, if something went wrong and I couldn't just wait it out.
Grocery stores didn't carry most of that. Pharmacies had some of it, but their inventory was limited, and stealing from one would be too obvious. I needed bulk. I needed variety. I needed enough to last years.
Which meant hospitals.
I spent an entire evening researching hospital supply chains, security systems, inventory management. Hospitals kept detailed records. They had cameras everywhere. They had staff working around the clock. Stealing from one would attract attention immediately.
But stealing from several...
That might work.
If I hit multiple hospitals across the city, took small amounts from each, spread it out over days or weeks, I could probably get what I needed without triggering any alarms. It would take time. It would take planning. But it was doable.
I added it to my list.
And then there were the weapons.
I didn't need them immediately. I wasn't planning to fight my way through the apocalypse—I was planning to hide from it, to lock myself in this mansion and wait for the worst of it to pass. But I also wasn't stupid. Weapons were insurance. Weapons were backup. Weapons were leverage.
And there was a warehouse on the outskirts of the city that had everything I needed.
I'd found it by accident, scrolling through forums and black market listings late one night. Someone had mentioned it in passing—a triad-controlled warehouse, fully stocked, used for smuggling and storage. The post had been deleted within hours, but I'd already saved the address.
I didn't know who owned it. Just that it belonged to a triad leader, someone powerful enough that people didn't talk about him openly. That was fine. I didn't need to know his name. I just needed to know where his weapons were.
I started mapping it out.
Security cameras—how many, where they were positioned, what angles they covered. Guards—how many, what shifts they worked, whether they patrolled or stayed stationary. Access points—doors, windows, vents, anything I could use to get in and out without being seen.
I pulled up satellite images, street views, building layouts. I cross-referenced them with forum posts, news articles, anything that mentioned the area. I built a mental map of the entire block, every entrance and exit, every blind spot.
The plan was simple: get in, take everything, get out. No confrontation. No evidence. Just like every other heist I'd pulled.
The hard part was timing.
I needed to do it before the apocalypse started, because once the world collapsed, leaving the house would be impossible. The streets would be flooded with zombies. The city would be a death trap. I'd have one chance to get this right, and if I missed it, I'd be stuck without weapons for at least a year.
Maybe longer.
I stared at the map on my laptop screen, tracing the route from the mansion to the warehouse and back. Forty minutes, if traffic was light. An hour, if it wasn't.
I could do this.
I just needed to pick the right night.
I leaned back in my chair, checking my phone one more time.
Thirty-three days left.
Plenty of time to get everything done.
Right?