Chapter 11: Sui City

Chapter 11: Sui City

At 3:00 PM, Shu Fu made it home just before the door and window shop workers arrived.

That day, she had visited a total of 15 gas stations. Each gas station sold her six 30L portable oil drums, allowing her to take away 180L of gasoline. Across 15 gas stations, she stockpiled 2700L of gasoline. Just the gasoline alone cost her nearly 20,000 yuan.

In the few years she had been in this world, she had neither used a car nor visited a gas station. The restrictions on buying gasoline from her original world were deeply ingrained in her mind. By the time she reached the fourth gas station that day, she began to feel uneasy, fearing that someone would come out and accuse her of hoarding gasoline, threatening to call the police.

But in reality, no one paid her any attention.

Still, she was very cautious, trying to pick gas stations that were more spread out. Each time she emptied and collected the portable oil drums in her car, she would stop by a nearby underground parking lot for a short while.

Two of the parking lots happened to have supermarkets above them, where she quickly stocked up on fresh vegetables, fruits, eggs, dairy, meat, fish, and bottled water.

She didn’t even take the time to eat; when she was hungry, she simply took out some bread from her space and quickly ate a few bites.

The farthest gas station was near the wholesale market, so she detoured there. She bought a large quantity of vegetables, fruits, fish, shrimp, crab, seafood, processed meats, frozen meats, dumplings, fish balls, and other semi-finished products.

She rented a flatbed cart and transported the supplies back to her car trip after trip, until every corner of the car, except the driver's seat, was completely filled.

In her wristband space, she now had 101 portable oil drums totaling 3030L of fuel. Since the portable oil drums were all the same shape and stacked, they surprisingly didn’t take up much space.

On the way back, Shu Fu also stopped by the wholesale market again, purchasing 20 rectangular storage bins, each half a cubic meter in size. These bins had lids; when not filled with items, they could be stacked without taking up much space. Once filled, the lids could be closed, allowing them to be stacked again.

She didn’t intend to use them for storing items but rather for stockpiling water.

Currently, the raft’s water tank could hold 500L of water, and the purified water was limited to 10L per day. Although it was sufficient, the water from the Drift Island House had no heating system, so it was always cold. She couldn’t possibly wash with cold water all the time, and boiling water with a kettle was too time-consuming and electricity-consuming. Therefore, she planned to fill these bins with water at around 60 to 70 degrees Celsius for washing purposes. Each bin could hold half a cubic meter of hot water, which was 500L, or about 132 gallons. Filling all 20 bins would provide enough hot water to last her for a long time.

By now, she had stored all the supplies from the wholesale market in her wristband space. On her way back, she also stopped by the food court and picked up a large amount of takeout food and drinks from a restaurant she hadn’t visited before.

Her last two stops included a water delivery station near her neighborhood, where she ordered 40 cases of bottled water, each containing 4 bottles, to be delivered to her garage.

The second stop was at a nearby grain and oil store in the neighborhood, where she restocked a full carload of rice, flour, cooking oil, grains, various seasonings, and condiments.

She didn’t eat three meals of rice every day and didn’t consume much. Based on her previous consumption, she estimated that she used about 3 to 5 pounds per month. Calculating for 5 pounds per month, the rice, flour, and oil she had stocked up, along with her previous purchases, would last her many years.

At 3:40 PM, the door and window installers arrived just when the rain was at its smallest. They brought not only the laminated glass and sliding security windows but also a stainless steel gate that fit the size of her front door.

This was arranged after she called them again to discuss reinforcing her front door. The gate was somewhat similar to a security window, installed outside the door, and also sliding, providing an extra layer of security.

Since the laminated glass was an internal installation, and Shu Fu had indicated that aesthetics didn’t matter as long as it was sturdy, the installation process went quite quickly.

During this time, she went down to the garage to collect the 40 boxes of canned pre-cooked dishes, sauce-covered rice, and dehydrated vegetables she had ordered the previous day. She also used a foldable cart to collect other items she had previously ordered from the package lockers.

With this batch, nearly all the items she had ordered online had arrived.

Before 6:00 PM, all the work was completed.

Satisfied with the securely installed windows and the smoothly operating gate, Shu Fu thanked the workers and saw them off. After they left, she began cleaning the messy house, first sweeping, then mopping.

By 7:00 PM, she had finished all the work and collapsed, utterly exhausted, on the sofa.

She lay on the sofa, zoning out for ten minutes, then suddenly stood up and went to the bathroom to clean the storage bins she had bought that day. After that, she adjusted the water temperature and began the repetitive task of filling the bins with hot water.

