Chapter 32: Guns

Nap time is a necessity for high school students.

Eight classes a day, plus exams and self-study, drain the brain immensely; one must sleep for dozens of minutes in between to restore energy—this is an objective law of human physiology, indifferent to personal will.

Even if some overachievers sneak in study during nap time, their efficiency isn't necessarily any higher—according to some teachers, most of it is just fake effort.

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Her eyelashes fluttered; Ye Jiaying suddenly woke, lifting her head from the desk.

The cheek pressed against her arm was faintly red, faintly marked by the imprint of a button; her drowsy eyes caught the wall clock: 12:50 p. m., forty-five minutes left until nap time ended.

Should she go back to sleep? No, wait—something was wrong.

She frowned, glancing around; every object in the classroom—the ceiling, walls, curtains, air conditioner, podium, desks and chairs—even every sleeping classmate—was shrouded in shadow.

As if covered by a filter.

Li Cheng's seat on the right was empty; she hesitated, extending a finger to tap the arm of the girl beside her.

Click.

Her finger sank straight through, as if piercing sand.

The girl remained in her nap posture, chest rising and falling slightly, still asleep. As Ye Jiaying withdrew her finger, the sandy depression on the girl's arm instantly healed, leaving no trace of damage.

"?!"

Shock and terror surged through her; Ye Jiaying instinctively stood, stepping away from her seat.

Through the curtain's gap, she saw a colossal, spindle-shaped rift piercing the sky outside.

Countless brilliant stars of varying colors glimmered endlessly within the rift.

Everything screamed that the current situation was abnormal.

She pinched herself multiple times, confirmed she wasn't dreaming; her phone had no signal, no contact with the outside world; all classmates were like inhabitants of another world, unawakenable—or perhaps she herself was in another world.

After much hesitation, she walked to the back of the classroom and slowly pushed open the door, peering through the crack.

Her pupils shrank sharply: outside the corridor, a layer of spiderweb covered everything—white silk piled in layers like a gauzy canopy.

And in the corridor stood a familiar figure untouched by shadow.

Yuan Zhixia—the notorious eccentric, the genius girl—stood with her backpack on, solemnly studying the web before her.

"Yuan—"

The whispered word "classmate" had not yet left her lips when Yuan Zhixia noticed her and immediately raised a finger to her lips, signaling silence.

Shhh—

Six giant spiders, each the size of a medium dog, crawled across the outer edge of the web.

Their shadows cast on the wall, their many legs tugging at the web, causing it to tremble faintly.

Between the six giant spiders, something was suspended by silk—a figure wrapped in a cocoon, twisting and struggling constantly.

Intense fear gripped her heart. Only when the spiders' shadows vanished did Yuan Zhixia move, slipping soundlessly to the back door of Class Five, joining Ye Jiaying, and stepping inside.

"Yuan classmate, what's going on? Why are you and I awake? That spider—"

Too many questions crowded her mind; Ye Jiaying asked in a rapid, hushed stream.

"This isn't a place to talk."

Yuan Zhixia scanned the Class Five classroom, her gaze passing over the dried black bloodstain on the seat to the right of the podium, locking onto the tall wooden cabinet at the back of the room.

For the sake of classroom tidiness, brooms, dustpans, and other cleaning tools were stored inside the cabinet, so its interior was spacious.

The two squeezed into the cabinet; Yuan Zhixia turned on her phone's flashlight and handed it to Ye Jiaying to hold for illumination.

She herself removed her backpack and unzipped it.

Only then did Ye Jiaying notice: Yuan Zhixia's backpack was a rapid-response ballistic vest backpack.

In addition to shoulder straps, it had a waist belt, and by pulling two cords, the outermost flap could be flipped over the head to cover the chest like a vest.

The flap's interior was hollow, lined with ceramic ballistic plates—similarly designed on the backpack's back panel.

Come on, which normal student brings a backpack like this to school? This isn't war-torn the Middle East, or warlord-ridden Africa, or daily gunfighting, free America.

Ye Jiaying's eyes widened; compared to the ballistic backpack, what was inside Yuan Zhixia's bag was even more bizarre.

