Fortunately, City A is a large city with many e-commerce platforms, and all the items Tang Li needed were available from local stores, with quick delivery.
The biggest expenditure among these items was for lithium batteries.
Tang Li purchased lithium batteries of various models, along with matching inverters. She even bought eighteen units of the highest capacity lithium batteries, costing a total of 150,000 yuan.
Once these batteries arrived, she would fully charge them and store them in her space, where she could endlessly replicate them. After the apocalypse, Tang Li would never have to worry about a lack of electricity.
Considering that the power would go out once the disaster began, rendering electric fans, air conditioners, and refrigerators useless, while the extreme heat season would bring very high temperatures, Tang Li acted quickly.
She needed to stockpile enough ice before the power outage.
Since Tang Li was in the Northern Hemisphere, the disaster in this region would begin with the extreme heat season. The extreme cold season wouldn't arrive until November.
Therefore, Tang Li couldn't wait for the extreme cold season to use the atmospheric temperature to freeze ice.
After the disaster started, although there would be heavy rain and strong winds, the temperature during the extreme heat season would rise above 50 degrees Celsius. Moreover, due to the humid air, it would be extremely stifling.
Without electricity, Tang Li could only rely on ice for cooling.
Tang Li removed all the food stored in the freezer compartment of her refrigerator, along with the drawers, and set them aside.
Then, she found plastic basins and bottles, placed them in her space, and replicated many of them.
After filling these replicated plastic basins and bottles with tap water, she put them into the refrigerator, filling the entire freezer compartment.
The reason for replicating only one plastic basin and one plastic bottle was to save space.
Containers like these, once used, would be returned to the space, which wouldn't affect the rate of its expansion. Even replicating them in large quantities for a short period was fine.
Therefore, for each type of container, Tang Li would place only one in her space and then replicate it for use.
This approach saved a significant amount of space occupied by containers and improved the efficiency of space utilization.
The reason for replicating only the containers and not the water was that water is a consumable and extremely scarce in the apocalypse.
These ice blocks, during the hot extreme heat season, would need to be replicated in large quantities to be effective.
The plastic basins and bottles would be put back into the space, but the water from the melted ice might not be. Water could be used up, drunk, spilled, or evaporated.
Therefore, to prevent a large consumption of water in a short period and to avoid affecting the rate of space expansion, it was necessary to store more water in the space.
Once the ice in the refrigerator was frozen, Tang Li would take the frozen ice, along with the plastic basins and bottles, into her space, replicate empty plastic basins and bottles again, fill them with water, and put them back in the refrigerator, repeating the cycle.
After closing the refrigerator freezer door, Tang Li turned her attention to the items she had taken out of the refrigerator earlier.
Since her family owned a supermarket, Tang Li's refrigerator was well-stocked.
A drawer filled with popsicles, ice cream cones, and other cold drinks; a drawer with frozen dumplings, buns, and zongzi of various fillings; a drawer with fish balls, meatballs, cured sausages, and the like; and several bags of beef and chopped ribs.
Tang Li considered the matter and put the cold drinks directly into her space.
The fish balls, meatballs, cured sausages, beef, and ribs were left out to thaw before being placed into her space.
She then boiled water and cooked the buns, dumplings, and zongzi with various fillings, peeled the zongzi leaves, arranged them on plates, and stored them in her space.
In her previous life, Tang Li knew that time did not pass in her space. Food would remain in the same state as when it was placed in the space and would not spoil.
Even if food was left out to spoil before being put into the space, when replicated, it would not be in a spoiled state. Instead, it would revert to its original condition when first placed in the space.
Once these buns, dumplings, and zongzi were stored in her space, Tang Li could take them out and eat them whenever she pleased.
Similarly, to improve space utilization, the containers for these buns, dumplings, and zongzi were also replicated by Tang Li using her space.
In reality, all these buns, dumplings, and zongzi were stored on a single plate.
After being placed in the space, there was only one plate. However, when taking out the buns, dumplings, and zongzi, this plate would be replicated again, just as it was when first placed inside.
