It took a bit of research to find the perfect bulk grocery store for my first solo adventure.
It took even more effort to get out of the house, even when Xu Zhenlan and Zhou Chenghai were gone to work.
If I had any worries or concerns about how hard that house was to break into, they completely evaporated when I realized how hard it was to break OUT of. Every time Zhou Chenghai spotted me on camera, he sent me a text asking what I thought I was doing.
I don't know if I finally managed to sneak out without him knowing, or if he gave up on trying to keep me in.
Either way, the taxi was waiting for me on the other side of the iron gates and took me to the store I had decided on.
I have to admit, I was a bit concerned that it wouldn't be as impressive as it was online, but this store was exactly what I needed. It was massive, impersonal, and designed for bulk purchases.
It was the kind of place where someone buying fifty bags of rice wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.
Like I said... it was perfect.
I walked in around 10 AM on a Tuesday, when the store would be busy enough that I wouldn't stand out, but not so crowded that I'd have trouble moving.
The building stretched out like an aircraft hangar, all corrugated metal and industrial lighting, and inside, the aisles were wide enough to drive a forklift through. It also didn't hurt that the shelves reached up to the ceiling, stacked with pallets of goods wrapped in plastic.
I grabbed a flatbed cart—the industrial kind that could hold a refrigerator—and started walking down the aisle.
First rule of buying for prepping was to buy visibly. Make it look normal. Make it look like I belonged here.
I loaded the cart methodically.
Twenty-five pound bags of rice, stacked four high. Cases of canned tomatoes. Boxes of pasta. Cooking oil in gallon jugs.
I moved slowly, like I was considering each purchase, like I was just another bulk shopper stocking up for a large family or a restaurant. The cart filled up quickly, and I made sure to pause occasionally, checking my phone like I was consulting a list.
There were cameras everywhere. I had counted them on the way in—one at the entrance, two covering the main aisles, one at each corner of the store, and several more scattered throughout.
They were the cheap kind, the ones that recorded everything but didn't have enough resolution to catch details unless you were standing directly underneath them. They were good enough to catch shoplifters stuffing things into their bags, but not good enough to notice when an entire pallet of rice disappeared while someone was standing in front of it.
I stopped in the rice aisle and pretended to examine a bag, turning it over like I was reading the label. The camera above me was angled toward the main walkway, not down at the shelves, but I wasn't taking any chances.
I waited until a woman with two kids passed by, her cart overflowing with cereal boxes and juice cartons, and then I reached out with my mind and pulled.
The spatial storage opened like a door I couldn't see, and the entire pallet of rice—forty bags, a thousand pounds, vanished into it.
One second it was there, the next it was gone, and the only evidence was the empty space on the shelf and the faint shimmer in the air that disappeared before anyone could notice.
With a small smile on my face, I moved on.
Canned goods were next. I loaded my cart with a few cases of beans, corn, and soup, making sure they were visible, making sure anyone watching would see me shopping like a normal person. Then I turned down the aisle where the pallets were stacked floor to ceiling, and I started taking everything.
Tomatoes. Green beans. Peaches. Pineapple. Tuna. Chicken. Soup. Chili. I didn't even look at the labels—I just pulled, and the spatial storage swallowed it all. Entire pallets disappeared in seconds, and I kept my face calm, my movements slow, like I was just browsing.
A store employee walked past me, pushing a cart full of returns, and I smiled at him. He smiled back and kept walking.
No one noticed, and hopefully, it would continue that way.
The frozen food section was trickier.
The cameras here were better, angled down to catch people opening the freezer doors, and there were more employees around, restocking and checking temperatures. I couldn't just make entire freezers disappear—that would be too obvious.
So I played it differently.
I opened a freezer door and started loading my cart with frozen vegetables, bags of French fries, and boxes of chicken nuggets. I took my time, like I was being picky, like I was checking expiration dates. And while I did that, I pulled everything from the freezer behind me. The one no one was looking at. The one the camera couldn't see because I was standing in front of it.
Frozen pizzas. Ice cream. Bags of shrimp. Frozen fruit. It all vanished into the spatial storage, and I kept loading my cart with the visible stuff, keeping up the act. When I finally closed the freezer door and moved on, the one behind me was completely empty, and no one had seen a thing.
I repeated the process three more times, moving through the frozen section like a ghost, taking everything I could while maintaining the appearance of a normal shopper. By the time I reached the end of the aisle, I'd emptied six freezers, and my cart was still only half full.
Cooking oil was next.
I loaded my cart with a few gallon jugs, making sure they were visible, and then I turned down the aisle where the bulk containers were stored. Five-gallon jugs, stacked on pallets, enough to deep-fry a small country.
I pulled them all. Every single one. The spatial storage didn't care about weight or volume—it just took what I gave it, and I gave it everything.
By the time I reached the checkout, my cart was overflowing, and I looked like exactly what I was supposed to look like: a rich girl with too much money and not enough sense, buying enough food to feed a small army.
The cashier didn't even blink. She just scanned everything, told me the total, and I handed over my credit card without hesitation.
"Big party?" she asked, smiling politely.
"Something like that," I said, smiling back.
She didn't need to know that the "party" was just me, alone in a mansion, preparing to outlive the apocalypse in comfort.
I loaded the visible purchases into the back of the car—just enough to make it look like I'd actually bought what was on the receipt—and drove away.
Behind me, the warehouse store stood quiet and unassuming, completely unaware that it had just lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory.
And no one would ever know.
Because there was no evidence.
No footage of me carrying anything out.
No record of pallets being moved.
Just empty shelves and a receipt for a few hundred dollars worth of groceries.
I glanced at the rearview mirror as the taxi I had requested pulled out of the parking lot, watching the store disappear behind me.
One down. Dozens more to go.
Because survival wasn't about having enough. It was about having everything.
And I wasn't sharing it with anyone.