"I actually only managed to retrieve a few of the boulders before you got here," Jing Shu muttered, rubbing her temples with a soot streaked hand. One of the massive stones had ended up lodged directly in a bus window, its tip protruding inside. The problem was, with the fire raging out of control, she had not been able to get close enough to reclaim it into the Cube Space without being burned.
Now, the bus was nothing but a charred, skeletal frame, but inside, the massive boulder still sat, glowing a dull red hot in places, standing out starkly against the blackened wreckage. Burned corpses were reduced to ash and twisted, carbonized bones. The sight and smell were enough to make even a hardened stomach turn.
How was she supposed to explain this? She had not even finished tidying up the scene, retrieving her tools, when a whole crowd showed up.
Her tone turned serious, rehearsed. "You might not believe this, but I had dragged a bunch of rocks over earlier to block this corner, as a makeshift barricade for... safety. Maybe there were too many people in the vehicles, and they lost control while taking the turn too fast. They skidded, flipped over, and just happened to crash into the boulders. That's why you see the stone lodged in the window." She gestured vaguely at the wreck.
The veteran officer next to Yang Yang, a man with a weathered face, frowned deeply. "You're saying they flipped first, and only then did the rock somehow break through the glass from the outside? But judging by impact physics and the trajectory of the debris, it clearly looks like the rock was propelled into the vehicle while it was upright."
Before he could finish his technical rebuttal, Yang Yang cut him off with a subtle raise of his hand. "And the strong smell of gasoline all over the scene, the saturated ground. Was that your doing?" His eyes locked onto Jing Shu.
Jing Shu shook her head, her expression one of innocent puzzlement. "You probably won't believe me, but I think they were carrying extra gasoline themselves, maybe for their bombs or vehicles. The cars flipped, tanks ruptured, leaked fuel everywhere, and that caused this horrific incident. I only used my crossbow to... humanely finish off a few survivors who were suffering. You've seen action movies, cars always burst into flames after a bad rollover. These two just did the same." She shrugged, selling the flimsy story with sheer audacity.
There was no way she could explain where so much gasoline had come from without a container. She had arrived, according to all visible evidence, with nothing but her crossbow and a backpack.
Yang Yang's lips curved into a playful, knowing smile that didn't reach his cold eyes. "So what you're saying is this was all a tragic coincidence? You stacked a few rocks for fun, they happened to roll over at exactly this spot, exploded spectacularly, and no one survived except the ones you shot. That's your official story?"
Jing Shu nodded rapidly, like a pecking chick. "Exactly. Just a series of very unfortunate coincidences."
"I believe you… not at all," Yang Yang thought inwardly, though his amused smile never faltered. He filed her away as a fascinatingly dangerous variable.
He glanced at the two other figures standing beside Jing Shu in the flickering firelight. "And who are these two?"
Jing Shu had the black case in one hand, her foot still planted on the moaning man sprawled at her feet, and a disheveled, sweat soaked young man stood close by, looking shell shocked. "This," she nudged the big man with her boot, "is Zhang Qiang, Zhetian's third in command. And this," she gestured toward Wang Dazhao, "is my embedded informant within Zhetian. Wang Dazhao." Calmly, she shifted the black case more securely behind her back, a possessive move.
"Relax, we won't pry into your… spoils of war," Yang Yang said, his eyes narrowing with interest at the scorched Zhang Qiang. "But I am very, very interested in having a conversation with this man."
"My cousin Wu You'ai has been captured by Zhetian's No. 2, Shangguan Jun. I will need Zhang Qiang alive, at least for now, as potential leverage to get her back. Also," she turned her full attention to Yang Yang, "please spare a team to guard the villa. I worry they might launch a retaliatory strike out of pure spite if they have any cells left." The request was delivered as a demand wrapped in pragmatism.
Although she had been checking in via text with her grandparents and all was reported normal at Xishan Villa, Jing Shu wasn't taking any chances. A backup force was necessary.
"Fine," Yang Yang said with a smirk. "This trip was worth it just for the entertainment. I will… borrow Zhang Qiang for a while." The word 'borrow' sounded ominous.
Jing Shu didn't trust Yang Yang not to 'interrogate' Zhang Qiang to death before he was useful. She grabbed the semi conscious man by his burnt collar, hauling his massive, dead weight like a sack of rice, and climbed into the back of a patrol car, dragging Wang Dazhao in with her. Su Lanzhi and Jing An, after a worried glance, followed behind in their BYD Song as the convoy sped toward the location Wang Dazhao had provided.
Jing Shu's suspicions about Yang Yang's methods were quickly confirmed. The moment they were on the road, Yang Yang, sitting in the front passenger seat, pulled out a long, ominous needle from a kit, filled a large syringe with clear fluid, saline, he claimed, and without ceremony, jabbed it into Zhang Qiang's thigh, injecting a substantial volume. A dark, satisfied gleam lit Yang Yang's eyes as he prepared to start his 'conversation.'
