How many people did Zhetian even have? They wanted to blow up Xishan and rob Qian Duoduo? They wouldn't even get past the front gate before being beaten to a pulp, their bones crushed by the security force. As it turned out, Zhetian didn't go to Xishan back then. They hit the oil base instead, the distant fire turning the horizon a bruised red.
Then they turned around and came for Jing Shu's family, planning to blow up the villa with the same ruthless efficiency, but she intercepted them on the road and wiped them out in one sweep.
So when Zhetian bragged about blowing up Xishan and robbing Qian Duoduo, it became a joke that Jing Shu quickly forgot, buried under the weight of daily survival. Until today. Lin Yi appeared, and the meticulous setup he had been building for so long only deepened her doubts, the complexity of the trap making her skin prickle. What was he really after?
After all, Lin Yi was the infamous Zero, the head behind more than a hundred forces in China.
If Zero himself had come to blow up the richest man's turf, then was Zero-Seven (Lin Qi), the Zhetian chief of Wu City, also here?
When the thunder of explosions rolled across the mountain, the sound vibrating through the rock and into her boots, she became certain. These people really were going to blow up the whole of Xishan, reducing the peaks to rubble.
Why was she so sure? It was because of the underground passages, those dark arteries she had just traversed.
When she and Su Mali reached a transfer point in the tunnels, she spotted clotted black smears and leftover marks on the ground, the dark stains looking like dried oil or old blood. She had wondered what they were. They looked like something that had been stored there for a long time, then transported away. Transported where?
When a main passage led directly to Qian Duoduo's largest, most extravagant fortress, she had her answer. They were going to blow up his home.
Looking back, everything lined up, the disparate pieces of the puzzle clicking into place.
The black residue had to be explosives, the fine dust coating the floor. They had dug the tunnels, then used an "elevator" to move the charges across. As for the sheer quantity, she remembered that Lin Yi had smuggled a massive lot of explosives back from America and then disappeared from sight. So that batch must have been stashed in the tunnels, hidden in the cool, dry dark.
Judging by the construction, those explosives had likely arrived last year. The tunnels had been in place for a while, the walls already showing signs of age.
But if all the conditions were ready, why not pick a time and detonate the fortress outright? Why drag Su Mali and the others into it?
What she couldn't figure out most was this: if Su Mali was a chess piece, then it would be enough to keep her confined. Why deliberately let them return? That was the real question, the one that made her pulse quicken.
"If you plan to blow it up, then blow it up. Why all this nonsense?" she fumed, her breath coming in short, frustrated huffs. The thought that she might be blasted to kingdom come in a moment made her knees go weak.
Hurry. She had to find the explosives.
If those tons of charges went off, they could flatten Xishan, erasing every trace of the villa.
Lin Yi played big. Damn big.
She was, in fact, wronging him a little. The original plan had been to detonate last year. But once Lin Yi learned that Qian Duoduo had built a turtle-shell air-defense fortress capable of withstanding ton-class bombs, he gave up on bombing Xishan and switched to the oil base instead.
Alone in the tunnel, she didn't need long to find another passage, her eyes scanning the rough walls. Its face was disguised with a layer of invisible floor tiles, a fake wall that looked perfectly solid. If she had not tapped with a hammer, she would never have found it.
Everywhere else sounded solid, the dull thud of stone on stone. Only this spot gave back a hollow thud-thud-thud.
"But this door won't open. It's iron," she whispered, her fingers tracing the cold, unyielding metal. If the explosives were on the other side, she had no time to waste. She took out a grenade she had taken from Zhetian, the metal heavy and cold in her palm.
She knew it might collapse the tunnel, but that was fine. If it caved in, she would dig through the dirt with her bare hands if she had to.
Her first time using a grenade, she was nervous, her palms slick with sweat. In the pitch-black corridor, she followed the instructions to the letter: twist off the cap, pierce the moisture-proof paper, pull the igniter ring. She stepped her right foot back one big step, chest up, head high. She stamped with her left foot, tightened her core, and snapped her wrist as she threw the device. Then she hit the floor, pressing her face against the grit.
"One, two, three. Boom!" The blast punched through the dark, a roar that deafened her. The whole tunnel shivered three times, dust and small pebbles raining down from the ceiling.
When the dust settled, the door was gone, replaced by a jagged hole. The corridor remained intact, the reinforced walls holding steady.
Thank Su Mali's blessed luck.
No, wait. A closer look showed the workmanship differed completely from the rough-dug sections. This was built with air-raid materials, the concrete smooth and gray. It was designed to resist blasts. Her grenade had only blown the door, shaking loose a little dust.
From here on, she felt she had truly entered Qian Duoduo's domain.
She pushed deeper into the new passage. The place opened up into a world of its own, the ceilings rising high above her head. She crouched, rubbed the floor with her fingers, and sniffed the air. The sharp tang of powder stung her nose, a bitter, chemical scent.
Following the passage, she realized how poverty limits imagination. From that stretch onward, everything from underground to the surface had been built with air-defense materials. If she had to describe it, it's a giant air-raid dome, a turtle shell made of meters-thick blast walls. The place was armed to the teeth. She could almost see Qian Duoduo building a house out of gold.
No wonder Lin Yi had never carried out his plan. To crack a fortress like this, anything less than dozens of tons would be embarrassing. Now she understood his approach. If the shell couldn't be cracked from outside, then smuggle the explosives inside and blow it from within.
Which meant she and Su Mali had just provided the opportunity he needed.
Jing Shu quickened her pace, the sound of her own breathing loud in the silent corridor. Then she saw detonators, their wires trailing like spiderwebs. And she knew them well.
In the fifth year of the apocalypse, when Wu City migrated south with the government, the plates of the earth had buckled and twisted. They met impossible terrain that had to be blasted flat, for vehicles and even for people.
She didn't hesitate. She swept all the detonators into her Rubik's Cube Space, the items vanishing instantly. No time to joke around. These things were too dangerous. Beneath them, a thick hose lay coiled on the ground, filled with a yellow paste. The hose ran straight toward the next chamber, snaking along the floor.
There was no mistaking it. TNT.
It's the cheapest, most widely used explosive in the world, good even for underwater blasting, with tremendous power. It was also the least sensitive of the lot, unaffected by heavy rain or immersion.
You could even shoot it and it wouldn't detonate. It needed a detonator to blow.