May 17, 3031 - Country C, City S
Aria planned to continue output in public, keeping the Andrew Gu identity as the public business owner. She asked the 3 guards to move into the house to keep an eye on the property on a permanent basis while she checks in occasionally. They were also tasked to update the security system of the property the next day.
But she decided to have the machines produce double the output of the public plant inside her space.
Even though S3's copy ability should be a no brainer regarding resources, she still doesn't fully trust S3. So in order to safeguard against it, she would rather have an excess of food and water at hand than to potentially encounter an error during a "paste" action.
Jumping into the space and hooking all 12 processing machines to energy cubes, she turned them on and had the processing robots take care of the second plant in her E-Space.
Talking about food, Aria decided to add that to her list of things to collect during the day while robbing the pharmacies at night.
Wanting to visit the Lis family while everyone is not at home (it's around 4:00pm) Aria dressed in non descriptive clothes again and covered her face.
Touching the front estate's gate security, S3 overrode the systems and cameras of the house. There shouldn't be anyone at home at the moment, grandma Li is playing mahjong with her friends and grandpa Li should be golfing with some board members. The chef usually arrives between 5-5:30pm so she had roughly an hour to go through the Li's house.
Over 30 people lived in the large estate, except for Aria. They fill their days attending school, shopping, traveling, or playing with their friends.
The Li's family line is deep and healthy. They have over 200 people within their clan. Grandpa Li kept a tight rein on each City's family power as the 1st head position.
They also have a lot of wealth, being one of the giants before the ZA. And after the ZA, with the help of the CFPs, they were able to hold on to that power and wealth in the base.
But that means there must be a lot of secrets too.
She'd never understood why they targeted and hated her so much. They surely can afford to give everyone a good life, what makes her different from everyone else?
Shaking her head to clear the negative thoughts, after confirming no one was in the house, she quickly ran to Lily's room and opened the jewelry box in front of the vanity table. Aria was specifically looking for one piece of jewelry. A white piece of jade bracelet.
Aria remembered this piece was something she gifted herself for her 20th birthday (1 months before current timeline). It was one of the most expensive things she had ever purchased, spending all of her savings on it.
When she came back, Lily happened to see it and took a liking to it and it disappeared. Aria thought she lost it somewhere and was sad for a long time. Lily scornfully tells her to take better care of her cheap stuff when she heard it was lost.
But Aria saw it again the day before the ZA at Lily's birthday party. Lily wore a beautiful pure white dress and her accessories were top of the line. On her pale wrist was the white jade bracelet that Aria lost. During the night, Lily has intentionally broke the bracelet once confronted by Aria of the theft.
Lily's thoughts were easy to understand: if she can't have it, no one else can.
——
The next day was chaos and everyone started gaining abilities. Lily's space ability was the most valuable to the Li's family. Even though everyone had their own space button, Lily's space was 1 acre, which was obviously a good thing.
It literally saved the Li's family many times and largely attributed to the Li's family power.
Owning CFPs means nothing without raw materials to process. Lily's space can grow things really quickly. And living things can live and multiply. Even humans.
Fresh meat and vegetables were readily available to the Li clan to consume everyday, while the CF and LP were used to bargain and demand more power and resources at the base, eventually overthrowing the base leaders and taking over Base PK themselves.
Lily's powers seem innocent enough right? Grow food, feed people, store things, a human mobile warehouse.
After the first year, Lily secretly customized a part of her grow space for a different purpose. She built a large prison.
At first it was a defense mechanism. The Li's weren't able to keep Lily's space a secret too long. Many people tried to kidnap her to take the resources for themselves but were never successful. After many failed attempts, Lily got mad and built a large prison inside her space to capture and trap the people who tried to kidnap her.
Then after awhile, when people started looking at her with fear, even her family members, she started to just imprison those who offended her. Aria spent a year inside Lily's space before being handed over to Edward Xiang for experimentation.
But one thing she learned that no one else knew was that Lily's space ability allowed her to teleport and escape to anywhere she has ever visited.
