"Yuanyuan, Little Chen, it's about time we head back. If you want to play more, we can always come back later."
"Okay."
"Alright."
Hmm, it was obvious Su Chen still hadn't had his fill of fun.
Zhang Yanyan pulled open the car door and slid into the back seat. The driver, Uncle Chen, turned around and asked, "Miss, back to the manor, or the villa near the university?"
"The villa," Zhang Yanyan said as she leaned back against the seat, her fingertips swiping across her phone screen to finish paying the resort bill. Even though she was essentially transferring the money to herself, the formalities still had to be followed.
Just then, the Su family's car pulled up alongside theirs. Su Yuan leaned out of the window and called to her at the top of her voice.
"Cousin! Little Chen and I are going home for a couple of days, we'll head back to the villa on Monday!"
"Got it, drive slowly on the road," Zhang Yanyan said, poking her head out. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Su Chen in the passenger seat, grinning and waving at her through the window. Remembering the warmblood horse she'd just given him, she added, "If that horse doesn't suit you when you ride it..." She was going to say he could just swap it for another.
"Thank you, cousin! I'm going to ride it tomorrow first thing!" Su Chen called back loudly. Su Yuan immediately smacked his arm and pulled the conversation back on track. "Oh right, tomorrow's my mom's birthday banquet, you absolutely have to come! We agreed on it, I'll be mad at you if you don't show up!"
"Don't worry, I won't miss it," Zhang Yanyan smiled. "I already got a present ready for Auntie, it'll be her favorite for sure."
"I knew I could count on you!" Su Yuan made a heart gesture. The Su family's driver honked the horn, and the two cars parted ways at the intersection, one heading to the Su family's residential neighborhood, the other toward the villa district near Teng University.
There was no one else in the car, so Zhang Yanyan closed her eyes and spoke to the voice in her head, Eighteen. "Do an inventory of all the jade in my space, including the batch my dad brought back, plus all the pieces I bought at past auctions and the jade market. Count every last one of them."
Eighteen's mechanical voice rang out right away, with a faint fizz of data flickering in the background.
[Host, inventory complete. There are 36 old jade ornaments from Lanzhou, 127 half-polished jade blocks from Myanmar, plus 219 uncut raw stones, and 89 sets of various jade jewelry. Add to that the 58 top-tier old mine raw stones Ms. Zhang brought back, 42 ice-type jadeite ornaments, and 67 sets of high-quality jade jewelry. The space's energy value is completely full, if you pour all of it in you can level up twice in a row.]
"No way, the mediocre pieces can go, but the top-tier jades are one in a million finds, I'm definitely keeping those."
Zhang Yanyan opened her eyes, the delight still bright in them. Over the past year or so, she'd made trip after trip to the jade market, saving up for enough energy to level up, and now that day had finally come.
[...]
[Fine, host. With the rest of the jade, you still have more than enough to level up once.]
Forty minutes later, the car pulled up in front of her standalone villa. Uncle Chen carried her bags in for her, reminded her that the kitchen had warm soup waiting, then drove back to the manor.
Zhang Yanyan stepped inside, asked the housekeeper to tidy up the living room, then went straight to her bedroom, locked the door, drew the curtains, and with a thought, entered her space, appearing right in the middle of the walk-in closet.
Right in front of her was a mountain of jade, raw stones spread across a whole open patch of ground, with jewelry and ornaments arranged on temporary wooden racks. The soft glow of the jade filled the air, a truly pleasant sight to behold.
Good thing the space was big enough, otherwise there'd never be room to store all of this.
Zhang Yanyan squatted down and picked out all the top-quality pieces: ice-type full-green jadeite bangles, glass-type jade Buddha pendants, old mine landscape ornaments, plus a few raw stones that could cut out imperial green jade.
Once she'd set those aside, she waved her hand and dumped all the remaining jade straight into the spiritual spring at the center of the space.
The second the jade touched the spring water, it fizzed. The surface of the spring bubbled over with white foam, pale green spiritual mist drifted up from the water and circled the space a few times, and the whole space began to tremble gently.
Eighteen's prompt sounded immediately. [Space energy value overflow detected, initiating large-scale expansion. Upgrading... 10%... 50%... 100%! Upgrade complete!]
