Su Lanzhi and Jing An could hardly believe what they were hearing, their faces pale in the dashboard's glow. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't wrap their minds around the logic, why would anyone specifically target their villa with bombs in this collapsing world? What made them stand out?
"Where could they even get bombs in our country? Maybe they're just bluffing, trying to scare us? Where did you get this information? Can we trust it?" Su Lanzhi asked anxiously, her hands twisting in her lap.
Jing Shu, keeping her eyes on the dark road ahead, briefly explained Wang Dazhao's role and the intel, then posed a colder question: "Who benefits most from chaos and instability in our country right now? The U.S., obviously. The more chaos, the better for them to exert influence or scavenge in the aftermath. Their foreign spies and assets have been exposed or neutralized early on, so now they're using local proxies, smuggling in explosives through corrupted channels and stirring up unrest. Otherwise, with our country's traditionally strict controls, how could things like homemade bombs and organized gangs with this level of armament happen?" Her analysis was bleak but plausible.
Bombs were most dangerous once detonated, causing indiscriminate destruction, but even before that, in the wrong hands, they were instruments of terror and leverage.
"Jing Shu, how are you planning to stop them? There are only three of us, and we don't have the advantage of the villa's traps or fortified position. Why don't we wait for Yang Yang and the armed police to come? You said you called them," Jing An suggested, his voice tense with paternal worry.
"Dad, listen. Drive to South Alley. If you see a group of people gathered or moving in vehicles, it's definitely them. Your task is simple, run over as many as you can, break their formation. Some of them came by car, some on bicycles, they're strung out. I'll be on the other side of the intersection, setting boulders and makeshift traps to slow them down and cause confusion. Don't worry, I won't reveal myself. It's so dark tonight, and with the power out, they won't see me anyway. I'll use the terrain."
After careful thought, Jing Shu decided to trick her parents into going to a relatively safer position where they could provide a distraction without being in the heart of the danger. Even after drinking Spirit Spring for half a year, they were only stronger and hardier than average, not superhuman. They couldn't face a hundred armed men.
Besides, once the real fighting started, she needed to act without restraint, using everything from the Cube Space. She didn't want any distractions, any need to protect them. In this life, she wouldn't tell her parents about the Cube Space again. Possessing such a treasure was a crime in itself, a secret that could get them all killed if discovered. Better to let them survive the apocalypse in relative peace, thinking their daughter was just exceptionally resourceful and ruthless.
In Jing Shu's framing of the plan, Jing An bore the heavy responsibility of the vehicular attack, while she herself faced little danger setting passive traps. Jing An could feel the weight of hope and trust placed on him. After dropping Jing Shu off at her chosen spot, a debris-filled side road, their BYD Song sped away into the deeper darkness.
"Jing Shu, be careful. Don't be reckless. We'll stay in touch," Jing An urged, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror for a fleeting second.
They agreed on a simple signal: send a single number in their family group chat every three minutes to confirm safety. Only then, with this thin digital lifeline, did her parents drive away with a little peace of mind, swallowed by the night.
Jing Shu stood alone, panting in the oppressive, windless heat, her breath ragged. She watched the shared location pin from Wang Dazhao grow steadily closer on her phone's dim map and quickened her pace, moving with a predator's silence. Two streets over, she reached the planned intersection.
It was a desolate place, an under-construction bypass rarely visited even before the apocalypse, with little traffic and few buildings.
The sky was starless, a blanket of thick haze, only faint red glimmers of distant fire or refinery flares shone in the dark. Wu City was now a dead city without a trace of civilian light. Maybe the scientists were right in a twisted way. The permanent darkness had saved the earth from immediate solar scorching. Otherwise, with the sun blazing unobstructed and temperatures soaring over fifty degrees daily, humanity might not have survived at all, baked alive.
Up ahead, according to Wang Dazhao's updates, two battered minibuses were approaching, crammed with over a hundred men, grossly overloaded. Their speed would be slow, strained.
If she only blocked the road with stones, it wouldn't be enough. Even without sunlight, vehicles still had bright headlights. They would see the obstruction and stop, not blindly crash.
Her only effective option was to crouch in their blind spot, then launch her cone-shaped stone weapons from the Cube Space to strike head-on and wreak havoc inside the buses. A brutal, direct assault.
But that alone might not be enough. If even one person escaped, they would report back, and she'd have endless trouble later. Jing Shu narrowed her eyes, the decision cold and final. Anyone who dared target her home, her family's sanctuary, none would leave alive. She would turn this stretch of road into a tomb.
She found withered, hardy saplings that had been planted on the roadside before the apocalypse in a failed greening effort. Collecting over a dozen of the sturdier ones, she cleared a space in the Cube Space and set them aside for later use.
