Chapter 38

Buildings 3 and 4 of Jixing Community were connected, but their orientations differed. The apartment Zheng Feifei rented had a north-facing window overlooking the community’s open space, perfectly positioned to view Buildings 1 and 2.

After being repeatedly reminded by Shu Fu, Zheng Feifei decided not to sleep and keep watch. To see more clearly, she even used binoculars.

She hadn’t expected that she would actually see people.

“Did you call the police?”

“The line’s busy.”

“What about the rescue team?”

“Can’t get through.”

Shu Fu fell silent.

The situation seemed dire. Most of these people were probably refugees from flood-stricken cities. Compared to people like Zheng Feifei’s family, their circumstances were likely even more desperate. Each city’s disaster response varied, and not every place managed an orderly evacuation like Suicheng did.

Especially in coastal cities hit by tsunamis—many people woke up to find their homes destroyed and possessions gone, facing utter devastation and displacement.

These people had faced life and death, lost loved ones, experienced extreme highs and lows, and traveled from disaster zones to Lou Yuncheng, as if stepping from a war-torn world into one of peace.

But despite all being human, the stark contrast in their experiences could easily breed resentment.

They weren’t born evil, but over time, even a small incident, an intense emotion, or inflammatory words could ignite chaos.

And now, that chaos had arrived at Jixing Community.

They must have scouted the area and knew most residents here were locals. They had come to loot.

The photo taken at the emergency room told Shu Fu that these people had become desperados. They had likely all seen blood; they wouldn’t hesitate, and they wouldn’t hold back.

Shu Fu understood these people. She had once participated in writing a script with a similar scenario and had collected a lot of materials and videos for several scenes.

Most of the residents in the building had probably never faced anything more terrifying than the falling debris from the water spout incident the day before. The difference in experience meant the residents were no match for these intruders.

If they couldn’t fight back, their only option was to hide and wait for rescue.

Zheng Feifei’s family lived on the 10th floor, which was a relatively safe height. As long as they could secure the door, they’d be safe.

Holding her phone, Shu Fu spoke to her clearly and calmly:

“Don’t be afraid. Help will come, but it might not be until dawn, or even by tomorrow afternoon, maybe longer. Don’t even think about trying to sneak down to the parking garage to get your car and escape before they come upstairs. Don’t be foolish—the garage and elevator entrances will definitely be guarded, waiting to catch you.

Listen carefully: Don’t turn on the lights, don’t open the windows, don’t respond, and don’t make any noise. It’s 3 a.m. now, the time when people are most exhausted and sleepy. They’ve come at night to catch you off guard.

At first, they might try to trick you, saying if you hand over some food or water, they’ll leave and won’t hurt anyone inside. They’ll claim they’re pitiful, their kids are starving, or they have someone seriously ill at home without money for medicine.

Then, they might start threatening you, saying if you don’t open the door within a certain time, they’ll break it down. They’ll claim they have plenty of experience breaking doors, even weapons, and once they’re inside, they’ll kill anyone who refused to open the door—or worse, torture them. They might drag out other residents whose doors they’ve already broken into—maybe women or children—and torment them outside your door, making them scream, beg, and cry for you to open up.

But don’t soften. Don’t listen. This is psychological warfare and a battle of defense. Remember, as long as they can’t get into your apartment, you’re safe. There are so many households in the community; they won’t focus on just one, and they don’t have the time or efficiency for that.

Secure the door. Block it from top to bottom with everything you can find. If they break into your neighbor’s apartment and try to climb over from their window, use long sticks or laundry poles with knives tied to them to stab them down before they can pry open your security bars! You’re on the 10th floor—it’s raining outside, and the windowsills are slippery. Even if the fall doesn’t kill them, it will cripple them. Remember, if you don’t want to die, don’t let your compassion run wild. Don’t hesitate. Don’t hold back.

Finally, if they get frustrated and set a fire, don’t panic. It’s raining heavily outside, and they can only set fires in the hallway. Once the fire starts, they’ll have to retreat first. If your door catches fire, extinguish it from the inside with water, or tip over buckets so water flows out through the door cracks. It’s been raining every day, the air is humid, and the hallway floors are damp. Even if the fire starts, it won’t burn for long…”

This time, Zheng Feifei didn’t just listen alone; she put the call on speaker so her parents could hear too.

The last time, they hadn’t believed Shu Fu’s warnings, and their family had suffered before the mass evacuation. She had even encountered something terrible.

This time, no matter what, she had to protect this apartment.

After hanging up the phone, Zheng Feifei looked at her panicked parents and said firmly, word by word:

“Dad, Mom, did you hear that? Don’t let compassion take over. Don’t hesitate. Don’t hold back. Otherwise, you’ll be sending me to my death!”