The water heater in her home was a new purchase she made after renting the place. It was a gas water heater installed in the kitchen, a bit pricier than an electric model, but it didn’t require pre-heating and had no water usage restrictions. As long as she set the desired temperature, it was ready to use instantly.

Gas was cheaper than electricity, and in terms of daily expenses, it was definitely a better choice than an electric water heater.

Due to the adjustable temperature and instant availability of the gas water heater, she had considered installing one while organizing items in the Drift Island House. However, the wooden house had no electricity or gas, and she, being unskilled, wouldn’t be able to install it herself.

Even if she could, she wouldn’t dare to drill holes in the wooden walls with a power drill. So, she decided to stock up on warm water instead.

For dinner, she made a simple bowl of noodles with plain vegetables and a side of braised chicken in five-spice sauce.

While waiting for the water to fill the storage, she opened the lucky draw wheel and used her two draw chances.

Her luck was just okay, and she drew a blue fifth prize and a red fifth prize.

The blue fifth prize was a "bathing wooden bucket," and the red fifth prize was two 50-lb bags of rice.

The rice came in vacuum-sealed bags, similar to those sold in stores, but without any branding, just plain nylon composite bags.

After claiming the wooden bucket, the wheel displayed 'placed,' but the bucket didn’t show up in her home. Shu Fu realized what happened, drew the curtains of the living room balcony, put away the sofa and coffee table, and released the raft.

In the wooden shower room of the Drift Island House, a half-height round wooden bucket appeared, fixed on one side of the wall, sharing the space with the shower head on the opposite side.

A wooden faucet was also added above the bucket, clearly meant for filling it with water for bathing.

For now, only cold water was available, and using her stored warm water for this seemed too extravagant, so the wooden bucket wasn’t very useful.

After several draws, she had a rough idea of the prize contents. Red prizes seemed to be food supplies, and blue ones appeared to be physical house furnishings for the Drift Island House. Green prizes, based on her guess, were likely energy sources for the raft.

Among the three types of prizes, red and green were the most useful, while blue ones were somewhat redundant since she could place furniture herself.

Currently, she had placed a wooden tea table, a single sofa, several aluminum shelves, and boxes of neatly organized clothes, shoes, bedding, and daily necessities in the wooden house.

She still wondered what the golden prize, which she had never won despite three attempts, could be.

**

Tuesday, moderate rain.

She still didn’t go to work, venturing out in the rain to complete a task of moving her car and, along the way, returning a tabby cat that had been taking shelter under her car from the rain. The tabby had an owner, living on the fourth floor by the stairwell of her building.

The tabby had once been a stray, and she remembered when the sixteen or seventeen-year-old son of the fourth-floor family had adopted it as an abandoned kitten. The building’s poor soundproofing meant she often heard the boy playing with the cat when she passed by the fourth floor. Recently, however, the cat had started venturing out on its own.

Being a tabby with a wild nature, she guessed the cat had grown and begun to yearn for the outside world, especially with the building’s open stairwell, ideal for a curious cat to explore and climb.

The tabby was soaked, its round eyes wide open, giving it a somewhat endearing expression. Its striking blue eyes were rare for a tabby, and its fur was a beautiful blend of brown and silver.

Although she had heard the cat meowing before, this was the first time she saw it clearly. It looked about three or four months old and was quite cute.

Wondering if it was sick, the cat didn’t run away but weakly took a couple of steps toward her.

She reached under her raincoat and pulled out a thick towel, wrapping the tabby in it.

The tabby meowed once, as if trying to struggle.

"Don’t move," Shu Fu said, gently tightening the towel around the cat. "I’m taking you home."

Perhaps because the towel was dry and soft, the cat stopped struggling and obediently lay still, letting out a couple of small meows.

As she carried the cat over, she heard an argument coming from inside. The family was quarreling over the missing cat. The son insisted on finding it before going to school, as his high school studies were important. His mother, naturally upset, scolded him but said she would go look for it, telling him to focus on school.

The boy didn’t trust her, accusing her of not wanting to keep the cat and hoping it wouldn’t return.

Shu Fu knocked, and after a moment, the boy’s father opened the door. She had met the father a couple of times before and remembered him as a quiet, taciturn man.

The woman frowned slightly when she saw the cat wrapped in the towel. The boy, on the other hand, was very happy, calling out in surprise, "Good Boy," and rushed over to take the cat from her, saying thanks.

