After returning home, Wen Qian registered an account online to browse discussions about the apocalypse.
There were many speculations about the future, such as alien attacks on Earth, the third world war, disasters caused by the disappearance of the moon, asteroid collisions, and environmental issues like glacier melting.
Listening to people's opinions, Wen Qian felt like she was hearing the same thing over and over again.
She noticed that some individuals were overly anxious and made bold claims, only to end up promoting products in the end.
Some considered these discussions baseless rumors, while others suggested being prepared and learning from survival enthusiasts both domestically and internationally.
In the end, Wen Qian decided to anonymously share her own dreams and even provided movie screenshots resembling the scenes she had witnessed as a reference.
After completing these tasks, she posted her threads in various places, although there were some overlaps, the content was not exactly the same.
Dreams don't occur in a single day, and for different dreams, she posted different threads.
Before going to sleep, Wen Qian glanced through her posts. Since the content had passed the moderation process, it was not blocked. However, not many people paid attention to her content on most platforms.
It was normal for a new account to go unnoticed.
Only the initial platform where she posted seemed to have hit the right audience. She saw the number of viewers reaching a three-digit figure and naturally left some comments.
Some claimed that her anxiety stemmed from watching too many disaster movies and novels, while others believed that what she said could actually happen.
There were even suggestions that the dreams she shared might be experiences of her parallel self in another world.
Wen Qian pondered over these ideas and thought that perhaps there was indeed another version of herself going through such events.
Some dismissed it as groundless worrying, while others appeared indifferent, believing that everyone would face the same outcome, so there was no need to be afraid—just live in the present.
After finishing reading the comments, Wen Qian closed the page. She had said everything she could, and the remaining concerns related to her personal safety, which she wouldn't disclose to anyone.
If she didn't post, she would feel a vague sense of self-blame. At least by doing this, she wouldn't keep thinking about these things.
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While on her way to work, Wen Qian received a phone call. The delivery person had left the heater at the entrance of the industrial park.
Wen Qian was in her office nearby, and through the window, she could see the delivery van entering the park.
The heaters were quite large, requiring two people to move them. There were also pipes and inner compartments, but Wen Qian wasn't worried about anyone taking her things since she was right there.
However, even so, she waited until noon when everyone was having lunch break to go and collect her items.
She could imagine the delivery person wondering why someone would buy several heaters and a heated table in the summer.
Wen Qian had purchased these tools for heating her house for the latter half of her life. She still remembered the heavy snow in her dreams.
In the small mountain village where Wen Qian lived, everyone relied on firewood and charcoal for heating. There was no central heating system, and few people burned coal. Using electricity was too expensive.
There were often cases of carbon monoxide poisoning due to poor ventilation during heating, and in severe cases, entire families would perish.
Whether there would be electricity in the future was uncertain. Wen Qian even estimated that when she returned to her hometown, she would have to stock up on charcoal in advance.
After arranging everything, Wen Qian returned to her office and continued working.
Wen Qian felt that it was the right decision not to quit her job, especially now that she had received a salary deposit of nearly ten thousand yuan. If she felt things were not going well, she could always leave later.
Since she didn't have any means of transportation, Wen Qian thought it would be a good idea to have at least a bicycle in her space.
She also believed it would be useful to have various types of wheels or small carts for future loading and unloading purposes.
As soon as she received her freshly earned salary, it was immediately allocated for winter preparations. In addition to clothes and shoes, Wen Qian thought she should also have snow skis and goggles.
She made associations with snow-related items such as frostbite ointment and water purification tablets for after the snow melted.
Wen Qian also planned to buy some yarn and knit sweaters for herself. She felt that two down jackets were not enough; she needed waterproof and windproof clothing as well.
The winter work clothes provided by the company were assault jackets, but they only included the top. Wen Qian checked online and found that the cheap ones were unreliable, while the reliable ones were expensive.
So, she decided to postpone the purchase for now.
She did, however, buy a lot of inexpensive underwear, bras, and socks online. Especially socks, it was easier to buy readymade ones than to make them herself.
During her vacation, she rented a van and went to Baisha Market to stock up on rice and noodles, about a ton in total.
This time, she put privacy film on the rental van's windows so that she couldn't see what was inside. She loaded the goods and left without having to look for a place outside the market; she just made a round inside and went to another place to shop.
It was even more efficient than before.
This time, she bought four pieces of pork, a small amount of beef, and a lot of frozen chicken and duck products.
After buying the cheapest cooking oil last time, this time she also bought peanut oil and sesame oil, which were relatively more expensive, but it was good to have different oils for variety.
She also spent some money on seafood, about six thousand yuan, to try something different.
She also bought some fruits like strawberries and blueberries that were in season.
She decided to stock up on seasonal fruits every now and then in the future. The prices of fruits in season wouldn't be too high, although fruit prices in the city were never cheap.
At first, Wen Qian kept track of her expenses meticulously, but later she stopped doing so.
She had a deposit slip for twenty thousand yuan that would mature in a month, which she kept for purchasing self-defense tools. She only needed to keep enough money for living expenses and the fare back home.
In the process of shopping, Wen Qian also didn't forget to buy some snacks, such as wholesale milk tea powder, which was actually plant-based creamer.
But things with additives tasted really good, and she might not be able to drink them in the future, so she bought several boxes of milk tea powder and a few barrels of popping boba.
She also bought snacks like planet cups, fruit hard candies, and jelly powder.
She even purchased some glass jars for storing jam, as she might make her own jam and fruit preserves in the future.
Anyway, she bought a lot of white sugar, which could be used for various purposes.
At the wholesale market, she also bought a lot of doubanjiang (broad bean chili paste) and yellow bean paste. Although there were recipes for various sauces, homemade ones were always different from store-bought ones. She wanted to keep some authentic flavors for slow enjoyment in the future.
So far, Wen Qian's imagination of the future was all about survival in difficult conditions, finding a safe place to live alone, and the content of her life would be sleeping, eating, and working.
She even began to doubt that she would forget about time and age.
To address this, she bought an almanac so that even if she forgot the time, she would have a rough idea of the year and month.
Through her constant actions, she shifted her focus from dreams and worries to the present and future, envisioning what kind of troubles she might encounter someday.
It is said that without long-term plans, one will inevitably face immediate worries. In times of peace, the problems she worried about were clearly different from those after the occurrence of dream disasters.
What should she do when encountering bad people? What about encountering extremely wicked and malicious individuals? What if one day in the future she needed to kill someone in order to stay alive?
When the end of the world truly arrives and the law becomes ineffective, what can she do to ensure her safety?
