Ch 67: My Multiverse Supermarket

Instance: Mingde School

An Yixiao woke to the sound of a ringing bell.

She sat up slowly, reached for the curtain beside her bed, and lifted a corner.

Morning light seeped faintly through the mist outside. The air was damp, heavy, and filled with clouds of midges dancing over the desolate field.

Just looking at it made her skin crawl with an itchy, sticky ache.

Pain? Her thoughts caught for a moment. She looked down at herself—and realized the wounds that should have killed her were mostly healed.

Could Lü Chui have saved her?

No. If it were Lü Chui, there wouldn’t be visible surgical incisions on her body.

Besides, the last person she remembered seeing before she lost consciousness was the little boss from the supermarket.

Thinking of that, An Yixiao climbed off the bed—which looked oddly like the medical pods from sci-fi films—and found her shoes under the table.

After putting them on, she left the room.

Outside was a cozy little living room, with two more rooms down the hall.

An Yixiao was sure this was someone’s home.

But she wasn’t the type to snoop, so she went downstairs.

From the staircase she could tell the building had three floors.

Good Life Supermarket had been three stories tall too.

Sure enough, when she reached the first floor, she saw the familiar little shop.

The shopkeeper was sitting behind the register with a bowl of food, about to eat.

Sensing her presence, Zhou Li looked back. “Woke up to the smell of my cooking?”

An Yixiao nodded politely. “You’re the one who saved me?”

It was phrased as a question, but she already knew the answer.

What she couldn’t understand was how—Zhou Li wasn’t a player. Had she used some kind of item she’d bought from someone else?

Zhou Li said, “Can’t have a new employee die on her first day, can I? That’s bad luck.”

An Yixiao: ?

Only then did she remember agreeing to something before passing out.

Zhou Li pulled out a contract. “You’ve already missed two workdays. According to this, if you skip a third, I’ll have to fire you.”

An Yixiao looked it over—she was now officially an employee of the supermarket, position: security guard, salary: 3,000 credits per month.

Her bloody palm print served as her signature.

Behind the contract was another sheet. She turned it over—
“Debt: 3.2 million?”

Zhou Li nodded. “Surgery fee, medicine, transportation, bed fee, and nursing care.”

“I get the surgery and medicine, but what transportation, bed, and nursing?”

“I took you to the doctor. Long trip—transportation cost’s fair, right?”

A single dimensional jump consumed enormous energy; Zhou Li naturally had to recover the loss somehow.

An Yixiao: …

What car?

But she still nodded.

Zhou Li went on, “The hospital bed isn’t free either—120 a day. As for nursing care—”

“I get it,” An Yixiao interrupted. “I’ll pay it back.”

After a pause, she asked, “Can I get a raise? Three thousand’s too low.”

“…That’s the standard rate for small-shop security,” Zhou Li said.

“Then I’ll just have to live and work another eighty-eight years.”

“You freeload and you joke about it?”

An Yixiao couldn’t help laughing.

Afterward, her expression softened into sincerity. “I truly owe you my life. Thank you.”

Zhou Li didn’t reply, pretending to focus on her food. In reality, she was grumbling to the system, “Hiring one employee is expensive as hell.”

The system said, “You didn’t have to hire her.”

Zhou Li: “…”

“Regretting trading an artifact to save her?” the system asked.

To save An Yixiao, Zhou Li had first signed a work contract to make her an official employee—then jumped dimensions with her to the interstellar world.

She hadn’t gone looking for An Fengxuan or Lü Chui because every dimensional jump’s destination was random. Even with enough energy to make several jumps, An Yixiao’s injuries wouldn’t have lasted that long.

Zhou Li knew the Mia star’s city hall monitored her shop closely. The moment it appeared, they’d show up disguised as customers.

She planned to use Lü Chui’s replicated card as leverage—trade it for advanced medical help.

But when she arrived on Mia Star, it wasn’t city officials who appeared—it was Dr. Sophia.

Zhou Li blinked. “Doctor, have you moved into the park?”

Even the nearby Ciji Hospital wasn’t this fast to respond.

“Correct,” Sophia said. “I bought the rest of the park’s open land. I’m moving my clinic here so I can better fulfill my duties as the resident physician.”

Zhou Li: …

Sophia glanced at the blood-soaked An Yixiao. “Who’s this?”

