Although it was meant as a warning, Wen Qian felt it wouldn't be of much use, because if they truly encountered those villains, the warning came from a place too far away to provide any support.
However, being forewarned was still better than having no clue at all, so she could be more cautious.
Early in the morning, Wen Qian got up, folded and rolled up her bedding, took the gun off the door panel and slung it over her back, intending to head home early.
When Ni Sha and her husband saw her coming out, they invited her to have breakfast, figuring she would need sustenance for the long journey ahead. Wen Qian figured she could repay their kindness the next time she brought them supplies, so she didn't decline, especially since they didn't know she could eat while traveling.
After breakfast, she bid them farewell, and Ni Sha waved goodbye as Wen Qian's figure receded into the distance. Ni Sha was very worried – if bad people really came as Wen Qian described, what would they do? Should they hide in the mountains? But they were already in the mountains. If the intruders just wanted to loot food supplies, it wouldn't matter much, but she feared it could be worse than that.
Once Wen Qian was far enough from Ni Sha's home, she took out the small wooden board from her spatial storage and floated downstream with it, saving her the trouble of walking. As she neared her own home, she docked the board and walked the rest of the way to Big Jin's place to give him the update.
She soon arrived near her home, went ashore, and headed to Big Jin's home. Big Jin stayed close, only setting animal traps nearby, not daring to venture too far out.
Wen Qian told Big Jin that she had spent the previous night at Ni Sha's before returning, and had passed along the message.
That was all they could do – they had no great countermeasures for such a situation.
Wen Qian asked Big Jin what they should do if the bad people really came. Big Jin couldn't think of a good solution either, only suggesting he would set traps outside before going to bed at night.
If they discovered the intruders early enough, they could hide in the woods. In any case, they wouldn't just sit and wait to be slaughtered. According to the villagers, if the number of villains was truly as great as rumored, they would be completely powerless to resist.
Wen Qian realized that too – for such a vague warning, there wasn't much they could prepare.
So she decided she would also set traps around her home at night before sleeping, but what kind of traps should she set?
She considered it in her mind, realizing that traps capable of injuring people while remaining concealed would be difficult to set up.
If the aim was just to alert herself, then she could use alarm traps, since her home had walls around it.
She had used alarm traps for a time back in Xia Province, placing them inside the walls, before abandoning them later.
Now with this new sense of crisis, she took them out again.
Arranging them in a quadrilateral formation around her home, any intruder approaching from outside would trigger an alarm.
Wen Qian planned to mainly use them at night when she slept – during the day she figured she would be more alert outdoors.
Although all three households were aware of the situation, after ten days or so the initial sense of tension had dissipated, as if it were just a passing news story.
They figured those bad people had likely died in the winter, or been killed by someone else.
After finishing her work at the forestry station, Wen Qian returned home to find the stove had long gone cold, but the food inside was still warm enough to have for lunch.
Along with the bread she had baked the previous day, that would be her midday meal.
As she ate, the wind outside began to pick up. Wen Qian looked at the sky – this seemed to herald an incoming rainstorm.
She closed all the windows and doors, her prediction proving accurate as the wind grew stronger and stronger, the treetops outside swaying as if about to snap at any moment.
The sky darkened as thunderclouds rolled in, soon accompanied by flashes of lightning and peals of thunder.
But it was just wind and thunder – by the time Wen Qian finished eating and went out to feed the rabbits, not a drop of rain had fallen yet.
Just as she was wondering if it wouldn't rain after all, the racket outside grew louder as fat raindrops began pounding down, leaving splotchy shadows on the paved ground.
Watching from the window as the ground quickly became drenched, Wen Qian worried the weeds she had pulled at the forestry station the previous day might revive in this downpour.
"I should have tossed them farther away," she muttered to herself.
Normally when she hoed weeds in the fields, she would fling the larger ones out of the fields, leaving the smaller ones in the sun to wither and die.
But now with the rain, those small weeds might come back to life.
She sighed – farming was so difficult. With nothing else to do, she figured she might as well take an afternoon nap.
Wen Qian watched the heavy rainfall outside, the air so thick with mist that visibility was low and nothing could be seen clearly.
She suddenly wondered – if there was both a downpour and thunderstorm like this, would gunshots even be audible?
If she were a bad person, in addition to nighttime, a stormy day like this would be the ideal time to commit crimes.
She drew the curtains, darkening the room, then lit a lamp and secured another latch on the door.
Then she went to the bedroom, hung up a lamp, and climbed the ladder to the loft where she had been sleeping recently.
The bedding was laid out downstairs on the kang bed platform, and she had even stuffed things inside to make it look like someone was sleeping there.
Though she could have slept downstairs today with the rain, she still climbed up to the loft anyway. Hanging the lamp from a beam, she lay down.
Unable to sleep due to the rain, she took out a book to read instead – after some thought she chose "The Companion of Talents."
The two-volume work could answer most of her questions, so she opened the table of contents to find the chapter she wanted to read.
The rain hadn't let up, though the intensity had decreased slightly compared to the earlier downpour, if only a bit.
Eventually too tired to keep reading, Wen Qian closed her eyes and lay there.
Bang!
Wen Qian's eyes flew open.
That was the sound of the small door on the iron gate being blown open and slamming against the main gate, even though she had definitely latched it shut.
Wen Qian immediately sat up, retrieved the ladder, and went down, her first thought being to quickly pile objects behind the doors and windows to create cover as fast as possible.
