Jing An had been frowning, thinking of a way to help his daughter regain her dignity that didn't involve violence, but he was startled by her sudden, domineering approach, the speed of it leaving him no time to interject.
After piercing the peephole, Jing Shu smoothly inserted the hooked iron wire inside, feeling for the simple latch. With a slight, practiced pull, she unlatched the door from within, the mechanism clicking open. Ten years into the apocalypse in her past life, if you didn't max out practical skills like lockpicking and window climbing, you simply couldn't survive the constant need to access abandoned places.
Next year, when the sea levels would rise and flood the central area of Wu City, anyone who hadn't mastered this skill wouldn't even be able to scavenge supplies from submerged buildings. The fast, the skilled, would snatch goods and trade them for food. The slow, the untrained, would be left with nothing but red nematodes and despair to eat.
In her past life, Jing Shu was always one step behind, perpetually late to the scene, reduced to eating whatever was left, often just the red nematodes. There's a saying that "eating cold leftovers is not as good as eating them hot". That was exactly how her past life had felt, always getting the cold, unwanted scraps. Fortunately, driven by sheer hunger and desperation, she had eventually learned many such skills to secure better food. When a former slacker gains real, survival based motivation, the results can be terrifying in their efficiency.
With a single, powerful kick, she slammed the door open, the wood groaning against its hinges, and was the first to enter, her body a silhouette against the dim light from the hallway. Jing An followed close behind, his bulk filling the doorway.
Wang Qiqi was a step behind and got smacked squarely on the forehead by the rebounding door. "Ow!" Wang Qiqi held back a full scream, then yelled out, his voice shrill with adrenaline, "Gou Yitian, let's see if you dare to run your mouth now!"
The dark apartment hit them with a palpable wave of scorching, stagnant air and an immediate, overwhelming stench of urine, feces, and unwashed body. Jing Shu nearly gagged from the smell, her nose wrinkling.
Jing An shone his flashlight beam directly onto Gou Yitian, who was lying sprawled on a stained sofa in nothing but yellowed underwear, clutching his phone, his face wide eyed in shock, the screen's glow illuminating his features.
After months without vitamins or proper nutrition, and having his last food stores wiped out by carrion scavengers, Gou Yitian's appearance was a testament to the times: bulging, bloodshot eyes that seemed lifeless, sunken cheeks, a messy, unkempt beard, and a foul personal stench that added to the room's miasma. He looked exactly like the miserable state most people who had lost their stockpiles now lived in.
"H-how did you get in here?" Gou Yitian stammered, unable to believe these people had just barged right into his apartment. Were they demons? That loud bang earlier, had they actually broken the door? But so what? His new group, "Bì Rì," was planning a big operation today. With his inside information, they'd take over this whole community in no time.
What could this small group do, kill him? If they couldn't bring themselves to do that, they were all doomed anyway once his friends arrived. Gou Yitian seethed inwardly, a spark of defiance in his sunken eyes.
Jing An rolled up his sleeves, his muscles tightening, ready to teach the arrogant young man a physical lesson. Wang Qiqi opened his mouth, perhaps to issue a threat or a demand, but the words froze in her throat.
Because Jing Shu had already launched herself forward. Without aiming carefully, she went straight for a brutal kick aimed at his head. When he instinctively raised his arms to cover his head, she pivoted and drove her foot into his soft stomach. When he curled forward, groaning, hands going to his midsection, she went lower, her movement a blur in the flashlight's beam. Gou Yitian didn't even fully understand what was happening before being caught in a ruthless, efficient beating.
How strong was Jing Shu now? Nobody in the room truly knew.
Gou Yitian only knew that the first kick to his ribs felt like being stomped by a heavy draft horse. The pain was so intense it stole his voice, he couldn't form words, only a choked scream escaped.
Then Jing Shu's foot, clad in a sturdy boot, landed squarely on two very specific, very soft spots between his legs.
He thought he heard a faint, internal crunching sound. Agonizing pain, white hot and nauseating, shot from his lower body up through his gut to his kidneys, stealing his breath entirely, and his vision tunneled to black as he passed out, slumping sideways on the foul sofa.
"Still want to play tough? Still pretending you're untouchable?" Jing Shu muttered, kicking his limp shoulder a few more times to make sure he was thoroughly unconscious, then stopped, feeling a cold sense of satisfaction settle in her chest.
Wang Qiqi's jaw dropped and stayed that way, his eyes wide. He shuddered violently, especially recalling the twisted, silent scream on Gou Yitian's face at that last kick. His teeth began to chatter audibly. "D-did you... kill him?" This wasn't at all how he had pictured this confrontation going! This was supposed to be about shaming him, maybe roughing him up a little.
Even Jing An flinched, a sympathetic wince crossing his face. Only men could truly, viscerally understand the kind of pain that kick must have delivered.
"He's fine. He's breathing. He's alive." Jing Shu checked quickly, then efficiently used the same hooked iron wire to bind Gou Yitian's wrists tightly together behind his back, then lashed his ankles, securing everything with a complex, deadly knot she knew would tighten with every struggle. Without a pair of heavy duty pliers, even a sharp knife would have a hard time cutting through it.
"Alright," Jing Shu said, her voice flat. "Call that lady here. Wang Xuemei. We'll deal with this together, as neighbors."
