In the office.
Xander Kane’s eyes widened, his face flushed red. "Sean, why didn’t you tell me about selling the shares earlier? This is a family matter. What do you mean by bringing it up at the shareholder’s meeting?"
Ginny Kane glanced at her brother, signaling him to keep quiet.
"Uncle Xander, it’s like this. I... I really don’t want to stay in Breven anymore. It feels like I can see Mom and Dad every day here. My brother wants to take me traveling around, and I... WAAAH... Uncle Xander, it’s all my fault..."
"Alright, Ginny. Now that Uncle Xander knows, I’m sure he won’t blame us, right, Uncle?" Sean said.
The siblings were playing the innocent victims to perfection. Sure enough, Xander and Shane Dawson, who was standing beside him, didn’t say anything to reproach them. They merely patted the siblings’ shoulders comfortingly.
Shane pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and spoke slowly. "Sean, how about you and your sister transfer your shares to me and your uncle? We’ll buy them from you at market price."
Ginny looked at Sean with hesitation, and Sean mirrored her with a look of uncertainty and confusion.
"Then... could you and Shane pay us in cash? We want to go somewhere to clear our heads and eventually settle abroad. We don’t want to come back to Zenia; it holds too many sad memories. As long as we get some annual dividends to cover our living expenses, that will be enough," Sean said, lowering his head and gently stroking Ginny’s hair.
Xander and Shane exchanged a glance before both of them nodded.
"Don’t worry," Xander assured them. "We won’t let you two take a loss. Between the two of you, you hold sixty percent of the shares. Discuss how much you want to transfer, and then let me know the price. How does that sound?"
"Okay... but can you give us the cash as soon as possible, Uncle Xander? We want to leave Breven immediately."
"Yes, we can," Shane chimed in.
Having received the siblings’ assurance, the two men left Sean’s office.
Watching them leave, Sean’s expression instantly darkened. "Heh, they really can’t wait, can they? Mom and Dad treated them so well. Ungrateful wretches."
"Alright, Sean. The private investigator might not make any progress anyway. If we can’t find evidence of what they did, we’ll deal with them on the night the zombie virus breaks out."
The siblings ultimately decided to sell fifty percent of their shares for a total of 12 billion yuan. They requested 6 billion yuan in cash upfront, with the remainder to be paid out annually in the form of company dividends.
"They just don’t want to pay the rest. Company dividends? They’ll be the ones deciding how much to distribute. Thank god the apocalypse is coming," Sean scoffed, staring gloomily at the contract in front of him. "The apocalypse is right around the corner anyway. Let them take those shares straight to hell."
They signed the contracts and called a local courier service to deliver them to Xander. Ginny figured this was probably the maximum amount of cash the two older men could scrape together. They had likely coughed up everything they had embezzled over the years, mortgaged their houses and cars, and perhaps even pledged their own company shares as collateral.
Afterward, the siblings began ordering supplies from all over.
The change in the Kane Group’s presidency wouldn’t be announced right away. The board had to consider stock market fluctuations, which worked out perfectly for the siblings. They planned to delay the announcement until after the Double Eleven shopping festival. After all, the Kane Group’s primary businesses were shopping malls, real estate, and supermarkets. This conveniently allowed Sean to exploit his position as president to stockpile supplies. Ordering such massive quantities of goods would usually attract a lot of unwanted attention, but a supermarket stocking up for a major sale was a completely different story.
Using the Double Eleven promotion as his cover, Sean even had the legal department draft a non-disclosure agreement. He personally sent out all the digital contracts and documents. Seeing the president himself handle the paperwork, the suppliers treated the collaboration with the utmost importance, secretly guessing that the newly appointed boss was trying to make a big splash for the holiday.
Because of this, Sean’s stockpiling went relatively smoothly. However, the sheer volume of the orders meant that the fastest deliveries would still take a week. Most would arrive in half a month, and some would take an entire month. Having contacted nearly a hundred suppliers, Sean was so busy he barely had time to breathe. It took him a full week to finalize everything, leaving only the logistics of receiving and transporting the goods.
When it came to food, they hoarded massive amounts of instant meals: self-heating rice, self-heating hot pots, hot and sour glass noodles, river snail rice noodles, instant noodles, rice noodles, sausages, assorted braised meats, and various canned meats. They ordered ten million boxes of each item, totaling 1.36 billion yuan. However, they only paid a deposit of nearly 200 million yuan, with the remaining balance due within six months.
Rice, flour, and cooking oil were a given. They purchased specialized storage barrels that could hold one ton each. They ordered fifty barrels of each staple, paying a 500,000 yuan deposit and agreeing to settle the rest upon delivery.