Zhang Qiang was wrenched back to screaming consciousness by the sudden, unbearable internal pressure and agony from his existing injuries. His body, riddled with old scars and fresh burns, twitched and convulsed violently against the seat. Wang Dazhao turned away, his face pale. The car was unnervingly silent; the other two officers in the vehicle were clearly accustomed to Yang Yang's sadistic methods and showed no reaction.
The giant man writhed like a speared maggot. Jing Shu's head throbbed with a mix of disgust and impatience. Wang Dazhao leaned in close to her ear, whispering grimly, "Shangguan Jun is Zhetian's most twisted man. He loves torturing people, and worse, he kills them as soon as he's gotten the information he wants. Says keeping them alive afterwards gets boring."
Jing Shu's heart sank like a stone. And Wu You'ai? A gentle, quirky soul like her might not fear death philosophically, but enduring this kind of prolonged, inventive torment was another matter entirely. If Wu You'ai died under torture, how would Jing Shu ever face her grieving grandparents or Third Aunt? The weight of responsibility felt suddenly crushing.
She slammed a heavy boot into Zhang Qiang's back, knocking the air from his lungs and flattening him against the seat. "Stay down and shut up!" she snarled.
There was a loud thud, and Zhang Qiang went completely limp, unconscious again.
Everyone in the car, including the drivers, swallowed hard. The sheer, casual force of that kick was frightening. Even Yang Yang shot Jing Shu a surprised, appraising look over his shoulder. "This woman… She's terrifyingly strong. Hauling a 100 kilogram man like a toy, and that kick…" His interest in her deepened.
Soon, the convoy arrived at Zhetian's secondary base, a half constructed, abandoned office building only a few hundred meters from the Ai Jia Supermarket, lurking in the shadows.
"Mom, Dad, stay here in the car. Lock the doors. Officer Yang Yang and I will check it out first," Jing Shu instructed firmly. Her parents couldn't handle what they might see inside. She had already prepared herself mentally for the worst, mutilated bodies, signs of prolonged suffering.
As long as Wu You'ai was still breathing, even barely, Jing Shu believed she had a way to save her with the Spirit Spring. But she needed to get to her in time.
"Please, let me not be too late." The silent prayer was a rare crack in her armor.
Her grip on Zhang Qiang's collar tightened until her knuckles were white, her pace quickening as she dragged him toward the building's dark entrance. Wang Dazhao jogged behind her, struggling to keep up, flashlight beam jumping.
Yang Yang gestured sharply to his team. "Split into three teams. Surround every exit. No one comes in or out unless it's us."
Inside, the air was stale and hot. They climbed the bare concrete stairs, the only sound their footsteps and Zhang Qiang's body scraping. Jing Shu dragged him up to the fourth floor, where Wang Dazhao indicated the holding and interrogation rooms were. The entire building was eerily, deeply quiet.
"Strange," Wang Dazhao whispered, frowning as he swept his light down an empty corridor. "There should be guards posted here. At the very least, someone watching the stairwell door. Did they already realize the attack failed and they'd been exposed? Did they bail? But it's been less than an hour since the ambush." His voice held a note of dread.
"If they left in a hurry, that's worse. Who knows if they took the hostage with them or…" Jing Shu didn't finish the thought. As she passed the first open doorway, Wang Dazhao's flashlight beam swept across a corpse sprawled on the ground just inside, the body carved with dozens of precise, shallow knife wounds.
"That's… that's Xiao Liu from our community. He took a bodyguard job with that rich guy Qian Duoduo a while back. Why is he here?" Wang Dazhao's voice was tight.
Jing Shu didn't answer, striding to the second door. Her own flashlight revealed another body, this one's limbs twisted at impossible angles and shattered, the face frozen in a grotesque, open mouthed mask of ultimate pain.
Yang Yang, following close behind, licked his lips, a flash of professional excitement in his eyes. "I didn't think I'd meet anyone with tastes… sicker than mine. I really want to meet this Shangguan Jun now." His tone was one of morbid admiration.
At the third door, which was slightly ajar, Jing Shu didn't bother with the handle. She planted a powerful kick near the lock. The flimsy door flew off its hinges, crashing inward. Everyone behind her swallowed again at the display of brute strength.
The room was empty, just scattered trash and a single chair.
With every door they passed, every empty or corpse filled room, Jing Shu's heart sank further into a cold pit. Another flashlight beam from an officer behind them revealed a familiar face in a side room that looked like a storage closet turned into a water torture chamber, one of the elderly women from their community, the first to publicly beg for water on that first Water Distribution Day. She floated face up in a pool of murky green, fetid liquid.
The light illuminated her bloated, discolored corpse. Countless pale carrion scavenger larvae swarmed over her body, wriggling in and out of her eye sockets and nostrils. The stench of decay and chemical was overwhelming. She had clearly been soaking for hours, if not days, her body grotesquely swollen. The sight was a stomach churning testament to the depravity they were dealing with. Time was running out.