Ch 109: My Multiverse Supermarket

As the first family to settle after Zhou Li officially became the island’s master, Du Xiaogan and her grandmother and sister were granted free choice of rooms within the shelter complex.

For the first time, they realized that the island’s dwellings were all underground.

“It’s so big and empty in here! How come there’s no one around?” Grandma Du asked.

Lin Xiaole, who was guiding them, replied, “You’re the second group to move in.”

“The second?” Du Xiaogan was surprised.

Was such a huge island really run by only a handful of people?

Grandma Du, however, saw nothing odd about it and chuckled. “No wonder there are so few people—so it wasn’t just my imagination.”

Du Xiaogan didn’t browse for long. She chose a room on the first basement level—there was a hospital nearby, unopened but somehow reassuring.

“Mercy, what a big room!” Grandma Du said after peeking in.

Most rooms in the shelter were singles. The complex had originally been built to house the Hiltus family, so many units had their own bathrooms.

Only a quarter of the rooms were meant for workers and servants, about twenty square meters each, with no private bath and two bunk beds inside, like college dorms.

To care for her grandmother and sister, Du Xiaogan picked a room with a solid wood bunk bed and private bath. Her grandmother and sister shared the 1.5-meter lower bunk, while she slept on the 1.2-meter upper one.

Lin Xiaole said, “You could actually pick three rooms—there are still plenty vacant.”

“No need,” said Du Xiaogan. “When more people move in, changing rooms would be trouble. One is enough for us.”

The room made efficient use of its space: besides the bed and bathroom, there was a wardrobe, a small desk, a sofa, and even a kitchenette. The kitchen ran only on electricity—but power didn’t seem to be lacking.

…

Once she had settled her grandmother and sister, Du Xiaogan went back to Lonewind Island to finish moving.

The underground structure made Grandma Du feel stifled. Wanting some air but unwilling to leave her younger granddaughter alone, she pushed the wheelchair along for a walk through the shelter.

“Goodness, there’s even a movie theater!”

“Why isn’t the cafeteria open?”

“The hospital’s closed too… this place is huge—you could get lost so easily!”

Each time she shouted, her voice echoed back, as though someone were repeating her words.

After a while, the eerie resonance made her uneasy. She hurried to take the elevator up to the surface.

*

After the Du family settled in, Zhou Li paid them no further attention.

For her, being the island master was a side job—her true focus was still running the little supermarket.

That night, Xu Jiayi returned to the island again—this time with several boatloads of coral and a crate of sea fluorite.

The coral came from islanders she’d bought from; the fluorite was recovered from an island warehouse.

Zhou Li opened a corporate account for her. “Even if Newborn Island relocates elsewhere, you can still trade by sending your representative here.”

Xu Jiayi couldn’t serve as the legal representative herself—she needed to stay and oversee Lonewind Island—so she appointed her secretary, Xu Ouge, to hold the account.

“These corals are worth twenty-two billion,” Zhou Li said. “The sea fluorite, one hundred thirty thousand.”

The coral haul weighed over two tons, with some rare red coral among it. But because so much hit the market at once, prices crashed; the final total was only twenty-two billion.

The sea fluorite, however, held steady at 7.5 yuan per gram.

Knowing that fluorite was valuable in magical worlds, Zhou Li decided to buy it through the supermarket’s business account under the label of “craft material.”

She paused, then added, “And these ambergris pieces—one point eight billion.”

Xu Jiayi blinked at the white, rock-like lumps beside Zhou Li. “Ambergris?”

“You don’t know what it is?” Zhou Li asked in surprise.

Xu Jiayi glanced at her secretary.

Xu Ouge whispered, “Ma’am, when we were buying coral, one of the fishermen tried to cheat the scale by tossing that stone into the bag—uh, ambergris. We were in a hurry to load up, so I didn’t throw it out…”

Xu Jiayi: …

Wasn’t that the same as picking up 1.8 billion for free?

Eager to learn, she asked for details.

Zhou Li explained the origin of ambergris.

“So when a whale excretes ambergris, the waves can wash it ashore, and you can just find it on the beach?” Xu Ouge asked.

“Sometimes, yes,” Zhou Li said.

She hadn’t expected that no one here even knew what ambergris was.

She’d assumed there were no whales—but its presence proved whales lived in these waters.

“In many island cultures,” Xu Jiayi said, “whales are seen as divine beings. Hunting them is forbidden. Researchers once determined ambergris to be merely their excretion or intestinal stones—nothing valuable.”

That enlightened Zhou Li.

On Earth, ambergris had been prized precisely because of perfume culture; rare, luxurious, it was both fragrance and fixative.

But here, there was no long tradition of scent craft.

And since raw ambergris smelled foul, no one had thought to study it.

Zhou Li smiled. “If no one’s paying attention to it, that means plenty of ambergris is still out there waiting to be found.”

Xu Jiayi immediately saw how she could raise the needed seventy-eight billion quickly.

