This chapter contains graphic and tactical descriptions of violence in a home-defense scenario. Jin Shu's preparation pays off in a decisive, and brutal, way.
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"Motherfucker, who slashed me?!" a voice roared in the dark, raw with pain and confusion.
"Ah, my back, it hurts! Something's in my back!"
"We're gonna be crushed! Get off!"
The men who had fallen at the very front of the heap weren't so lucky. The sudden chain reaction collapse made the people behind them lose their grip on their weapons, and blades, machetes and kitchen knives, flew from their hands and spun through the air. The unlucky ones were chopped in the skull or sliced across the back. Screams, sharp and agonized, burst out in ragged waves.
Hiding at the very back, Brother Da Bi had also toppled into the men ahead. A sharp, grinding pain clamped around his ankle, and he found he couldn't move it another step. He was bound in place, locked down. "Damn it, what is this?"
He yanked with everything he had, his calf muscle straining, but nothing budged. His fingers, groping blindly, brushed against something icy and solid. A steel collar, like a cruel animal trap, was clamped tight around his ankle, the teeth biting through his pants into the skin.
A raw urge to turn and run clawed up his throat, leaving a sour taste on his tongue. They'd already lost more than twenty men, either in the pits or tangled here. Every brother had come armed, yet they still hadn't even seen the faces of the people inside the villa. That bastard Gou Yitian had said it was only a little girl's family, soft targets. Did Gou Yitian ever mention any of these traps? He must've known. They'd been set up.
They'd kicked a steel plate wrapped in silk.
"Where's my knife?" Brother Da Bi grunted, patting the ground around him. In the pitch dark, dizzy from the fall and throbbing pain, he had no idea where his weapon had flown. His flashlight had skittered far away, its beam pointing uselessly at a wall. Using Lao Zhu's broad, unmoving back to push himself up, Brother Da Bi felt something slick and warm in his hand, a hot liquid pulsing between his fingers. "B blood. Lao Zhu, Lao Zhu, are you alright?" He got no answer, only a wet, gurgling sigh.
Chaos erupted again, another fresh wave of panic.
The front runners who'd made it past the initial snare heard the new screams and crashes behind them and thought another group was attacking from the rear. They turned to look back, their attention split. The moment they did, a heavy whoosh sliced past their ears, and three enormous weighted nets dropped from the ceiling, slamming another wave of men flat onto the tiled floor.
Spikes, thumbtacks, and little sharp paring knives were tied along the ropes of the nets. And from somewhere above, triggered by the nets, came a stinging, choking rain of glass shards, powdered lime, fine chili powder, and all kinds of nasty surprises Jing Shu had prepared. The men caught under the heavy mesh were left blinded, coughing, and unable to fight back.
Jing Shu burst from her hiding spot near the chicken pen, her voice cutting clean through the noise. "Aim at the doorway, now!"
Running on terror and pure adrenaline, the family obeyed. Crossbows twanged one after another, the sounds sharp and mechanical. Their shots weren't precise, not aimed at individuals, but with bodies jammed together at the entrance, somebody was bound to get hit. The ones at the very front, already thrown off by the nets, had the worst luck, turning into human pincushions as bolts thudded into limbs and torsos. The courtyard filled with a new chorus of howls and curses.
The remaining repeating crossbows from Jing Shu's Cube Space, set up on tripods in the shadows, fired several more programmed volleys into the mass of men trapped under the nets. The bolts found flesh with cold, mechanical precision until Jing Shu was certain this dozen had lost any ability to stand or pose a threat.
In the confusing dark, lit only by the scattered beams of dropped flashlights, Jing Shu calmly tracked the remaining silhouettes through her phone's thermal feed.
Some were panicking and spinning in circles. One misstepped and fell into the koi pond with a splash, his cries bubbling in the water. A few stragglers clutching machetes had split off and were creeping along the raised vegetable beds, crouched low and edging toward the dark windows of the house. Others had already tried to retreat, to flee back out the door, but the doorway was jammed with bodies pinned by nets or caught in snares, forming a grisly barricade.
Jing Shu lifted her own crossbow, the stock cool against her cheek. After half a year of daily practice on the back hill, she could finally hit moving targets in low light. She exhaled, her finger steady on the trigger. "One." Twang. "Two." Twang. "Three." Twang.
The screams in the courtyard shot up another octave.
"Cluck cluck cluck, cluck cluck!" In the near darkness, Xiao Dou's eyes gleamed with a faint green reflection. At Jing Shu's small hand signal, the plump chicken launched itself in a blur of feathers and polished steel, ramming the fifteen centimeter stainless steel spike on its helmet straight into the thigh of a crawling man. It yanked it free with a sharp twist of its strong neck, then stabbed him again in the side. After a vicious burst of thrusts, the man lay twitching, his torso riddled with holes. Even Jing Shu winced, her own teeth aching at the brutal efficiency.
With one target down, Xiao Dou, its beak flecked with blood, prowled for the next, its head snapping side to side.
In the unfamiliar, trap filled terrain of the courtyard, these invaders were like loose sand, scattered and blind. Not one could mount a real fight.
