Originally, Jing Shu had wanted to find an excuse, to fabricate some rumor or anecdote, to build more traps, but unexpectedly, Wu You'ai with her blunt, academic analysis provided her with a perfect, logical reason first, saving her a lot of effort in persuasion.
"Just physical traps aren't enough. What if we run into a gang of desperate criminals, or people carrying knives and guns? Traps only work on the first few, and only if they're careless," Wu You'ai asked, pushing her glasses up, her chuunibyou tendencies flaring again as she sketched a crude diagram of attack vectors on a napkin.
Jing Shu clapped her hands in agreement, seizing the opening. "Exactly! Dad, Grandpa, think about it. What if dozens of people, organized, rush into our villa at once? Even if they just rob us of our food and supplies it's bad enough, but what if they decide to kill witnesses too? Even if it may not happen, we must prepare for the worst case. Better safe than sorry. We can't rely on the police coming in time." Her voice was earnest, painted with a worry that felt all too real.
Her words did unsettle the whole family, a chill settling in the dining room. After all, right now everyone at this table could still eat until full, but if starving, desperate people from the surrounding blocks saw the villa's lit windows at night, heard the occasional hum of the generator, or smelled cooking meat, what would happen? So instead of discussing vegetable prices or work gossip, the family began brainstorming defensive measures, their conversation turning practical and grim.
The next day, under the perpetual dim twilight, Jing Shu, Jing An, and Grandpa Jing started by placing a row of sturdy, waist high metal fences around the villa's perimeter, bolting them into the hard baked earth. From the fence line to the villa's own wall, they marked and then dug a trench two meters deep all the way around, the soil piled neatly to the side, intending to cover it with spring loaded wooden boards camouflaged with a thin layer of dirt and gravel. Anyone who stepped onto those boards would immediately fall into the pit, a simple but effective first delay.
The logic was clear: If the fence was there as a clear boundary and someone still didn't use the main gate but chose to climb over instead, what could they be up to? Definitely nothing good. Let them fall into the pit and reconsider their life choices.
The trapdoor boards were designed with a simple hinge and counterweight system to open only under downward pressure. Once someone stepped on them, the boards would instantly swing open inward, and the spring loaded bolts would snap them back into a closed, locked position flush with the ground. This meant anyone who fell in wouldn't be able to push it open from below, they'd be stuck in a dirt walled hole.
Jing Shu suggested quietly installing sharpened rebar or spikes at the bottom to cripple intruders so they would lose all combat power immediately, but since the rest of the family had never encountered the truly feral, murderous bandits of her memory, they couldn't understand the cold, preventive bloodthirst that drove such a suggestion. They thought simply trapping them, holding them until authorities could maybe come, was enough. Killing was unnecessary, and besides, killing could land them in prison if order ever returned.
Jing Shu said no more, nodding as if acquiescing, but in her heart she already decided: once the basic traps were finished, she would modify them alone at night. If anyone dared break into her family's sanctuary, she would make sure they were half dead before they could blink. This was one of the deepest, most visceral grudges she carried from the other timeline.
In her previous life, she had huddled in her tiny, dark apartment, scrolling endlessly through local network posts on a dying phone while living in constant, gnawing fear of a break in. One moment, she would see a grainy video of how a gated community was stormed by a mob wielding machetes and steel pipes, slaughtering anyone they saw in the courtyards. Another moment, she would read first hand accounts from survivors about entire apartment blocks taken over by gangs who looted every last bag of rice, killed resisting men, and enslaved women.
Everyone thought the apocalypse had come and they could do whatever they wanted, that the old rules were dead. The government looked weak, stretched too thin. Whoever was strongest could rule their little patch of hell. Because of them, Jing Shu had spent half a year trembling at every noise in the hall, and she now hated those kinds of people with all her heart, a hatred that was clean and sharp.
Meanwhile, Jing An made trips to source materials, buying large amounts of composite wood boards from Lao Chen the decorator, whose shop was now mostly empty. Two boards formed one trapdoor, and it would take hundreds to encircle the entire villa. Luckily, the price was still cheap, the man just happy for any business, so it didn't cost much of their remaining cash.
The main gate was prioritized for protection. The entire villa was already fitted with reinforced, laminated glass, arranged in small triangular patterns that were difficult to shatter completely. Even breaking one piece required repeated, forceful blows. So the main entrance, the double wooden doors, was the key weakness.
Jing Shu voiced her idea during a planning session: "The best traps are controllable ones. For our own safety, and to avoid accidentally trapping Auntie Lai coming home late, they shouldn't trigger by themselves but only when we manually activate them from inside. A switch in the control room."
