Su Meimei, who had loudly accused Jing Shu of murder, not only failed to take her down but ended up giving Jing Shu an honorary commendation instead, a public validation, and ultimately ruined herself with that stunt, a classic case of overreach.
The villa family even got the Consolation and Counseling Specialist replaced with one of their own, a seamless takeover of local authority.
From then on, the remaining eighty or so people in the group all understood one thing, a lesson learned in blood and fear: the Consolation and Counseling Specialist held real power. Their influence determined whether you got food, whether you could survive, the line between life and slow starvation.
But Jing Shu was even more powerful, even more terrifying than a specialist. Everyone who had ever crossed Jing Shu seemed to have met a terrible fate, a pattern of retribution that was becoming impossible to ignore.
Chou Chou had recently developed depression, a heavy cloud over his mind, plagued by nightmares of having his eyes gouged out, waking in a cold sweat.
It all started when he uncovered a shocking secret. He searched the chat logs for mentions of Xiao Shu from the villa, scrolling back for hours, and to his horror, he realized that everyone who had spoken ill of her had ended up miserable, a catalog of misfortune.
The first was Bai, the supermarket owner. He was beaten, hospitalized, and had his store confiscated. A few months later, he was reported dead from heatstroke, a convenient end.
The second was Luo Hao from Building No. 13. He drank industrial water, could not be saved, and died, a foolish, painful death.
The third was a man from Luxury Car Sales, Building No. 5. He triggered a massive robbery involving Biri's gang. Chou Chou had been scared out of his wits back then. That man had led people to raid the villa, but somehow, all of Biri's men ended up dead, including him, vanished without a trace.
The fourth case was Zhang Feng, Shi Zi, and Zhu Fan. All three called Jing Shu a murderer alongside Su Meimei. They had visited the villa not long ago, but on the way back, they were attacked by bees. Their bodies swelled with enormous welts that festered with pus, a visible, rotting punishment.
Everyone had been stung by bees before. The swelling was always large but subsided in a few days, rarely serious, an annoyance.
Who could have expected things to worsen so drastically? The venom was something else.
The welts ruptured, oozing pus. The three visibly shriveled, like they had been drained dry. The welts turned into sores, their flesh rotting away, a slow decay.
The fifth incident was the group of five robbers who were killed with their eyes gouged out, the photo a silent horror in the chat.
The sixth was Su Meimei herself. Once so arrogant, she was stripped of everything and erased from her position. Nobody knew what had happened to her now, a ghost.
And the seventh would likely be him. He had been the one to question why the Consolation and Counseling Specialist wasn't elected by a vote, which could very well have offended that terrifying villa family… The thought was a loop in his mind.
"I'm doomed. Doomed." Chou Chou's depression deepened, a pit he could not climb out of.
Jing Shu had no idea there was someone in the community so terrified of her that he was mentally breaking down, a casualty of her reputation.
After removing Su Meimei as the specialist and replacing her with Wu You'ai, Jing Shu had paid a price in favors and owed Niu Mou a considerable debt but succeeded in bringing all the apocalypse's "golden jobs", agriculture, livestock, and the all powerful Consolation and Counseling Specialist, under her family's control, a strategic consolidation.
Now, no matter what food or livestock they brought out, everything would be aboveboard, documented and sanctioned.
Jing Shu had carefully questioned Wu You'ai about the kidnapping incident over tea, finding out everything that Shangguan Jun had said and done, the details of the trap. Wu You'ai had now been successfully welcomed into Jing Shu's circle of trusted family, a bond forged in shared danger.
She was never stingy with her own people. After arranging for Wu You'ai to receive a government position, her third aunt, Jing Lai, had been so emotional she almost pledged to work like a beast of burden for life, tears in her eyes.
Wu You'ai's leg still had chunks of missing flesh, deep pits from the torture, but Jing Shu dripped diluted Spirit Spring on the wounds every day, the clear liquid cool against the scar tissue. The healing was slow, but Wu You'ai could now walk again, a massive improvement over being unable to move, a miracle in small doses.
"Wait a while before going home. These scars are still too obvious," Jing Shu said, practical.
After all, in this blistering heat, Wu You'ai wearing long pants would raise suspicion. Without them, the gaping holes in her leg would be plainly visible, a story she could not explain.
Still, the job of Consolation and Counseling Specialist gave Wu You'ai purpose, a reason to get up. Every day, she visited every household in the community, verified the records of those flagged with high scores in the database, and marked them as key observation targets, her notebook filling up.
Meanwhile, in Wu City's communities, one to four specialists were appointed per area, all performing their duties, a net spreading.
Their investigations revealed that the government's massive data system was terrifyingly accurate, a digital omniscience.
The most shocking case was the "Pig Farm" incident, a name that would become shorthand for horror.
A gang of criminals had kidnapped dozens of women, gagging them to prevent suicide. They subjected the captives to all kinds of abuse, physical and psychological. The gang had ruled Red Apple Community unchecked for two months. The place was remote, so no one came. Anyone who did was also captured, swallowed by the silence.
This inhumane gang, with their twisted hobbies, went undiscovered until the government sent a specialist to investigate. That was when authorities realized the entire community had been overrun, a fiefdom of filth. Police were dispatched to wipe out the gang in one sweep, a swift, violent correction.
Only twenty or so women were left alive, but they were broken beyond recognition, most driven insane, their minds shattered.
The news only reported that much. It was the bloodiest headline at the end of June. The police shot the entire gang dead, but nothing was said about the twenty surviving women, their fate a blank space.
Jing Shu knew those twenty women had been secretly executed as well, a mercy killing or a cleanup, it was hard to say.
She wondered if things were unfolding just as Wu You'ai's mentor had predicted: lure criminals to commit atrocities, let a group of innocents suffer, then send the army to kill the criminals too. Two birds with one stone, reducing China's strained food supply, a cold, demographic calculus.
Or maybe it was as Jing Shu had speculated: from the moment the government realized something was wrong, it scrambled to consolidate all resources, spending every day collecting supplies. The chaos was due to a lack of police, while government compounds, police housing, and oil company communities remained well guarded, islands of order.
Either way, this was a massive power shift. The government finally had its hands free, the initial paralysis over.
The first targets were gangs, warlords, and those with "special hobbies," along with looters who preached that "might makes right" in the apocalypse, the philosophy of the strong crushed.
Not just in Wu City but nationwide, it was as if a single trumpet had sounded. Disappeared police forces suddenly reappeared, uniforms crisp. Anyone caught looting was shot on sight. Warlords occupying housing were shot. Anyone with a score over 100 was shot, the threshold a death sentence.
[Wang Qiqi]:"@Everyone, don't travel far right now. Wu City police are cleaning up criminals starting from the new city district. The news says they have already shot over 300 people in one day."
[Zhu Fan, Building No. 7]:"Can someone tell me what is going on? My cousin and I went to the supermarket to buy food. When he scanned his ID, it started beeping. People surrounded him and took him away. It's been three days, and I still can't contact him!"
[Wang Qiqi]:"He might have been flagged."
[Zhu Fan, Building No. 7]: "If he was flagged, what happens? Is he in jail?"
[Wu You'ai]:"Jail? Do you really think we have the food to feed prisoners now?"