Chapter 18: The Elevator: Manager, You’re Hallucinating!

Tang Danqing watched the NPC play with her new Spatial Storage Feature, unable to put it down. The sight put her in a wonderful mood.

She followed the NPC around the house, quietly watching her move from the living room to the kitchen and then the bedroom. The girl’s little white hand touched one object after another, storing them away before taking them out again somewhere else.

Tang Danqing chuckled to herself. That’s exactly how I was playing a little while ago.

It was astonishing. Could you imagine what it felt like? You put your hand on a chair, give it a little nudge with your mind, and the entire thing moved into another space you could see.

When you wanted it back, you chose where and how to place it, and there the chair was again.

Since the space was shared, Tang Danqing could see the little things the NPC stored inside it. She could even take them out somewhere else herself.

“I made you some coffee. Try it.”

The NPC stored the coffee and its cup from the counter.

Tang Danqing sat at the dining table, opened the inventory, and took it out. A steaming cup of coffee appeared in her hands.

Shang You stared at it in amazement. Even after seeing the coffee reappear, she could hardly believe it.

So that was how Shan Qing had been able to produce so many supplies out of thin air. She had the ability to use Spatial Storage. And she’d shared that ability with Shang You…

Teaching someone to fish was worth more than giving them any amount of supplies.

Shang You felt even more bewildered. She couldn’t understand what she’d done to deserve this. They’d known each other for barely two weeks, but Shan Qing had been kinder to her than Shang You could ever have imagined—or even imagined possible.

At this point, calling it “a little bit of luck” no longer seemed enough.

Tang Danqing drank her coffee, delighted, then hurried into the study to finish the jungle diorama she’d started building the previous time.

Together, she and the NPC made a lush, vibrant jungle. The NPC watched beside her, smiling.

“Thank you, Shan Qing. If you hadn’t given me the diorama, I wouldn’t even know what a forest looked like.”

Tang Danqing paused. “Oh.”

She rubbed the NPC’s head, feeling sorry for her. “We can build lots of other scenes, too. Don’t be sad. I’ll keep you company. When the snow’s gone, we’ll go out and have some fun.”

The NPC looked at her, her smile warm and bright.

This time, Tang Danqing completed the Joyful Recreation quest without a hitch. It wasn’t just the satisfaction of finishing the task. For three whole hours, she’d forgotten the howling wind and heavy snow outside, and spent a peaceful stretch of time with Little Jelly, making a miniature landscape beside the crackling fireplace in the study. She really had felt her mind unwind.

Maybe this kind of life wasn’t so bad.

She stood up to stretch her neck and had the NPC sit in a chair. Then she massaged the girl’s shoulders and neck to loosen her muscles. They’d both been looking down for too long.

The next quest, which unlocked after the activity, got Tang Danqing excited all over again—

Unfortunately, the holographic game had a strict Holographic Health System. Once she hit the four-hour limit, she had no say in the matter. The game kicked her out.

After the forced logout, Tang Danqing unplugged all the sensors. She sat in the game pod until the dizziness and mild nausea faded, and couldn’t help agreeing with the Health System’s restrictions.

On her thirteenth day in the game, Tang Danqing bought another book from the Shop.

It was all because of her quest.

[Main Quest: If you have ammo and provisions, why stay cooped up? And if you run out, you’ll have to seek new opportunities elsewhere! Take the first step: venture outside and patrol the world around you. (Hint: To complete the quest, you must travel at least 3 miles from your shelter. This quest is extremely difficult. Your roommate cannot leave, so you’ll have to go alone. Before leaving the shelter, make sure you have strong means of defending yourself!)]

Tang Danqing immediately grabbed an AK and slung it over her shoulder.

But she soon realized that firepower wasn’t the real problem with the quest.

She and Little Jelly lived on the 22nd floor of a hotel, in the topmost suite. It was the only presidential suite on the floor, with its own elevator that went straight to the 1st-floor lobby and the B1 and B2 parking garages. But that elevator had frozen up long ago and stopped working.

The only way to get around now was to walk down the 22 floors through the fire stairs, then climb all the way back up when she returned…

That wasn’t a problem for Tang Danqing. She’d climbed more than a thousand steps in a single training session before.

The NPC, on the other hand, couldn’t manage it. A trip down 22 floors would leave the frail little thing gasping for breath.

Since she planned to go out, Tang Danqing started paying attention to the fire stairs. Three NPCs lay frozen solid inside.

She realized she’d have to deal with the problem at its source: stop outsiders from bothering them in the first place.

And the private elevator ought to be for its intended residents alone.

Tang Danqing flipped through a book on elevator mechanics, chewing on a pen as she skimmed and underlined the key points. Then she folded down a few pages, carried the book outside, and got to work repairing the private elevator to the 22nd floor.

The elevator shaft and car formed the outer shell of the entire system and its first line of defense, so she had to reinforce them until they’d be difficult to breach by force.

