Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 31 Emergency Mobilization

The martial law order was officially issued at 5:30 a.m. Su Xinpei stood by the horizontal bar near the playground at resettlement site number seven, watching Old Sun unload the last batch of compressed biscuits from the truck. Old Sun had a bad back; he had to lean against the truck bed to catch his breath after carrying just two boxes. Su Xinpei took the delivery slip from him and told him to sit in the corridor to check the inventory list, while he carried the remaining boxes of supplies into the storage room. After unloading the last box of bottled water, he leaned against a pillar in the corridor to catch his breath, then pulled a micro-communication chip from his pocket and attached it behind his ear.

Ye Xinghe's voice, like a taut steel wire, came through the earpiece, cutting straight to the coordinates: "The Special Meteorological Bureau has detected seven subspace rifts expanding simultaneously. Rift No. 12 in the Beihe Industrial Zone has been sealed, but three of the remaining six rifts are located in densely populated residential areas—the tenement buildings on the east side of the old Beihe district, the back street of the vegetable market, and the old water pumping station less than 800 meters northeast of Resettlement Site No. 7." He paused. "If these three fall simultaneously, I have no way of estimating the casualties. The Special Meteorological Bureau is severely understaffed; all external consultants have been required to participate in the sealing operation. Consultant Su, your assigned area is Resettlement Site No. 7 and its surroundings. Coordinate the evacuation efforts and provide on-site technical support to the field teams if necessary."

Su Xinpei clutched his ear, not answering immediately. He unconsciously scratched a shallow mark on a pillar in the corridor with his fingernail—eight hundred meters. Every day, he cycled from his apartment to the neighborhood office, the first intersection he passed being the old water pump station. Next to the pump station was a row of old-style bungalows, housing at least a dozen retired workers. He had personally reviewed the low-income assistance applications for two of them last month. He remembered one of the elderly women, Grandma Song; he had just helped her fill out her preferential treatment allowance application form a few days ago. If the pump station cracked, that row of bungalows would be engulfed by the low-temperature field of the crack within minutes, and the people inside wouldn't have time to escape.

"Received. There are currently over two hundred people at my shelter, six in total including myself. Evacuation will take time, so I'll first implement internal lockdown and group the people, then set up observation posts around the shelter." He switched his earpiece to standby mode, turned, and walked into the teaching building. People on the makeshift beds in the corridor were still asleep—some were snoring softly, and a child was turning over in their sleep. He found Lao Sun and the other four social workers on night shift, and they held a brief meeting in the stairwell at the end of the corridor to divide the tasks: Lao Sun would be responsible for material allocation and external communication; two social workers would be responsible for grouping and registering all the sheltered people by floor, prioritizing the elderly, children, and those with mobility issues; the other two social workers would check the locks and doors of all entrances and exits of the teaching building, and use tape to create a grid pattern on the glass to prevent cracking. He himself would be responsible for perimeter security and communication with the Special Weather Bureau.

After finishing his work, Su Xinpei stood for a moment at the door of the easternmost classroom on the first floor of the teaching building. This was the room he had arranged for Uncle Zhou's family during the day; Uncle Zhou's wife was sleeping on a folding bed in the corner of the classroom, holding their child. The child was sleeping soundly, and he could see the rise and fall of the child's breath between his eyebrows from the doorway. He remembered what Uncle Zhou had said on the phone—"He said there was someone under the bed." There really was someone on the other side of the crack; it wasn't a hallucination.

He gently closed the classroom door and walked to the old playground outside the main gate of the resettlement site. Beyond the eastern wall of the playground was the alley lined with old poplar trees; turning north at the end of the alley led to the old water pump station. He stopped at the edge of the playground, focused his energy into his dantian, and released his qi sensation. Since entering the initial stage of skin refinement, his perception range was wider than a few months ago. He could feel the steady chill in the alley to the east coming from the shadows of the old poplar trees and the ventilation openings between the brick walls, rather than the pulsating cold of cracks. But further north beyond that alley, his perception was suddenly cut off by something—not emptiness, but a tangible obscuring. That area felt like it was sealed by an extremely thin membrane in his qi sensation; on the other side of the membrane, something was wriggling very slowly, at a frequency so low it was almost imperceptible, but the temperature was wrong. This was the same tactile sensation he had experienced in the incubation zone in the factory area last time, only this time it was closer to him, so close that he could hear the leaves of the old poplar trees outside the east wall of the playground suddenly stop falling.

He regained his composure and pulled a communication chip from his coat pocket. "Team Leader Ye, the air pressure in the direction of the pumping station has dropped, and the crack may have entered the early stage of step expansion. The shelter is still operational, but evacuation will take time."

Ye Xinghe paused in the earphone. "Received. I'm heading to the back street of the vegetable market. The old Beihe district tenement building area—wait." His voice was suddenly interrupted by something, followed by an extremely piercing metallic scraping sound in the background, then hurried footsteps and Xia Liyuan's angry roar. A few seconds later, Ye Xinghe's voice came back: "A mature mirror image has been spotted outside the tenement building. I will send Wang Shu to reinforce the pumping station—he is a runemaster, and you have the stabilizing rune plate and self-encoded anti-waveform suppression rune that he repaired last time. Work with him to stabilize the crack in the pumping station and try to delay it until morning."