Wang Xuemei arrived soon after, her face pale and streaked with old tears. Through fresh sobs, she pounded on Gou Yitian's chest and shoulders until he groaned back to consciousness. To Wang Qiqi and Jing An, this felt like a more understandable, if raw, way for a woman to vent her grief and anger. Jing Shu's method had been... well... they both mentally coughed and looked away.
Jing Shu and Wang Xuemei quickly agreed in hushed tones: this scum couldn't be left alive to retaliate. Jing An, though seething with anger, felt a deep seated unease. He thought it wasn't worth risking prison for, even now. Wang Qiqi's biggest, most practical worry was voiced in a whisper: "If we just let him go, he'll definitely get revenge. But we don't dare kill him either. That's a line..."
Jing Shu didn't argue. Instead, she methodically picked up every piece of technology in the room, a dusty desktop computer, a flat screen TV, Gou Yitian's phone, various chargers, a couple of power banks, and smashed them repeatedly against the edge of the concrete floor until they were nothing but scraps of plastic and circuitry. She then wound the wire securing Gou Yitian's limbs through the sturdy wooden frame of the heavy sofa, looping it multiple times. She stuffed his own rancid socks into his mouth and sealed them in place with a roll of duct tape she found in a drawer.
"This way," she explained tonelessly, "he can't call for help even if he gets free of the gag, and he can't escape. Unless he can carry this entire sofa with him, he's not going anywhere."
Gou Yitian, now fully conscious and writhing in pain and humiliation, glared at Jing Shu with pure, undiluted hatred, muffled grunts of rage escaping around the sock gag. He was hunched over, legs splayed awkwardly, hands and feet bound together behind him. He couldn't even twitch without pulling against the sofa's frame. In his heart, he cursed this vicious girl and her group a thousand times.
With his limbs bound and lashed to the solid piece of furniture, Gou Yitian couldn't even stand up, much less shuffle to the door or call for help from the balcony.
"He won't be able to run, and he won't be able to eat or drink anything either," Wang Qiqi observed, looking at the trussed up figure. She silently gave him three seconds of internal mourning. It was a grim fate.
He was going to starve, dehydrate, or overheat to death in this filthy apartment. In the early days of the apocalypse, before everyone was fully brutalized, few people could easily bring themselves to deliver a killing blow outright. This was a slower, passive form of execution.
Jing Shu, however, had no such qualms. She planned to sneak out later that night, after everyone was asleep, and finish the job cleanly with the "Paper Mask" method she'd learned in her previous life.
That meant soaking sheets of paper or cloth in water and layering them over someone's nose and mouth until they suffocated. Most people died after five layers. This method left no visible wounds, no blood, and when Wang Qiqi or others inevitably came back to check later, they'd just assume Gou Yitian had finally succumbed to heatstroke, thirst, or despair. No one would suspect her.
On the walk back through the dark compound, Jing An looked deeply uneasy, his brow furrowed. "Are you sure this is okay? Leaving him like that? Won't the police come after us if he dies? Murder is still murder, it's still illegal. Isn't there another way to handle this without... killing?"
"Dad," Jing Shu said, her voice low but firm, "if he lives, he will come back with reinforcements from that gang he mentioned. And the police?" She let out a short, humorless laugh. "They don't have time for a case like this. There are so many robberies and murders in the city every night now they can't even log them all, let alone investigate."
"Half the armed police are permanently stationed at the artificial sun construction site, the rest are guarding the central granaries, government facilities, and the few vegetable distribution centers that still operate." Jing Shu thought again of Wu You'ai's chilling predictions about deliberate social triage. Wu City had a police force of over 200,000 before the Dark Days, yet even if this was a planned, allowed riot, how had their presence vanished from the streets so completely?
"Forget it. This isn't something I can figure out right now." Jing Shu shook her head, as if to clear it. The full, ugly truth of the strategies at play was beyond what an ordinary citizen like her could fully comprehend or change. Back home in the villa, she mechanically went about her daily routine of walking Xiao Dou around the perimeter and then mentally organizing the contents of her Cube Space.
The ten black pigs within the space were nearly fully grown, hefty and healthy. She needed to make arrangements for them soon, decide how to use them as strategic assets.
After that unscrupulous farm had secretly tried to raise poultry, causing the carrion scavenger outbreak that nearly wiped out all remaining birds in the region, only a handful survived in deep rural homesteads or in climate controlled government facilities.
A live, healthy pig was now more precious than a sack of grain or a case of water, and money couldn't guarantee you one at any price.
Thinking of how to best leverage the pigs, Jing Shu later brought Xiao Dou to the scrubby area behind the compound where the six robbers had died days earlier. The soil there was disturbingly soft now, caving in slightly at the slightest touch. Just beneath the surface, countless pale carrion scavenger larvae squirmed through what remained of the corpses, hollowing them out efficiently.
Xiao Dou enjoyed a hearty, gruesome meal, pecking with gusto, and Jing Shu collected a container of the wriggling larvae to feed the growing frog population. She estimated the supply from this macabre site would keep Xiao Dou and the frogs fed for several days at least.
That evening, while the family was gathered enjoying a quiet dinner of corn porridge and pickled vegetables, Jing Shu's phone on the table buzzed again. She glanced at it casually, as had become her habit, expecting another update from the community chat.
The message that glowed on the screen, however, made her hand freeze halfway to her chopsticks.
[Wang Xuemei No. 2]:"@Xiaoshu from the Villa District, you're next. Are you ready?"