Zhang Qiang got lucky in a horrific sense. When the bus rolled onto the driver's side, he sitting in the front passenger seat, happened to land on the very boulder that had speared through the windshield, his body slamming onto its rough, unyielding surface. The impact knocked the wind from him but didn't crush him. Gasping, he grabbed the heavy black bomb case that had slid near him and scrambled out through the shattered window frame, ignoring the cuts from the glass.
He didn't stop to think about how strange all this was, how the boulders seemed to have come from nowhere. Hands and feet shaking uncontrollably, he clawed his way out onto the hot asphalt. He admitted it to himself. He was scared to death. All he wanted was to get away from this cursed stretch of road. As he stumbled to his feet, something wet and slick dripped onto his head and shoulders.
"Is it raining?" he mumbled, disoriented.
"What's that smell? Gasoline?" another survivor nearby coughed out.
"Who poured gasoline all over my face?!" a voice shrieked from the darkness.
"No, really, look up! It's a rain of gasoline!" The realization was panic inducing.
Most people were trapped, crushed under twisted metal and bodies, and could not move. Only a few, like Zhang Qiang, had managed to wriggle out of the broken windows. Those still pinned inside shouted, "Quit yapping and help us out there! Are you dreaming? In this weather there is no rain, it's"
Before the sentence finished, a dozen flaming branches, their ends wrapped in oil soaked rags, arced in from far away, tracing bright, deadly curves through the black air. When they landed on the gasoline drenched wrecks and the spilled fuel on the road, they ignited everything instantly.
With a deep whump, the whole scene erupted into an inferno. In pitch black Wu City, two brilliant, roiling fireballs bloomed at last, casting grotesque, dancing shadows for hundreds of meters.
The screams from inside the buses grew exponentially louder, then quickly choked into gurgles and crackles. A few who had just crawled out didn't make it far and were caught by the racing flames. They ran and shrieked, human torches in the night, then dropped to roll on the ground, but nothing helped. The gasoline fire was merciless.
Jing Shu had gone all in, using a hose like apparatus from her Cube Space to douse the buses and the immediate area like a 360 degree sprinkler, ensuring saturation. Without firefighting foam or significant water, there was no putting it out.
Wang Dazhao stared from a safe distance, his legs shaking, gulping the hot, smoky air. On the far side of the wreck, away from the worst of the heat, sweat poured down his back. Faced with a vision of hell, the stench of burning fuel and flesh already assaulting him, he finally understood why Jing Shu had warned him so starkly, run fast or you might die.
Luckily, he had been mentally ready, his body coiled. The moment the bus flipped, he was the first to dive headfirst out the window before anyone else even reacted, landing in a roll and scrambling away.
Otherwise… he looked at the roaring pyres. Otherwise, he would be charcoal.
"Being alive is better," Wang Dazhao thought, a profound, simple truth.
Boom!
The two buses, their fuel tanks compromised, exploded one after the other, secondary blasts that shook the ground. The stench of charred rubber, plastic, and burnt flesh rolled out in a sickening wave. A small, dark mushroom cloud of smoke and debris climbed into the sky. For several kilometers in every direction, anyone awake could see the smoke and the glow of the flames. The screams had dwindled, smaller and smaller, then faded almost to nothing, replaced by the roar of the fire and the popping of materials.
Already, while the flames still raged, Jing Shu had her crossbow out, moving like a ghost through the perimeter of light, prowling the dark for any survivors trying to crawl away and picking them off with silent, efficient shots. Jing Shu did not kill the innocent, but anyone who had willingly come here tonight to bomb her villa and kill her family had forfeited their right to mercy. They had to be ready to die, and she was the instrument.
As she picked off targets, Jing Shu also swiftly reclaimed any intact cone shaped boulders into the Cube Space. Some had shattered or split on impact. She had fired twenty five in that initial volley and recovered only eighteen that were still whole. It had taken her a whole day to grind and shape just two of them. The loss was irritating, but acceptable.
"Help! Help me!" Zhang Qiang slapped at his face and shoulder frantically. When he first felt the liquid on his skin, he hadn't registered the danger until the flung torches landed and the flames raced toward him. Now his clothes and hair were on fire.
The strong, pig squeal howl of a large man in agony drew Jing Shu's attention. She turned. The two meter tall figure clutching a case, now ablaze, was that not Zhetian's third in command, the bomb carrier?
Jing Shu's gaze snapped to the case and lit up with cold avarice. She pulled a thick climbing rope from the Cube Space, looped it from behind the staggering giant, and cinched it tight around his arms and torso in a practiced motion. Without a word, she ripped the case from his scorched hands, then kicked the big man's legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the ground. She stomped on his back and shoulders several times, hard. So you really could stomp out some of the flames, she noted clinically.