Maybe because the boy was a bit too eager, the previously obedient tabby cat struggled a little and cried out again.

"Thank you," the boy's mother also came over and thanked her, her expression not showing much happiness either.

Shu Fu didn’t say much. She didn’t really care whether others were grateful or not. She just helped out of convenience, following her heart as she always did.

As she walked up the stairs in the stairwell, she heard the boy's mother urging him to go to school, saying he was already late and needed to focus on his upcoming exams.

The boy responded absentmindedly, and upon realizing that the tabby cat might be sick, insisted on taking it to the vet, which upset his mother again. Amidst the scolding, the tabby cat's somewhat hurried cries could be heard...

Such a simple task yielded a 5% progress bar and a chance to draw a prize.

"Congratulations on winning the fourth prize: front door overhang."

"Do you want to claim your prize?"

"Yes/No"

This time, it was a blue category prize, one level higher than the blue fifth prize "bathroom barrel."

Shu Fu released the raft, and the top of the front door of the wooden house now had a rectangular wooden awning facing outward. The awning was the same height as the wooden house and aligned in width, extending outward by about half a meter. On the outer corners on both sides were square, log-colored pillars, and between the pillars and the wooden house was a wooden fence about one meter high.

Originally, the raft outside the wooden house was empty, and one had to be careful not to fall off. But now, with the addition of the awning with a fence, she no longer had to worry about falling into the water due to the raft’s swaying when standing at the front door of the wooden house.

It seemed that this blue-type prize was quite useful. Although she could place the furniture herself, this kind of fixed home installation was something she couldn’t do on her own.

In the afternoon, when the rain subsided, she went out with her documents and drove to a nearby bank. She left 5,000 yuan in her account for emergencies and withdrew the rest of the cash. The 5,000 yuan would be enough to cover her online shopping expenses for some time.

There would be a transitional period from the disaster phase to the complete evacuation phase in Sui City. She needed to keep cash on hand to deal with situations where the network might become problematic.

After the city was completely submerged, it would become a ghost town. Whether the money was left in the bank or in her hands, it wouldn’t matter much.

Thinking about the image of an empty, quiet water city and her own situation, Shu Fu sighed, already able to anticipate the loneliness that would come.

Moderate rain mixed with light rain drizzled for another two days.

Shu Fu didn’t go out again, ordering various home-delivered meals every day: Sichuan cuisine, sushi, bubble tea, pastries... as well as vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, milk, yogurt, carbonated drinks, snacks, fast food, and daily necessities from the supermarket.

On Thursday afternoon, the moderate rain turned into a heavy downpour. The sky, once again like Sunday’s, seemed to be leaking, with rain pouring down relentlessly from the gloomy sky.

Around dusk, the residents of Sui City received a thunderstorm disaster warning on their phones. Having learned from the previous painful lesson, the subways, buses, and taxis in Sui City were all suspended.

It was rush hour, with people leaving work and school. Those who hadn’t left their companies or schools had to stay indoors temporarily, while the few pedestrians outside hurried to take shelter in the nearest sturdy buildings.

On the streets, private cars closed their windows and slowed down. On several streets where parking was allowed, car owners even chose to pull over and wait anxiously for the thunderstorm to pass.

When the first lightning bolt streaked across the sky, Shu Fu had already checked all the doors and windows of her house and then released the raft in the living room, directly entering the Drift Island House.

The last thunderstorm didn’t cause any damage to her home, but one could never be too careful. Since she had a five-hour safe wooden house every day, she naturally had to make use of it.

She turned off the main power switch in the house, plunging it into darkness. In such light, even if the curtains between the living room and the small balcony weren’t drawn, you couldn’t see inside, so she didn’t bother closing the curtains.

A rechargeable energy-saving lamp sat on the wooden coffee table in the house, emitting a soft, warm orange light that filled the entire wooden house.

Standing outside the wooden house, even with the bright lights inside, the light couldn’t fully penetrate the frosted glass, only revealing a very faint glimmer.

Due to the living room’s constraints, the raft could only be placed longitudinally inside, with the front door facing the small balcony. Once the door was closed, from inside the wooden house, you could only see the living room’s side walls through the windows.

The dark living room was illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning, casting flickering shadows and accompanied by deafening thunderclaps that made her heart race.

Shu Fu thought this thunderstorm would pass quickly like the last one, and even if it was more severe, it would last no more than half an hour at most.

But after an hour, the lightning still flashed brightly in the dark sky, showing no signs of letting up.