TNT melts at 81°C. Put it in a fire and it won't explode. Because it doesn't burn, heat only turns it into liquid so it can be cast into different shapes; it becomes a waxy, viscous pool that hardens as it cools.
Explosion isn't about burning. It's about producing a massive volume of gas. Any explosive that suddenly generates enough gas will blow, the way an overfilled tire bursts under too much pressure.
A shockwave sets it off. Two detonators are enough to trigger it.
Jing Shu's heart pounded, the rapid thrumming vibrating against her ribs. "Damn, good thing I found this early. If these several tons had gone off, the whole mountain would be flattened."
She had handled detonator work before. Do not ask why. Back then, to earn a bowl of food, she took any dangerous job or else she would starve, her stomach a constant, hollow pit of desperation. She knew exactly how deadly TNT was. She had felt blasts tear the air beside her ears, the sudden pressure slamming into her skull and leaving her gasping. One mistake and you're done.
In those years, to blow the top off a small hill, all it took was a bundle of charges the size of a few men's arm span and a detonator. The peak went flat, turned into a rain of gravel and dust.
To put it plainly, a five-story commercial building could be obliterated with just 800 kg.
And what lay piled on the ground here, by her estimate, was about two tons.
"What a sin. Truly a sin," Jing Shu muttered as she moved, her hands working in a blur as she swept every stick of it into the Rubik's Cube Space. She hadn't even examined the newly upgraded space, yet the first thing it swallowed was a mountain of explosives.
Her shoulders finally loosened. Safe now, right?
At that exact moment, the world outside began to rumble. The whole building shivered, the thick concrete floor vibrating beneath her boots. This was no drizzle of noise like before. This was real thunder. By the sound alone, based on two years of reading explosions by ear, it's a chain detonation.
That's how you save charges and maximize power over a huge area: a starter detonator triggers the next, and the next, every site seeded with charges like a field of lethal grain.
"Oh no, there's more." Jing Shu gritted her teeth and sprinted, not toward the exit but deeper into the enormous air-defense shell.
She is the fish in the pot, set to be stewed by the blast. Lin Yi would never have planted only one cache. If it are just this, it wouldn't justify digging more than ten kilometers of tunnel.
With each rolling boom outside, Jing Shu knew there had to be more.
Time's running out. She ran harder, her lungs beginning to burn with the cold, damp air. In a section like an underground storm drain, she found another run of TNT and swept all of it into the space.
Blast after blast thudded through the walls, and her heart went cold. How many tons had Lin Yi laid? He wasn't just blowing one spot. He meant to level all of Xishan.
Also, how big is Qian Duoduo's place?
The rumble swelled. The timing told her the wave of firing detonators is about to reach this sector. She had to move faster. She could almost hear the skitter of the igniters coming alive in the dark corners.
"Too late. The detonators are live. Run back."
Jing Shu valued her life. She ran like a madwoman, her shadow flickering against the rough walls. The TNT placements had been calculated with surgical care. Each cluster would flatten its assigned zone. If she stayed ahead of the wave, the bombs wouldn't catch her.
Boom.
Bzzzz.
The energy slapped her into a wall, the force of the air hitting her like a physical hand. The sound knocked out her hearing for a heartbeat, leaving a ringing hum that filled the silence. Luckily this is only the tail of the shock. She coughed, half buried under rubble, the dust coating her tongue.
Her body felt different. Stronger, tougher. It hurt like hell and she would bruise, but there's no internal damage and no broken skin. Good. The breakthrough in the Rubik's Cube Space had lifted her physique a tier as well.
Footsteps. Jing Shu pressed into the darkness of the wall, hidden beneath the debris and twisted rebar. A woman in tight black clothes with a ponytail stepped into view.
The woman swept a flashlight across the wreckage, saw only rubble, then turned back and spoke aloud into her mic, "Plan B failed. Cause: four segments of explosive missing. Suspect exposure. Explosives stolen. Requesting orders."
A faint voice crackled from her mic, sounding tinny and sharp. "Execute Plan C. Force-detonate the central charges."
The woman's face didn't change, her features frozen in a grim mask, yet tears slipped from her eyes and tracked through the dust on her cheeks. Her voice stayed mechanical, like a puppet. "Received, my boss."
Jing Shu frowned. "What was this? Force-detonate the central charges?" That sounded nasty. She released two snakes to shadow the woman up ahead, the reptiles slithering silently over the stone, then she shook the dust from her shoulders and trailed far behind.
Since the upgrade, the Rubik's Cube Space had become truly powerful. The snakes are her eyes and scouts. She could control them at range without fear of discovery.
She followed the ponytail through the blasted tunnel for three minutes to a hall that looked like a conference room, the luxury of the heavy furniture out of place in the gloom. Behind a wall of mirrors was a hidden compartment. The sight chilled her. Qian Duoduo's estate is so vast that losing a dozen square meters would go unnoticed. A four to five hundred-meter conference hall, and the mirror wall moved forward two meters. Who would detect that?
The compartment held a bank of monitors covering key points, their screens glowing with static and flickering images. Jing Shu wasn't worried about being seen. In those sewer-black tunnels, even infrared would struggle to catch her.
The real problem is the entire room stacked with explosives. What sat here matched everything she had collected all day. If this lot went off, no matter how big Qian Duoduo's house is, everyone would be launched into the sky. The outside is still booming. The bombardment clearly wasn't over.
"Arrived at central control. Requesting instructions."
The voice on the mic is icy. "Fire the detonators."
"Yes, my boss."
The woman began the sequence, her fingers dancing over the controls.
Jing Shu sprinted, furious with herself for not sticking closer. This woman is going to die. She hadn't expected a person to obey to this extent. Told to kill herself, and she didn't even flinch? No, she had cried earlier. Useless. Tears without resistance.
She cursed under her breath. Whether her spatial ability is exposed no longer mattered. If she is one second late, she would be skyward with the rest.