Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 32 Rift Operation

The crack in the abandoned primary school is located directly beneath the main beam of the school building.

Su Xinpei squatted outside the school wall, peering through the rusty iron railings. This primary school had been abandoned for at least five years; the weeds on the playground were waist-high, and all the doors and windows of the teaching building had been removed, leaving only a row of dark, empty frames. The main teaching building was a four-story brick-and-concrete structure. The slogans on the exterior wall had faded to just the two characters "Diligence," above which was a diagonal crack running the entire length of the wall—not a crack in the wall, but a crack in the air, identical to the crack in the factory area, only thinner, longer, and quieter. Purple light shone through the crack, coating the entire facade of the teaching building with a thin layer of cold light.

"The crack is located directly beneath the main beam, less than two meters from the east load-bearing wall. The rune sealing team needs at least twenty-five minutes to complete the standard sealing procedure—but the problem is those things." Ye Xinghe half-squatted beside him, pointing to the window in the first-floor corridor of the teaching building. The window glass was long gone, and one could see directly into the corridor through the iron railings. Something was moving in the corridor, not a person. There were about a dozen fragments of the Mirror Figure swimming in the corridor. They were slightly smaller than the juvenile that Su Xinpei had shattered at the pump station last time, but their numbers were denser. Occasionally, the fragments would touch each other, making a slight chiming sound. Purple light shone through the crack, coating each fragment with a fleeting reflection. These fragments had no fixed formation or uniform direction; they simply churned slowly in the corridor like disturbed water. But Su Xinpei noticed a detail: they did not approach the crack directly below the east end of the corridor, nor did they completely retreat from the stairwell at the west end—their range of movement was strictly confined to the corridor on the first floor of the teaching building, as if they were suppressed by the crack within an invisible circle, or as if they were temporarily surrounded by something.

"There are too many." Xia Liyuan squatted on the other side, holding the probe of the rune detector in his hand. "We can't clear them all by stabilizing the runes one by one. We need to find a way to gather them in one area to create a positional difference, and then concentrate on burning or suppressing them—but I didn't bring the cluster suppression module."

Ye Xinghe had already mentally planned a clearing sequence: Xia Liyuan and Li Dan would push towards the center from both the east and west sides simultaneously, forming a suppression zone ten meters below the rift, while the rune-sealing team would enter. This plan was a standard C-shaped encirclement and clearing maneuver, but it required perfect synchronization of the advance rates in each direction—if the west side advanced too slowly, the east side would be subjected to excessive firepower. Given the current density and irregular speed of the debris in the corridor, it would take at least thirty minutes to push through from both sides simultaneously. Adding the twenty-five minutes for the sealing team, the total time would likely exceed the remaining time during the rift's calm period.

Su Xinpei didn't participate in the discussion. He kept staring at the wall facing the front of the teaching building—at the crack above the word "Diligence" and the empty window directly below it. Then he stood up, walked a few dozen steps west along the school wall, stopped next to the old flagpole on the other side of the playground, and then stood there again. From this angle, he could see the other end of the corridor on the first floor of the teaching building. At the end of the corridor hung an old doorplate that hadn't been removed yet. The words on the doorplate were no longer legible, but above it was a row of rusty metal megaphones. It was the kind of old-fashioned school corridor broadcasting system—a metal megaphone hanging at the door of each classroom, the cables long since broken, but the megaphones still facing the corridor.

Su Xinpei stared at the metal megaphone for a long time. Then he remembered the shout he'd given outside the fire door. The man in the mirror feared directed emotions—not the sound itself, but the clear, directional mental impact contained within it. Last time he'd shattered one, and this time there were more in the corridor. But the corridor was a straight, enclosed space with a fire door at each end. If he could direct his voice from the west end of the corridor to the east, the sound would be repeatedly reflected by the walls, creating a brief, focused amplification.

"Team Leader Ye, leading these things to one place can shorten the clearing time." Su Xinpei squatted down, picked up a piece of broken brick, and drew a rectangle on the ground—a simplified diagram of the first-floor corridor of the teaching building. Then he drew an X at one end of the rectangle. "The crack is at the east end. If I yell directly into the corridor from the megaphone at the west end, the corridor will become a temporary amplification chamber. We don't need to attract all the debris, just enough to stun about two-thirds of the debris in the first half of the corridor for four to five seconds, causing them to briefly shrink to the area below the crack—the range is smaller than the C-shaped advance zone, but the density is just right for the King's Stability Rune to cover it all at once."