Judging by the earlier batch, ambergris fetched tens of thousands per gram.

Yet she didn’t lose herself in greed. “Little Boss,” she asked, “would it be possible to prepare part of the shipment in advance?”

She had to bring part of the supplies back to the island first—only when the people saw tangible goods with their own eyes would they truly calm down.

Zhou Li said, “We can do it in batches. Come by tomorrow morning to pick up the first shipment.”

Once they had finalized matters regarding Lonewind Island, Xu Jiayi added, “By the way, Little Boss, I’ve already contacted the Su family. They’ll be sending representatives soon.”

The Su family controlled the oil fields, so if Zhou Li wanted to purchase heavy fuel, negotiations had to go through them.

Since Xu Jiayi had profited quite well from her trade with Zhou Li, she was happy to act as intermediary.

“Thank you. Come by tomorrow—I’ll treat you to coffee,” Zhou Li said. (Though it was only instant coffee.)

…

At around nine that night, Zhou Li closed the supermarket for the day.

She still needed to move the supplies Xu Jiayi had requested into a temporary warehouse beforehand.

The temporary warehouse was nothing more than a tent that Xu Jiayi’s men had set up.

After all, if she let them fetch goods directly from the shelter’s underground storage, the mystery surrounding Newborn Island’s facilities would vanish.

By keeping the items in the temporary warehouse, she could maintain the illusion that they were being moved out from the shelter’s stockpile.

“Why does Lonewind Island need so much refined sugar?”

When Zhou Li was bidding for items through the auction system, she noticed that the amount of sugar on Xu Jiayi’s list was unusually large.

Wait—wasn’t sugar used to enhance the power of explosives?

She carefully went over the names on the list again and, sure enough, found potassium nitrate and fertilizer among them.

Her chemistry grades had never been great, but she could still make an educated guess: Xu Jiayi planned to extract purified potassium nitrate and mix it with sugar to make gunpowder.

In this post-apocalyptic world, firearms were scarce, and with Lonewind Island under blockade by the Li family, Xu Jiayi had little choice but to innovate.

Zhou Li didn’t cancel those items from the transaction.

As long as she wasn’t directly supplying weapons, she didn’t care what Xu Jiayi intended to do with the materials.

Luckily, the auction system had upgraded—otherwise, buying that much sugar from the Earth dimension would definitely have drawn the attention of national security.

“Hey, System,” Zhou Li asked, “does this seventy-eight-billion mega-order count as complete?”

The system responded with a burst of digital fireworks. “Congratulations! You’ve set a new record for the highest single-order transaction. May your sales continue to soar!”

Zhou Li twitched the corner of her mouth. “If I remember right, the biggest deal should’ve been the one with the Interstellar City Hall, no?”

“Single order,” the system clarified. “Your trade with the Hall was multiple transactions. Different category.”

“Fine,” she said. “So, any rewards?”

The system fell silent for a moment, then replied, “…Energy surplus is its own reward.”

Zhou Li: “That sounds like your reward, not mine.”

“The duration of your spatial-fold storage technology has been extended,” the system replied stiffly.

Zhou Li had been about to say that now that she had the auction system, the spatial-fold feature seemed redundant.

But before she could, it hit her—it wasn’t useless at all.

She had noticed something: the auction listings never went beyond Earth’s current level of technology.

For example, whenever she tried to purchase interdimensional artifacts or items from the Infinite Plane, the search results always came up empty.

Likewise, she couldn’t find magical stones or high-tech equipment from the interstellar realm.

Even “ancient” goods were modern reproductions, not genuine relics.

That meant all the items she bought across different planes could only be stored in her personal space.

There was still room for now—but what about later, when she accumulated much more?

She’d wanted to buy an interstellar-grade spaceship, but where would she keep it?

That’s where the spatial-fold storage technology would come in handy.

Realizing this, Zhou Li happily accepted her “reward.”

…

Meanwhile, on the same sea—Vila Island.

Unlike Lonewind Island, where coral harvesting was booming, Vila Island was shrouded in fear and tension.

The cause: its master, Li Zairen, and his recent madness.

First, he mobilized every armed force under his command. Then, at the slightest mistake, he imposed severe punishment—declaring the island under martial law.

During this “emergency period,” all discussion of him was forbidden.

He ordered residents to monitor and report on one another, and anyone caught spreading talk would be tortured with electric shocks.

Some believed he did this to preserve his image—and to ensure news of his humiliating defeat in Lonewind’s waters never reached the main island.

But there’s no such thing as a secret that stays buried forever.

When General De’an heard the news, he was so furious he needed an oxygen tube to breathe.

He immediately ordered Li Zairen to return to the main island.

Li Zairen refused, claiming that a zombie outbreak had erupted on his subordinate island, Savi, and that he couldn’t leave.

After he said it—whether it was true or not—it had to happen now.

☢️☢️☢️