If Lily in this lifetime has the same space ability, Aria planned to reside in a completely different base to avoid her. That abuse of Lily's space is too overpowering. Aria does not want to be inside there ever again.
——
After rummaging through 4 boxes of jewelry without much success, she started opening drawers to search for the bracelet. Aria's heart was uncomfortable thinking that it might be hidden inside Lily's space button.
Giving up searching in the bedroom, Aria walked past the walk-in closet when she felt an invisible pull from her chest. It was the same feeling she got before she found the bracelet in the antique store.
Curious, she walked into the closet and was drawn to a white fur coat. Checking the pockets, she felt a hard round shape. It was the jade bracelet!
After some thought, Aria made a copy of the jade but specifically asked S3 to paste it using a plastic material instead. Then slipped it back into the coat pocket.
Aria toss the real jace bracelet in her space and left the room. Looking at the time, she had 45 minutes left before the chef arrived.
S3: Aria, I found a secret door inside the office at the corner of the East Wing.
Aria slightly paused before moving towards the office.
S3: I've deactivated the iris scan so you can just press the button located here. I've also deactivated everything below.
Aria: Is there an exit below? I don't want to be stuck down there.
S3: There are 2 exits.
A digital overlay showed an outline at a certain location. Aria pressed it and a hidden door opened underneath the large desk.
Seeing that she doesn't have much time left, Aria hurried down the stairs and closed the hidden door behind her. If she gets stuck down there, she'll just jump into the space and wait until the house is empty again before leaving from the way she came.
Walking for 5 minutes down a narrow walkway, imagining herself now underneath the entered a warehouse sized space full of large sturdy metallic boxes, lined and stacked up to the ceiling.
Aria: S3, identify. What are all of these?
S3: Weapons and drugs. The Li Family is one of the biggest suppliers for City S and the surrounding county. From the size of this stash,
No f*ing way. The Li family deals with illegal contraband and weapons!
Aria hurriedly swept everything into her space, emptying out the whole "warehouse" of goods. Seeing three doors come into view now that the warehouse is empty, Aria walked towards the smaller one. S3 already bypassed the lock so Aria opened the door easily. Walking down a hallway into another open "warehouse" area.
Seeing the familiar 6x6 security container that's commonly used to transport heavy and important cargo, Aria asked S3 to identify the closest container to her.
S3:The crates are filled with gold and silver bars.
Aria: What?! Did you just say, "GOLD BARS"?! How much are we talking about here?
S3: Affirmative. At today's current price of gold and silver, we are looking at $58B.
What. The. Actual. F*.
Is it necessary to even work anymore after having this money hidden under your house? This explained so much... but she bet the Li head doesn't allow many people to know about this tax free stash.
Take! Take everything! These mother f*ers.
Aria swept all the crates into her room then after making sure there's nothing else, Aria went back to the main warehouse area and opened the larger door.
Aria doesn't know why she kept feeling surprised every time she opened a door. This room was largest of all, half of it devoted to processing and creating the drugs. And the other half to thermal weapons and ammo.
Hundreds of robots were hard at work, measuring and mixing out precise amounts of ingredients or raw materials to make weapons and drugs.
Again, sweeping everything into her space, she opened the last door to see trolleys and signs of it being a delivery tunnel.
Feeling disgusted, Aria left the underground warehouses and was back in the study room.
Remembering one of the uncle's hobbies from the previous life, Aria went into a large room full of stuff. Most were antiques that the family circulated as decorations throughout the year. But half the room again was full of 6x6 crates.
The uncle loves collecting high quality cold weapons. After the ZA, this stash of cold weapon was super useful. Opting out on collecting these weapons since they weren't illegal to own, Aria decided to copy the weapons crates instead of taking everything away since she didn't want them to find out about the theft just yet.
Recognizing a crate with a few large dents on the side, Aria took that specific one away.
Inside was the sword she used to use in her last life. It wasn't anything special, but it was sturdy and she had it inside her space button until she died. She didn't want anyone else to use her weapon in this life.
After confirming with S3 that there was nothing else of value, Aria left the Li's estate a filthy rich woman.