Out of concern for both safety and secrecy, the next day Jing Shu quietly shared her more elaborate plans with Jing An and Grandpa Jing in the tool shed. They thought she was overreacting, was spending too much time reading doom scenarios, but in the end her persistence, her quiet, unwavering certainty, won them over, and they agreed to build double layered, manually triggered traps around the core living area.
Around the main entrance they set up more than twenty foot snare traps, buried just under the decorative gravel of the path. These were simple and practical, adapted from old hunting designs, with little danger of causing fatal injury.
Steel hoops, strong and sprung, were laid out in circles around the entrance. When deactivated, stepping on them felt like stepping on a stiff rope, and careful, light walking wouldn't trip the mechanism. But once Jing Shu flipped the master switch in the hallway closet, connecting them to the trigger line, springs would snap the hoops shut with a loud clack and pin down anyone or anything stepping inside, clamping around ankles or feet, preventing them from moving or charging the door. At that point, the intruder would be nothing but a sitting duck, stumbling and trapped.
The second trap was inside the entrance hall itself. The villa had a high, two story ceiling there, so Jing An installed recessed pulleys and release mechanisms near the top of the walls. Jing Shu then went to the shuttered city zoo, using a forged work order and a bartered pack of cigarettes, and obtained three heavy nets designed to capture large, unruly animals like bears.
These nets were made of interwoven 304 stainless steel wire, incredibly tough, and each was hung from four corners high above the entrance, folded and held by electromagnetic catches. At the push of a button on the same control panel, one would drop, its weighted edges smashing down on anything below and pinning it in place. The sharp hooks at each corner were designed to embed into the wooden floor, making escape impossible without cutting tools.
To test it, Jing Shu lured Chicken No. 1, the largest and boldest of the hens, to the entrance with a trail of corn. At her signal from the hallway, the heavy net dropped with a terrifying whoosh thud, trapping the fat bird at the door, completely immobilized under the metal mesh.
The fat chicken flapped desperately, feathers flying everywhere, but despite its increased strength and size from the Spirit Spring watered feed in recent days, it couldn't break the steel strands. Jing Shu was very satisfied, resetting the net with a winch. She didn't need to hold enemies for long, just long enough for her or Jing An to respond with other measures.
She tried the now wary fat chicken with other traps too, the pit trap (with a soft landing prepared), the foot snares (on a light setting), and all worked well. However, the once carefree, strutting chicken now seemed deeply traumatized. Every time it passed the main doorway, it trembled and clung to Jing Shu's heels, skittering across the floor, terrified of being suddenly crushed and pinned again. The chicken had become very obedient, following her like a feathery shadow.
Jing Shu also added extras, little surprises connected to the control panel: containers of small, sharp stones; bags of fine, irritant chili powder; jars of glass shards; and even a small, carefully secured reservoir of strong sulfuric acid that could be released via a solenoid valve at the press of a button to give intruders a nasty, burning surprise from above.
As the days passed and the villa became ringed with hidden threats, Grandpa Jing and Jing An reinforced the chicken coop with a second layer of welded wire mesh and a simple lock. Jing Shu spent nearly all her remaining paper money, the bills feeling increasingly irrelevant, to buy several tons of lump coal from a desperate dealer and built a small, vented coal storage house behind the villa, camouflaged to look like a garden shed. Meanwhile, conditions in Wu City grew palpably worse, the tension in the air thickening like the heat.
Jing Shu couldn't remember exactly when the first major wave of robbery and murder had begun in her last life, the timeline was blurry with fear. In this life, she was still busy calibrating a tripwire when a message popped up in the community chat group, the notification buzz sharp.
[Wang Qiqi No. 13]:"@Everyone, if you go out these days, carry a stick or something. Don't go alone. Be especially careful after leaving the supermarket with groceries! Today, our neighbor Feng No. 3 was robbed by a group right outside the community gate. He resisted and got badly hurt with a knife. The hospital is out of antiseptic and medicine, so he has to tough it out at home. With this hot weather, wounds easily fester. Best not to get injured or sick now."
[Feng No. 3]:"Those bastards couldn't buy food inside and just waited outside the supermarket in the shadows. They stalked loners. Inside the supermarket there are police with batons, so they didn't dare, but once you leave the lit area, they rob you openly in the dark. I screamed for help but no one came out of their houses. When I finally called the police, they only logged it since no one died. They're getting more arrogant every day."
[Wang Xuemei No. 2]: "Luckily I went at 4 a.m. to queue. Didn't get anything because they sold out, so I went straight home empty handed. Nothing to steal, I guess."
Wang Cuihua sent a voice message, her voice blunt as ever: "You think that's bad? I queued for two days straight just to buy one kilo of rice. Slept on the sidewalk. The people around me stank of despair."