Then she began her meticulous, silent preparations, placing larger boulders at strategic points using the space's telekinetic-like control within short range. She believed individual physical strength was limited, but human intelligence and preparation were limitless.
"I'm in the first bus. The one carrying the bombs is Zhetian's third-in-command, Zhang Qiang, in the second bus. He's two meters tall, heavily built, and carrying a black metal case. Be careful! We're almost at your location!" Wang Dazhao's final message came through.
"When the bus stops or is hit, jump out the window immediately and run into the darkness. If you're slow, you'll die with them," Jing Shu typed back, her instructions merciless.
She saw the faint, bobbing glow of headlights in the distance, cutting through the dust. They were almost here. Her heartbeat accelerated, not with fear, but with a fierce, cold focus. Adrenaline surged through her veins, making her pulse quicken with a hunter's excitement. As the twin beams of light drew closer, her eyes glimmered with reflected pinpricks of light in the dark.
"Run slow and die?" Wang Dazhao muttered to himself, tucked in a corner of the overcrowded, sweltering bus, not fully understanding the mechanics of the threat. But since Jing Shu said so, and her track record was lethally good, he resolved to leap out as soon as the bus jerked or stopped. Luckily, every window was rolled down in a futile attempt to combat the heat, and he was positioned by one.
With everything in place, Jing Shu crouched low behind a large, cone-shaped boulder she had positioned. Her pupils contracted until they were pinpricks, maximizing the scant light. The two minibuses drove toward her at about fifty kilometers per hour, one trailing the other by a few car lengths. The moment the first bus's hood passed her marker, she thought, Now!
…
"Lao Zhang, drive faster! And tell the fools ahead to speed up too. We've been crawling like turtles forever. How long until we get to that damn community?" Zhang Qiang barked into his handheld radio, sitting in the passenger seat of the second bus, irritation etched on his broad face. He grumbled to the driver, "I don't know why Shangguan Jun worries so much. It's just a villa, not a fortress. You'd think it was more dangerous than an oil field guarded by armed police. He had to convince the boss to send a huge team just to bomb a single house. We could've snuck in with a small team, planted the charges, and blown it sky-high ourselves. No one would've known. Damn this heat! It's killing me." He wiped sweat from his brow.
"Yeah, yeah, I know some of you have cops or informants planted among us. So what? Even if they warned them, they won't have had time to prepare a proper ambush at that community. It'll be a slaughter." He laughed, a rough sound.
The driver, Zhang Shifu, obediently slammed the gas pedal, the engine groaning in protest. "Brother Qiang, this is the fastest I can go with this load! We're overloaded by twenty people already! The suspension is shot!"
Just then, as the first bus entered the kill zone…
Multiple cone-shaped boulders, each weighing hundreds of kilograms, suddenly shot horizontally from the darkness beside the road, appearing out of nowhere with impossible speed.
Boom!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The deafening sound of brakes screeching and metal tearing filled the air, but it was too late. Several massive rocks smashed into the side and front of the first bus. One smaller, sharper projectile even pierced through the front windshield with a crash of glass. The overloaded vehicle was struck with colossal force, killing five or six men instantly, their bodies crushed.
"What the hell is that? Where did all these rocks come from?" a scream erupted from the second bus.
The two buses, hit in quick succession, skidded out of control. The first, its frame buckled, slammed into a roadside concrete barrier and flipped onto its side, sliding along the ground with a grinding shriek. The second bus, braking hard, swerved and tipped onto two wheels before crashing down on its side, blocking the road.
Zhang Qiang's legs shook violently where he sat, and the stench of released urine and feces immediately filled the hot, cramped bus. He stared in horror at the mangled, bloody faces of his companions near the front. Beside him, half of driver Zhang Shifu's upper body was simply gone, pulped by a direct hit.
Screams and moans erupted inside the overturned vehicles. Chaos reigned. Many were too injured by the impact or the following crush to move.
"Get off me! I can't get out! My leg's broken!"
"Move, damn it! Let me out first! It's on fire!"
The overloading and sudden violent braking had caused the buses to roll. People were piled on top of one another in the dark, crushing those below. Some were clearly dead, silent. Others, flung outside through shattered windows, lay groaning on the asphalt.
"Did you think this was over?" Jing Shu's laughter, low and cold, rang out in the darkness near the wreckage. She stepped into the dim glow of one dying headlight, a dark figure holding a massive spiked mace. She had invested heavily tonight, using precious pre-positioned stones from her space. They had better not disappoint her by dying too quickly. The real work of ensuring no witnesses was just beginning.