The big man's screams rose and fell like a slaughtered hog being bled.
With the giant pinned and smoldering, Jing Shu focused on the case. It was not locked, just latched. She pressed the release. Firelight washed over six dark green grenades neatly clipped in place within foam inserts, the letters MK3 stamped clearly on each.
"Right. The MK series has been a classic U.S. grenade line since World War I, nicknamed the 'pineapple' for its segmented casing. The current MK3 series is still in active use. Its specialty is raw, fragmentation based power. Within a fifteen meter radius, it has the honor of being devastating." She recited the knowledge from some past survivalist deep dive.
Jing Shu stroked the cool, serrated metal of one grenade, reluctant to put it down. They were beautiful in their lethal simplicity.
Perfect. Another life saving, or rather, life ending, tool for the future. A pity there were only six. Still, they were worth the cost of tonight's operation, the gasoline, the lost boulders, the risk.
When Zhetian had raided a police station before, they reportedly only got away with two firearms and a couple of grenades. Now they had these extras, likely issued for the oil base attack. Their mysterious backers, their 'handler,' must have provided new toys. Jing Shu even briefly considered the insane idea of playing double agent to scam a whole batch of grenades and guns.
She snapped the case shut and stored it directly in the Cube Space. Life saving gear belonged where she could grab it fastest, in the space that moved with her.
"Jing Shu?" Wang Dazhao hurried over, drawn by the ongoing shrieks. "You okay? Did you get the bombs?" Seeing Zhang Qiang pinned and helpless under Jing Shu's boot, now mostly just moaning, Wang Dazhao swallowed hard. How strong was she? The man was a giant.
"I put them away first. This one is Zhetian's third in command, right?" Jing Shu confirmed, yanking the big, burned man upright by the rope. He whimpered.
Wang Dazhao stared at the scorched scalp, singed eyebrows, and half melted face. If not for the immense height and frame, he wouldn't have recognized him.
"That's him. Zhang Qiang. Zhetian's No. 2 is Shangguan Jun. The boss… he has no public name. I heard this organization spans the country, not just Wu City. Our local boss is codenamed Zero Eight. There seem to be seven more bosses in other regions. About the handler you asked me to trace, I only know a little. Codename Zero. He only contacts bosses with code designations, never in person."
"It was Zhetian's No. 2, Shangguan Jun, who ordered the abductions today. As for the top boss, Zero Eight, I have never seen him. He issues commands verbally through those two, or through dead drops…"
As they spoke, the growl of multiple engines approached rapidly. Jing Shu looked up, squinting against the firelight. It was their own BYD Song, its taillights recognizable, followed by three dark patrol trucks with shaded headlights. The convoy's beams flooded over the scene, illuminating Jing Shu, Wang Dazhao, and the half dead Zhang Qiang still under Jing Shu's foot.
Their BYD Song screeched to a stop. Su Lanzhi practically threw the door open and jumped out, running to Jing Shu, her face a mask of terror and relief, both scolding and crying.
"You little menace, why can't you ever spare us this worry? We waited and waited at the rendezvous and never saw any bicycles or men come by. Instead, Officer Yang Yang arrived there first with his team. Then we suddenly saw the sky glow like a furnace, and smoke rose. We rushed here. Thank goodness, thank goodness you're all right." She grabbed Jing Shu's arms, checking for injuries.
Szzzt—
The burning bus frames kept popping with bursts of burning body fat and exploding tires.
Like last time, over thirty armed police in dark uniforms poured out of the patrol trucks, quickly fanning out. They visibly shuddered at the sight of the scorched, contorted corpses and the charred, skeletal frame of a bus with a massive boulder still lodged in its side.
Yang Yang, stepping out of the lead truck, his handsome, usually impassive face finally showed a flicker of genuine surprise. He swept his powerful flashlight beam over a few bodies with crossbow bolts in them, then over the strange, scattered boulders, and finally settled on Jing Shu. "Miss Jing, care to explain what happened here? These boulders and rubble, the heavy stench of gasoline in the air, and the bodies with your distinct arrows in them. You shot them, yes? Don't tense up. I am just… curious." His tone was neutral, but his eyes were sharp, analytical.
If the villa's pit trap killing dozens last time could be chalked up to fortunate preparation and advantageous terrain, then this was no accident, no lucky defense. Luring her parents away to a safe distance, then single handedly ambushing and burning more than a hundred armed men to death on an open road, that was deliberate, offensive action. Su Lanzhi and Jing An truly seemed to think two different groups were involved, or that it was a miraculous ambush, but Yang Yang, with his trained eye, knew it was one person's handiwork. This time, this young woman had clearly planned and executed a massacre.