“Oh! The supermarket’s new employee—but that’s not important. Can you save her?”

“I can, but not with just an emergency kit. She’ll need a full medical pod, and that’s expensive. Are you sure, little boss?”

Zhou Li thought, I already brought her here. Turning back now would waste the energy I spent jumping dimensions.

“I’m sure.”

Just then, Lin Jianshan—thinking the supermarket had returned—rushed in for work, and Sophia had her help move An Yixiao into the vehicle for emergency treatment to keep her alive.

While the machine whirred, Sophia handed Zhou Li a bill. “She’s stable. How will you pay?”

One glance made Zhou Li’s head spin—activating the medical pod and using the reagents cost over ten thousand orka, and full repair would run into the millions.

“I need emergency care more than she does,” Zhou Li muttered. Then aloud: “Do you know where to find an orka vein?”

Sophia: ? “You expect me to dig it up myself?”

Zhou Li nodded.

Sophia: …

Before the doctor could explode, Zhou Li pulled out the card she’d gotten from Lü Chui. “This artifact can replicate any ordinary material—but only once. If it could copy an orka vein…”

Sophia’s eyes lit up. “Deal.”

“Huh? You just believe me like that? No questions?”

“Why question it?” Sophia replied calmly.

Zhou Li was speechless. This clearly defies science—how did she just accept it?

As Sophia reached for the card, Zhou Li pulled it back slightly. “Wait. I’m not finished.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll trade it for the treatment—but I also want that medical pod.”

“If the card really gives me an orka vein,” Sophia said, “I’ll give you ten pods, not just one.”

“As long as it works,” Zhou Li said quickly. “One’s enough—and if it still has leftover reagents, even better.”

Sophia smiled and shook her hand.

…

When the system reminded her of the cost, Zhou Li replied, “How could I regret it? A single medical pod could help the nation unlock countless breakthroughs.

“And besides, losing an orka vein isn’t a real loss. The replication idea was just a theory—until it worked, it wasn’t truly mine.

“It’s like buying an uncut jade stone: you know there’s jade inside, but you don’t know if it’s cheap green or imperial jade until you slice it open. If someone spends 3.2 million on a rough stone and it turns out worth 32 million, that profit doesn’t belong to the seller.

“So really, I spent only 8,000 credits to get a medical pod, saved a life, and got an employee who’ll work for me for eighty-eight years.”

By her math, Zhou Li had come out ahead.

An Yixiao, unaware of any of this, studied the view outside.

She’d only glimpsed it upstairs before.

Now, standing at the door, she saw that beyond the shop was… a school.

She had a hunch, and asked to confirm it: “Boss, where are we?”

“Mingde School,” Zhou Li said.

“I knew it.” An Yixiao’s expression stayed calm, but inside she was rattled.

So the supermarket really could travel freely between dungeons.

And she hadn’t been rejected by the Game’s system.

—She’d been taken away before clearing the [Dawn Village] dungeon, technically a “Game escape,” usually punished by account suspension.

And now she’d entered another dungeon, [Mingde School], without authorization—a “stowaway.”

If the dungeon was low-level, her presence would raise its difficulty.
If it was already high-level, she’d be marked as an intruder, stripped of system protection, and torn apart by monsters at any time.

To test it, An Yixiao opened the door.

The instant she did, a wave of intense malice surged from Mingde School.

She slammed the door shut and retreated inside.

Zhou Li: ? “What are you doing?”

“Wanted some fresh air,” An Yixiao said. “Turns out the air outside isn’t that fresh.”

“No wonder I keep the door closed,” Zhou Li replied.

“Wise as always, boss.”

Zhou Li gave her a strange look, as if wondering how the elegant guild leader had turned into such a shameless flatterer.

This time, the little supermarket appeared behind Mingde School.

An Yixiao didn’t know much about Mingde School, only that—like Dawn Village—it was an S-rank “rule-based simulation” dungeon.

Its mortality rate wasn’t particularly high, but that didn’t mean it was safe.

Players who entered Mingde School rarely met an ordinary ending: some vanished without a trace, while others emerged mentally broken.

An Yixiao had once used an artifact to spy on this dungeon, but the attempt yielded nothing. The dungeon was too corrupted—forcing a peek had nearly contaminated her own mind.

