Hundreds of bags of rice were piled into a small hill, enough to last ten years if she ate sparingly. Gu Mingyuewas delighted, and the negative online comments questioning her authenticity seemed far less bothersome now.
After a night passed, more than ten people placed orders. After confirming the delivery addresses with the customers, she began packing them with the shopping bags she had collected in the past. Once shipped out, she headed to the farmer's market.
The market was much quieter after 10 o'clock. Fruit stands set up umbrellas, and bees buzzed around the dark grapes. The vendors were sitting in front of fans, waving electric mosquito swatters back and forth.
At the market's entrance, four flour workshops had stalls. The outer shelves displayed homemade dry noodles, while inside, there were cold noodles covered with cloth.
Cold noodles were hard to store, so she didn't consider them. She bought fifty pounds of each type of dry noodle—coarse, medium, and fine. The shop owner's wife, seeing that she was a big customer, also recommended their homemade rice noodles, sweet potato starch noodles, potato wide noodles, and more. Gu Mingyuewas tempted. "If I buy a lot, can you give me a discount?"
"Of course," the shop owner's wife said warmly. "I'll give it to you at cost price."
Gu Mingyue didn't take her word too seriously, but she asked about the price. "Do you have 200 pounds of rice noodles in stock?"
"Yes, we do!" The shop owner's wife replied with a big smile. "Anything else?"
The sweet potato noodles could be used for spicy sour noodles, and the wide noodles for hotpot. Gu Mingyuethought for a moment, "300 pounds of sweet potato starch noodles, 200 pounds of wide sweet potato noodles, and 500 pounds of potato starch..."
The deal wasn't even sealed yet, and the shop owner's wife was already grinning ear to ear. She grabbed a pen from the holder and started writing on the paper while chatting with Gu Mingyue. "I'm not bragging, but our supply is the largest in the whole market. You won't find better prices anywhere else."
Gu Mingyue glanced behind her at the shop.
The storefront wasn't large. Wooden shelves lined the walls, and a machine stood in the middle, but there was no visible stock.
She asked, "Where's your inventory?"
"We have two shops in the alley on the right, stocked to the brim," the shop owner's wife explained.
The market's rent was high, so buying in bulk to store here was unwise. Instead, she rented two shops in the right alley, hung up their own sign, and casually mentioned, "We have branches, you know!" In this small-scale business, it wasn't enough to just stay in the shop; they had to go out and drum up business.
Restaurants, hotpot joints, and hotels in the west district—all potential customers.
The shop owner's wife continued, "Do you need some cold noodles or gluten? How about self-raising flour for buns? Or pea flour, corn flour?"
Gu Mingyue hadn't prepared a list yet but was curious. "Are they expensive?"
"Self-raising flour for buns is two yuan per pound, pea flour is four point two per pound, and corn flour is three point five per pound. Go ask around, I guarantee you won't find cheaper than this."
Gu Mingyue had often used pea flour in her father's store, and the cost was more expensive than that. She said, "I'll take 500 pounds of flour, 400 pounds of pea flour, and 1,000 pounds of corn flour."
"What about the cold noodles and gluten?"
Gu Mingyue looked at the flies on the cloth. "No need."
The shop owner's wife looked slightly disappointed.
The Yunxi Hotel near the Yunxi Mall was owned by her relatives. Originally, several weddings and banquets were booked there, but due to the fire and the pandemic, the hotel was closed, and all her goods were returned.
She wished she could buy more.
The shop owner's wife tapped on her calculator and showed Gu Mingyue the number: over 25,700 yuan.
"The second-to-last shop in the left alley is mine. I'll pay a 5,000 yuan deposit, and after the goods are delivered, I'll pay the rest."
With experience, her tone was firm.
"Alright, I'll give you a receipt."
Seeing Gu Mingyue drenched in sweat, the shop owner's wife handed her a fan—a promotional fan with an advertisement for a men's health clinic. Gu Mingyue felt a bit embarrassed but still accepted it. "Thank you."