"Received." Su Xinpei switched the chip to a direct connection channel with Wang Shu, told him his location at the resettlement point, then pushed open the iron gate by the playground and walked along the alley towards the pumping station. The alley was dark, and the lights from the elevated railway tracks in the central urban area were blocked by the dense foliage of the old poplar trees, leaving only a few streaks of light. His canvas shoes trod on the blue brick ground, each step extremely light and steady. The charcoal in his abdomen was firmly settling below his Guanyuan acupoint, and the purple wax pill given to him by Master Chen was still slowly releasing its bitter taste under his tongue, locking his heart rate below the peak of his tendon-strengthening stage. He could feel the crease on his left rib slightly itchy—not a warning, but more like the unease of being recognized by something far away. He didn't press it with his hand.

The pumping station was at the end of the alley. He stopped. The pumping station's iron gate was closed—but a crack had appeared in it. Not the gate itself, but the air. A purple crack, about half a meter long, hovered a meter in front of the gate, its edges slowly undulating, exactly like the pre-expansion rhythm he had seen in the factory workshops. Below the crack, a very thin, dark purple, translucent membrane covered the concrete floor, beneath which the outlines of two larvae pulsed. A hatching zone—smaller than the large one he had seen in the factory area, but too close to the residential area. The doors of the first row of houses in the bungalow district were only a few steps from this hatching zone.

Su Xinpei didn't approach rashly. He walked around the pump station's perimeter wall to the south side, squatted down, and took out a rune-carving knife and a titanium alloy rune plate from his waist pouch. This rune plate was the fourth-type anti-waveform suppression rune that Wang Shu had recarved for him at the Special Phenomenon Bureau workshop last time. It could be reused eight times, and he still had six uses left. He used the carving knife to align the copper core contacts on the edge of the rune plate, inserted it into the cement crack between the pump station wall and the bungalow area, and then took out the spare stabilizing rune plate from his other pocket. Just as he pressed the rune plate down, the ground beneath his feet trembled slightly. He quickly looked down—his eardrums detected the continuous low-pressure vibration from deep underground before his body, consistent with the behavior before the workshop cracks stepped up. He suppressed his breathing to five or six times per minute, steadied his center of gravity, and quickly activated his ear meridian: "Wang Shu, what's the situation?"

The voice in the earpiece wasn't Wang Shu's, it was Zhou Cheng's. Zhou Cheng's voice was extremely fast, accompanied by rapid keystrokes and intermittent call signals from the other side of the field channel, overlapping: "Advisor Su, the crack in the direction of the pumping station has entered the countdown to step expansion—wait a moment." The keystrokes stopped, and it was from the direction of Master Chen's old pharmacy; Old Tie Tou's voice switched in from another channel. It wasn't addressed to Su Xinpei, but was a call to the entire channel: "Leave the large crack at the North District factory to me."

The line is broken.

Su Xinpei stopped holding the carving knife. He watched the purple light in the crack before him slowly widen, his palms sweating, but the talisman in his hand remained perfectly still. He didn't stand up and run towards the factory area, nor did he repeatedly call out to his ear. He switched the carving knife to his left hand, his right hand still pressing on the talisman, and squatted quietly for a few seconds under the pump station wall, head bowed. He remembered the purplish-black threads in Old Iron Head's forearm wound when he bandaged it—the cold light lingering at the edge of the sealed crack slowly seeping through the gauze. Old Iron Head had crushed those three lords with sheer strength, then sat on the machine base, wrapping his left forearm with a torn shirt sleeve. Now he had called on himself again, to shoulder the biggest crack alone.

"Damn it." He cursed inwardly, then crushed the purple wax pill Chen had given him against his palate with his tongue, the extremely bitter liquid flowing down his throat and into his stomach. Zhou Cheng's urgent message was quick and brief: "The water pump station's crack has entered a critical phase; please take immediate action on the perimeter."

Su Xinpei stood up. He activated the stabilizing talisman plate. The copper core contacts on the plate's surface lit up briefly when the first wave of crack pulses struck—in the instant the pulses were weakened by the talisman array, he heard an extremely faint, wet, frictional sound, nowhere to be found in his aura, softer than the person in the mirror, less concentrated than anything in his memory. Then he pressed the Type IV anti-waveform suppression talisman onto the right side of the stabilizing talisman plate, pulled out another spare talisman plate from his pouch, and used a carving knife to carve a minimalist directional rejection talisman on the back of the plate. The knife tip flipped across the alloy surface without any pause. He didn't check if the panel showed any experience points, but when the copper core of the Type IV talisman plate was activated three times in succession by his fingertips, he knew that Wang Shu's words were true—the self-encoded future is not in the brain, but in the hands.