Crucible of Solitude (17)
Kyung-tae and his team had prepared the demolition with flawless speed and precision. No way to know the exact outcome until it blew, but I had no doubts about failure. Even if the blast exceeded expectations, it would only moderately damage the adjacent factories. The factory owners under the communist nobles' protection would count themselves lucky for such light losses.
Kyung-tae returned and handed me the wireless detonator, checking his watch as he reported.
“Set it to go off in 9 minutes 17 seconds even without a signal, hyungnim.”
Insurance against a failed signal or faulty detonator. Sweat soaked the napes of Kyung-tae and his men's necks. I nodded in approval.
“Good work. Your skills are impressive.”
“Nah, it was nothing.”
Completing the job in this massive warehouse in under ten minutes was remarkable. Not just rigging it to blow— they'd cleared the improvised firewalls the peasant workers had slapped together and calibrated the charges precisely. Even if I'd made them memorize tables of blast radii by explosive type, applying that in the field was another level entirely.
Now it was time to decapitate the 30,000 peasant workers.
Exiting the bomb warehouse through the underground passage with my men, I triggered the detonator the moment we surfaced.
BOOM!RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!
The explosion resonated through my feet, hips, spine, skull, and teeth. Thunderous roars like dozens of lightning bolts in succession obliterated every other sound on the surface. The night sky's underbelly near the ground turned ashen with gunsmoke, heating like molten iron. At last, the fully ripened chaos burst free from disorder.
The peasant workers' ranks collapsed instantly. They'd been unnerved since my fake blast, gripped by anxiety and terror as survivors shouted, “The bomb warehouse is on fire!” My predicted hellscape unfolded exactly: a tableau of mass crushing where men trampled men to death.
Even better, the stockpiled explosives were all directional bombs—EFPs.
KABOOM!BOOM!
With each new fireball erupting from the half-collapsed warehouse, dozens of projectiles launched. Each one, aimed right, could pierce six or seven men at once. Even the shrapnel fragments carried enough kinetic energy to shred flesh. Shockwaves set off car alarms in a hysterical chorus, adding apocalyptic wails to the blood-red night.
Blood and guts sprayed everywhere, invisible whips lashing survivors into frenzy. The 30,000-strong infinite competition intensified: tramplers won, trampled lost. The fallen had skin torn, muscles stripped in seconds. By eye, half their body weight seemed to vanish into countless bloody footprints.
Sometimes bombs themselves flew through the overpressure, intact. The black powder inside didn't ignite on impact, but ignorant peasant workers panicked as if they would any second. Circles cleared around falling bombs, rings of trampled corpses forming at the distorted edges.
Awakened ability users outlasted ordinary laborers. A grand arena of the law of the jungle.
“It's too dangerous to go out now.”
Not my men's voices— one of the ability users guarding the peasant leadership. The brains who'd issued orders remotely from safety were finally abandoning this “arsenal of the revolution” and crawling out.
One leader, rebuffed by his guards, tore at his hair and groaned.
“Damn it! What the hell is happening?!”
They had no clue we lurked in these shadows. I'd come to grab them, but they'd come to us— convenient.
I'd pegged them as leadership when the emergency response team arrived. The strongest mana fields among the peasant ability users clustered in one dorm, with non-ability users mixed in upstairs, calmly holding position amid the chaos. Obvious.
The augmented reality glasses from Chief Panhai Shan failed to ID any leaders' faces. But escorts glowed with red outlines. Proof the brass had rigorously avoided exposure, always sending underlings.
I ripped off the useless terminal and crushed it in my fist. The crunch stayed trapped in my sound-absorbing field.
Their anxious chatter continued.
“We need to alert the Black Sea Party. Any way to do it?”
A cadre gnawed his nails, mumbling. An ability user shook his head.
“No. Only way is to reach a cell zone.”
“This feels all wrong. Gotta be the Public Security bastards' doing...!”
No escaping across open ground with delayed-fuse EFPs firing nonstop. I watched silently, mapping their hierarchy. Interrogations start there— trained ones always try to feed false chains of command first. Buys time, and sometimes that sliver decides outcomes.
Hoped for new leads too, but that was greedy.
Hierarchy mapped, I signaled Kyung-tae: strike.