"The weather forecast says it'll be high temperatures for the next two weeks, so be careful. Two people were just taken away by an ambulance."
In this weather, collapsing could mean ending up in the ICU—rare but serious.
"Okay."
The fan wasn't very large, and the air it blew was hot. Apart from a few shirtless people busy by the meat stalls, everything else in the market was quiet.
She did a rough calculation of her savings: over 330,000 yuan in medicines, 40,000 yuan spent on rice, more than 20,000 yuan on pork trotters and ribs, 94,000 yuan on beef, mutton, and geese, 40,000 yuan on fish, and 25,000 yuan just now. Her savings were around 1.07 million yuan.
The post-apocalyptic disaster might last for years, but this amount wouldn't be enough.
Leaving the market, the lamb vendor called, saying the temperature was too high and the meat was going bad. He asked if he could freeze it for her until she had time to pick it up.
"I'm in the left alley. You can bring it over now."
"Okay."
Next door to the shop was a protective railing store owned by a father and son. It was so hot that they had moved inside to do some welding.
When Gu Mingyue opened the rolling door, two stainless steel racks had already been set up inside.
The newly polished racks gleamed with oil. She tried to move them into the space.
Sure enough, they could be easily stored if manually moved.
After taking the racks out, she borrowed a stool from next door and waited for the delivery.
The flour from the workshop arrived first. The delivery man was a thin middle-aged man, followed by two high school students. Neither of them raised their eyes, their fingers constantly swiping on their phones.
The middle-aged man went over and snatched their phones. "Unload the goods first."
"We're coming," said one of the teenagers, angrily grabbing the phone back and turning away to squat down.
The man paused. "Do you want me to report you to your mother?"
"Do it!" The tall teenager shouted, clearly furious.
The man tried to urge the shorter one, who obediently put away his phone.
The man asked Gu Mingyue, "Do you want to put the racks here?"
"Yes," she replied.
The man glanced at Gu Mingyue, realizing she had witnessed his stern treatment of his son, and awkwardly tried to explain, "Young people love playing games. It's not a big deal."
His hair had a touch of white, but he still seemed quite energetic. "The high school exam is next year, but even though it's the holidays, he's not going to extra classes. He's just playing games at home all day. If he doesn't come out and work for a few days, he won't know how hard life is."
He glanced at Gu Mingyue as he spoke.
The girl was sweating, her mask damp, but her skin was fair, and her eyes were large—clearly not from a poor family. He then urged his son again, "Do you want me to call your mom now?"
"Coming!" The tall teenager angrily stood up, hoisting two bags of flour and walking into the shop. "Reading, reading, reading all the time. You've read me deaf!"
Gu Mingyue didn't like adult nagging either.
Gu JianGuo was fine, but Xiao Jinhua's constant nagging could go on endlessly.
Nagging was a job for the young. If you didn't find a proper job while you were still young, you'd end up washing dishes at a restaurant after thirty-five. Then she'd start nagging her about not getting married, about growing old and being alone, with no one to care for her when she got sick.
When it got too much, she wouldn't reply to Xiao Jinhua's WeChat messages for two months.
Now, seeing the sullen teenager in front of her, she couldn't help but see a reflection of herself.
She took out her phone and sent a WeChat message to Xiao Jinhua: [Mom, I'm coming back next Monday. Can you come pick me up?]
She couldn't bring herself to say anything more emotional.
Even if she did, Xiao Jinhua would probably be afraid to hear it.
This was how their relationship had been, and it couldn't be changed.
"Who will buy the groceries if I leave? Your dad and Xiao Xuan will come, I'll go buy crawfish..."
Gu Mingyue's favorite food was crawfish, especially the heads—sucking on one could satisfy her for days.
"By the way, a new braised meat shop opened across the neighborhood. The boneless lemon chicken feet are delicious, should I buy some?"
"Sure."
"What else do you want?"
"These two are enough."
"I've already told the crawfish vendor, they'll send a box directly..."
A box weighing twenty kilograms. There were only four adults and two kids at home—could they finish it?
"Too much."