Ye Xinghe stared at the rectangular brick painting, remaining silent for a few seconds. "How confident are you?"

"Directional emotions can shatter the larvae—it briefly interfered with the perception of the mature organism when I attacked it." Su Xinpei placed the broken bricks on the spot representing the megaphone. "The corridor is about forty meters long, and the metal loudspeaker is about forty meters away from the crack at the far east end. The distance is within a reasonable range for the echo."

"We've never tried the operation you're describing, nor are we equipped with any sonic weapons—if we make a mistake, and you're standing alone at the west end of the corridor, all the debris will rush towards you, and we won't have time to save you."

"You guys are at the east end. I'm at the west end. Once the debris is stunned, you clear it from the east end toward the middle immediately. I only need a temporary barrier on my side—Wang Shu will embed a one-way rune barrier to the south of my position, leaving a half-meter gap. If it leaks through, I can handle it myself; it's not the first time." Su Xinpei said this in a very flat tone, the same tone he used when he helped Grandma Song fill out the preferential treatment application form and said, "I'll go to the community for you tomorrow."

Ye Xinghe glanced at him but didn't answer immediately. Xia Liyuan muttered beside him, "The corridor is long enough, and the terrain is advantageous to him." Wang Shu looked up from the monitor screen, adjusted his glasses, and said two words: "Feasible." Ye Xinghe unfolded the folded tactical map again, scanned it for a few seconds, and then nodded. "The plan is adjusted to: Su Xinpei will fire a directional sound wave from the loudspeaker at the west end, lasting five seconds. After the sound wave is fired, Xia Liyuan and Li Dan will immediately clear it from the east end towards the middle. Wang Shu will set up a one-way rune barrier behind the pillar on the south side of the west end of the corridor. After Su Xinpei fires, he will immediately retreat behind the barrier. I will be in charge of on-site command below the crack. Everyone, pay attention: after the fragments shrink, there will be a brief period of high-density recoil—don't hold back then, clear it all out, don't let it disperse back."

The operation begins.

Su Xinpei climbed over the wall and crept along the edge of the playground to the west stairwell of the teaching building. The stairwell was piled with broken desks and shards of glass. He squeezed through the gaps between the desks and climbed to the west end of the first-floor corridor. The corridor was dark, with purple light filtering through a crack at the east end, turning the entire corridor into a long, dark purple box. The fragments of the people in the mirrors were all floating in the middle of the corridor, their reflections flickering in the dark purple light, and there was a very faint smell of ozone in the air. He pressed his back against the west wall and tested the wooden backing with his knuckles—the backing was solid wood, cold and hard, reflecting sound well enough. The metal megaphone hung about an arm's length above his head, the horn facing the east end of the corridor. The paper basin inside was long since rotted away, but the metal horn itself was still intact, its shape complete, like a rusty funnel.

He compressed his breathing to twelve times per minute, drawing the air down from his throat to his dantian. The purple wax pill Master Chen had given him was mostly dissolved; he crushed the last small piece against his palate with his tongue, letting the extremely bitter liquid flow down his throat, easing the fatigue and soreness in his vocal cords. The fascial lines, honed by his advanced tendon training, twisted from the Yongquan point (Kidney 1) all the way to his diaphragm, and he sank them all into that tiny piece of charcoal in his dantian. Then he took a deep breath, the warmth circulating throughout his body rising from his dantian, flowing along the Ren meridian to his chest. He poured all the commands in his emotions into that breath—not fear, not anger, but "Get out!"

"All teachers and students—evacuate the playground immediately!"

