Chapter 30: Firearms

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A midday nap is an absolute necessity for high school students.

With eight classes a day, plus exams and self-study sessions, the mental toll is immense. A few dozen minutes of sleep to restore one's spirit is an objective law of human physiology, one that cannot be overridden by mere willpower.

Even those "grinders" who secretly study during lunch break rarely see a significant boost in efficiency. As some teachers put it, most of it is just performative effort.

"..."

Her eyelashes fluttered, and Ye Jiaying jolted awake, lifting her head from the desk.

Her cheek, which had been resting against her arm, was slightly flushed and bore the faint imprint of a button. Her sleepy eyes caught the analog clock on the classroom wall: 12:50 PM. There were forty-five minutes left until the end of the lunch break.

Should she keep sleeping? No, wait. Something felt wrong.

Frowning, she scanned her surroundings. Everything in the classroom—the ceiling, walls, curtains, air conditioner, podium, desks, chairs, and even the bodies of every sleeping classmate—was shrouded in a thin layer of shadow.

It was as if a filter had been placed over reality.

Li Sheng’s seat to her right was empty. Hesitantly, she reached out and poked the arm of the girl sitting to her left.

*Click.*

Her finger sank directly into the flesh, as if poking into sand.

The girl remained in her napping position, her chest rising and falling slightly; she did not wake up. As Ye Jiaying pulled her finger back, the sandy indentation on the girl's arm smoothed over instantly, leaving no trace of damage.

"?!"

A surge of shock and terror welled up in her heart. Ye Jiaying stood up instinctively and retreated from her seat.

Through a gap in the curtains, she could see a spectacular, shuttle-shaped rift piercing the sky outside.

A vast multitude of brilliant stars in myriad colors shimmered incessantly within the rift.

Everything pointed to the abnormality of the current situation.

She pinched herself several times to confirm she wasn't dreaming. Her phone had no signal; she couldn't reach the outside world. All her classmates seemed to be in another world, impossible to wake. Or perhaps, it was she who was in another world.

After hesitating, she walked to the back of the classroom, pushed the door open slightly, and peered out.

Her pupils contracted sharply. Outside in the corridor, a layer of spiderwebs covered everything. White, silken threads were layered over one another like a shroud.

And there, standing in the corridor, was a familiar figure not shrouded in the same shadow.

Yuan Zhixia—the infamous eccentric and genius girl—was standing there with her backpack, solemnly inspecting the webs before her.

"Yuan..."

Before she could finish the whispered word "classmate," the other girl noticed her and immediately held a finger to her lips, signaling for silence.

*Rustle—*

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Six enormous spiders, each the size of a medium-sized dog, crawled past the outside of the web.

Their shadows cast onto the wall, and their numerous legs hooked into the webbing, causing it to tremble.

Between the six giant spiders, something was suspended by silk. It looked like a human figure, wrapped in a cocoon, constantly writhing and struggling.

An intense fear gripped her heart. Once the spiders' shadows had vanished, Yuan Zhixia moved silently toward the back door of Class 5, met up with Ye Jiaying, and stepped into the classroom.

"Yuan, what on earth is going on? Why are you and I awake? That spider..."

Too many questions pressed upon her heart, and Ye Jiaying whispered them out like a barrage of gunfire.

"This is not the place to talk."

Yuan Zhixia scanned the classroom, her gaze sweeping over a patch of dried black blood on a seat beside the podium, before locking onto a tall wooden cabinet at the back of the room.

To keep the classroom tidy, cleaning supplies like brooms and dustpans were stored in that cabinet, so it was quite spacious inside.

They squeezed into the cabinet. Yuan Zhixia turned on her phone's flashlight and handed it to Ye Jiaying to help provide light.

She then took off her backpack and unzipped it.

Only then did Ye Jiaying notice that Yuan Zhixia’s backpack was a rapid-response bulletproof pack.

It featured not only shoulder straps but also a waist belt. By pulling two cords, the outermost layer of the backpack could be flipped over her head and worn over her chest like a vest.

The layer was hollow, lined with ceramic ballistic plates—a design replicated on the back of the pack as well.

