Chapter 260: A Sanctuary of One’s Own
After eating her fill, Sheng Wanyan brought the eager, thirsty Maodou into her spatial domain. The moment they stepped inside, the massive dog trotted straight toward the spiritual spring. He took a measured, delicate sip as he always did, then bounded right back to find his mistress.
Sheng Wanyan was over in the orchard, carefully harvesting grapes. She had quite a few jars of wine aging in the soil here, which she planned to dig up and give to Grandpa Sheng when the timing was right. She also needed to send a batch back to the Capital. Her plan was to wait for the mail courier to arrive early next month so she could dispatch the package herself.
Translating these ten books was a massive undertaking, and she couldn’t afford to waste time. To keep her companion occupied, she stopped by the storage warehouse and pulled out a rubber toy ball. Maodou immediately went wild with excitement, batting it across the ground and racing around the house in pure bliss.
Sheng Wanyan left him to his own devices. Maodou was already deeply familiar with the terrain of the space and could easily navigate his way back no matter how far he roamed.
With the house entirely to herself and no prying eyes to worry about, Sheng Wanyan spent the entire day inside her domain, even taking her meals there. Since she was dining alone, she decided to treat herself to an extravagant hot pot feast.
She gathered a mouth-watering spread: tender marbled beef, tripe, beef tendon, delicate kelp sprouts, tribute vegetables, shrimp paste, and savory duck bills. To round it out, she strolled over to her cultivated garden plot to pluck a few fresh cucumbers and crisp spinach leaves.
Looking around, however, she felt a slight headache coming on. Her warehouse was bursting with stored meats and produce, the livestock and wild game she raised were thriving, and the vegetable garden was utterly massive. She hadn’t even planted any new seeds lately simply because her inventory was already overflowing. If she kept sowing crops, she wouldn’t even know what to do with the excess, which was why she had left the most recent harvest untouched.
Then there were the chickens, ducks, cattle, sheep, and fish, all of which were constantly reproducing. Though the spatial domain was incredibly vast, the sheer volume of living creatures made her scalp go numb. If she slaughtered them all and moved them to the stasis warehouse, she would completely run out of storage space.
At least she didn’t have to worry about the orchard; the fruit hung perfectly ripe on the branches without ever rotting or dropping to the ground, allowing her to harvest them at her leisure or ferment them into wine. But the livestock was a genuine logistical puzzle. If they kept multiplying at this rate, her pristine domain was going to look like a chaotic commercial farm.
Well, it essentially is a farm at this point, she amused herself.
Sheng Wanyan pondered the issue and decided that once the country’s economic reforms took effect and private commerce was legalized, she would open a large supermarket. She could enlist Father and Mother Sheng to help her manage the business and pay them a generous monthly salary. As their daughter, she now possessed the wealth and capability to provide her parents with a comfortable, secure enterprise of their own.
She could even gift them a portion of the company’s shares, but a sudden thought gave her pause: the Sheng family now had little Huzi to consider.
Huzi was the undisputed heir to the Sheng family line. She was not her parents’ only child, and while she wasn’t a stingy person by nature, she knew that nothing poisoned family dynamics faster than money and business inheritances.
It was a sad truth of human nature. In the face of immense wealth and power, even the deepest bonds could fray, and the most loving couples could become unrecognizable strangers. More importantly, Sheng Wanze was the primary successor of the Sheng household, not her. Her sole duty as a daughter was to show filial piety and care for her parents in their twilight years.
The human heart was an unpredictable thing, especially when maternal instincts were involved. Pan Yue was a mother now, and it was only natural for a mother to want to secure the absolute best future for her own child. Sheng Wanyan felt the exact same protective drive for the life growing inside her own belly.
She couldn’t predict whether Pan Yue’s character would shift in the future, but if an opportunity arose to secure massive wealth for her son, any person would be tempted to take advantage of it. If financial friction arose down the line, it would only breed bitter resentment.
Furthermore, while Father and Mother Sheng were deeply fair people who treated their son and daughter equally, that absolute impartiality might not extend to their grandchildren. To put it bluntly, there would always be an unspoken distinction between a grandchild who carried the Sheng surname and one who carried the Gu surname. Even when Sheng Wanyan became a grandmother herself in the distant future, she couldn’t guarantee she would always achieve perfect, flawless fairness among her descendants. If she had a paternal grandson, she would naturally find herself planning extra safeguards for him.
Therefore, she had to take preventative measures now. It was always better to avoid potential conflicts before they ever had a chance to take root.