Zhang Yanyan looked around. The space had expanded several times over. The mountain forest had grown much bigger, the wild fruit trees and other plants were far lusher than before, the farmland had been divided into over a dozen neat, orderly plots, the fish pond had widened with fish darting around more lively than ever. The only things that hadn't changed were the small villa in the space and the time-stopped zone.
"Perfect," Zhang Yanyan muttered to herself happily as she walked a full loop around the space.
"Eighteen, pull up the stockpiling checklist I made earlier. Starting today, we're going to stock supplies systematically by era. Grains, oils, and cloth from ancient times, medicine and medical equipment from modern and near-modern eras, water and canned food for the apocalypse. For anything already in the supermarket on the first floor, we can stock less of it. For everything else that's missing, we'll prepare extra later, to get ready for traveling to other worlds in the future."
[Understood, host.]
Zhang Yanyan acknowledged the voice, then messed around in the space a little longer, marking out the open patch next to the spiritual spring to use as a warehouse, before exiting the space.
She'd barely stepped out of her bedroom when she smelled the sweet fragrance of tremella soup drifting from the kitchen. She drank a bowl of soup, sent Su Yuan a WeChat message to confirm the time and location of the birthday banquet, then went back to her room to go over the Zhang Group's project documents.
The next afternoon, Zhang Yanyan changed into a simple off-white dress, put on a thin diamond necklace, picked up the gift box she'd prepared for Su Yuan's mom, and had Uncle Chen drive her to the hotel where the Su family was hosting the meal.
Su Yuan's mom Li Hui was a middle school teacher, so she hadn't gone over the top with the birthday banquet. She'd only invited close family and a few good friends, so there were just two tables of guests total.
When Zhang Yanyan arrived, Su Yuan was standing by the door greeting people. She lit up the second she saw Zhang Yanyan, hurried over, linked arms with her and led her inside. "You're finally here! Mom was just asking about you."
"Traffic was a little backed up on the way," Zhang Yanyan said as she handed over the gift box. "Happy birthday, Auntie, this is for you."
Li Hui was chatting with relatives, and she broke into a wide smile the second she spotted Zhang Yanyan. She pulled her over by the hand to sit down. "Yanyan, you're here, come sit. You shouldn't have brought a gift, you're being too polite, kid."
"Of course I had to get something for your birthday," Zhang Yanyan said, a rare, genuine warmth in her tone that made Li Hui beam with joy.
The birthday banquet was lively and full of casual, warm family chatter. Zhang Yanyan sat and chatted with everyone for a while, ate a few bites of food, then said her goodbyes to Li Hui early, explaining that she had some school matters to take care of.
Li Hui had Su Yuan walk her to the door, and stuffed a big bag of pastries into her hands, telling her to come over for meals more often.
When they came out of the hotel, Uncle Chen drove her back to campus. As soon as they pulled up to the front gate of Teng University, they saw a crowd of students gathered around, chattering noisily, gawking at some kind of commotion.
Zhang Yanyan told Uncle Chen to pull over to the curb, rolled down the window and glanced out. There she saw Zhou Nian blocking Tang Tang's path, with Song Ze standing in front of Tang Tang to shield her, the two of them yelling at each other so heatedly their faces were bright red.
"Tang Tang, don't play innocent! You did it on purpose, you were deliberately seducing Song Ze! You homewrecker!" Zhou Nian's voice was sharp and shrill, wild with rage, her eyes red and hair messy, looking completely distraught.
"Zhou Nian, don't spout nonsense like that," Tang Tang hid behind Song Ze, her eyes red-rimmed, her voice soft and thick with grievance. "Song Ze and I are just classmates. You keep misunderstanding us like this, and spreading nasty rumors about me everywhere. I'm really hurt by it."
"Just friends? Friends hug and cling to each other? Friends eat every single meal together?" Zhou Nian pointed at the pair, her hands shaking with rage. "Song Ze, you tell me! All those things you said to me back then, were they all lies?"
Song Ze frowned, his face full of obvious impatience, and roughly shoved Zhou Nian away. "What's between you and me has nothing to do with Tang Tang at all. Why do you always target her? I already told you, we aren't right for each other. I'm the one who wants to break up with you. What's the point of you pestering her over and over again?"