The sound exploded from the tin loudspeaker. It wasn't a scream, not a roar, but a command. He had worked at the neighborhood committee for three years, negotiating with holdouts, arguing with drunkards, and slamming his fist on the table with unreasonable complainants—he knew how to deliver "Get out of here!" like a metal bar pounding on the ground. The sound wave surged eastward along the straight, cylindrical walls of the corridor, the wooden lining of the walls vibrating slightly under the sound pressure, and the tin loudspeaker overhead emitted a sharp, metallic shriek due to the reflection of the sound wave. The fleeting fragments of reflections in the corridor all stopped the moment the sound wave arrived—the fragments on their surfaces ceased to rotate, their outlines contracting neatly in the first second the sound wave swept over them, and then a reverse gust of air bounced back from the crack at the east end of the corridor, causing Su Xinpei's back to slam against the wooden lining. The fragments along the entire corridor were all dragged towards the area about ten meters below the crack at the east end, amplified by the directional sound waves and reflections from the walls. The fragments were compressed together, producing a dense rustling sound, and coalesced into a rapidly swirling mass of mirrors.

"Move!" Ye Xinghe ordered from the east end.

Xia Liyuan and Li Dan simultaneously entered from both sides of the east end. Xia Liyuan held a specially made incendiary injector, its nozzle aimed at the very center of the debris cluster, unleashing a short burst of flame—not standard fuel, but a "flashpoint solvent" formulated by the Special Meteorological Bureau's technical department. This solvent was far more efficient at burning subspace debris than conventional weaponry, producing a bluish-purple flame that emitted a sharp cracking sound from the debris's internal thermal expansion as it burned. Li Dan was responsible for clearing the edges of the debris cluster, using his gun blade in conjunction with a stabilizing net to push any attempting-to-separate debris back into the burning area. Wang Shu set up a one-way runic barrier behind Su Xinpei. The copper core contacts on the barrier's surface flickered slightly in the aftershocks of the sonic waves, absorbing several fragments that had been pushed to the west side of the corridor by the recoil—these fragments shattered upon impact with the barrier, falling to the ground and evaporating into grayish-white smoke. The fragments of the Mirror Man directly in front of them were almost unable to stand firm under the combined pressure of the sonic waves and the firepower from the east end. Disrupted by the sonic pressure, the fragments were unable to reassemble themselves, and each short burst of flame from the incendiary injector baked the outer shell of the fragments until it became even more brittle and thinner. Ye Xinghe stood below the crevice directing the attack, his bullets precisely striking the scattered fragments scattered on the periphery, shooting down every remnant that tried to break away from the group and counterattack westward.

From the moment Su Xinpei uttered his first word to the moment Li Dan nailed the last fragment to the remaining membrane below the crack, Ye Xinghe glanced at his tactical watch—eight minutes. This was more than half the time of the originally planned C-shaped clearing operation.

The rift sealing team immediately moved in. The Special Meteorology Bureau's rune masters constructed a circular stabilizing array around the rift on the ground where the fragments had completely evaporated, continuously suppressing the rift's step pulses using standard sealing procedures. The rift closed with a very low, muffled sound; the purple light at its edge flashed one last time before extinguishing. All the purple light in the teaching building dimmed, and the corridors sank back into darkness, with only the faded slogan "Diligence" remaining intact visible when an emergency flashlight swept across the wall.

Ye Xinghe stood at the point where the crack had closed, looking down at the ground—after the crack disappeared, only a very thin grayish-white line remained on the cement floor, like a pencil lightly drawn on paper. He holstered his pistol and said to his earpiece, "The crack at Beihe Elementary School has been sealed. The area is safe."

The action report was submitted by Ye Xinghe in the early hours of the following day. Su Xinpei didn't see the printed version until the afternoon of the next day, on the makeshift desk in the corridor of Settlement Point No. 7. The report stated: "Advisor Su Xinpei suggested and implemented a non-standard tactic centered on directional acoustic interference, successfully compressing a large number of mirror image fragments in the teaching building corridor below the cracks, buying valuable time for the containment operation. This tactic is feasible in confined spaces and is recommended as an alternative in similar environments." In the comments section at the end, Ye Xinghe wrote a small line in pen: "Advisor Su Xinpei acted unilaterally, and the result was positive."

Su Xinpei looked at the line of text and silently commented in his mind: "Decisive and arbitrary, it's a word that always gets blamed." Then he folded the report and put it into his training log, and continued to distribute breakfast to the elderly at the resettlement site.