Happy Fifth Day: Creating Another Uncle
The scenery outside the train window sped past. Jiang Muyun found it hard to look away.
Outside were high-rise buildings, and beside her ears was the clamour of human voices. It had been a long time since she had seen such a lively, vibrant scene.
Jiang Muyun watched the whole way. She even extravagantly wasted three hours walking home from the station.
She listened to the street vendors calling out, to the sound of car horns, to the laughter and chatter of pedestrians.
When Jiang Muyun returned, it was mealtime, so there were not many people in the residential compound.
She took out her access card and opened the unit door. The lift happened to be stopped on the first floor.
Jiang Muyun entered the lift and pressed the fifteenth floor. It did not stop midway and brought her straight to her door.
Standing in the familiar corridor, looking at the slightly peeling 1501 doorplate, Jiang Muyun took out her key. From finding the keyhole to pulling out the key and closing the door behind her, every movement was muscle memory, smooth and practised.
The moment Jiang Muyun sat on the old sofa with its peeling leather, turned on the television and air conditioner, and felt cold air blow over her in the scorching summer heat, she truly realised that she had come back to life.
She comfortably rested her head on the armrest of the sofa and lay there for a while. When she checked the time, it was seven in the evening.
Jiang Muyun had set off at six that morning. The bullet train from Xi City to Nan City had taken more than seven hours, and then she had walked home from the station. Unexpectedly, an entire day had passed just like that.
Jiang Muyun lay collapsed on the sofa for a while, then struggled to get up and take a shower. After that, she took out a portion of the packed food from her space.
After eating, she dug out the old man’s treasured belongings.
There were his military medals, his uniform, and some old items.
Jiang Muyun stroked the military uniform he had cherished, found a large storage box, placed all his old belongings inside, then put the storage box into her space, in a corner far away from the miscellaneous items.
Jiang Muyun stood up and stretched. First, she turned on the desktop computer and laptop at home, casually found a video site, and began downloading films, dramas, and all kinds of variety shows in bulk on both computers at once.
Fortunately, her broadband package had not expired when she left home.
Then came organising her shopping list.
The list needed to be carried around with her. She would cross off each item after buying it, so the original list, covered with edits and deletions, already looked far too messy.
Jiang Muyun did not want to torture her own eyes, so she chose to copy out a new version.
Originally, Jiang Muyun had only wanted to stockpile enough food, medicine, and daily necessities. Her main goal was to meet survival needs. Everything was based on the standard of “being able to live.”
But now, Jiang Muyun looked at her remaining balance and felt that, on top of “living,” she could still improve her quality of life a little.
Her major purchase in Xi City had cost nearly six hundred thousand yuan. She now had a little over 2.28 million yuan left.
From now until existing currency completely lost its value, there were still around six months.
She decided to leave the spare eighty-thousand-plus yuan for her expenses during this period.
Later, when everyone was frantically waving banknotes around to exchange for supplies, if she did not spend any money at all but still managed to live well, she would easily become a fat sheep in other people’s eyes.
As for the remaining two million, Jiang Muyun planned to spend it in two places.
First, buying supplies.
Second, renovating the house.
In the early stages of the apocalypse, although people panicked because of famine, basic social order still existed while the authorities held an absolute advantage in armed force.
It was only after the acid rain arrived, causing large areas of battered buildings to finally collapse into ruins, when the authorities were too overwhelmed to take care of everything, when existing food and water resources sharply decreased, and after the rain stopped and mosquitoes and insects flooded everywhere, causing plague to spread in all directions, that the long-panicked masses completely lost control.
The residential compound where Jiang Muyun lived had originally been a government family housing estate, home to many retired veteran cadres. Later, during urban redevelopment, it had been demolished and rebuilt, and many new residents had moved in. However, most of the original residents had also chosen to move back.
Whatever else could be said, the construction quality here was absolutely solid.
Back then, Jiang Muyun had personally watched Grandpa Jiang and his group of old friends come over every now and then to inspect the work.