She lined the inside and outside of the elevator car with composite armor plating, modeled after the construction of an armored cash-in-transit truck. The middle layer used composite ceramic, with high-hardness ballistic steel on the outside to withstand explosives and powerful impacts. Inside, she filled the gaps with aerospace-grade flexible aerogel blankets and sealant for insulation.

She stuck Renovation Coupons all over the elevator walls, then applied them to the doors. The doors were made of the same bulletproof materials, with industrial locks that engaged at multiple points. Once shut, they clamped together like a predator’s jaws, nearly impossible to pry open from the outside.

Inside the elevator shaft, Tang Danqing used high-strength reinforced-concrete Renovation Coupons to reinforce the entire structure, then added bulletproof steel plates. The book had mentioned terrorist groups drilling through the sides of elevator shafts, and she wasn’t about to leave that option open.

She replaced the elevator guide rails with heavy-duty solid steel. The redundant reinforcement meant that even a major impact against the shaft wouldn’t knock the elevator off its rails.

She replaced all the elevator’s electrical components with military-grade equipment. The drive system’s motor was upgraded to a gearless permanent-magnet synchronous traction machine, designed to operate across a wide range of temperatures. In other words, even without insulation, the equipment wouldn’t freeze to death. That was the kind of reliable she wanted.

If an intruder went on a rampage and tried to destroy the system, every layer of material she’d installed acted as another safeguard. The elevator would keep running even if one layer was damaged.

She installed the new control cabinet in the 22nd-floor electrical room, far from the underground machine room where the other elevator control cabinets were kept.

Tang Danqing also gave the elevator three layers of access control.

The first was at the entrance. A hidden high-definition camera would perform facial recognition, giving visitors an initial screening.

The second was beside the elevator doors: a palm-vein scanner, nearly impossible to fake.

The third was inside the elevator. After the doors closed, a camera would scan and identify the passenger’s iris. Only after passing this biometric check would the elevator travel to the 22nd floor. If the scan failed and the system detected an intruder, the doors would seal shut and trap them inside. Tang Danqing could deal with them at her leisure.

The elevator also had an alarm system and a security mode she could control.

“If someone follows us into the elevator, press this hidden button,” Tang Danqing told the NPC, taking her hand and pointing it toward the button. “It’s the emergency alarm. It connects straight to our living room.”

The next step was to activate security mode from the control panel in the living room. The elevator doors would lock immediately, and the car would fill with a powerful sedative gas.

Finally, she installed heating and insulation to protect every joint in the system.

Tang Danqing had to admit, she was becoming more and more thorough when it came to reinforcing defenses.

She learned fast as she built. After studying several high-profile criminal cases, she kept looking for weak spots and sealing off every route the criminals in those examples had used.

She replaced the fire-stair door on the 22nd floor, too, with a bank vault door. It had the same biometric and keypad access system. No one but her and Jelly would be getting onto the 22nd floor, even if they climbed the stairs!

Tang Danqing also took Little Jelly for a test ride in the newly repaired elevator. It was spacious, clean, and fresh inside. The ride was smooth, stable, and fast, and the whole experience was wonderfully comfortable.

While they rode, Tang Danqing hung a mushroom-shaped sign in the elevator. She used a marker to write a message on it and drew a smiley face:

[Have a pleasant trip. Welcome home. (Smile)]

Unfortunately, she still couldn’t take the NPC outside. Tang Danqing gently patted her head.

“Jelly, wait here for me. I’m going out to take a look.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you to come home.”

Yanyun Hotel.

The hotel manager was inspecting the premises, checking for any issues with the hotel’s operations.

The guest in the presidential suite was strange. She’d booked the room, then vanished without ever checking in. Even so, guests who could afford the presidential suite were VIPs, and the manager couldn’t afford to neglect them. The private elevator to the unused 22nd floor was still there, so she used her manager’s key card to open it and check its condition.

The moment she stepped inside, she frowned.

Who’d pulled this prank?

Someone had hung a child’s mushroom-shaped sign on the elevator wall! It had eight characters written on it—“Have a pleasant trip. Welcome home”—followed by a childish smiley face!

Who’d thought this was funny?

The manager tried to pry it off with her fingers, but the hook was firmly stuck to the wall. The hotel spent tens of thousands of yuan every year on the decor for this presidential suite’s elevator. A prankster had used a ten-yuan sign and might cost the hotel thousands more in repainting. Who had hung this thing up? Did they really think it was cute?

The thought of such a tasteless person made the manager’s temper flare. If she caught whoever was responsible, she’d make them pay.

Fuming, she returned to the 1st floor and called for a cleaner. She handed over her access card and told her to hurry up and remove the tacky decoration from the elevator.

The cleaner hurried over with her cart and key card.

But a few minutes before she stepped inside, the mushroom sign and its hook flickered like an unstable current. They blurred, sharpened, then blurred again, just as they had when they appeared. Then, in an instant, they vanished.

The cleaner stood in the private elevator with her cart, looking around in bewilderment.

What hook? What sign? There was nothing there. The elevator looked perfectly clean. The hotel had a bunch of celebrities staying there lately. The manager was probably under too much pressure at work!