Once the contents of the plate were finished, the plate could be directly put back into the space.
Tang Li cleaned and washed all the appliances, such as rice cookers, induction cookers, microwave ovens, air fryers, as well as various pots, bowls, plates, saucers, chopsticks, spoons, and spatulas, that could be used in the apocalypse and stored them in her space.
When she needed them, she could replicate them, and after use, she could directly store them back in her space, saving her the trouble of washing them.
After preparing the buns, dumplings, and zongzi and storing them in her space, Tang Li then searched for all the edible items in her home.
There was half a bag of rice left.
Tang Li replicated a row of rice cookers, filled each one with rice, washed it, and cooked a pot of plain white rice, which she then stored in her space for consumption at any time.
After the white rice was prepared, there was still some rice left, so Tang Li cooked a pot of congee.
She divided both the white rice and the congee into two portions. One portion was stored in her space while still hot, while the other was placed under the air conditioner to cool before being stored in her space.
After all, while hot food was warming in the extreme cold season, it would be too hot to consume in the extreme heat season, necessitating the consumption of cold food.
Besides the white rice and congee, Tang Li would also pay attention to storing cold items when collecting other food in the coming days.
The refrigerator's chiller compartment contained a lot of yogurt, cocktails, chocolates, and other snacks, which Tang Li directly stored in her space.
Additionally, there were many eggs and a box of Biluochun tea in the chiller.
Tang Li did not directly store the raw eggs in her space. She planned to cook them before storing them, so she could take them out and eat them directly later.
As for raw eggs, she had ordered a pound from Boss Niu, which would be placed directly into her space along with other eggs, which would be sufficient.
Tang Li's father had enjoyed drinking tea when he was alive.
Although Tang Li only drank tea occasionally over the past five years, she had discovered that tea had a limited shelf life and thus replaced it with new purchases every year.
Now, it was perfect for making tea eggs.
Seeing the tea, Tang Li was reminded of the cigarettes and alcohol her father had treasured.
She stored both white wine and yellow wine in her space.
As for the cigarettes, they had clearly passed their expiration date, so Tang Li didn't want to occupy the valuable space with them.
However, she planned to visit a tobacco and liquor store at her leisure to purchase various brands of famous cigarettes and liquors.
In the apocalypse, although cigarettes and alcohol were not as important as food, they were still hard currency and extremely rare.
There would always be wealthy individuals willing to exchange food for cigarettes and alcohol.
Using cigarettes and alcohol to ask for favors or to express gratitude was pleasing, less conspicuous than directly giving food, and quite practical.
After storing the cooked tea eggs in her space, the sun had already set outside.
As the summer heat subsided, the streets outside also became lively.
After a busy afternoon in the kitchen, Tang Li was covered in sweat.
Tang Li didn't mind, as it was just a bit of sweat, which was nothing in the apocalypse.
However, this reminded Tang Li that she needed to prepare some items for bathing in the apocalypse.
In the apocalypse, water resources were also extremely scarce. Especially after the solar storm in the second year of the apocalypse, uncontaminated surface water might only be found in laboratories.
Even potable water was scarce, let alone water for bathing.
To address this, Tang Li retrieved the large wooden bathtub from her home.
The wooden bathtub was purchased by Tang Li's parents when they were alive, but it had not been used much. It was too heavy and consumed too much water.
At this moment, it was perfect for use as a container to store household water.
Due to the bathtub's weight, Tang Li directly stored it in her space and replicated two of them in the bathroom.
One was filled with cold tap water and stored in her space.
The other was filled with steaming hot water heated by turning on the household gas water heater, and it was placed inside and stored in her space.
With these two barrels of water, Tang Li would no longer lack water for washing and bathing in the future apocalypse, whether it was during the extreme heat season or the extreme cold season.
Afterward, Tang Li replicated another bathtub, filled it with warm water, and adjusted the water temperature.
Before bathing, Tang Li stored this bathtub with the appropriately tempered water in her space. In the future, she could simply replicate it for bathing, thus avoiding the need to adjust the water temperature again.