Once We Lived in Nanjing

Ban Xia, armed like a special forces operative, threaded through the lush forest, vigilantly scanning her surroundings. Tactics for dealing with solitary animals differed from those for confronting groups. For solitary targets, trapping them for a clean kill was the strategy - one shot, one kill. But with a group, traps were ineffective; catch one and the rest won't fall for the same trick.

So the only option was to actively sweep the area.

Driving them out of Meihua Villa, teaching them a harsh lesson they wouldn't forget, and letting them know that they were encroaching on the territory of a monster who wielded lightning - ensuring they dared not take half a step over the boundary for the rest of their lives.

The girl had mapped out her route. The layout of the residential area resembled a giant military chessboard, with apartment buildings as the regimented pieces, red roofs and gray walls, roads paved with tiles and asphalt crisscrossing across. The rest of the space was entirely occupied by green plants. Viewed from above, Meihua Villa appeared as a vast green carpet dotted with red cubic blocks, while the hardened asphalt roads formed a fine mesh on the carpet.

From north to south, she planned a carpet-like sweep, searching building by building.

Entering the structures was quite dangerous. Her teacher had warned her never to enter unfamiliar buildings unless absolutely necessary. If one must enter, they should arm themselves to the teeth.

Ban Xia stepped over waist-high weeds and into the building entrance of Meihua Villa. The apartment buildings inside were all similar—two homes per floor, facing each other, with only one apartment on the ground level.

The apartment's entrance was small, fitted with the universally used dark green password-secured iron doors. Upon entry, one faced the staircase leading upstairs, and underneath were spaces for storing miscellaneous items.

The iron door had been smashed, hanging off its hinges, severely decayed and covered in brown-black rust. Ban Xia stepped over it, treading on the shattered tiles.

A pungent musty smell hit her as she walked in, causing the girl to wrinkle her nose.

She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and covered her mouth and nose with it.

The color of the floor tiles was hard to discern. After twenty years of abandonment, a layer of dust could accumulate ankle-deep. Combine that with wind and rain, decayed leaves, animal activity, urine, and feces—all the deposits from nature had formed a layer of black mud on the smooth floor. Academically speaking, it's called humus. It had rained recently, and the floor was still damp. Ban Xia's boot soles stepped into the black mud, feeling sticky.

The staircase was on the left, and the solo apartment on the ground level was on the right, its door facing directly to the storage space under the stairway.

Walking a few steps into the corridor, the floor gradually revealed its original color. The traces of animal activity were evident; the floor was littered with black or white droppings, some of which Ban Xia could recognize, and others she could not. These buildings often had animals taking refuge from the rain.

The walls still held old, faded blue mailboxes, one small compartment for each residence, unlocked with a key and each mailbox bearing an apartment number.

She could vaguely make out the peeling numbers, including 603 and 604.

Humming a tune, Ban Xia shouldered her heavy shotgun and began pulling open one mailbox door after another, peering inside.

They were all empty.

The girl shook her head and strode onward.

There was only one apartment on the first floor. Ban Xia shouted loudly and kicked at the door, only to end up hopping around clutching her knee in pain.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow..."

Anger surged through her. She racked a round into the chamber of her shotgun, stepped back a few paces, and aimed at the door. "Listen up, inside! You're surrounded by me! You have five minutes! Put your pants on your head and come out in a line!"

"Five—!"

"Four—!"

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

Silence.

"Stubborn resistance! Fools!"

Ban Xia yelled again and kicked at the door, then hopped around on one foot, cradling her knee in pain.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow..."

She stared at the door for a few seconds, pondering. Humming, she reached out, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled with a gradual force, "click".

The door didn't open.

Indeed, it was a door that wouldn't budge.

·

An eight-floor residential building had two units, and aside from the first floor, each floor had two households. In total, there were thirty households in a building.

Ban Xia started from the first floor, cleaning upwards level by level. Some doors couldn't be opened—the hinges and locks had completely rusted over, or the doors were jammed shut. There was nothing she could do about them.

She would search any room that she could enter.

Man-made structures provided natural shelters for many animals. Humans thought some animals wouldn't climb stairs, but they eventually learned to do so.

In some rooms, Ban Xia could find dried feces of large herbivores like cows or horse deer. It was hard to imagine how they got up there—a line of horse deer ascending the stairs?

Some apartments had poor waterproofing. Rainwater slowly but steadily infiltrated them, soaking entire walls, which led to large patches of moss and mushrooms growing there.

When tired, she would lean on the balcony to rest, holding her gun while gazing out.

The building across looked like a giant with a red hat, draped in a tattered green garment.

After finishing one building, she'd move on to the next.

This work was lengthy and tedious. Ban Xia continued for two days straight with nothing to show for it.

Bai Yang commented, "Is this task really that time-consuming?"

Ban Xia retorted, "Nonsense, can't you see I'm all alone? If I had an extra pair of hands, the progress could be twice as fast!"

Bai Yang asked, "Is there anything that can help you?"

Ban Xia replied, "I need a helping hand. Send someone over, or you might as well express mail yourself here! Find a way!"

Bai Yang said, "Don't be ridiculous. How could that be possible? How can we send someone over?"

Without the slightest hesitation, Ban Xia said, "Refrigeration!"

Bai Yang: "You're trying to murder me. How could someone survive being frozen and then thawed?"

Ban Xia: "Then set up a larger time capsule, stock it with twenty years' worth of food and fresh water, get inside yourself, and bury it for twenty years."

Bai Yang: "That's being buried alive. I'd suffocate and die from asphyxiation."

Ban Xia: "Then put in twenty years' worth of oxygen."

Bai Yang: "We don't have that technology. Even if we did, after twenty years a person would age."

Ban Xia: "I don't mind uncles! Plus, I'm very pretty, my instructor always said I'm the prettiest girl in the world!"

Bai Yang: "Considering that you're the only one left in the world, what aren't you the first in?"

Ban Xia: "Tsk."

On the third day, Ban Xia finally found some traces.

Searching all the way to the east side of the neighborhood, Ban Xia peered out from among the grass taller than a person and spotted chaotic footprints and brownish-yellow hair on the ground.

There were also black, dried-up bloodstains. The girl bent down, dipped her finger in some earth, and smelled it—it was indeed blood, likely left from hunting.

The girl followed the clues, moving forward slowly. The further she went, the more hair and footprints there were, with traces of trampled and bent weeds—it looked like there was more than one. Ban Xia quickened her pace and gripped her shotgun tighter.

She had finally found this group of little creatures.

At last, she squeezed into a large nest of grass, raised her gun barrel, and then froze.

A chill rushed from her feet to the top of her head. Her entire back tingled. The girl instinctively aimed her gun and turned around, her eyes locked on the lush, dense bushes behind her.

She was half right in her thinking—indeed, there were jackals, as evidenced by one with yellow fur lying on its side in the grass, its hind legs gnawed clean, revealing stark white bones. The mass of black flies covering its body scattered explosively when disturbed, swirling in front of Ban Xia with a buzzing sound.

In such damp and hot weather, a body could be extremely decayed in less than two days.

Ban Xia waved away the annoying flies, slowly squatted down, and her gaze settled on the jackal and the massive tearing wounds on its fur and back.

She was only half right. Jackals had indeed appeared near Meihua Villa, but they were not the hunters.

They were just the prey.