The entire violent clash, from the first man falling into the pit to the last crossbow bolt hitting home, lasted less than a minute. Not a single robber who'd entered the villa grounds was left standing, fighting, or fleeing.
"I is it over?" Su Lanzhi choked, her voice trembling. Had they really survived this disaster? "Jing Shu, Jing Shu, where are you?" her legs shook so badly she could barely stand as she stepped down from the back door, peering into the gloom.
"I'm right here. Don't come out yet, the ground's messy." Jing Shu left the cover of the chicken pen and flipped on two rows of outdoor lights she'd installed along the eaves.
The pitch black courtyard exploded into harsh white light. A bloody tableau spread out before them. Gore splattered the gravel path. Dark pools spread across the tiles. Bodies lay in twisted positions. Third Aunt Jing Lai gagged and retched up her half digested dinner on the spot. Su Lanzhi stumbled back a step and clapped a hand over her mouth.
At the main entrance, the scene was even worse. More than a dozen men lay tangled together, staring at nothing or moaning faintly. Their bodies were dotted with bright red fletching and dark stains that looked black under the lights, a grotesque contrast against the white tiles. Three large coarse nets smothered the group at the entrance. They lay half dead or fully still, their bodies bristling with bolts like monstrous porcupines, blood pooling beneath them. The unluckiest ones had nails or glass shards driven straight into their temples and had passed out or died on the spot.
Some trapped in the nets had their eyeballs pierced by flying nails or tacks, the ruined organs bulging from their sockets, a sight that made stomachs turn.
In the trampled vegetable beds lay several men Xiao Dou had stabbed over and over, their clothing and skin torn into holes, their blood already soaking into the soil.
Two who'd fallen into the deep koi pond never surfaced. Only a few bubbles broke the murky water. A few stragglers groaned in the middle of the path, bolts sticking from legs or shoulders. Jing Shu had tagged them cleanly. They weren't dead yet, but they weren't going anywhere.
"Cousin," Jing Shu said to Wu You'ai, her voice flat now, "take them inside. It's safe outside for the moment, but they shouldn't see the cleanup."
What came next wasn't for her family's eyes. Jing Shu had survived ten years of the apocalypse in her last life. She'd witnessed too many ugly, necessary deaths and had delivered too many herself. She refused to plant those scars in her family's hearts if she could help it.
Wu You'ai, pale but strangely focused, nodded and began helping Grandma Jing, the trembling Third Aunt, and the shell shocked Su Lanzhi back inside. Jing An came out, his expression grim as he carried a toolbox. "The front gate's broken, and some snares are triggered. There's likely another batch out there waiting. We need to reset what we can."
At the crucial moment, Jing An pushed past his horror. For his family, he'd risk everything.
"I'll help you fix the traps," Grandpa Jing said, steadying himself with effort, his old hands no longer shaking. "What about that dozen still moaning outside the wall, in the pits?"
"No rush on them," Jing Shu said, wiping her hands on her pants. "I'll clean our courtyard first." She bared her white teeth in a cold smile with no warmth at all.
By clean, she meant something simple and final: drag every corpse and every still living body to the pile by the shattered front doorway.
Dead or struggling, she twisted each neck with smooth, practiced ease. A quick wrench, a muffled crack. Using a knife would've splattered the tiles again. Too much trouble to scrub.
The dead felt nothing. The ones clinging to life endured their agony and the terror of watching her approach. Waiting to die is one of the cruelest tortures. One man in Jing Shu's hands, his leg bent at an impossible angle, chattered his teeth and stammered, staring up at her with blood specked lips. "P-please, don't kill me. I have a kid..."
Crack.
Jing Shu snapped his neck and tossed him onto the growing pile. It landed with a heavy thud. The dozen still alive and watching, Brother Da Bi among them, turned gray at the sight. Whatever fight they had left vanished.
Jing An and Grandpa Jing kept working, resetting a snare wire, ignoring everything else. Their faces were hard. Earlier, when they'd caught Gou Yitian, Jing An had urged Jing Shu not to kill because murder was illegal, a sin. And look at what that mercy had brought. If they'd ended Gou Yitian then, none of this would've happened. The lesson cut deep.
These men had come to rob, rape, and kill. They all deserved to die. If they hadn't died tonight, his family would've. Jing An couldn't even imagine the reversed scene.
A few of the wounded began dragging themselves toward the broken doorway, smearing blood and filth behind them. "Brother Da Bi... help. Call Brother Da Ri. Get help..."
Brother Da Bi, trapped by the ankle collar, shook as he searched his body for his phone. Then another corpse dropped beside him. A hot stream of urine ran down his own leg. His composure snapped. Brother Da Bi dropped his head and sobbed, harsh and broken.
Jing Shu dusted off her hands and stepped to the doorway, staring into the darkness beyond the wall. "There are twenty three bodies in the courtyard now. That makes the first wave complete. Those of you still alive out there in the pits or hiding in the shrubs, you can hear me. Choose your way to die. Come out quietly, or I come find you."
Her voice carried, cold and sharp, through the night.