The elderly people of Grandpa Jiang’s generation had lived through no fewer storms in their lives than Jiang Muyun had in the apocalypse. There was no way to fool them.
Barring any accidents, her home could shelter her for quite a long time in the apocalypse, so of course she had to settle it properly.
As long as the house did not collapse, Jiang Muyun was willing to live here until the end of time.
As Jiang Muyun wrote, her eyelids began to fight each other.
When she opened her eyes again, she discovered that it was already the next day.
It was now August 23rd, 2023, in the Blue Star calendar. There were forty-two days left before the global temperature drop.
After crawling over to the computer and checking the download progress of her spiritual food, Jiang Muyun did not rush to unpack the luggage she had brought back.
First, she called a housekeeping company and asked them to clean every corner of the house thoroughly.
Jiang Muyun had personally experienced how terrifying the insect plague after the apocalypse was.
Every insignificant corner could become a breeding ground for all kinds of creatures.
In her previous life, she had heard that bugs had grown beneath someone’s wooden floor. The insects had filled the empty space under the flooring so completely that they forced cracks into the floorboards before anyone discovered them.
Fortunately, when Grandpa Jiang had lived in the old house, he had suffered enough from the creaking sounds of ageing wooden floors. So after moving back, he had used ceramic tiles throughout the home. Otherwise, Jiang Muyun would have had to rip up the floor and relay it.
While the housekeeping company cleaned the house, Jiang Muyun was not idle either.
After measuring the dimensions of all the doors and windows at home, she changed her outfit.
In the mirror, Jiang Muyun wore a chiffon dress, low heels, sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed sun hat. Her lips were painted a blazing red.
Just looking at herself in this outfit made Jiang Muyun feel hot.
She wrapped her cool slippers in a plastic bag and stuffed them into her handbag.
Then she casually bought a parasol with lace trim from a street vendor before calmly taking the subway to the outskirts of the city. She found a medium-sized door and window factory and ordered several custom-made windows.
They were all specially made double-layer tempered glass: thermal insulation, heat insulation, soundproofing, odour-proofing, and first-rate sealing.
The windows were custom orders made according to the window dimensions. The order had to be placed first before production began. The factory’s ready-made stock already had owners, so Jiang Muyun would have to wait around ten days before the installation workers came.
The kind of double-layer windows Jiang Muyun bought were not common in the south, not to mention that she specifically wanted tempered glass.
These kinds of double-layer windows were usually installed in northern regions, where people used thickened windows to withstand winter temperatures of minus thirty to forty degrees.
The fact that Jiang Muyun’s windows could be delivered in ten days was because Nan City’s geographical location was special.
Nan City happened to sit on Hua Country’s north-south dividing line. Winter was very cold, but not cold enough. So the people living in Nan City had winters where the lowest temperature could reach minus seven or eight degrees, but no central heating.
Some people chose to rely on their financial resources, using air conditioners and electric heaters for warmth. Others could not stand the dryness of air conditioning and chose to rely on their physical endurance instead, resisting the cold with righteous spirit alone.
There were also people who could not stand the dryness and did not have enough righteous spirit, so they had to think of other methods, such as installing these special windows at home.
Because of that, this type of window sold quite well in Nan City. The factory had sufficient stock, and the workers were all skilled. All that was needed was the time to produce them.
Next was the door.
In the apocalypse, whatever came knocking at the door might not necessarily be human, but something ghostly. A single anti-theft door really was not secure enough.
So Jiang Muyun chose an unbelievably ugly iron gate. Its style was roughly “special prison edition,” and it happened to fit her home’s dimensions.
The person receiving Jiang Muyun said that it had been custom-made by a customer who then abandoned the order. Because the door used good materials and its cost was not low, the factory had kept it there to sell. If Jiang Muyun wanted it, they could give her the lowest price.
In any case, the cost of this door had already been paid by its original owner.
The windows Jiang Muyun ordered were expensive, so giving her this small discount was nothing.
Jiang Muyun nodded without hesitation and asked whether they could install it as soon as possible.
The person was quite happy to get rid of such a slow-selling item and directly promised that someone would come to install it tomorrow.