Beeper alarm, pepper spray, taser, Swiss army knife, hatchet, foldable multi-axis drone, handheld GPS radio, sponge earplugs, quick-release tourniquet, gas mask, paper map, glow stick, waterproof space blanket.

All items were secured inside the backpack with straps and clips, preventing collision or noise during movement or running.

Yuan Zhixia reached into the backpack, pulled a hidden zipper, opened a concealed compartment, and pulled out a handgun?!

Ye Jiaying stared, dumbfounded, as Yuan Zhixia extracted the gun body, magazine, then found the barrel and spring from other compartments.

"Yuan classmate, what is this—"

"Shh."

Yuan Zhixia cut off Ye Jiaying's whisper, then pulled out a fingertip spinner, disassembled it, and removed a bright yellow brass bullet hidden inside.

This gun was made by her own hands.

Students who illegally build guns know that with 3D printing technology increasingly mature, having a blueprint makes constructing a gun's outline not too difficult.

Especially for a Glock 17, with relatively few parts—all components including the magazine body, follower, trigger mechanism, and slide are made of plastic.

The real challenges are the barrel, spring, firing pin, bullets, propellant, and primer.

Yuan Zhixia routinely earned scholarships like eating and drinking, and occasionally traded virtual currency online; by the time she entered high school, she'd saved enough to convince her parents to let her buy the standalone garage beneath their apartment building.

She spent money renovating the garage, installing soundproof panels, purchasing a small CNC machine, a 3D plastic printer, a 3D metal printer, and a suite of chemical equipment.

After preparing all this, she first used an industrial-grade printer to fabricate the gun body, magazine body, trigger, and other structures—strength equal to injection-molded engineering plastic.

Then she used the CNC machine to machine the barrel.

Some springs, firing pins, and casings were sourced via the all-powerful Taobao—casings aren't contraband; discarded casings from legal shooting ranges are everywhere.

The propellant was her own blend of single-base powder: nitrocellulose plus a retardant, burning slowly and steadily, ensuring sufficient chamber pressure without exceeding limits and causing catastrophic rupture.

(Fireworks prioritize light and sound effects, burning rapidly; using fireworks powder to load bullets would almost certainly cause an explosion.)

As for the primer, Yuan Zhixia used mercury fulminate. She had also prepared it herself from mercury and nitric acid—modern ammunition primers commonly use non-corrosive tetrazene, antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, and the like, but considering the difficulty of preparation, the noise it would make, and other factors, she still chose the corrosive mercury fulminate. It worked well enough anyway.

Once all of the above was sorted out, only the reloading of the bullets remained—simple enough with the right professional equipment. Overseas, hand-loaded bullets actually have better shooting accuracy than factory-made ones because the powder charge can be precisely controlled, and they save money too.

Of course, privately manufacturing firearms and ammunition is absolutely illegal and cannot see the light of day.

On one hand, she had to keep track of when her neighbors left home, to avoid the people next door thinking the sound of the lathe was too loud and reporting it to the property management.

On the other, she had to carefully handle all kinds of chemicals, terrified that the smell would leak out and bring the police.

Even after the handgun and ammunition were fully manufactured, they still had to be disassembled into parts, tucked into various spots in her backpack, and disguised as a toy gun. When she carried the bag out on ordinary days, she didn't dare take the subway either.

After all this painstaking effort, purely from the angle of self-defense, it was somewhat overkill.

Stun batons, pepper spray, screeching alarms—these were already enough to ward off attackers.

If push came to shove, specially modified hand crossbows, air guns, nail guns, stun guns, and the like had enough power to kill large animals and could serve the same defensive purpose.

If she were caught, the punishment would also be lighter than for manufacturing a real gun.

"Click-click-click-click."

Yuan Zhixia used a loading press to rapidly load the bullets, her lips unconsciously pressing together slightly.

The reason she had poured so much energy and heart into owning a firearm was, to a large extent, because of an intense sense of unease.

Unlike other oblivious ordinary people, she, as a genius, had long ago pieced together clues from the internet and sensed the anomalies of this world.

Beneath those fragmentary, contextless urban legends, some terrifying truth lay hidden.

(End of chapter)