In the summer, people typically don't have much of an appetite. Gu Mingyue hadn't had rice for several days, and even drinking water made her feel full. She had done a gastroscopy and colonoscopy, and everything seemed fine, but the lack of appetite was related to her mood.
She used to agree with this explanation and took a few pills prescribed by the doctor, but the effect was minimal.
Xiao Jinhua hadn't replied. She was probably out with the kids. Her niece was two years old and couldn't stay inside, always crying to play outside. Her sister-in-law had to supervise her nephew's homework and was overwhelmed, so Xiao Jinhua often took care of her niece.
Noticing that her aunt still hadn't responded, Gu Mingyue made a voice call. The other party answered just as the call was about to end.
"Minyue." The Gu family was known for their loud voices, and Gu Mingyue pulled the phone away from her ear. "Aunt, what are you busy with?"
"Listen to this." A continuous metallic cutting sound came through the phone, and after a long while, her aunt's voice finally spoke, "We've been so busy these days. Your uncle and I haven't even had time to sleep..."
Her aunt ran a metal parts processing factory, and the couple was too frugal to hire help, so they did everything themselves.
When they had too many orders, they worked overtime for days and nights.
"You need to take care of yourself..."
"Ah, you're starting to care about me now? Don't worry, Aunt's fine. But you, don't stay up too late..."
Gu Mingyue had always been known for being nocturnal—sleeping all day and only heading out cautiously at night. So when anyone came to visit during the holidays, they would always ask, "Is Minyue still sleeping?"
It wasn't even 9 or 10 a.m., but it could be 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and the same question would come up. Gu Mingyue would always get annoyed, but this time, she didn't. She asked if the situation with the pandemic was severe and if they had stocked up on supplies.
"We've stocked up."
Her aunt was the youngest in the family and kept up with trends. While Xiao Jinhua was still skeptical about online shopping, her aunt had already been using masks bought online and filming short videos. Whenever news of a pandemic came up, she would immediately call to remind everyone to stock up.
Gu Mingyue asked, "How much did you stock?"
"A lot," her aunt said. "Your uncle and I get so busy that we don't check our phones. The pandemic came suddenly, so we stocked up for half a year's worth of rice and grains."
"Wow," her aunt exclaimed. "I just noticed I hadn't replied to your message, probably forgot after washing the dishes. As for the stocks, if they're sold, then they're sold. You handle it, we'll talk about it during the New Year."
Gu Mingyue brought up the topic of Gu Jianguo's birthday, asking if she was going back to Cicheng.
Her answer was the same as Gu Dagu's—she'd make up for it during the New Year.
After ending the call, Gu Mingyue felt heavy-hearted.
Apocalyptic warnings were often exaggerated, and her aunt and uncle didn't take them seriously. Even if there were natural disasters, they believed they could overcome them. As long as they still had strength, they would earn money—nothing could stop them.
"All the goods are here, you count them..." A man interrupted Gu Mingyue's thoughts. She looked at the neatly arranged shelves, quickly checked the weight, and paid the full amount through WeChat.
Once the man left, she closed the rolling door.
It was easiest to store the goods and shelves in the space, but the shelves were too conspicuous. If they disappeared suddenly, it would attract attention, so she left some goods outside.
The beef and lamb were a bit trickier. One hundred kilograms per bag, and there was probably four or five kilograms of blood. The transparent plastic wrapping was a bit off-putting.
Seeing her frown, the vendor pulled two more bags from under the car seat. "You bought a lot, so I'll give you some sheep and cow hides."
"Thank you."
"I figured you don't have a scale, so I brought one."
With 1,100 kilograms of meat, the weight was higher by several dozen kilograms due to blood, but Gu Mingyuepaid the final balance.
As she was about to leave, the vendor reminded her, "It's hot, the meat spoils quickly. If you're not transporting it right away, remember to store it in a freezer."
"I rented a truck, I'll come by tonight."
The poultry vendor was meticulous, using small bags to pack each chicken, duck, and goose individually. Even so, the smell was still strong.