"Maybe they were afraid the water would flood in," Su Lanzhi guessed.
Jing Shu frowned. "When I came back yesterday, it wasn't closed. No one else in the community would bother to shut the garage gate."
The entrance to Banana Community's underground garage sat right by the community gate. The iron door was usually open. When Jing Shu returned yesterday, it was still open. Why was it suddenly locked now?
Jing An turned the wheel and drove in from the surface road, easing the car forward. Jing Shu felt something was off, but the phone's security feed showed nothing unusual. Nothing had come near the villa. Not even a shadow.
It was the same old community. Rain hammered down in sheets. In the darkness, Jing Shu looked like she was thinking hard.
…
"I didn't expect to lose anyway," Shangguan Jun muttered. "I dragged this ruined body back to Wu City. People say fallen leaves return to their roots. I guess I wanted to die here.
But I'm not satisfied. I never tasted that thrill of despair from a woman. I refuse to accept it. She was the only one among all the punished who would discuss methods of torture with me. I felt like I'd found a soulmate.
Such a pity I'm dying. Naturally, I'll take her with me. I'm afraid she'll be lonely down there, so I'll send her whole family to keep her company. See how considerate I am? I already investigated her household and habits.
I have one trigger grenade. It's moisture-proof and waterproof, but it's still a one-shot chance. Luckily I've got some black powder. Not much killing power, but it can create a diversion. To make sure it explodes on a rainy day, I put in a lot of work…
To get a one hundred percent hit, I built a launcher and propellant. As long as the grenade hits their car, it's over.
That car. They're here. Much earlier than I expected."
A heavily loaded car crawled forward with headlights blazing, a beacon in the night.
In the pitch-black community, Shangguan Jun crouched at a first-floor window. Bloodlust brightened his face. His knuckles whitened from his grip. "Here they come. Here they come."
When the BYD Song turned the corner, the black powder ignited with a bang. Momentum sent the whole vehicle skidding and tilting. Tires screeched. Screams followed, exactly as predicted.
"Now."
Shangguan Jun trembled with excitement. There were only two ways to reach the villas: the underground garage passage or this road. He took aim. The launcher kicked as he fired. After hundreds of simulations, adjusting for rain and wind resistance, he had honed his shot to perfection.
It flew true.
Shangguan Jun could already see the car blooming into fire in the rain.
Biu
Boom
Ah, that beautiful sound and those sparks, and life about to end.
A louder, fiercer blast erupted right beside him. Shangguan Jun's head rang. A dull hum swallowed the world. "Is a grenade really this powerful? I should have stood farther back."
Warm liquid seemed to leak from his ears. Pain tugged at several places on his body. After squatting there all night, his limbs went numb and stopped obeying him.
The smoke thinned. The car's headlights still flashed stubbornly.
He blinked hard. The car lay there, intact. How? Impossible. He had simulated that throw a hundred times. How could it miss? It was only a dozen meters away. How could he miss at that distance?
"What is that? A pile of boulders?" By the car's harsh light, Shangguan Jun saw more than twenty stones of different sizes layered across the road, stacked like a solid wall.
The front stones were shattered into gravel. The larger rocks behind remained unbroken.
"How can there be rocks here? There weren't any a moment ago. It's like they appeared just to shield her family and block the grenade. How is that possible?"
Still reeling, he suddenly remembered the Zhetian raid, when over a hundred people tried to blow up the villa and got stopped. The message that reached the armed police back then said the road had filled with rubble and boulders.
Now the same scene played out again. Shangguan Jun stared at the car, stunned. Was there really something supernatural in this world?
His consciousness wavered. He touched his ear, then lowered his head and smelled the blood soaking his clothes. "Oh. So it wasn't that the grenade was too powerful. The grenade I fired bounced back. I was too close to the blast."
A woman stepped out of the BYD Song. She met his gaze, eyes cold and bright in the dark.
Step by step she came toward him. Shangguan Jun thought, "So this is the mysterious homeowner from the file, Jing Shu, right? The one Wu You'ai was willing to die to protect?"
So Jing Shu really had some hidden secret. Too bad it did him no good to know now.
"She's speaking," Shangguan Jun noticed. "But I can't hear her anymore." He strained to look into the car, hoping to spot Wu You'ai, but there was no sign of Wu You'ai.
"What a pity. But I can't wait any longer. For me, this way of dying isn't so bad. If there is another life, I hope I'll be born into a normal family, with parents who love me.
If there really is another life.
Goodbye, Wu You'ai."
…
By the time Jing Shu sprinted through the darkness, Shangguan Jun was dead, utterly dead. Even so, she stabbed him dozens of times, venting her fury.
If she hadn't had night vision, if she hadn't trained with the Rubik's Cube and grown hypersensitive to color changes, she wouldn't have noticed the incoming projectile. She wouldn't have exposed the space at the last possible second.
Fortunately, the family inside the car had no idea what had just happened.