Chapter 429: Express Station

Chapter 429: Chapter 429: Express Station

Once again, she smoothly made eye contact with a girl. Lily scanned the area around her; there were no machines or shops.

’What could it be?’

Lily Hart approached the girl, her voice tinged with anticipation. "So, what first prize did you get?"

The girl had a baby face, which made her look young and approachable, but her words immediately created a sense of distance.

She glanced around. "It won’t fit here."

Lily Hart was momentarily speechless. She turned and gestured for the girl to follow. "Come on, follow me. I’ll find a place for you."

’This person’s pretty sharp. She knows she needs to redeem her prize, but that it won’t fit here.’

The two walked over to the side of the car dealership. Lily pulled out the Lucky Cat. "Alright, let’s see it."

The baby-faced girl deftly inserted the small card, so fast that Lily Hart couldn’t even see what was on it.

A flash of white light flared and vanished. A large metal shed appeared in front of them, its four walls completely sealed, leaving no gaps for the wind.

It also had a sign with two words: Post Station.

Lily Hart was stunned. ’Whoa, isn’t this a prize I thought of before? I’d almost forgotten about it, but here it is.’

The girl walked inside with Lily Hart following close behind. The interior was completely empty.

Nothing at all.

The girl frowned and turned to Lily Hart, who simply shrugged and shook her head.

"You don’t know how it works?" the girl asked, skeptical.

"You’re the first person to get a Post Station, so how would I know? First, open your Light Brain and find an app named ’Lily Hart’," Lily Hart said.

’Compared to this girl, I’m a total chatterbox.’

The girl did as instructed and opened her Light Brain. Sure enough, a new app had appeared. She tapped it open.

The entire Light Brain screen was now filled with a floor plan of the Post Station.

She could zoom in and out, rotate it, and pan around. A toolbar on the side allowed her to add furniture and other items to the station.

The girl was very bright and figured it out with just a little guidance.

Lily Hart ventured a guess. "It’s empty right now because there aren’t any packages yet. You’ll be plenty busy once people start using the service."

The girl looked confused. "Who would send packages right now? And what could they possibly send?"

Lily Hart had considered this question before. In the current state of society... the demand for package delivery didn’t seem very high.

’Send food? People can barely feed themselves, so how could they possibly mail any to others?’

’And if you wanted to buy food, you could just get it from the online supermarket and have it delivered right to you. Why go through the trouble of a delivery service?’

’No, that’s not quite right,’ she realized. ’You can’t buy things from the milk tea shop, the cake shop, or the hot pot restaurant online.’

’There are still many bases that don’t have access to these kinds of treats.’

Lily Hart sidestepped the girl’s dispirited question and proposed, "Perhaps you could try developing a food delivery service."

"Food delivery? You mean taking food from the shops out there and delivering it to customers?" The girl understood at once.

"Exactly!" Lily Hart said, giving her an appreciative nod.

As they had walked over, they had gotten a good look at all the shops.

"Would they agree to let me do that?" the girl asked, hesitating.

"With me handling it, how could they refuse? Besides, it’s a way for everyone to make more money. Why say no?" said Lily Hart.

The girl grew thoughtful, then suddenly introduced herself. "My name is Sylvia Jarvis."

Her way of introducing herself was a little unusual, but Lily Hart nodded in understanding.

"Got it, Sylvia. Why don’t you check the app and see if you can add a food delivery feature? Theoretically, since both services are related, it should be possible."

While Lily Hart was still muttering to herself, Sylvia Jarvis had already silently opened the app and found the feature.

"It’s here, but it costs five hundred thousand points to activate, and I don’t have it," Sylvia Jarvis stated flatly.

"I’ll cover it for you, but you have to pay me back," Lily Hart said, her tone a mix of magnanimity and thriftiness.

"Thank you, Boss Hart," Sylvia Jarvis said. After receiving the transfer, she immediately activated the feature.

It was the first time Lily Hart had seen even a hint of a smile on her lips.

"Alright, Sylvia! Let’s go talk to the shop owners about the delivery service!" Lily Hart said cheerfully.

The two of them left the Post Station, one after the other, with Sylvia Jarvis carefully shutting the door behind her.

’She seems so soft and cute on the surface, but she’s actually quite a cool character inside.’

Across from the Post Station was a fried chicken stand. Following the principle of proximity, they headed there first.

Lily Hart found Brock Finch and explained the food delivery idea to him. He agreed without a moment’s hesitation.

The specifics of the collaboration were as follows: Sylvia Jarvis would be responsible for building a food delivery platform.

All the food items from nearby shops would be listed on it—fried chicken, all kinds of milk tea, cakes, you name it.

Ideally, it would work like one of the big delivery apps from the pre-apocalypse era.

Each business would have its own separate storefront on the app. Tapping it would display all the items they sell.

That would make it convenient for customers to browse, and easy for Sylvia Jarvis to manage, right?

The delivery platform would be open to everyone. If someone was craving milk tea, they could just order it on the app.

After a customer selected their items, paid, and placed an order, the shop would receive it and begin preparation. Once the order was complete...

...the order needed to be sent to the Post Station, the only place that could handle one-click delivery.

Every order would have a barcode that, when scanned, would reveal the customer’s exact location, contact info, and other details.

After being processed by the scanner, the order would appear in the customer’s hands the very next second.

It was incredibly convenient and a huge benefit to the public.

It even saved the cost of hiring delivery drivers, using high-tech means for direct-to-door service!

The only catch was that prices on the delivery platform would be higher than in the brick-and-mortar shops.

After all, this covered the transportation fee. It wouldn’t be much more, though—just a few extra points.

Those few points were how everyone would make their profit.

Having ironed out the partnership model with Brock Finch from the fried chicken stand, Sylvia Jarvis breathed a sigh of relief.

If she had tried to negotiate on her own, the shopkeepers probably wouldn’t have given her the time of day. But having Lily Hart there changed everything.

Lily was like a walking good-luck charm with an off-the-charts likability rating. Anyone who saw her couldn’t help but smile.

After they were done with the fried chicken stand, the two of them simply continued down the street, hitting the milk tea shop, the hot pot restaurant, and the cake shop.

Sylvia Jarvis didn’t even pass up the breakfast stall, even though it was only open from eight to eleven in the morning.

They went down the line and negotiated with all five shops. Job done!

Afterward, Lily Hart and Sylvia Jarvis returned to the Post Station to start building the delivery platform.

Sounds difficult and high-tech, doesn’t it?

In reality, once the five-hundred-thousand-point activation fee was paid, everything else was pre-packaged and ready to go.

Sylvia Jarvis just needed to invite the merchants to join the platform, guide them through listing their products, and have them set their prices.

Sylvia Jarvis thought for a moment and realized that Cynthia Whittaker, the owner of the hot pot restaurant, was the least busy of the bunch.

When they had gone to see her earlier, she had been sitting behind the register playing on her Light Brain, with another girl beside her.

So, she sent the onboarding invitation to Cynthia Whittaker.

Sure enough, the unoccupied Cynthia Whittaker clicked the notification as soon as she saw it. After filling out the information, she was successfully onboarded.

Sylvia Jarvis’s spirits lifted, and she and Cynthia Whittaker immediately began uploading the restaurant’s products.

Lily Hart helped out from the side, her eyes watching as exquisite photos of one ingredient after another floated past.

She couldn’t help but gulp. It suddenly occurred to her that it had been ages since she’d last had hot pot. ’Maybe it’s time for a team-building dinner?’