Chapter 63: Extreme Heat 4
She bought a generator, dry cell batteries, and electric lights, and what remained was instant food.
One box of biscuits, three bags of instant noodles, two boxes of instant hot pot, two boxes of instant rice, three boxes of chocolates, four cartons of milk, and five large bags of cereal.
That should be enough.
Chu Yian pulled this cart of items back home, then, sweating profusely, entered the kitchen.
The kitchen at noon was like a steamer.
As soon as the gas stove was turned on, the temperature became even hotter.
It was so hot that Chu Yian didn’t feel like cooking at all, and she had lost her appetite. In the end, she just tore open two packs of instant noodles, cooked them, and ate a little to get by.
The weather was simply too hot.
She really should buy another air conditioner.
Chu Yian planned for herself while calculating how much money she had left.
Yesterday, meat and vegetables cost 1938 yuan;
Fruit 569 yuan;
Electric lights 86 yuan;
Huoxiang Zhengqi water 20 yuan;
Soda 90 yuan;
Generator bought today 1350 yuan;
Food 876 yuan;
Appliances and dry cell batteries: 120 yuan;
Total expenditure was 5049 yuan, with 20341 yuan remaining.
There was still a lot of money left. Chu Yian planned to spend all her money in the early stages of this game and then stay at home for the next ten days as if on vacation.
To achieve this goal, at four in the afternoon, while the sun was still blazing, she was already out again.
Air conditioners were both expensive and hard to buy recently. She ran to several shops before she managed to buy one. A 3P standing air conditioner cost 5000 yuan!
Chu Yian suddenly had 5000 yuan less, and her heart ached for a moment.
But then she remembered that the air conditioner in the bedroom was only 1.5P, which wouldn’t be very effective in the large space of the basement, and she felt relieved.
It’s fine, she had bought most of her things, so it didn’t matter if it was a bit expensive.
Hauling the air conditioner back under the sun, she didn’t rush to install it. Chu Yian immediately hurried towards the city again.
The first thing she did after returning was to head straight to the Shopping Mall.
There was no bed in the basement, so she needed to get a mattress. Besides the mattress, she also needed a sleeping mat.
Chu Yian remembered from her childhood a kind of sleeping mat woven from pure bamboo strips. When new, it pricked the skin, but once polished, it was exceptionally cool. Besides leaving various marks on the body after sleeping on it for a long time, it was truly superb!
Unfortunately, she couldn’t find it in the city.
At least, she didn’t find it in the Shopping Mall.
She directly bought a sleeping mat that looked very cool and put it in the car. By the time she came out, the sky outside had already grown dim.
8:12 PM,
The streetlights along the road had already turned on.
This was the first time Chu Yian had driven her three-wheeled vehicle so late at night, but she still needed to go to the gas station to refuel.
She had driven the tricycle back and forth for three days, and now the fuel was running low. Also, the diesel generator she just bought would be a gas guzzler in the future.
After filling up the tank, she also bought 1000 liters (1 cubic meter) of bulk diesel.
By the time the gasoline was filled, the sky had completely darkened.
As she drove further into more remote areas, the streetlights became increasingly sparse.
Although the night was cool, it was also desolate and quiet. Driving a vehicle alone on the road gave her an eerie feeling.
Suddenly, at a turn, a man stood by the roadside, waving at her. This area was quite a distance from both the town and the suburbs, so he was probably stranded on the road, unable to find a ride at night.
Chu Yian saw him, but she didn’t slow down. Instead, she stomped on the accelerator and sped past him.
Although she was occasionally kind-hearted, she would never recklessly stop her car to help an adult man late at night, in an isolated area with no one else around.
The man had finally waited for a car, but he didn’t expect the other person to drive past so quickly. He couldn’t help but curse under his breath.
Damn it!
“What’s wrong, Old Li? Did someone get away again?”
In the nearby woods, someone else was surprisingly asking.
The man referred to as Old Li grunted in response, “It’s not easy to catch a fat sheep on such a late night.”
“Ah, take it easy.”
The man in the woods said, “This round of the game is twenty days, and we only have 4000 yuan between us. Just staying in a Hotel will use up all that money. If we don’t earn some extra cash, what if something happens later?”
As he spoke, he took out his phone and checked it, “There’s still an hour and a half left, then it’ll be my turn.”
“Hiss, how is there still an hour and a half?”
The man referred to as Old Li complained, “I told you to buy some mosquito repellent. The mosquitoes by the roadside are so vicious, they’ve bitten me all over.”
Chu Yian was unaware of this small interlude. She drove quickly and arrived home ten minutes earlier than usual.
The first thing she did upon arriving home was to close the door and lock the main gate securely.
Only then did she turn on the large lights in the yard and begin to unload the gasoline from the car, barrel by barrel.
She moved all 10 barrels of gasoline into the basement.
Instant food, vegetables, fruits, lighting fixtures, and now gasoline, sleeping mats, mattresses… The basement, which had just been cleaned, was now cluttered due to the excessive number of items stored there.
Looking at the basement, Chu Yian felt she still needed to organize it.
But for now, while the weather was still relatively cool, she should get the air conditioner set up.
The air conditioner installer had been booked for the same day next week. Chu Yian thought that the air conditioner would be moved eventually anyway, so she might as well install it herself now.
Chu Yian’s manual skills… were very poor.
She almost broke the newly bought air conditioner.
She worked from 9 PM until early morning before she successfully installed the air conditioner.
She was truly exhausted and sleepy; she had no time to sort out the basement. She quickly took a shower and fell asleep as soon as she lay on the bed.
Game Day Four
Due to staying up late yesterday, Chu Yian slept until 8 AM this morning.
By the time she woke up, the sun was already high in the sky.
The orange-red sun hung in the sky, and the temperature had already begun to rise little by little. Chu Yian didn’t even have time to cook; she quickly washed up and rushed towards the city.
Today, she was visiting a furniture factory.
The basement space was too simple, and items were not easy to divide. To make her rest more comfortable later, she planned to buy a few screens to create a storage area.
However, these screens… wooden ones cost four figures, and even the cheap ones were 500-600 yuan!
How could one screen create a storage area? She would need at least four. These things would quickly drain her money, and they weren’t even worth it.
Chu Yian shook her head; there was no need to spend money on this.
She came in a hurry and left regretfully because it was too expensive.
As soon as she walked out of the furniture store, without the benefit of air conditioning, a wave of heat washed over her. Chu Yian immediately broke into a thin sweat and now just wanted to find a place with air conditioning.
Ahead, there was a snack shop. Chu Yian hadn’t had breakfast this morning.
She lifted the door curtain and ran inside, glancing at the shop’s specialty sign. “Boss, two liang of beef rice noodles.”
No sooner had she spoken than a crackling sound suddenly came from the utility pole across the street outside the door.