The cadres, overwhelmed in the explosive night and mourning the peasant slaughter, offered no real resistance. Captured wholesale. Escorts thrashed futilely— outmatched in power, numbers, and ambushed. No chance to hold out.
I stepped into the subdued site; the kneelers grasped our pecking order instantly. Their “boss,” jaw smashed during restraint, glared and spat bloody saliva. Even in the gloom, his eyes blazed.
“So it was you bastards! Filthy lapdogs of the false communists...!”
The boss roared beast-like, veins bulging.
“You! You! Don't you feel anything Seeing that pitiful scene? All those wronged people! Dying so helplessly, horrifically! No guilt as a cop, you beast in human clothes (衣冠禽獸)! Curse that I can't rape your 18 generations of ancestors!”
A foreigner might laugh it off as literary cursing, but to Chinese, it's fight-to-the-death rage fuel. One straining against kevlar ropes with ability power lost balance and flopped sideways. Couldn't rise alone now; he writhed, screaming. Heroic to him, wormy to us.
I waved my men off. Let him.
“Just you wait...”
Outside, explosions and crush-hell raged. The boss quit trying to stand, grinding teeth and blowing dust with heaving breaths.
“The working class is the most revolutionary! Workers are the revolution! As long as oppressed laborers exist, revolution's flame never dies! Hear me? Your false communists and lapdogs will face history's judgment! Remember my words when enraged people tear you apart!”
“Revolutionary fighter, eh.”
Site wrapped up. Low-level cadres with face IDs? Public Security would snag them. Not as vital as these.
Now hit the other Black Sea Party bases confirmed yesterday and today— before they reacted organized to the arsenal fiasco. Signal jammed or not, the warehouse boom reached downtown easy. Public Security sites we'd ceded were likely assaulting pre-blast.
I'd refuel here first.
“Long night ahead. Everyone eat something.”
I pulled an energy gel, popped the cap. The prone boss shot a venomous side-eye; his face twisted uglier.
“Eating now?! With so many innocents dying?!”
“Hungry, so eat. All this to eat and live.”
“You demon spawn! Human scum deserving heaven's wrath (人渣滓)!”
Demon, huh. Amid thick smoke and human reek, sating hunger halfheartedly made dim sum pop to mind. Those greasy ones I'd barely nibbled.
Gulped the gel pack, rinsed the cheap sweetness, pressed the provocation.
“You know others are demons, but not yourself.”
“What?”
“If you wanted to play righteous, don't use drugs to control people.”
“What... nonsense...”
“No good reds in this country. Nerve to claim fighting for workers while burning through civilians like tools. Least I admit I'm filthy.”
“Red molecule” in Chinese lacked Korean's contempt bite. But for this crawling young Maoist, it stung— his face flushed beet-red, fitting a rotten red.
Dropped the feigned ignorance, bellowed.
“Don't lump us with you! Necessary evil for revolution! Who're you, false commie hunting dog, calling us red molecules?!”
“So drugging to breed collaborators was smart?”
“Shut up! We just skipped persuasion!”
“Skipped persuasion?”
“Yes! Process doesn't matter! They end up devoted to the right cause! Voluntary or not— irrelevant! No one's exempt from revolution's ranks! Wanting out makes you the enemy! Everyone risks life! That's natural!”
Garden-variety lunatic. Provoking the ideologue's depths revealed agreement via other cadres' vitals. Some even hearing “drugs” first time. Strictly, Black Sea Party bound collaborators with dope. Only suspicions linked them to “Mao Gong”— no hard proof. But boss stepped in it twice: admitting drug distribution, subconsciously tying to Black Sea Party.
No clue their internal rank, but starting interrogations with the rattled ones saves time. Tip Public Security on handover.
“Comrades!”
Boss rallied in resolute tone. “Comrade” outside army long meant gay slur, but nostalgic Maoists differed.
“Dragged off like this, we become revolution's stumbling block! All suicide! Aid revolution in death! Show false communists our resolve!”
Suicide? How? No means.
Under my puzzled gaze, boss crunched his tongue— crack. Half severed tongue dropped with blood. Decisive, but— I burst into hollow laughter.
“Seriously... Still idiots believing biting tongue kills?”
My scoff halted a few mimicking him, glancing nervously. With evolution-denying profs banding together, why not this rumor? Chew the stump hard, maybe bleed out by noon.
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