Jiang Muyun walked around a bit more, then went to the shop next to the door and window factory and bought several thick blackout curtains. The curtains would be delivered together with the windows.
After buying the doors and windows, Jiang Muyun spent some time nearby and rented another small warehouse.
Jiang Muyun chatted for half an hour with the cigarette-smoking warehouse manager about her chain-smoking third uncle. Then Jiang Muyun met the warehouse manager’s third uncle, and from that third uncle, she spent five thousand yuan to buy a van of unknown previous ownership.
Judging only from its appearance, it looked as if it had been dragged back from a Middle Eastern battlefield. Yet somehow, it drove surprisingly smoothly, and all its documents were complete. Jiang Muyun clicked her tongue in wonder.
As expected of the legendary domestic miracle vehicle. Its power was unknown, but it grew stronger when facing strength.
It was hard to say what other advantages this vehicle had, but durability was certain.
She had no other requirements. She could not afford a good car, and there was no need to buy one. Durability was enough.
Jiang Muyun paid readily, and the third uncle had brought all the documents. Both of them had local household registration, so they went straight to the vehicle administration office to transfer ownership.
This third uncle was indeed a professional second-hand car dealer. Once he entered the vehicle administration office, it was like returning to his own home. He was more familiar with the second-hand car transfer procedure than the staff.
By the time Jiang Muyun walked out of the vehicle administration office, she could directly drive away in this battle-damaged version of a van.
Since she was already in the city, Jiang Muyun was no longer in a hurry to head to the outskirts.
Seeing a mountain bike specialty shop nearby, she first went inside and browsed around, then ordered five multi-gear mountain bikes.
All of them had off-road mountain tyres. She also bought dozens of extra tyres and many spare parts, making it convenient for her to replace and repair them later.
After the apocalypse, energy would become scarce. Ordinary people would not be able to obtain fuel, and fuel-powered vehicles would almost all become scrap metal.
Not to mention that after floods, acid rain, and earthquakes took turns eroding everything, there would simply not be much space left for ordinary household cars to drive. New energy vehicles with insufficient power would naturally have no room to function either.
This kind of mountain bike, with strong passability and no need for fuel, was the best means of transportation.
Jiang Muyun agreed on a time with the owner. The bikes and accessories would be delivered to the small warehouse she had rented at six o’clock that evening.
Jiang Muyun drove her little broken van unhurriedly toward the small warehouse.
On the way, she passed a construction site. Jiang Muyun spent a little money and loaded several bags of cement and sand.
The drought in the early apocalypse had made home toilets completely useless.
Later, when floodwater backed up through the sewage system, and when insect disasters caused bugs to crawl into homes through every pipe opening and ventilation outlet, those became nightmares for countless families.
If she bought some cement now, she could seal all of them directly when the time came and solve the problem once and for all.
Jiang Muyun also casually asked where the workers usually ate, then went from restaurant to restaurant, ordering each one’s signature dishes.
While filling her own stomach, Jiang Muyun also ordered food in quantities for several hundred people.
This time, she chose dishes that produced a lot of oil smoke and strong smells when cooked.
She did not ask the owners to deliver. Instead, she arranged a time with each restaurant owner and would drive over to pick the food up herself.
If you wanted to find restaurants that were both tasty and affordable, you still had to mobilise the power of the masses, Jiang Muyun sighed as she sat in the car.
As for rice, Nan City charged for rice. Jiang Muyun felt she might as well go home and steam more herself.
The battered van drove over a pitted cement road, and the several snakeskin bags loaded inside the vehicle vanished without a trace.
When the van passed over that stretch of road again, those mountain bikes also entered Jiang Muyun’s space.
After Jiang Muyun picked up the dishes she had ordered during the day, she learned from the proprietress of one restaurant that a new plastic processing factory had opened in the Chengnan Industrial Zone. The wholesale price for food containers there was especially cheap, and the small restaurants in this area were preparing to pool an order and buy a large batch together.
Jiang Muyun felt that her luck was truly quite good.
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