In post-apocalyptic survival, rope was particularly important.
The teacher had collected many ropes and stored them in the building. She was a person of great foresight and vision. When Xia was young, she didn’t realize it, but as she grew up, she came to understand how remarkable a Teacher was. She discovered that the Teacher had considered and arranged everything. During the most chaotic and difficult days, she had dragged young Xia along, gradually collecting supplies and transforming Building 11 of Meihua Estate into a solid fortress.
Finally, she came to rest eternally beneath the green lawn below, and though the girl was alone, she remained well protected.
Xia slung two bundles of green nylon rope over her shoulders—one 8 millimeters in diameter, the other 10 millimeters, both very sturdy—then went downstairs.
Setting traps was also a science. Animals were smarter than humans thought; never underestimating other creatures’ intelligence was one of Teacher’s survival principles.
Xia didn’t know exactly what kind of uninvited guest had invaded Meihua Estate. It could be a jackal, a leopard, or even a brown bear—anyway, something very dangerous. Meihua Estate wasn’t a particularly good habitat; since Teacher was still alive, they had regularly maintained the community’s environment. Due to human activity, herbivores stayed away, so large predators rarely came to the community.
Xia still remembered when she first noticed that thing—it was during her last fishing trip when something followed her home at night.
Had it entered the community that night?
Or had it been lurking there even before?
Meihua Estate bordered the wide Musu Yuan Street to the west, Haiyue Garden Community to the north, Houbiao Camp Road to the south, and China Electronics Technology Group Corporation’s 28th Research Institute dormitories to the east. This meant its western and southern sides were cut off by major roads, while the northern and eastern sides connected with other residential areas. In this era, residential communities had long been completely covered by vegetation, no different from jungles, so dangerous creatures might have come from Purple Mountain in the northwest.
The girl sat on the first-floor stairs of Building 11, humming softly, her long legs stretched out together, one hand holding a sharp dagger, the other gripping a small piece of round wood.
She was whittling the wood.
Xia pushed the back of the knife with her left thumb, peeling off wood shavings piece by piece—skilled carpentry work that she’d done many times before. She was carving a square notch into this palm-sized round wood.
She was making a trigger for the trap.
The teacher had said all traps could be simplified into three parts: power, traction, and trigger.
The trigger was the pivotal mechanism that kept the trap balanced and still when there was no prey, and activated the trap when prey touched it. It was the core mechanism of the trap, absolutely crucial.
The most common and simple trigger consisted of two interlocking hooks, like how two human hands could hook together with four fingers bent. These two hooks could be made from wood.
Two similarly sized wood blocks were carved into hooks with a knife.
The girl spent half an hour hollowing out square notches in the center of both wood blocks, making them both concave. Then she tried hooking them together and pulled hard.
Very solid.
After some more polishing and refinement, she squinted against the light to examine them.
The trigger was complete!
One-third of the trap was finished. Among the three essential elements, the trigger needed to be handmade, while traction relied on sturdy nylon rope. The rope connected all components of the trap and transmitted force.
Finally, there was power.
Power sources could be natural, and the easiest to obtain was trees.
Xia wrapped herself thoroughly in a plastic raincoat, wearing a hood and gloves, with rubber rain boots on her feet. This was to prevent her scent from lingering. Some animals had keen senses of smell; if they detected human scent on the trap, they would remain alert and wouldn’t fall for it.
The girl crawled into the underbrush, moving deeper while keeping her head down, looking for signs of animal movement.
Mottled residential buildings stood on both sides, with emerald vines cascading from their rooftops, covering the dark windows.
These high-rises had been uninhabited for over a decade. A building left vacant for ten or twenty years in normal society versus one in an uninhabited environment produced drastically different results—in normal society, there were no places both completely devoid of human presence yet full of life. Evacuated Chornobyl might meet the first condition, but Pripyat in northern Ukraine, located above 50 degrees north latitude, had a dry and cold climate. The post-apocalyptic Meihua Estate was more like dropping a building into the center of the Amazon rainforest—completely deserted, isolated from the world, and left vacant for twenty years.
Most buildings here were uninhabitable now. The humid climate and plant erosion had caused cracks in the exterior walls; some residential buildings were severely cracked, with deep fissures visibly running from top to bottom.
The girl emerged from the undergrowth onto the road.
Except for the asphalt-paved roads, every other place in the community was covered in dense, wildly growing weeds.
The former community landscaping had become lush vegetation—not just grass, but shrubs, vines, and newly grown trees, all tangled together impenetrably like a thick wall, with the old residential buildings sitting behind it.
The better landscaped a community had been, the faster nature reclaimed it. Only paved surfaces with tiles or asphalt still held out stubbornly.
As long as they hadn’t broken apart, plant seeds couldn’t germinate there. Without plants, it wasn’t yet nature’s territory. All paved surfaces in this world—tiled, asphalted, weed-free hardened roads—were Xia’s territory. She and nature maintained their separate domains.
The girl found a suitable tree.
It grew in the roadside brush, possibly a sawtooth oak, about one story tall, with a trunk as thick as a bowl, growing straight and becoming thinner toward the top.
Trees as a power source for traps provided elasticity, or elastic potential energy. This was the easiest energy to obtain and utilize. Trees and bamboo both worked—they were everywhere and could store energy when bent. Just had to make sure the tree wasn’t too thick or too thin—too thick couldn’t be bent, too thin would snap.
Xia threw her backpack on the ground, held the knife between her teeth, jumped up forcefully, clamped her legs tightly around the trunk, and nimbly climbed up like a monkey. She drew out the knife and cut away all the excess branches one by one, leaving only the main trunk in the middle.
She then grabbed the pointed top of the trunk, and lightly jumped down, pulling the treetop to the ground, and using her body weight to bend the tree.
The young, water-rich sawtooth oak was extremely flexible. The originally straight trunk was bent by the girl into an ‘n’ shape, bowing low without breaking.
She released her grip, and the trunk snapped back violently.
Perfect, very suitable.
Xia clapped her hands, very satisfied. This tree was ideal as the power source for the trap.
She would deal with that dangerous visitor.
The best way would be to hang it from the treetop.