On December 25th, 1999, Gao Xuan experienced the most thrilling Christmas night of her life.
That evening, someone told her to enjoy the few peaceful days she had left, because beginning next year, everything would become very different.
Gao Xuan calmly carried the German Shepherd out of the car, walked home with exceptional composure, and then lay on her bed in a daze, unable to recover for a long time.
Sensing that his owner was in a poor mood, Cola gently licked her fingers to comfort her.
Gao Xuan hugged her dog, feeling lost and helpless.
“What if he was telling the truth? What are we supposed to do if the apocalypse really comes? How will we survive?”
Cola tilted his head, unable to understand what the human was worrying about.
To him, life was simple: work, eat, and sleep every day.
“It must be wonderful not to understand anything.” Gao Xuan sighed.
She did not sleep at all that night.
Her eyelids were so heavy that she could barely keep her eyes open, yet her mind was more alert than ever. No matter what she did, she could not fall asleep.
When she stood before the mirror the following morning, she found dark circles beneath her eyes and bloodshot veins across them. She looked utterly exhausted.
Gao Xuan washed her face with cold water and barely managed to calm herself.
At Jinjiang Pet Hospital, Annie looked at the time every two minutes and muttered to herself.
“She’ll be late if she doesn’t come soon. What’s going on? She’s never been late before.”
The moment she finished speaking, Gao Xuan entered with Cola.
Annie gave her a strange look.
“What exactly did you do last night?”
“Don’t mention it.” Gao Xuan looked extremely depressed. “I heard some earth-shattering news and didn’t sleep all night.”
“A confession of love?” Annie asked suggestively, blinking at her.
Gao Xuan replied expressionlessly, “A threat.”
Annie fell silent.
On Christmas night, Gao Xuan had been alone with an incredibly rich and handsome man…
And he had threatened her?
Annie could not help wondering whether she had grown too old to keep up with the times or whether young people nowadays simply knew how to have too much fun.
“In any case, I spent the entire night thinking about it and ultimately reached one conclusion: I should stockpile more food soon.”
Gao Xuan discreetly glanced at her employer before adding, “You should stock up as well.”
“Stop messing around.” Annie was speechless. “Why would we suddenly stockpile food? As long as you have money, you can go to the supermarket and buy it whenever you like.”
“What if something unexpected happens and you can’t buy any?”
“If you start stockpiling rice, flour, and cooking oil whenever there’s the slightest disturbance, you’ll soon become exactly like my mother.” Annie looked thoroughly disdainful.
“Mighty tycoon, stockpiling some rice, flour, and oil isn’t going to bankrupt you,” Gao Xuan advised earnestly.
She did not mention the reason at all.
For one thing, she did not entirely believe Gu Xinghang’s claims herself, let alone expect to convince someone else with talk of an apocalypse.
For another, if his dream truly had predicted the future, Gu Xinghang had warned her out of kindness. She absolutely could not betray him.
Therefore, Gao Xuan only tried to persuade Annie from the perspective of preparing for the unexpected.
“Aren’t you overthinking this?” After being persuaded several times, Annie gradually lost her patience.
“We’re living in a perfectly peaceful world. Why would anyone need to stockpile food? Isn’t that completely ridiculous?”
“You keep talking about preparing for the unexpected, and it sounds reasonable enough, but that kind of disaster simply isn’t going to happen!”
“Besides, even if something really did happen, the federal government would handle it.”
Annie spoke optimistically.
“Even if the sky falls, there will be taller people to hold it up. Just live your life properly and stop imagining all sorts of nonsense.”
Some people would never believe that a prediction might come true unless they witnessed the disaster with their own eyes.
To put it positively, they were cautious and not easily deceived.
To put it negatively, they were stubborn. Once something truly happened, they could easily fall behind and lose the initiative.
Seeing Annie’s reaction, Gao Xuan stopped trying to persuade her.
The shop became quiet, and neither of them spoke for a long time.
After a while, Annie could no longer restrain herself.
“You aren’t genuinely planning to stockpile food, are you? You’re a university graduate, yet you actually believe in apocalypse theories?”