“But… there are so many people in the community. A lot of them are probably still asleep and don’t even know someone has broken in…” her mother couldn’t help but say, but quickly added, “Don’t worry, in such a critical moment, I won’t go outside. I’m just thinking about how we can warn the others.”

Zheng Feifei remained silent, then reopened WeChat, changed her profile picture and name, and deleted the building and apartment number she had previously marked in several group chats as required. She quickly wrote down what Shu Fu had just said, including tips like using water buckets if there wasn’t enough furniture, collecting rainwater if they were short on water, and warnings that mobs had quietly entered the neighborhood. She sent these messages to multiple resident groups.

“I’m just an ordinary person. This is the most I can do.” She glanced at the front door of her apartment and said to her parents, “We don’t have enough stuff yet. Keep piling it up. I’m going to make weapons for the windows.”

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It was past 3 a.m., the time when people are usually at their most exhausted and drowsy.

Apartment 0806 in Building 1 was a small one-bedroom unit, occupied by a single man who had moved to Lou Yuncheng ten years ago for work. Now in his thirties, he was still single.

Apartment 0809 housed a young mother and her three-year-old son. She had moved into Jixing Community a little over a year ago after getting divorced.

The young mother was quite pretty and spoke gently. The man often ran into her in the elevator when he was heading to work and she was taking her son to kindergarten. Over time, they became familiar with each other. He would occasionally bring small snacks or gifts for her son, and in return, she would share homemade dishes with him.

The man liked the young mother but wasn’t sure how she felt, so he had never confessed.

That night, as he drifted in and out of sleep, he suddenly heard cries for help outside his door. The voice was unmistakably familiar, and it jolted him awake.

He sat up and listened carefully. This time, he not only heard the young mother’s cries but also her child’s wailing.

Something was wrong!

He immediately got out of bed, didn’t even bother with a jacket, slipped on his slippers, and rushed to open the door.

He worked a physical job and was strong—usually able to handle two men at once. But being startled awake in the middle of the night, his mind wasn’t fully alert. Acting on instinct and driven by the desperate cries of the woman he liked, his body moved before he could think rationally.

The door to 0806 swung open, and the burly man charged out, roaring, “Stop! Who the hell—”

Before he could finish, two men—one tall, one thin—who had been lying in wait on either side of the door, swung iron rods down on him. The thick metal rods struck the back of his head twice with sickening thuds. No matter how tough he was, no one could withstand such a sneak attack.

He collapsed instantly, face-down on the cold floor, unconscious, blood pooling from his head.

Across the hall, more men emerged from hiding. One of them, holding an axe, grabbed the young mother, who was crying and struggling to reach her child. A sinister grin spread across his dark, gaunt face. “Not bad. You’ve got some skills, managing to lure him out like that!”

The woman didn’t respond. She struggled desperately until she finally managed to grab her child’s hand. The boy was being pinned to the ground by another man, and no matter how hard he fought, he couldn’t get up, screaming his lungs out.

The man, finding it amusing, patted the boy’s head twice before letting go.

The young mother immediately pulled her child into her arms, clutching him tightly. She closed her eyes, unable to look at the man lying motionless in a pool of his own blood.

“Brother Xiao!” The two men with iron rods gathered around, praising how effective using a woman and child had been. They agreed to use the same tactic on other floors.

Desperation filled the woman’s face. “You promised to let me and my child go! You can’t do this…”

But they ignored her, chuckling as one of them pulled out a piece of cloth and stuffed it into her and her child’s mouths. Another tied their hands. The rest of the group entered the man’s apartment, quickly rummaging through his belongings—food, water, money, valuables—packing everything up like a swarm of locusts, their actions disturbingly practiced.

Two men dragged the woman and her child toward the elevator, passing by other tightly shut doors on the floor, behind which residents stayed silent and motionless.

“What about these apartments?” one man asked.

“Try climbing from 0806’s window. It’s closer. If that doesn’t work, mark the doors. We’ll come back and deal with these stubborn ones after we sweep the whole building!”

“Dammit!” someone cursed. “Why does this neighborhood feel tougher than the last one? So many people holed up like turtles, not making a sound! Did they all slip down to the garage before we got here?”

“Stop whining. Get moving! We’ve got people stationed at the garage. Even if they went down, they won’t get out alive!”

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Building 2, Apartment 0302.

Inside, the apartment was pitch dark. The front door was barricaded with furniture and heavy objects, completely obscuring the door panel. Despite this, two girls sat against the barricade, using their body weight to add another layer of defense.

Outside the door, the sound of an axe hacking away echoed through the apartment. Thump! Thump! Thump!

