CONTENT WARNING. This chapter contains extremely graphic and visceral depictions of violence, home defense, psychological torture, and disturbing imagery including animal predation on human remains. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
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A cold wind carrying the scent of blood and damp earth cut through the courtyard, making the few remaining leaves on the potted trees shiver. Brother Da Bi collapsed fully into the gravel, his whole body shaking with terror, and sobbed openly, begging for mercy over and over in a broken whisper. Regret, sharp and acidic, gnawed at him. Of all the softer targets in the slums and older districts they could've robbed, why had they chosen this fortified villa that had screamed trouble from the start? The energy car, the intact windows, the quiet, it had all been a warning he'd ignored.
And this woman walking among the corpses was a devil, a devil who killed without blinking, her movements efficient and emotionless.
"Gou Yitian had been right about one thing," Brother Da Bi thought hysterically. "This whole family was perverted. Who else would set traps filled with upward facing nails? Who else would rig so many giant spiked nets from their ceiling? Who else would have this many repeating crossbows just lying around?"
The woman even wore a real pistol at her waist, visible now under the light. Was the meager rice back at his hideout not good enough that he had to come here to rob and die?
"Oh right," Jing Shu said, as if remembering a chore, her tone casual, "I forgot there are two in the pond and eight more outside in the trench." She turned and began hauling up the two waterlogged bodies from the koi pond with a long handled net, the fabric straining.
Under the villa's harsh, bright lights, her silhouette as she worked looked stretched and demonic, and the once neat vegetable beds were now stained a dark, blotchy red.
Brother Da Bi, tears and snot streaking his face, hammered uselessly at the iron cuff on his ankle, wishing he could just hack his own foot off and run. There's a saying, once the golden circlet is on your head, you're no longer a mere mortal, and worldly desires can't touch you. When the first bloated, blood soaked body was dragged from the pool with a wet shluck, Brother Da Bi's sobbing cut off with a hiccup, his breath catching.
Jing Shu used a long stick to rap the sodden corpses. With a vigorous shake, several fat, silvery fish that had been latched onto the flesh dropped back into the water with soft plops. The previously calm pond surface suddenly erupted again as more of the vicious, opportunistic fish, carp grown big and aggressive, lunged up, their mouths gaping, and clamped down on the exposed flesh again, tearing.
She frowned in mild distaste, lifted the two heavy corpses with her stick braced against the edge, and dumped them beside the sobbing Brother Da Bi with a heavy, wet thud. Icy pond water splashed across his face and chest.
"Xiao Dou, come. Eat." As Jing Shu spoke, she jabbed a long handled shovel into each pit trap in the trench in turn. From the depths came wet tearing and crunching sounds, loud and sickening in the quiet night. Whoever was in those nail studded pits was long past saving.
The fat chicken trotted over obediently. Jing Shu bent and removed the gruesome spiked helmet. Freed, Xiao Dou went to work at once, tearing into the fish still clinging to the two pond victims. In moments the biggest fish were reduced to scraps, and so was much of the loose flesh on the bodies.
Brother Da Bi gaped, his mind refusing to process the sight of Wang Qian's half eaten torso with white ribs showing, or Li Rui, who had only his upper half left, the lower half simply gone. Now Xiao Dou was pecking what remained of Li Rui's face and chest into a bloody sieve.
At last, with a jolt of horrified clarity, Brother Da Bi understood how the corpses in the vegetable beds had ended up riddled with dozens of small, deep holes like strainers. It hadn't been blades or bullets. It had been this… this chicken from hell.
Seeing the twisted, agonized expressions still frozen on the faces of the dead, mouths open in final screams, eyes bulging, Brother Da Bi retched violently until only sour bile burned his throat.
"No, she's not just a devil. They're all demons. I want to go home. Please, I'm begging you, spare me. I'll do anything, anything," he whimpered, barely coherent.
The seven or eight other men still breathing and conscious, watching this casual brutality from where they were pinned or wounded, vomited too, sobbing as they heaved, the acrid stink mixing with the metallic stench of blood. This was hell made real. Too frightening. Those with any strength left began clawing forward, trying to wrench their trapped ankles free, their fingers scraping raw on the gravel.
They'd thought tonight would be easy prey, another cowed household. The apocalypse had come, the old rules were dead. They'd cut and robbed countless families with their knives, faced little resistance. The police couldn't control the chaos. They thought they were invincible, kings of their new world.
But today…
They'd met actual demons. The fish in the pond ate human flesh. The chicken was a feathered murder machine. The mistress of the house killed without blinking, her expression as calm as if she were weeding a garden. Even the apples on the tree were probably poisoned.
They were either begging pathetically or cursing with their last breath, nothing new or clever enough to catch Jing Shu's interest. She couldn't be bothered to speak. She began finishing them one by one, moving methodically from figure to figure.
Dead or not visibly breathing, Jing Shu twisted each neck first with a quick, brutal motion, making sure there'd be no surprises.
Seeing the pile of bodies thinning out and realizing with cold certainty that his turn was coming, Brother Da Bi started to stammer, the words tumbling out in a rush, "I, I, I can take you to kill Brother Da Ri. They're holed up in Building No. 2, maybe fifteen men. And there are more than forty others under other buildings, standing guard."