“That’s a trick people use to scam donations! They’ve mentioned it on television several times!”
“I’m not donating money to accumulate virtue. I’m simply buying supplies and keeping them at home,” Gao Xuan slowly replied.
“Why?” Annie simply could not understand.
Gao Xuan did not know how to explain it either. In the end, she simply answered, “Just think of it as me spending money for peace of mind. If I have supplies at home, I’ll sleep much more soundly.”
Annie fell silent.
That familiar excuse sounded exactly like something her mother would say.
…
After work that evening, Gao Xuan first took Cola home before heading to the supermarket for a large shopping trip.
The shelves were completely filled with all kinds of products: chocolate, sweets, instant noodles, biscuits, bread, milk, bottled water…
Everything one could possibly need was available.
As Gao Xuan walked, she examined the products while rapidly calculating in her head, attempting to devise the most cost-effective plan.
Logically speaking, her salary was decent, and she did not have many monthly expenses. She should have accumulated a fair amount of savings.
In reality, her bank account currently contained exactly ten thousand yuan.
Not a penny more or less.
To explain why, one had to begin with her family.
Gao Xuan’s mother had died from an illness when she was young, leaving father and daughter dependent on each other.
Not long afterwards, her father found her a stepmother.
Her stepmother was in poor health and found it difficult to conceive.
When she first joined the family, the three of them got along reasonably well.
However, everything began to change when her stepmother became pregnant.
Gao Xuan’s father spent every day fussing over his new wife, terrified that something might happen to the child in her belly. In the process, he forgot that he already had a daughter who also needed his care.
After nine months of pregnancy, her stepmother gave birth to a boy.
From then on, things became even worse.
Gao Xuan’s father, stepmother, and new-born brother were a family.
Gao Xuan herself seemed entirely unnecessary.
From that point onwards, Gao Xuan’s circumstances became extremely difficult.
Schools frequently collected all kinds of fees, and every time she asked her father for money, she would be reprimanded.
“Why do you need money again?”
“Is the school deliberately charging unnecessary fees?”
“Or did you secretly spend it yourself?”
“I’ve told you countless times that when your brother grows up, he’ll need money to buy a house, get married, and support a wife. We need to save every penny and can’t waste it!”
Every time she held out her hand for money, Gao Xuan felt indescribably humiliated.
The child had only just been born. Why were they already talking about saving money for his house and marriage?
How could paying for her education be considered wasting money?
Just so they could save another hundred or two hundred yuan every month, was she supposed to stop eating and drinking and ascend into immortality?
Only then did Gao Xuan finally understand something.
Once people became biased, there was no reasoning with them.
Although her father ultimately gave her the money each time, the endless criticism and humiliation involved made the process painful enough that she did not wish to remember it.
Gao Xuan studied with everything she had, swearing that she would escape her family.
After reaching adulthood, she successfully entered a university far from home.
Once she had arranged her student loans and packed her personal belongings, she left her hometown without looking back.
During university, whenever holidays arrived, Gao Xuan would claim that her part-time job offered double pay and that she had no intention of returning home.
She needed to work hard and earn enough money to support herself.
When her father learned this, he did not feel disappointed.
Instead, he believed his daughter had finally become sensible and understood that she needed to earn money to reduce the family’s burden.
As a result, Gao Xuan never returned home throughout her four years at university.
The final time they were supposed to meet was six months after her graduation.
Gao Xuan had been working when she suddenly received a telephone call from home.
Her stepmother’s voice was choked with tears.
“Your father was caught in a multi-vehicle accident last night. He doesn’t have much time left… Hurry back and see him one last time.”
Gao Xuan immediately froze, her mind descending into chaos.
She then travelled through the night, returning to her hometown as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, she still failed to make it in time.
When it came time to divide the inheritance, a lawyer suddenly appeared and announced that Gao Xuan’s father had drawn up a will before his death.
All his assets were to be left to his wife and son.
His daughter would receive nothing.
Gao Xuan clearly remembered that the weather had been exceptionally cold that day.