Each heavy blow was followed by the intruders’ gleeful laughter, laced with a malice the girls had never encountered before. The sound seeped through the door, making them tremble uncontrollably.

By the south-facing window, a boy stood guard, gripping a guitar with a knife strapped to it, his nerves stretched thin.

He was a university student in Lou Yuncheng. The two girls by the door were his sister and his girlfriend. Their parents were in other cities, where conditions were even worse than in Lou Yuncheng. After some discussion, both families had decided to move here to live together.

They had rented this two-bedroom apartment in Jixing Community ahead of time. Over the past few days, they had been busy furnishing the place and cleaning, often working late into the night, so they ended up staying over.

They never expected two consecutive nights of chaos—yesterday it was a massive storm with hurricanes and tornadoes, and today, a riot by refugees.

Their apartment was only on the third floor, and one of the glass window locks in front of him was broken—it couldn’t be secured from the inside and could easily be pulled open from outside. Since there were sliding security bars installed inside and the glass itself wasn’t damaged, he hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. Who would have thought something like this would happen tonight?

The apartment wasn’t fully set up yet, and they were missing a lot of basic things. They couldn’t even find a clothes-drying rod, and the only knife they had was a small folding fruit knife, taped to the handle of his guitar. It looked pitifully small.

But he didn’t dare let his guard down because he heard the sound of their neighbor’s apartment being broken into. That person must’ve been in a deep sleep—not only did they miss the messages in the group chats, but they also weren’t awakened by the commotion downstairs. Half-asleep, they were tricked into opening the door.

Now, those people were ransacking the neighboring apartment while hacking at their door and even opening the neighbor’s window, planning to climb over.

It was raining heavily outside, and the night was pitch dark. All he could hear was the loud rain, making it impossible to see clearly what was happening outside.

Suddenly, a flash of lightning illuminated everything. He saw a stranger crouching outside the balcony window—the man had somehow already climbed over and discovered the window with the broken lock. The blade of the long knife in his hand was already wedged into the window frame, slowly prying it open.

The lightning lit up both the intruder and the boy inside. The man raised his head and looked at him, noticing the guitar clutched tightly in his arms with the small fruit knife taped to it. The man immediately burst into laughter—a brazen, mocking laugh.

Even though the security bars blocked the man from entering, the boy instinctively took a step back because he noticed the bloodstains on the blade that the rain hadn’t yet washed away…

The intruder’s fingers hooked into the window frame, pushing it open. Rain poured in from outside as the man stood on the windowsill, gripping the metal bars of the security window tightly and shaking them violently. His hand, holding the long knife, stretched straight into the window, the tip nearly stabbing the boy’s nose.

The boy’s face turned pale as he took another step back, feeling his body stiffen, unable to move.

Suddenly, the man on the windowsill stopped laughing. He looked down at his chest, where a cold glint had appeared.

A few seconds later, the cold glint disappeared, and his body fell backward.

In the last second before falling off the windowsill to his death, the man wondered, Knives are supposed to be cold. Why did the knife that just stabbed into my chest feel burning hot?

Inside, the boy put down the guitar and rushed to the window. From a window to the right of his balcony, a woman in her thirties, her face pale, was retracting an extended clothes-drying rod.

At the end of the rod, a sharp sushi knife was securely fastened. It was this sushi knife that had just killed someone—no, killed a thug!

Seeing him stunned, the woman wiped the rain from her face, frowning. “Why are you standing there like an idiot? You’re a grown man! What, you don’t even know how to stab someone through iron bars?”

This female neighbor had a bad temper and a loud voice. Since they moved in and left stuff near the door, she had quarreled with them several times. In the minds of the three of them, she was already firmly categorized as a rude shrew.

He never expected her to step up and save them in such a critical moment.

“But… but my knife is too small. It can’t hurt anyone…” the boy finally stammered out.

The woman curled her lip impatiently. “A knife’s a knife—it can hurt people! Heat the knife over the fire until it’s red-hot. If anyone dares to break into our homes, stab them! One by one, make sure they never come back!”

The ruthlessness in her words startled him, and he nodded repeatedly. He then asked what to do about the front door since someone was trying to break it down.

“Move all the furniture over to block it! Stack buckets outside to weigh it down. What are you scared of? They can’t possibly keep hacking at your door until morning!” the woman snapped. From inside her apartment, the voices of two children calling for their mother echoed.

She immediately turned and shut her window.

The boy realized she was a single mother with two kids and had an elderly mother with health issues to care for. Thinking about it now—with a household full of the elderly, weak, and children—if she didn’t have a big temper and a loud voice, how could she possibly protect her family?

If even a woman can protect her family with her own strength, how could I be so weak and useless? he thought.

