Thank heaven for Jing Shu's bees, as their intervention changed the course of the massacre. In that split second, the poison bees struck with silent precision, and the raiders had brushed past death by a hair without even realizing it.
She didn't know if the panic had trampled her family in the blind, choking fog. What about the bride and groom? She had no time to check on the young couple. By instinct, she recalled that Grandma Jing and Paternal Eldest Aunt were in the kitchen (a solid brick structure that should be safer from the initial blasts) and that her parents were positioned outside, just out of the Molotovs' deadliest arcs.
All she could do was end the robbers fast before they could regroup.
The eight who had barged into the yard began to scream, their voices high and jagged with terror. The poison on the bees' stingers mixed five step viper venom with nux vomica, a lethal combination that attacked the nervous system instantly. The moment they were stung, their bodies went wrong all over; their muscles seized, and their vision blurred. One after another, they howled and collapsed, convulsing on the hard ground as the life began to drain from their limbs.
Only then did she step out of the shifting darkness of the smoke. She moved from body to body with clinical efficiency, finishing each with a clean throat cut that left a dark stain on the flagstones, then headed for the gate. There were more shadowy figures gathered there.
She stripped a device from one corpse, the plastic warm from the man's skin. When she put it on, shadowy silhouettes came into view against a grainy background; it was a stripped down thermal imager at best. She also pulled on a heavy bulletproof vest she had scavenged.
At the gate, a few men were sorting the day's gifts, cursing under their breath as if dissatisfied with the haul.
"Enough, at least we got a gun. Didn't expect these people to be armed. Good thing we came prepared," one of them muttered.
They had a pickup with a trailer hitched behind, the metal rattling as it idled, clearly meant for hauling away the heavy loot.
Off to the side lay Su Lanzhi, Jing An, Grandpa Jing, Father Qiao, and two of Qiao Lian's brothers, all sprawled at ugly, unnatural angles on the mud slicked ground. Whether they were alive or dead was unknown to her in that terrifying moment.
Rage was too small a word for what surged through her entire being.
Heat rushed to her head, a thrumming pressure that made her ears ring. Something deep inside her clawed to get out, a primal force she had been suppressing. Bloodlust flooded up from her gut, metallic and sharp. She didn't send the bees this time; she didn't draw a gun to finish them from afar. She yanked a heavy, spiked mace from the Rubik's Cube Space and sprinted toward them. If she didn't vent this sudden, overwhelming power, she felt as if she would explode.
Veins rose thick under her skin, pulsing with the effort. Long term use of the Spirit Spring was a double edged sword; it gave her incredible strength, but one spark of fury and her reason slipped its leash. All that remained in her eyes was the cold necessity of killing.
"Kill. Kill. Kill." The words pounded through her skull in time with her heavy footfalls.
The men with the thermal viewer sensed someone coming through the smoke, but the speed was wrong (too fast, too direct). One shouted, "She's already out?"
Her voice came cold and hollow from behind the mask. "No. They are in hell, where they belong."
"Who's there?"
"Hurry, shoot her!"
One of them reacted fast, flinging a handful of fine white powder into the air. Jing Shu only accelerated, her boots drumming against the earth. The mace rose and fell in a brutal arc. One blow, and the man burst apart with a sickening thud that echoed against the metal of the truck.
With her gas mask on, she feared nothing from the chemical irritants in the air.
The next man shrieked and sprayed wild gunfire into the haze, the muzzle flashes briefly illuminating the smoke, but his scream cut off when the mace crushed his chest with the sound of breaking timber.
Another turned to run toward the darkness of the road. She hurled the mace with all her might. It smashed the back of his skull, and he crumpled instantly. Three down.
Her heart hammered like a drum against her ribs. If someone had checked her pulse at that moment, they would have been terrified by its frantic rhythm.