So when planning her dungeon-clearing priorities, she’d placed it after Dawn Village.

She never imagined she’d enter it this way.

She glanced around the supermarket, keeping her expression calm. The place felt different—it blocked the dungeon’s corruption entirely. A genuine safe house.

After listening to An Yixiao’s description of Mingde School, Zhou Li muttered, “Why does this sound so… Lovecraftian?”

She’d had that same feeling earlier, when the system had explained “Dark-type abhorrents.”

A polluted psyche twisting both spirit and flesh—definitely a horror trope straight out of Lovecraft.

“Lovecraftian?” An Yixiao asked.

“To explain that, I’d need a thousand and one nights,” Zhou Li said.

After a moment of thought, An Yixiao asked again, “Then, little boss, do you have any plan for clearing it?”

Zhou Li blinked, her expression saying plainly, You seriously expect me to have one?

Just then—bang, bang, bang—someone pounded on the glass door.

Both turned toward the sound.

Outside stood several young men and women in identical old-fashioned robes.

At first glance, Zhou Li thought she’d somehow returned to the ancient era.

But on closer look, the clothes had the artificial, theatrical feel of costume photography.

“The door’s not locked,” Zhou Li called.

But the people outside didn’t seem to hear her. They just kept pounding on the door.

An Yixiao went over and opened it.

Immediately, the group bowed.

“I am Kong Ru from the Spring and Autumn class, here to make a purchase.”

“I am Duan Jing from the Classics class, here to make a purchase.”

An Yixiao’s lips pressed together—if one looked closely, the corner of her mouth twitched slightly. Her sharp eyes locked onto the girl called Duan Jing.

But Duan Jing showed no reaction.

Once the others had all introduced themselves, An Yixiao stepped aside to let them in.

Inside, they didn’t browse the shelves or show curiosity about the shop’s origins.

Instead, they all fixed their eyes on An Yixiao, who was wearing a sleeveless V-neck shirt.

“As a woman,” one of them said coldly, “how can you dress so shamelessly? Only indecent women look like… that.”

Zhou Li’s eyes widened. She looked up in disbelief.

The person saying this—was a woman?

An Yixiao’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t get angry either—she just glanced at Duan Jing again.

Duan Jing remained unmoved.

“What, then,” An Yixiao asked calmly, “do you think a ‘decent woman’ should wear?”

A person named Kong Ru stepped forward. “Naturally, one should dress like us. A woman’s arms, legs, and feet must never be exposed.”

The look in An Yixiao’s eyes turned glacial, as if she were already staring at a corpse. “So what women can or can’t do is decided by you men?”

Kong Ru snapped, “Who are you calling a man?”

Zhou Li, who had planned to play dumb and let An Yixiao throw them out, suddenly smirked. “She said you’re a man.”

Kong Ru’s face twisted. “I am a woman! I’m Kong Ru, top student of the Spring and Autumn class!”

An Yixiao noticed Duan Jing’s expression flickering—one moment twisted with fury, the next blank, then turning toward her again.

Zhou Li didn’t bother dealing with Kong Ru’s tantrum. “Weren’t you here to buy something? Security, explain the shopping rules.”

It took An Yixiao a second to realize she was the “security.”

She explained the rule: in order to buy from the supermarket, customers had to trade valuable items for shop points.

Kong Ru rummaged through their bag and pulled out a mirror.

“How could you have a mirror!?” they exclaimed, horrified. “Proper women don’t carry mirrors around!”

They shoved it into Zhou Li’s hands.

Zhou Li: …

She had many things to say but didn’t know where to start.

【Polluted Sleeping Magic Mirror (?)】
Year: Unknown
Origin: Unknown
Current Owner: Kong Ru
Starting Price: — (Not recommended)
Buyout Price: — (Not recommended)
Note: A mirror that induces sleep. Duration varies with user strength. Currently polluted—use may cause unpredictable effects.

Zhou Li sighed. If not for the pollution, it would’ve been a dream cure for insomnia.

“Not accepting it,” she said flatly.

Kong Ru’s expression darkened. “Why not?”

“Polluted artifacts are worthless.”

“Polluted? What pollution? Don’t speak nonsense! Mingde School is the purest place in the world! Only women as pure of heart as us deserve to stay here!”

☢️☢️☢️

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