TNT melts at 81°C. Put it in a fire and it will not explode. Because it doesn't burn, heat only turns it into liquid so it can be cast into different shapes.
Explosion is not about burning. It is about producing a massive volume of gas. Any explosive that suddenly generates enough gas will blow, the way an overfilled tire bursts.
A shockwave sets it off. Two detonators are enough to trigger it.
Jing Shu's heart pounded. "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. Don't ask why. Back then, to earn a bowl of food, she took any dangerous job or else she would starve. She knew exactly how deadly TNT was. She had felt blasts tear the air beside her ears. One mistake and you were 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.
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, sweeping every stick of it into the Rubik's Cube Space. She had not 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. 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 was a chain detonation.
That is 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.
"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 was the fish in the pot, set to be stewed by the blast. Lin Yi would never have planted only one cache. If it were just this, it would not justify digging more than ten kilometers of tunnel.
With each rolling boom outside, Jing Shu knew there had to be more.
Time was running out. She ran harder. 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 was not just blowing one spot. He meant to level all of Xishan.
Also, how big was Qian Duoduo's place?
The rumble swelled. The timing told her the wave of firing detonators was about to reach this sector. She had to move faster. She could almost hear the skitter of the igniters coming alive.
"Too late. The detonators were live. Run back."
Jing Shu valued her life. She ran like a madwoman. 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 would not catch her.
Boom.
Bzzzz.
The energy slapped her into a wall. The sound knocked out her hearing for a heartbeat, leaving a ringing hum. Luckily this was only the tail of the shock. She coughed, half buried under rubble.
Her body felt different. Stronger, tougher. It hurt like hell and she would bruise, but there was 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. 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, "Plan B failed. Cause: four segments of explosive missing. Suspect exposure. Explosives stolen. Requesting orders."
A faint voice crackled from her mic. "Execute Plan C. Force-detonate the central charges."
The woman's face did not change, yet tears slipped from her eyes. 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, then shook the dust from her shoulders and trailed far behind.
Since the upgrade, the Rubik's Cube Space had become truly powerful. The snakes were 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. Behind a wall of mirrors was a hidden compartment. The sight chilled her. Qian Duoduo's estate was 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. Jing Shu was not worried about being seen. In those sewer-black tunnels, even infrared would struggle to catch her.
The real problem was 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 was, everyone would be launched into the sky. The outside was still booming. The bombardment clearly was not over.
"Arrived at central control. Requesting instructions."
The voice on the mic was icy. "Fire the detonators."
"Yes, my boss."
The woman began the sequence.
Jing Shu sprinted, furious with herself for not sticking closer. This woman was going to die. She had not expected a person to obey to this extent. Told to kill herself, and she did not even flinch? No, she had cried earlier. Useless. Tears without resistance.
Jing Shu cursed under her breath. Whether her spatial ability was exposed no longer mattered. If she was one second late, she would be skyward with the rest.