"Nothing much, just checking out the walking staircase environment here." Jiang Yan finished speaking, glanced at the freight elevator indicator light, then followed him into the passenger elevator.
The apartment viewing concluded quickly—120 square meters, four bedrooms and three living rooms, a well-proportioned layout with excellent north-south ventilation.
This high-rise apartment building had at least 20% public space allocation. Combined with her plans to thicken the walls, the actual usable area would likely only be around 80-90 square meters.
The unit came fully renovated with complete installations including plumbing, electricity, gas, kitchen facilities, and more. Apart from furniture, it was essentially move-in ready.
There were three other households on the same floor.
Two of them had couplets pasted on their doors, simple shoe cabinets placed outside, and withered pine branches and calamus hanging from their door frames—clear signs of occupancy.
The unit next to the one Jiang Yan was viewing showed no such signs—its door frame and surroundings were spotlessly clean.
She had actually considered buying the entire top floor at one point, though the probability of all top-floor units being available for sale was quite slim.
Moreover, purchasing an entire floor, while making security design easier, would be far too conspicuous.
One misstep and she could become everyone's target.
"Yan-jie, what do you think of this one? If it's not suitable, we can look at another residential area. That community is quite nice too." Seeing her staring blankly at the other units, Du Ziteng spoke up.
"No need, this will do." Jiang Yan answered without hesitation.
Had she not encountered Zhang Qiqi, she would have definitely gone to see the other property.
But now? This was undoubtedly the place.
If memory served, when the apocalyptic rains came, flooding would reach at least above the 20th floor.
Zhang Qiqi lived on the seventh floor—Jiang Yan could leisurely watch the show unfold from here.
Naturally, finding an opportunity to properly deal with her was also part of the revenge plan.
Du Ziteng was momentarily stunned by her decisiveness.
"By the way, Yan-jie, this place still needs some preparation before moving in. Since you've sold your villa, where will you stay? If you don't mind, you could stay at my place temporarily. My wife just graduated from New Oriental Culinary School, and since you're knowledgeable about cuisine, perhaps you could give her some feedback on her dishes."
Jiang Yan declined his kind offer with a smile: "I appreciate the thought, but the InterContinental is like a second home to me. Don't worry about it."
-
Jiang Yan entrusted all property transfer procedures to Du Ziteng, then engaged a reputable renovation company and security firm to handle the modifications and security installations according to her specifications.
In simple terms, besides enhanced insulation, fireproofing, and waterproofing, she had the entire unit lined with thermal and soundproof materials.
The roof and walls were reinforced with metal.
She installed two doors made of the thickest steel plates—virtually bulletproof.
The windows were replaced with bulletproof, insulated glass. Underfloor heating was installed, and she had the renovation company create an easily operable circular opening in the exterior wall for emergencies.
Furthermore, she had the windows in two small bedrooms and the study completely sealed with cement and bricks.
Top-floor units naturally came with certain inherent flaws—typically prone to leaks and extreme temperatures in summer and winter—so owner modifications were expected.
However, the renovation team was still somewhat taken aback by Jiang Yan's extensive list of requirements.
Especially when they heard that the windows and balcony were to be sealed off, everyone assumed she was buying the place to store ashes.
But when they learned that even the walls and ceiling were to be reinforced with metal, despite having seen all kinds of bizarre requests, the person in charge was utterly baffled.
Once the entire room was renovated, wouldn't it essentially become a full 360-degree, no-blind-spot Metal Coffin Room?
However, Jiang Yan paid generously, so the contractor had no choice but to comply and even assigned extra workers to rush the job for her.
After all, the deadline Jiang Yan gave was tight—just two weeks—and she insisted all materials had to be eco-friendly.
As for surveillance, she hired a well-known security company from Anming.
Her requirements were that the installations had to be sturdy yet discreet, with backup power connectivity.
She had cameras installed in the hallways of the 32nd, 31st, 20th, and 7th floors, on the exterior wall outside the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows, on the rooftop, and at the entrance of the building's ground floor.
Truthfully, her request was quite challenging—not technically, but logistically, since it involved installing everything covertly without alerting the property management.
But Jiang Yan's generous payment ensured the company wasn't about to turn down such a lucrative order.
As for the property management, as long as the manager was dealt with, things would go smoothly.
How that was handled wasn't Jiang Yan's concern—she only cared about the results.
Of course, whether it was the renovation company or the security firm, Jiang Yan made them sign confidentiality agreements.
Such measures were more about deterring honest people than stopping dishonest ones—just a way to impose some restraint.
With the apartment arrangements mostly settled, Jiang Yan resumed her frenzied shopping spree.
First on the list were meat, eggs, dairy, and medicine.
Since frozen meat didn't taste great, Jiang Yan went the extra mile to source directly from farms.
However, many farms had fixed supply chains, so they couldn't provide large quantities to temporary buyers like her.
She wasn't in a hurry, though—whatever she couldn't buy domestically, she planned to acquire from large overseas farms in the coming days.
Even so, she still purchased 5,000 kilograms each of beef and pork, and 3,000 kilograms each of lamb and chicken.
For duck, goose, pigeon, and the like, she bought 1,000 kilograms of each.
Being a fan of hotpot, she also separately ordered 1,000 kilograms each of fatty lamb rolls, fatty beef rolls, tripe, beef aorta, duck intestines, and gizzards, among others.
She bought 30,000 fresh chicken eggs and casually added 8,000 duck and goose eggs.
Fresh milk came to 10 tons, while goat and camel milk were purchased symbolically at 2 tons each.
For convenience, she had also previously ordered 10,000 individually packaged cartons of milk and yogurt online.
Cream, cheese, and similar products were stocked at 5,000 kilograms each.
After completing these purchases, she had the farms butcher and portion the meat and offal from cattle, sheep, and pigs by cut, then immediately delivered to a temporary cold storage she rented.
Once the suppliers left, she promptly stored all the meat in her dimension.
Next, she headed to the seafood wholesale market.
She bought 3,000 to 5,000 kilograms each of various fish, shrimp, crab, shellfish, oysters, snails, and abalone.
Similarly, she planned to bulk up her seafood stash during her overseas trip.
By the time Jiang Yan finished storing all the rice, flour, oil, meat, eggs, dairy, and other supplies delivered by suppliers into her dimension, nearly a month had passed.
The arrival times of the main portion of supplies were uneven, and the quantities were substantial. There were even occasional instances where storage space ran out, requiring deliveries to be staggered in batches across different time slots.
However, she hadn't been idle during this period.
She purchased one hundred units each of Charging piles, Small household wind turbines, and Hand-crank generators.
For larger equipment, she bought ten sets of Energy storage battery compartments, while smaller items like Wireless power banks and Hand-crank power banks were purchased in quantities of three hundred each.
(End of chapter)