Chapter 1: Crossing to Zero

Zhao Xiulan felt a sudden pain in her forehead, and when she woke up, she found herself lying in a dilapidated room with mud-plastered walls and a gloomy atmosphere.

There was a small cabinet by the bed, and the bed was made of wooden boards with a mat of thatched grass underneath. She was covered with a thin, moldy black cotton quilt.

There was a strange smell lingering in the air, and she felt dizzy and weak when she tried to get up.

Where was she?

As another wave of pain hit her forehead, memories that did not belong to her surged into her mind.

She had traveled through time! The original owner of this body was also named Zhao Xiulan, and it was now the 1960s.

The original owner lived in a rural ordinary family with a total of five people: father Zhao Weiguo, younger sister Zhao Xiuzhu, stepmother Ma Yumei, stepsister Li Lijuan, and a child yet to be born to the stepmother.

In this era of scarce resources, the Zhao family, like most families, needed to work and earn work points. The annual grain allocation was based on work points. With the sharp decline in grain harvest, the amount of grain they could receive each year was not much. In addition, the Zhao family had a large population but limited labor, so they did not live well.

The original owner had a very difficult life in this family. Her biological father was indifferent, and the stepmother mistreated her, forcing her to work and often leaving her hungry. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, due to frequent hunger, she looked underdeveloped, with a thin and emaciated body. Prolonged malnutrition led to a sallow complexion, dry hair, and a small frame with sunken eyes.

Even so, Zhao Xiulan was still happy about this time travel experience.

The suffering the original owner endured from being bullied was nothing compared to the despair she experienced in the post-apocalyptic world.

In the post-apocalyptic world, not only was there a shortage of water and food, but they also had to defend against various zombie attacks. Compared to the constant danger of dying in the post-apocalyptic world, at least this era was safe, without the threat of zombie attacks, allowing her to sleep peacefully.

Suddenly, Zhao Xiulan remembered something and quickly checked her storage space.

Thankfully, her storage space was still intact.

The storage space had suddenly appeared in her body before the arrival of the apocalypse. Time inside the space was frozen, and whatever was placed inside remained unchanged, regardless of how much time had passed.

At that time, rumors about the apocalypse were rampant online. Faced with the sudden appearance of the storage space, Zhao Xiulan had made preparations in advance, spending six months traveling across the country to collect supplies.

The space not only stored various grains such as rice, flour, and cornmeal, but also included daily necessities, clothing, blankets, fruits, vegetables, and preserved foods.

There were also large quantities of meat such as beef, mutton, pork, and chicken stored in the space. She had deliberately purchased tens of thousands of kilograms of free-range eggs from rural areas and purchased tens of thousands of kilograms of fish, shrimp, and seafood from coastal cities.

Fearing that she would not be able to enjoy certain delicacies in the post-apocalyptic world, she had also stored hundreds or even thousands of servings of various barbecues, spicy hot pots, clay pot rice, and skewers.

Snacks and milk tea were also essential, so she had bought thousands or even tens of thousands of servings.

She had purchased large quantities of cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tea, and other daily necessities, as well as self-defense tools and medical supplies, as the sanitary conditions in the post-apocalyptic world were extremely poor.

After all these preparations, Zhao Xiulan's storage space was basically fully stocked.