"Dad, Mom!" She hurt in several places, a deep, throbbing pain where the shots had landed, but she forced herself to check the fallen family members. A quick breath test showed they were alive and uninjured by the weapons. Likely, it was the powder the man had thrown that had knocked them out. Relief loosened the tight knot in her chest.
So the raiders had used knockout drugs first to neutralize the guards. Jing An had managed to get two shots off before the chemicals took hold, then he had gone under. That was how they had grabbed his gun. Why didn't they shoot her family? In these desperate times, bullets were worth more than guns themselves. The people on the ground were already helpless; why waste precious rounds when the real goal was the grain stored inside?
She plucked several flattened rounds from the fabric of her vest. The bullets hadn't penetrated the reinforced plates, but the kinetic impact still left her chest and belly a bruised, aching purple.
Since her rebirth, she had rarely suffered such physical trauma. Today, she paid the price for her overconfidence. Guilt scraped at her insides like a dull knife. She hadn't expected this level of coordination. In the apocalypse, most people with established identities were nailed down by the government's big data, but some desperate souls chose to break bad, banding together as robbers to prey on the weak.
"Good thing for the vest and the gas mask," she muttered, baring her teeth at the sharp pain as her reason finally returned. Grabbing a megaphone from the truck, she shouted through the yard, "Everyone's fine! Those who were burned should get out to get some rain on the wounds!"
The robbery had come fast and ended even faster. Barely a few minutes had passed since the first smoke grenade had exploded. People still trembled from the terror of the firebombs, their faces pale in the firelight. No one had imagined the raiders would be put down so quickly and decisively.
...
"What happened out there?"
"They say a relative of Wei Chang's took down more than a dozen robbers alone. Officer Lao Xing's eyes just about popped out when he saw the scene. He said he would never seen such brutal technique. Smashed their heads like melons."
"For real? Then we owe that powerhouse our lives today."
"Yeah. Lao Xing says you can take the bodies to the station for bounties. They're worth thirty virtual coins a head at least."
"Not a bad trade for a morning's work."
...
Wei Chang worked quickly with the old policeman to regain control of the situation. They put out the remaining fires with buckets of water, cleared the yard of debris, and began to count the wounded. Thankfully, only three or four guests had suffered serious burns, and they were already being bandaged with the soothing ointment Jing Shu had brought from her stash. A dozen more suffered only minor burns or scrapes.
The frightened guests needed time to breathe and steady their nerves. It was chaos again, but a different kind of chaos. Grandma Jing came out of the kitchen crying, her face streaked with soot, then she bawled even harder when she saw the family alive and breathing.
"Those bastards. Heaven curse every one of them. Thank the heavens for sparing us from their cruelty."
The unconscious men were carried inside and given plenty of water to speed up their excretion and metabolism. Jing Shu made them sip small amounts of diluted Spirit Spring to counteract the lingering drugs.
Wei Chang knew how to handle people in a crisis. He announced loudly to the crowd that everything recorded on the gift ledger had be returned to the donors as compensation and that the wedding dinner had be free, so everyone could still witness the wedding of a happy couple.
Guests began to protest at the generosity. How could they take back what they'd brought as a blessing? So he said the banquet had add two meat dishes to every table to make up for the fright. Originally, there was only salt and pepper pork strips on the menu. Now, each table had also have red braised ribs and Dongpo Pork. Anything unfinished could be boxed up to take home to their families. Meat, in these days, cost three times the price of ordinary grain.
He added that medical care for the injured had be free until they fully recovered.
With that announcement, the sour mood sweetened considerably. People looked at Wei Chang with new respect for his leadership.
Jing Shu, for her part, returned to her small room and began practicing with the Cube Space. Every time she came down from a peak of adrenaline like that, the practice felt twice as effective, as if some inner window had cleared in her mind. She sensed she was on the verge of a major upgrade.
There was just a thin film holding her back, like a piece of delicate window paper. No matter how she pierced at it with her will, it wouldn't quite break.