After a moment's hesitation, Zhou Ke'er agreed to help. Her conscience tugged at her, but she couldn't condone the neighbors' plan to loot—jealousy had driven them to wrongdoing. Zhang Yi set the terms: "Show me useful intelligence first, then I'll give you what you want—your reward depends on your performance." Zhou Ke'er, kind yet pragmatic, replied, "I understand."
Their private exchange ended, and the owner group erupted—ninety-plus unread messages, every one of them tagging him with moral blackmail and thinly veiled threats: "Where are you, Zhang Yi? Will you hand over your supplies?" Zhang Yi only sneered. It was obvious what they were planning.
He answered bluntly: "Go eat shit." The chat devolved into insults. Zhang Yi didn't care; he'd killed before and felt no guilt about doing it again. A new group was spun up—this one excluded him—where the neighbors quietly plotted their assault. The prospect sent a thrill through him: his apartment was a "steel fortress," but the thought of hundreds of desperate people bearing down on it was intoxicating. He wanted to see how it would play out.
He checked his arsenal: five precision crossbows, three professional compound bows, more than 290 bolts, 300 steel marbles, a mountain knife, a 1.2-meter crowbar, a baseball bat, hunting knives, wolf spray, stun guns, gasoline, chemical irritants, and a stack of Molotov cocktails. He stared at the list coldly and said to himself, "Come as many as you want."
As predicted, the enraged neighbors let Sun Zhichao form a strike group and even looped Chen Zhenghao in. Chen declared, "We're taking Zhang Yi—his supplies dwarf ours. I want half." Having lost to Zhang Yi before, Chen used the crowd as cannon fodder; many accepted his terms because they feared his gun. Sun Zhichao urged, "Set aside grudges—seize the 'collective stockpile'!" Envy and hunger turned words into weapons: "Knives out—follow me! Kill Zhang Yi, take everything!" Most joined. Only a handful—Uncle You and Zhou Ke'er among them—kept silent, unable or unwilling to forget the small favors Zhang Yi had done.
Zhang Yi cleaned his handgun with a steady hand; his shooting muscles remembered practice from the range and a month of intensive training before the storm—close-quarters shots were second nature. When Zhou Ke'er messaged: "They're coming for you," his reply was laconic: "Oh, got it."
Zhou Ke'er, wrapped in blankets and frowning at the madness outside, urged caution: "They've lost it. You should give up some supplies—hundreds can overwhelm a house." Zhang Yi only smiled. "Don't come. Just wait and watch the show." Confused but bound by her ethics, she obeyed. She would not profit from bloodshed—at least, not willingly.