When dinnertime arrived in the outside world, Grandma Sheng walked across the lane carrying a jar of freshly simmered pig’s trotter soup. Since her granddaughter-in-law insisted on eating at home, the old woman figured she would simply deliver the nourishment herself.
Sheng Wanyan stepped out of her space to open the door. “Grandma, why did you walk over in this cold?”
“You still have the nerve to ask, you silly girl?” Grandma Sheng huffed gently, stepping into the warmth. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you all day. Of course I had to come check on you!”
Sheng Wanyan smiled warmly, guiding the elderly woman to a chair. “Sit down and rest, Grandma. Let’s eat together.”
Grandma Sheng glanced at the dining table and let out a sigh of relief when she saw a proper spread of meat and eggs. She was glad to see the girl wasn’t skimping on her meals. A pregnant woman needed to build up her strength; if she didn’t eat well now, her health would suffer terribly down the line. After all, life couldn’t stay perfectly easy forever.
“I won’t stay to eat, our dinner is already waiting across the lane,” Grandma Sheng said, patting her hand. “Just make sure you drink every drop of this soup to nourish your body.”
“I will,” Sheng Wanyan promised with a bright smile. She ladled the rich soup into a large porcelain bowl of her own and washed out Grandma Sheng’s container so she could take it back. “Are you sure you won’t stay, Grandma?”
Grandma Sheng shot her a mock-stern look. “Eat your food. Do you think grocery money grows on trees? I need to get back and help Xiaoyue anyway. Little Huzi is throwing a fit.”
Hearing that, Sheng Wanyan didn’t press her further. There would be plenty of other opportunities for family dinners. “Alright, go on then. I know your precious great-grandson is the most important person in the world to you.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Grandma Sheng chided playfully, walking toward the door. “My future great-grandchild in your belly is just as precious to me.”
Sheng Wanyan chuckled, thoroughly amused by Grandma Sheng’s sharp wit and natural instinct for keeping the family peace. It was wonderful how gracefully the old woman maintained absolute equality among everyone.
“Ah, it seems I’m still the least important one around here,” Sheng Wanyan teased.
Grandma Sheng rolled her eyes in fond exasperation, holding her empty bowl tightly as she stepped out into the lane. The girl is practically fully grown, yet she still acts like a spoiled child mapping out affection from an old woman like me, she thought, a smile tugging at her lips.
Watching her grandmother walk briskly away, Sheng Wanyan closed the door and shook her head with a soft smile. Grandma Sheng was an incredibly sharp, discerning woman; her refined manners and measured way of handling crises suggested a sophisticated background. Yet, since she had chosen to live out her days in quiet anonymity within a modest military compound, she undoubtedly had her own profound reasons.
Letting go of one’s past identity was a massive achievement. In the dark days of the revolution, survival was the only thing that mattered. As the younger generation, their duty wasn’t to pry into buried secrets, but to ensure her twilight years were filled with absolute peace, honoring her choices without question.
Sheng Wanyan sighed softly, kneeling down to ruffle Maodou’s thick fur before pouring a generous portion of premium dog kibble into his bowl.
Once she finished her own dinner, she immediately slipped back into her spatial domain to take a bath. In the outside world, bathing while heavily pregnant was an exhausting chore that involved boiling heavy kettles of water, carrying buckets back and forth, and lifting heavy basins. Only a fool would struggle through all that manual labor when she possessed a private sanctuary with a modern, effortless setup.
After a long, soothing soak, Sheng Wanyan curled up to rest inside the domain. The master bed here was massive and cloud-soft, ensuring she could sleep peacefully without any risk of rolling off. She nestled onto her side, wrapping her arms around a smooth silk quilt.
The temperature inside the domain remained a flawless, eternal 25 degrees Celsius—neither too hot nor too cold—rendering heavy winter blankets entirely unnecessary. Settled deep within this tranquil environment, she poured her focus into her work, losing track of time as she steadily completed page after page of translation.
Of course, she couldn’t submit the finished manuals to the publishing house too quickly. If she handed them over ahead of schedule, the editors might assume she had rushed through the technical data carelessly.
Checking the digital calendar inside her domain, Sheng Wanyan noted that it was already April 28th. A single month in the outside world was equivalent to a full year inside the space. She had only spent five days resting and working within her sanctuary, but because one external day stretched into more than twelve days of subjective time inside, those five days gave her a two-month head start. Pacing herself this way, she could easily deliver flawless, meticulously polished manuscripts right on time.