She had stood outside in a daze for a long time, unable to understand why she had exhausted herself travelling back and forth.
After all, part of her monthly salary went towards living expenses, another part was placed in fixed savings for illnesses and emergencies, and approximately half was specifically used to repay her student loans.
Her financial pressure was not insignificant.
Yet her biological father had never once considered her circumstances…
From that day onwards, Gao Xuan cut off all contact with her stepmother and never interacted with her again.
Meanwhile, because of the endless trouble involving her family, she had very little savings.
Of course, there were many ways to borrow money in modern society.
If she truly wanted to, she could always find a way to obtain a loan.
However, Gao Xuan could not determine whether Gu Xinghang had genuinely experienced a prophetic dream or had merely fabricated an exceptionally convincing story.
Therefore, she only planned to stockpile enough food for three to six months.
If the entire matter was a trap, she would not suffer any real losses. At worst, she would slowly eat through the stored supplies.
If the apocalypse truly arrived as predicted, more than three months of food would give her enough time to find a way to adapt.
In theory, the more supplies she accumulated, the longer she could survive after the apocalypse began.
In reality, however, the more resources a person possessed, the more likely they were to attract unwanted attention.
Besides, once the surrounding environment changed, she could not remain inside forever eating stored food.
She would eventually have to find a way to survive.
Without survival skills, even an enormous stockpile would be useless.
With survival skills, she would only need enough time to adapt to the new changes and endure the initial period of chaos.
Therefore, a three-to-six-month supply would allow her to advance or retreat as necessary. It was a highly flexible arrangement.
After circling the supermarket once, Gao Xuan suddenly remembered something.
“Now that I have a dog at home, don’t I also need to prepare food for him?”
At the thought, she fell silent.
Considering her financial circumstances, she was not truly suited to keeping a dog.
However, when she first encountered Cola, he had been standing alone, gazing expectantly into the distance as he waited for someone to return and collect him.
He had looked terribly pitiful.
It was as though everyone else had left in groups, while he alone had been abandoned.
The instant Gao Xuan saw him, she could not help thinking of herself.
That was why she had made an exception and taken him in.
Afterwards, Annie enthusiastically provided his three daily meals and snacks. Gao Xuan only needed to provide accommodation, so there was truly no reason to give the dog away.
“Forget it. If I spend the ten thousand yuan carefully, it should be enough.”
After considering the matter for a long time, Gao Xuan finally decided on her stockpiling plan.
In truth, if she ignored nutritional value and considered only survival, ten thousand yuan could purchase a great deal.
For example, one packet of instant noodles cost two and a half yuan.
If she ate two meals a day, she would only need sixty packets per month, costing a total of one hundred and fifty yuan.
She could even mix several different flavours.
Then there was fermented bean curd.
It was soft, fragrant, slightly salty, and went exceptionally well with rice. A five-hundred-gram jar cost only eight yuan and could last for an entire week when eaten with plain congee.
Lao Gan Ma chilli sauce was also suitable for mixing with rice or noodles.
There were also packets of preserved mustard greens. The cheaper varieties cost only a few jiao per packet, while the more expensive ones cost two yuan.
One packet served with plain congee could last an entire day.
Gao Xuan bought instant noodles, fermented bean curd, chilli sauce, and preserved mustard greens.
She bought the largest quantity of preserved mustard greens—one hundred packets in total!
Next, she purchased rice, dried noodles, and cooking oil.
The scattered collection of goods appeared enormous, yet she had spent only a little over one thousand yuan.
They were exceptionally economical.
“Let me think. What else do I need?”
After calculating for a long time, Gao Xuan purchased several packs of tissues, bags of dog food, and bars of soap.
She then hired a delivery van to transport everything home.
Finally, she ordered thirty cartons of bottled mineral water online, each containing four 4.5-litre bottles, and arranged for the supplier to deliver them directly to her door.
In this way, after spending only three thousand yuan, her rented home was already filled with supplies!
Only then did Gao Xuan belatedly realise that she had purchased so many things that there was barely any space left in the flat…
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