Rise of the Phoenix - Apocalypse Rebirth

Chapter 20 - The Li's Secrets

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.