They also stocked up on plenty of condiments. For essentials like salt, sugar, light and dark soy sauce, chili peppers, and broad bean paste, they went straight to a hotel supplier and ordered 2,500 kilograms of each. Even after clearing out the supplier’s entire inventory, they were still two-thirds short of their goal. The rest would take at least half a month to arrive. They paid a 20 million yuan deposit, with the remainder due once the order was fulfilled in full.
As for water, Sean specifically purchased water storage tanks for drinking water. He ordered fifty tanks, each capable of holding 250 kilograms. He also bought 500-milliliter bottles of mineral water—ten million cases of twenty-four bottles each. He put down a 5 million yuan deposit, promising to pay the rest within half a month of delivery. He even spent over 17 million yuan on several heavy-duty water purification machines.
For beverages, alcohol, cigarettes, and snacks, Ginny only spent about 30 million yuan. She planned to raid the liquor and tobacco factories, as well as warehouse supermarkets, directly after her Ability awakened. After all, beverages, alcohol, and cigarettes would become incredibly scarce in the apocalypse. At first, one Level 1 Crystal Stone could be traded for a single cigarette, but later on, even a dozen wouldn’t guarantee you one.
They ordered plenty of meat and freezable seafood. It was a pity her spatial domain couldn’t hold living creatures, or she would have packed it full of chickens, ducks, fish, pigs, cows, sheep, and live seafood. Once the water resources were contaminated in the apocalypse, fresh meat would become truly rare. They ordered 10,000 tons of every type of meat, paying a twenty percent deposit upfront. They would pay another forty percent upon delivery and clear the balance within a month.
The deposit for the meat alone came to 230 million yuan, leaving nearly 500 million needed for the delivery payment. But since the apocalypse would strike less than half a month after the deliveries arrived, who would care about collecting debts?
They also ordered clothes, quilts, and maternal and infant supplies, though not in massive quantities, spending around 13 million yuan. Ginny stockpiled nearly two million yuan worth of daily necessities like shampoo, body wash, and toilet paper. She didn’t buy too much, fearing that hoarding any more might spark panic. They bought even less in the way of medical supplies, spending one million yuan strictly on rubbing alcohol, bandages, cotton swabs, and basic over-the-counter medications.
To store gasoline and diesel, the two specially purchased over a dozen large storage tanks. They also ordered a substantial amount of barreled fuel—ten tons of gasoline and ten tons of diesel. Between the storage tanks and the fuel itself, they spent over 70 million yuan. They also procured solar panels and diesel generators, dropping over 12 million yuan on those.
They bought one hundred automatic mahjong tables for 340,000 yuan. To ensure they had entertainment even before finding a safe haven with electricity, Ginny also bought one hundred sets of traditional hand-shuffled mahjong tiles. She threw in two boxes of playing cards—two hundred decks per box, totaling four hundred decks—spending 8,000 yuan.
Following that, Ginny visited the largest electronics market in Sheridan. She purchased twenty high-performance laptops. At a pre-discount price of 23,000 yuan each, she negotiated a deal and spent a total of 400,000 yuan. She picked up fifty of the latest high-capacity smartphones. Originally priced at 16,000 yuan each, she got a fifteen percent discount and paid 680,000 yuan. She also bought fifty 15TB hard drives at 2,000 yuan a piece, totaling 100,000 yuan.
Once she brought them home, Ginny filled the laptops with downloaded TV shows, movies, and novels, and packed the hard drives with single-player games. She dedicated two hard drives specifically for e-books. She downloaded a massive variety of them and also backed them up onto flash drives. She got the games because they would eventually have a large group of people and could play together, while the books were essential for living a better life in the apocalypse and rebuilding their home!
Last but not least were the vegetable seeds. Remembering that the soil had been contaminated in her past life, Ginny scoured the internet and found thirty or forty stores selling nutrient-rich soil. She bought ten tons of nutrient soil at 3 yuan per kilogram, spending a total of 30,000 yuan. She ordered one ton of fertilizer at 10.4 yuan per kilogram, spending around 10,000 yuan. She also bought one million seeds of various vegetables for 150,000 yuan.
Ginny bought these primarily because she wanted to establish her own safe base after the apocalypse. But since the land had been contaminated in her past life, making it impossible to grow vegetables, she decided to stockpile the soil and seeds for now. Her spatial domain was large enough anyway.
For the most important books, Ginny still decided to purchase physical copies. She bought over ten thousand physical books covering all sorts of subjects and industries, spending a staggering 13 million yuan. She planned to collect more rare and valuable books into her space later. After all, at the beginning of the apocalypse, people would be too frantic over food and supplies to pay attention to books.
With that, Ginny’s stockpiling was fully ordered. All she had to do now was wait for the deliveries and the calls from the suppliers.