Chapter 13: Generous with Money

“It’s nothing, I just wanted to check out the condition of the stairwell over here.” After glancing at the freight elevator indicator, Jiang Yan followed him into the passenger elevator.

They finished viewing the apartment quickly. It was 120 square meters, with four bedrooms and three living areas, a well-laid-out, north-south facing unit.

In high-rise elevator buildings like this, the shared area is at least 20%. Plus, with all the extra wall reinforcement she planned, the actual usable space would probably be only 80 to 90 square meters.

The place was already nicely decorated, with all utilities—water, electricity, gas, and a fully equipped kitchen. Aside from furniture, it was move-in ready.

There were three other households on the same floor.

Two of the doors had couplets pasted on them, a couple of simple shoe cabinets outside, and withered pine and calamus hanging by the doorframes—clearly, people lived there.

As for the unit next to the one Jiang Yan was viewing, she couldn’t tell if anyone lived there; the doorframe and area around it were spotless.

She’d actually considered just buying the entire top floor, but the chances of finding all the units for sale at once were slim.

Besides, buying a whole floor would make security easier to manage, but it would also be far too conspicuous.

She’d easily become a target.

“Yan-jie, what do you think of this place? If it’s not to your liking, we can check out another complex. That one’s pretty good too,” Du Zitong said, seeing her standing at the door, lost in thought as she stared at the other units.

“No need, I’ll take this one,” Jiang Yan replied without hesitation.

If she hadn’t run into Zhang Qiqi, she probably would’ve checked out the other place.

But now, this was definitely the one.

If she remembered correctly, after the disaster, the floodwaters would reach at least the 20th floor.

Zhang Qiqi lived on the 7th floor—Jiang Yan could just sit back and watch the show from here.

Of course, finding an opportunity to deal with Zhang Qiqi was also part of her revenge plan.

Du Zitong was a bit stunned by how decisive she was.

“By the way, Yan-jie, you’ll need some time to get this place ready to move in. If you’re selling your villa, where will you stay? If you don’t mind, you could stay at my place for now. My wife just finished her training at New Oriental, and since you’re a foodie, maybe you could give her some feedback on her cooking.”

Jiang Yan politely declined, smiling. “Thank you for the offer, but the Intercontinental Hotel is like a second home to me. Don’t worry.”

*

Jiang Yan left all the paperwork for the purchase and transfer to Du Zitong, then found a reputable renovation company and a security firm, giving them detailed instructions on the remodeling and security upgrades.

In short, besides reinforcing insulation, fireproofing, and waterproofing, she had the entire apartment fitted with an extra layer of insulation and soundproofing.

The roof and walls were reinforced with metal.

The door was double-layered, made from the thickest steel plates—almost bulletproof.

She replaced all the glass with bulletproof, insulated glass, installed underfloor heating, and had the renovation company cut a convenient round hole with a switch on the exterior wall, just in case.

Not only that, she had the windows in two small bedrooms and the study sealed up with cement and bricks.

Top-floor apartments had their own issues—they tended to leak and were cold in winter, hot in summer—so renovations were common.

But when the renovation company heard all her requests, they were a bit dumbfounded.

Especially when she wanted to seal up the windows and balcony—they thought she was buying the place to store urns or something.

And when she insisted on reinforcing the walls and ceiling with metal, even the most experienced project manager was left scratching his head.

Wasn’t this basically turning the apartment into a 360-degree, all-metal coffin?

But Jiang Yan was generous with her money, so they just did as she asked, pulling in extra workers to get it done as quickly as possible.

After all, she’d given them a very tight deadline—just two weeks—and insisted that all materials be environmentally friendly.

For the security system, she hired another well-known company through An Ming.

Her requirements were that the installation be both sturdy and hidden, and that everything could be connected to a backup power supply.

She had cameras installed on the 32nd, 31st, and 20th floors, in the 7th floor hallway, outside the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, on the rooftop, and at the building’s main entrance.

Actually, her requests were pretty tough.

Not technically difficult, but it was tricky to install everything without the property management noticing.

But since Jiang Yan was offering a generous fee, the company wasn’t about to turn down such a big order.

As for the property management, as long as the manager was taken care of, everything else was easy.

How to “take care” of them wasn’t Jiang Yan’s concern.

She only cared about the results.

Of course, she had both the renovation and security companies sign confidentiality agreements.

Those were really just a formality—meant to restrain the honest people, not the dishonest ones.

With the apartment arrangements basically settled, Jiang Yan went on a shopping spree.

First on the list: meat, eggs, dairy, and medicine.

Frozen meat didn’t taste great, so Jiang Yan put in the effort to buy directly from farms.

But most farms only supplied regular clients, so as a walk-in customer, she couldn’t get huge quantities.

She wasn’t in a rush, though. If she couldn’t buy enough meat, eggs, and dairy domestically, she’d just go abroad to big farms in the coming days.

Still, she managed to buy 5,000 kilograms each of beef and pork, and 3,000 kilograms each of lamb and chicken.

For duck, goose, pigeon, and so on, she bought 1,000 kilograms of each.

She loved hotpot, so she also bought 1,000 kilograms each of lamb slices, beef slices, tripe, beef aorta, duck intestines, chicken gizzards, and more.

She bought 30,000 fresh eggs, and 8,000 each of fresh duck and goose eggs.

She bought 10 tons of fresh cow’s milk, and 2 tons each of goat and camel milk, just for variety.

For convenience, she’d also ordered 10,000 packs of individually packaged milk and yogurt online.

She bought 5,000 kilograms each of cream and cheese.

After buying all this, she had the farm divide up the meat and offal by animal and cut, and deliver everything to her temporary cold storage.

Once they left, she immediately transferred all the meat into her space.

After that, she headed to the seafood wholesale market.

She bought 3,000 to 5,000 kilograms each of various fish, shrimp, crabs, shellfish, oysters, snails, and abalone.

She planned to stock up even more on seafood when she went abroad.

By the time Jiang Yan had transferred all the rice, flour, grains, oil, meat, eggs, and dairy delivered to her warehouse into her space, nearly a month had passed.

The main issue was that deliveries arrived at different times, and the quantities were huge—sometimes she couldn’t store everything at once and had to stagger the deliveries.

But she hadn’t been idle during this time.

She bought 100 each of charging stations, small home wind turbines, and hand-crank generators.

She bought 10 large battery storage units, and 300 each of small wireless power banks and hand-crank chargers."