They arrived at Zhang Yi's door under umbrellas, but Zhanlong Security had installed an unusual number of pinhole cameras on this floor—every angle of the corridor was being watched.
When the group reached the door, Zhang Yi watched the feed and saw someone produce several shiny metal tools and start probing at the lock. "Lockpicking?" he muttered.
He raised an eyebrow but didn't panic. If his door could be picked open that easily, Zhanlong's reputation would be a joke. This door wasn't ordinary: it was world-class security, closer to a bank vault than an apartment entrance, with five layers of defenses. Even a top-tier locksmith would struggle to defeat the outer lock, and a heavy internal bar made brute force futile.
What made his setup truly uncompromising was a simpler trick: a 10-centimeter steel rod braced from the inside across the frame—no human could push it through without a machine. And because Zhang Yi expected forced entry, he had prepared an extra nasty surprise.
Watching them on his TV, Zhang Yi tapped his safe-house control app. Almost at once a massive current surged through the security door.
Lu Tao—focused on the lock—screamed as the electric shock grabbed him. The others scrambled back, horrified. "Help… help me!" His face contorted, muscles seized; the current locked him like a vice.
Fang Yuqing, Zhou Peng and the rest stared in disbelief. Smoke rose where Lu Tao stood; the stench of burning fabric and flesh filled the corridor.
Then Lu Tao collapsed. His clothes were charred to tatters, skin blackened and carbonized. He was dead.
The scream that rose from the group was a high, animal sound. Witnessing death up close turned bravado into raw panic.
Inside, Zhang Yi's mouth curved—satisfaction flickered across his features. They'd tried to trap him; they'd chosen the wrong target. "Who do they have to blame?" he thought. "They came for me—they deserved what they got."
Outside, Wang Min and the others went cold. Their plan had collapsed into a smoking corpse. Sun Zhichao, Lu Tao's friend, went berserk with grief and rage. He grabbed an iron shovel and slammed it against Zhang Yi's door. The pounding echoed down the stairwell, but the massive alloy door barely flexed; only the paint flaked away to reveal thicker metal beneath.
Zhang Yi strolled to the door, hands in his pockets, and called through with a mocking tilt to his voice: "Trying to break my door? Aren't you asking for death?" He sighed theatrically. "Isn't being alive good enough?"
The people outside were shaken, angry, and ashamed. Wang Min shouted, "We only wanted to negotiate—how could you kill someone? You're worse than Chen Zhenghao! You're a murderer!"
A woman's voice reached him—pleading, indignant. Zhang Yi realized these weren't Chen Zhenghao's thugs at all but his neighbors: Fang Yuqing, Lin Caining, and a handful of others, the very people who knew about his home and its comforts.
His expression chilled. "Stop pretending," he spat. "You came to break in and steal my shelter—you deserved to die."
Sun Zhichao, trying to salvage the situation, forced himself calm. "Zhang Yi, we mean no harm. We only want to talk. You killed our brother Lu Tao without warning—won't you at least explain?"
Zhang Yi laughed, an unkind, loud sound. "Talk? You turn up uninvited, try to pry open my door, and expect a friendly chat? After the lock's open, you'd throw me out or worse, then move into the house I prepared. Is that what you call 'talk'?"
Huddled together, the intruders whispered furiously. Ge Jialiang—the most timid among them—asked in a small voice, "What now? Lu Tao's dead and no one can pick the lock. Should we retreat? If Chen Zhenghao hears about this, he could come up the stairs!"
Sun Zhichao snapped back, throat tight with fury, "What are you scared of? We're on the twenty-fourth floor—Chen Zhenghao will go after lower floors first." But the bravado rang hollow. They'd miscalculated badly. Zhang Yi had not been bluffing.
Zhang Yi, already loading his handgun and picking up a crossbow, felt the hunt begin. Through his surveillance he could see everything—the whispers, the fear, the plotting. Outside, their faces were pale in the corridor light; inside, he had the advantage of distance, defense, and a decision no one in the building could force him to change.