Jing Shu paused, rubbed her chin thoughtfully, the blade in her other hand catching the light. "Why make it complicated? Call them. Lure the men from Building No. 2 here. Now."
Brother Da Bi swallowed hard, his throat clicking, his eyes darting toward the darkness beyond the wall. "What… what about the ones under the other buildings? The other guards?"
"Why would I care about them?" Jing Shu snorted. If anyone in those other buildings had stood up earlier, had joined her call to fight these thugs, she might've considered setting a bigger net for all of them. Since no one had, everyone could sweep only the snow from their own doorstep. That was the new rule.
Well, Wang Qiqi might be worth saving. She'd shown some spine. Jing Shu would ask about her later.
With trembling, blood smeared hands, Brother Da Bi fished a clean phone from the pile of discarded belongings near the door. Seeing the woman calmly sharpening her long knife on a whetstone from her pocket, the rhythmic shink shink horribly final, Brother Da Bi shook harder, the phone almost slipping.
The woman looked up, her frown deepening at his clumsiness. Such a fierce, impatient expression.
"Act convincing," Jing Shu said, her voice flat and impatient. "Or you'll be the first thing they trip over."
Brother Da Bi's voice shook as he dialed, the ringtone absurdly cheerful in the grim courtyard.
"Hello? Da Bi? How did it go?" The line crackled with whoops and catcalls, and the faint groans of women in pain.
"Success. A big success," Brother Da Bi said, forcing enthusiasm into his tone, but unable to stop the tremor.
"Then what's wrong with your voice? You sound strangled."
Seizing on the excuse, Brother Da Bi burst into noisy tears, playing up the stress. Jing Shu's frown deepened, her sharpening stopping. When she took a step toward him, the threat clear, leave no survivors, Brother Da Bi scrambled to buy himself more time, his words tumbling out.
"Da Ri, you won't believe it! There's not only an energy car. There's a whole pool of clean water. The pond is full of big fish. There's an apple tree loaded with fruit. And there's a hen, fat and healthy! I'm so excited I can't stop shaking!" The fish eat corpses. The apples are probably poison. The hen kills people. Woohoo, it's terrifying.
"Good. Good!" Da Ri's voice warmed with greed. "Keep the people under control. Remember, Gou Yitian wants that woman alive. We'll make this villa our new base, then go house to house from here. Don't spare a single one of them."
Brother Da Bi cursed that idiot Gou Yitian a thousand times for leading them here, but said aloud, "Fine. Hurry up and come split the supplies. Have the others keep watch at their posts."
Beep. The call ended.
Jing Shu took the phone from his limp hand, patted him down again to check for hidden devices or weapons, then flipped a small switch on a control box on the wall. The steel cuff on his ankle released with a clack. Jing Shu dragged him up by his collar like a plucked chick, tied his wrists behind his back with coarse rope, and tethered him to a post beside the chicken coop, in full view of Xiao Dou, who eyed him with clear interest.
Then Jing Shu and Jing An began the grisly work of tossing the remaining corpses from the courtyard into the empty pits of the trench one by one, covering them with shovels of dirt. The foot snare traps at the door were reset, the tripwires hidden again. Grandpa Jing, moving with grim efficiency, set up the trigger mechanisms for the inner net traps again. Jing An collected every spent crossbow bolt he could find and then, at Jing Shu's nod, flipped the main switch. The courtyard lights died, plunging the villa into a darkness that felt heavy and waiting.
Darkness swallowed the villa, only the faint glow from the curtained windows offering light. Jing Shu stood next to the tethered Brother Da Bi, her newly sharpened blade resting cold against his neck. "You know what to say when they get close. One wrong word and you'll gargle your own blood." Brother Da Bi nodded stiffly against the post.
Footsteps, a whole group of them, approached soon after from the direction of Building No. 2, along with the bobbing glow of several phone screens.
"This the place? It's dark as a tomb."
"Brother Da Ri, that woman's definitely here," Gou Yitian said, unable to hold back his excitement and hunger for revenge. "I can almost smell her."
Jing Shu nudged Brother Da Bi sharply with the knife handle.
"Da Ri! Is that you? Hurry up! The brothers are waiting to divvy up the good stuff!" Brother Da Bi roared, his voice surprisingly strong from fear.
"Why's the blood smell so strong out here?" Da Ri's voice came back, closer now, a note of caution in it. Then he remembered Da Bi had taken more than forty men. A few casualties in a takeover were normal, but this was too quiet. Not their usual loud celebration after a victory.
Before Da Ri could decide what felt wrong, Gou Yitian, fueled by hatred and impatience, kicked the already splintered front door open wider. "Brother Da Bi, you left that woman for me, right? If I don't torture her ten times worse than Wang Xuemei today, I won't be named Gou!" His voice was a snarl, slicing into the tense silence.
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"Once the golden circlet is on your head, you're no longer a mere mortal, and worldly desires can't touch you."
It means that once someone takes on a certain role, burden, or destiny, they stop being an ordinary person. The "golden circlet" is a metaphor for a heavy responsibility or a sacred duty. Once you put it on, you're expected to rise above normal human wants and weaknesses.
In other words, the moment you accept that role, you're supposed to let go of personal desires, temptations, and everyday concerns, because you're no longer seen as just a regular person but someone who must stay detached or pure.