At the windowsill of the apartment on the left—the one where the window had been pried open—someone poked their head out and discovered their companion’s death. They immediately started shouting, threatening to climb over again.

The boy quickly shut the window, searching for something to wedge it closed. He called out to his sister and girlfriend, telling them to turn on the gas stove and heat the knife over the flame.

The two girls had watched the whole ordeal unfold and were no longer trembling. They dragged out a heavy lounge chair from the room and stacked it against the door. Hearing the boy’s instructions, they immediately responded, continuing their efforts to defend their home.

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Building 4, Apartment 1005

Zheng Feifei checked the group messages and, after seeing some new defense tips, immediately got up and went to the kitchen. She turned on the gas stove and placed the knife, tied to a metal rod, over the flame to heat it.

The mob outside had already come by once. When they couldn’t break down the door and, after hacking at it a few times without any response from inside, they gave up and moved on to other apartments.

Zheng Feifei signaled her parents to guard two of the windows, instructing them to call her if they saw anything. She stood against the wall near the corridor, pressing her ear to listen for any sounds outside.

1006, break-in failed.

1007, break-in failed.

1008, attempted trickery failed, break-in also failed…

Listening to the mob’s cursing outside, Zheng Feifei’s initially tense nerves began to settle.

These people were just ordinary folks. As Shu Fu had said, this was a psychological and defensive battle.

And since they were inside their home, they naturally had the upper hand. As long as they could hold the doors and windows, they could protect themselves and their family.

She kept listening carefully to the sounds outside.

1009, break-in… huh?

Why did she hear the sound of a door lock clicking open?

She tensed up immediately. Had the residents of that apartment been asleep and missed the messages in the group chat? Zheng Feifei held her breath, expecting to hear screams from a man or woman at any moment—but there were none.

The corridor was eerily quiet, not even the footsteps of the mob could be heard.

Had they left?

Or… had she misheard, and that wasn’t the sound of a door opening?

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Building 3, Apartment 2106.

Shu Fu heard an exclamation coming from outside the balcony. She quickly moved to the right side of the balcony and looked out through the security bars and glass window. To her shock, there was actually someone climbing outside the bedroom window of the apartment next door, a rope tied around his waist, apparently suspended from the floor above.

He was smashing at the corner of the tempered glass with a hammer, and three corners were already cracked—he was now working on the last one.

The people inside the bedroom were helpless behind the glass, their weapons useless unless they opened the window, which would play right into the intruder’s hands.

But if they didn’t open it, the glass would soon break. Who knew what other methods the intruder had to breach the inner security bars once that happened?

While the people inside hesitated, the tempered glass finally shattered, cascading down in small pieces.

Now that the window was broken, what could they do? Stab at him with a knife?

One of them gritted his teeth and lunged forward with a stab, but the intruder grabbed his wrist through the bars and yanked him toward the window.

As he cried out in surprise, another person inside heard a woman’s voice from the left side: “Residents of 2105, duck down!”

They froze for a moment and then saw a beam of strong light shoot through a crack in the neighboring balcony window. The woman was holding something with both hands, and the bright light was coming from that object.

The people inside were stunned. Was that—a gun!?

In the next second, they instinctively ducked. The man who had his wrist grabbed also took advantage of the distraction to yank his hand back forcefully.

A faint whooshing sound cut through the air—very subtle but rapid. Thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip. Over and over again. They heard the intruder outside scream in agony, twisting and turning as if trying to dodge something, but he couldn’t escape the barrage of projectiles.

The man finally lost his grip and fell from the window, but the rope around his waist kept him from hitting the ground, leaving him dangling between the 19th and 18th floors, swinging and struggling, cursing and vowing to climb back up.

“What are you standing there for? Cut the rope!” the woman’s voice rang out again from the neighboring balcony.

The two people inside finally snapped out of it. One grabbed the rope to hold it steady while the other frantically sawed at it with a knife.

Luckily, the mob wasn’t well-equipped—the rope wasn’t professional-grade, just an ordinary one. With both of them hacking and sawing like mad, the rope snapped before the man could climb back up.

A final scream echoed through the air, followed by a heavy thud.

The man had plummeted to the ground, dead as could be.

The two inside were so exhausted their limbs felt like jelly. They wanted to shout their thanks to their neighbor, but when they turned around, the balcony window on the left was already shut tight.

Shu Fu locked the window again, turned off her portable protective shield, and pulled down the black mask covering her face. She switched off the high-powered flashlight that was duct-taped to the top of her nail gun. Then she pulled out a fresh row of nails from her supplies and crouched down silently to reload the nail gun.

A row of 30 straight nails, capable of rapid fire, could pierce targets within ten meters.

And the distance from her balcony to the neighboring bedroom window was just three meters—well within range.