Chen Zhenghao finally felt fear. He grabbed his phone and dialed 120, but the line gave him the same mocking busy tone. Two minutes, three—nothing. His chest tightened. Outside was a frozen grave; many hospitals had shut down. Even if one remained open, no ambulance could claw through the snow mountains to reach him.
He stared at his leg and decided—if no help would come, he'd have to help himself.
He staggered back to his apartment, hands slick with cold and panic. He rummaged drawers for a knife, an alcohol lamp, gauze, and hemostatic powder—battle scars from a life of fights had left him oddly prepared. With shaking fingers he slit open his pant leg. The sight drained color from his face: the bolt had punched deep, the flesh around it black-purple. The cold had temporarily bled him out, but the tissue was already dying.
No time for squeamishness. He lit the lamp, heated the blade, and cut. The heat smelled of burnt cloth and flesh. Pain flared, sharp and terrible, but the cold dulled it into a raw, grinding agony. He forced the bolt free and yelped something like a curse that ate itself. When he finally collapsed on the couch he was pale and sweating, breath ragged, hatred coiling in his eyes.
"Zhang Yi," he spat through clenched teeth. "You little bastard—I'll kill you. I swear it."
Zhang had already blocked him, so Chen did the only public thing he could: he tagged him in the owners' group. The text was a frantic, animal thing: "Zhang Yi, you bastard! Wait for me! If I don't kill you, I'll eat my hat!" The neighbors didn't know the whole story yet, but word traveled fast: Zhang had provoked Chen.
Some people cheered privately. Aunt Lin—still smarting from public humiliation—tapped with glee: "Dog eats dog—perfect!" Fang Yuqing, ever hungry for drama that might swing her way, curled her lips at the news: maybe now Chen would smack Zhang into shape and her favored status would return. Most, though, watched in uneasy silence. Nobody wanted to be collateral when gangland retribution came calling.
Zhang Yi heard the commotion and laughed out loud. He sent a voice note into the group, voice smooth and lazy: "What are you barking about? Keep it up and I'll take the other leg too." The message landed like a cold slap. The chat quieted; people could feel the knife-edge in his tone.
Chen smashed his phone on the table in fury, blood hot under his skin. "Zhang Yi! Wait and see—I'll kill you!" he roared, venom and pain braided together. Zhang answered in text without ceremony: "Come get me. We'll see who dies first." The two lines of threat hung like smoke.
Apocalypse had stripped social niceties down to bone. No more face-saving ceremonies, no polite lies—just hunger, danger, and grudges exposed. Zhang felt a clarity he'd never known: survival and retribution could be arranged like spreadsheets.
Chen's breath cooled on the air conditioner's weak heat. The wound throbbed and ached; mobility left him in ragged stabs. He hobbled to his phone and called his men.
Within the hour a dozen thugs gathered: machetes, pipes, bats—tools of old violence. Seeing their boss limping lit a furnace of fury. "He shot Brother Hao—let's rip him apart!" one shouted. "Give us the room number!" another demanded. Chen rattled off the address: 2401. "He's got a crossbow, be careful," he warned, but caution was the smallest of their concerns. They were hungry for blood.
They moved like a pack through the snow-packed corridors, muffled faces, boots crunching. Zhang watched them on his split-screen: a dozen black shapes converging on his door. He had not left his safe room. He had been expecting exactly this.
Outside his door the mob arrived and pounded with a chorus of curses, an animal percussion meant to intimidate. "Open up! You shot our boss! Today you die!" They smashed at the reinforced security door with hammers and iron bars, but the metal was a joke to them at first—until it proved not to be. Twenty centimeters of alloy and composite laughed at their bats; only sparks and tiny chips marked the surface. The men swore, slammed harder, but the door groaned not at all.
Inside, Zhang's game avatar died, again. He closed the controller, annoyed, and walked into the kitchen. Calm as a man making tea, he hooked a hose to the faucet, tested the spray, and climbed up onto a chair. The thugs outside were still shouting, unaware of what he planned.
He opened the small firing hatch two meters above the ground—a hole made for a different kind of defense—and aimed the hose down the corridor. Then he turned the tap.
A torrent hit them.
Water poured like a sudden summer storm into the cramped hallway, soaking clothes, boots, and skin. In the subzero corridor the deluge turned from wet to weapon almost instantly: it slammed into them, then the cold began its invisible work. Their breath fogged. Their soaked clothes stiffened. Boots squealed on iced metal. Curses flipped into screams as the water turned to near-instant slush on boots and bat handles.
They staggered, frenzied to shake the cold, to pull off wet layers—only to find numbness biting the fingers that tried. The men cursed and slid, swinging wildly, but the door didn't budge. The sudden cold had changed the game. The corridor filled with the sound of men trying to beat back freezing despair.
A leader tried to rally the group. "Get inside—get out—break the lock!" he shouted, but the water kept coming in sheets, and the air turned to a blade. Panic replaced bravado. A couple of the less hardened dropped to their knees, teeth chattering, hands useless on wet weapons.
Zhang watched from above, heart steady. He flicked the tap harder for a moment, enjoying the chaotic choreography—men swearing, sliding, teeth chattering like hungry rodents. Then he eased it back to a steady, savage drizzle. He wasn't trying to kill them outright; he wanted humiliation, immobility, a lesson soaked into bone.
Outside, a man slipped and the bat clattered. Another tried to stiffen his fingers and failed. A few staggered to the stairwell, cursing and collapsing against the rail, breath coming in hot arcs that fogged and then froze. The corridor became a tableau of rage and impotence.
"Can't you use more strength? Skip meals?" Zhang shouted down, voice carrying easily through the hatch. It was an insult wrapped in amusement, but it cut. The thugs answered with a new, angrier battering, slamming tools against metal in blind fury. The door took it. Sparking paint flakes fell. But it held.
They had expected a show of fear; instead they found a man who would not open his door and a weapon that turned their bravado into folly. The cold had become an extension of Zhang's defense—nature made into ally.
Eventually the mob staggered away, less from defeat than from a practical, animal decision: cold kills faster than blades if you can't get warm. Some slunk to the stairwell, some limped back to aid their boss. Chen's cries echoed faintly from within his own apartment—rage laced with a dawning comprehension of his vulnerability.
Zhang switched off the hose, let the last line hiss, then shut the hatch. Water dripped in tiny, angry beads from the corridor, already freezing in place. He returned to his couch, sat down, and picked up the controller. The game waited where he left it. Outside, the breath of men and machines grew thin and muffled; inside, his heater purred a quiet, domestic song.
He'd taught them one thing: in a world where nature did your work, arrogance could be drowned. He sipped his drink and smiled dryly. The next round of moves would be cleaner and colder.