*Wait a minute,* she thought, *what normal student carries a backpack like this to school? This isn't the war-torn Middle East, a warlord-ridden part of Africa, or the land of the free where shootouts happen every day.*

Ye Jiaying’s eyes widened. Even more bizarre than the bulletproof pack were the contents inside.

A buzzer alarm, pepper spray, a stun gun, a Swiss Army knife, a hand axe, a foldable multi-rotor drone, a handheld GPS radio, foam earplugs, a buckle-style tourniquet, a gas mask, paper maps, light sticks, a waterproof space blanket...

All these items were secured inside the pack with straps and buckles, so they wouldn't collide or make noise while walking or running.

Yuan Zhixia reached into the bag, pulled a cleverly hidden zipper to open a secret compartment, and pulled out... a handgun?!

Ye Jiaying stared, dumbfounded, as the girl pulled out the frame and magazine, then retrieved a barrel and springs from other compartments.

"Yuan... what is this..."

"Shh."

Yuan Zhixia cut off her whispered inquiry, took out a fidget spinner, and disassembled it to reveal the gleaming copper-jacketed lead bullets hidden inside.

She had built this gun herself.

Any student who dabbles in illegal gunsmithing knows that with 3D printing technology becoming more mature, it isn't too difficult to manufacture the outline of a gun if you have the blueprints.

Especially for a pistol like the Glock 17, which has relatively few parts; the frame, magazine body, follower, and slide can all be made of plastic.

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The truly difficult parts are the barrel, springs, firing pin, ammunition, propellant, and primer.

Yuan Zhixia treated scholarships like food and water, and she occasionally traded virtual currencies online. She had saved up a significant amount of money by the time she started high school and eventually convinced her parents to let her buy the standalone garage under their apartment building.

She spent her money renovating the garage, installing soundproofing panels, and purchasing a small CNC machine, a 3D plastic printer, a 3D metal printer, and a series of chemical apparatuses.

After making those preparations, she used an industrial-grade printer to create the frame, magazine body, and trigger mechanism, using engineering plastics with strength comparable to injection-molded parts.

She then used the CNC machine to turn the barrel.

Some of the springs, the firing pin, and the casings were acquired through the all-powerful Taobao—casings aren't contraband; one can grab handfuls of them at any legal shooting range.

For propellant, she used a single-base gunpowder she formulated herself—nitrocellulose mixed with a stabilizer—which burned relatively slowly and steadily, ensuring sufficient chamber pressure without being so high that the barrel would explode.

(Fireworks powder burns too quickly; trying to fill a cartridge with it would almost certainly cause an explosion.)

As for the primer, Yuan Zhixia used mercury fulminate, which she also synthesized herself from mercury and nitric acid. Modern ammunition primers usually use non-corrosive tetrazene, antimony sulfide, or potassium chlorate, but considering the difficulty and the noise of synthesis, she chose the corrosive mercury fulminate. It would suffice.

With all that done, the final step was reloading the ammunition—a simple task if you have the professional equipment. Abroad, hand-loaded ammunition is often more accurate than factory-made because the charge can be precisely controlled, and it’s cheaper to boot.

Of course, manufacturing firearms and ammunition privately is absolutely illegal and must be kept in the shadows.

She had to watch her neighbors' schedules to ensure the noise from the machine tools wouldn't lead to reports to the property management.

She had to be extremely careful in handling various chemicals, fearing that any leaking odors would attract the police.

Even after the pistol and ammunition were finished, she had to keep them disassembled, scattered throughout her schoolbag to disguise them as toy gun parts. She never dared to take the subway while carrying them.

Going to such extreme lengths—purely from a self-defense perspective—might seem a bit excessive.

Stun guns, pepper spray, and alarm buzzers should be enough to ward off criminals.

If push came to shove, specially modified crossbows, air guns, nail guns, or tasers would have enough power to take down large animals and serve as effective deterrents.

And if caught, the penalties would be much lighter than for manufacturing a real firearm.

*Click, click, click, click.*

Yuan Zhixia rapidly loaded the rounds using a speedloader, her lips pressed tightly together.

The reason she had invested so much energy and heart into possessing a gun was, to a large extent, a feeling of intense, gnawing unease.

Unlike other ignorant and oblivious people, as a genius, she had long since sensed the anomalies of this world through the subtle clues on the internet.

Beneath those aimless urban legends, some terrible truth lay hidden.

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