Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 29 Changes in the Lower City

Master Chen only taught half of the first lesson on Daoist alchemy.

It wasn't that he didn't want to finish. It was that the crease on Su Xinpei's left rib suddenly twitched—not an itch, not pain, but a throbbing. It felt like someone had inserted an extremely fine needle tip deep into that silver line, and then the needle tip itself trembled. Su Xinpei was sitting on a low stool with his eyes closed, performing his third adjustment of fetal breathing. His breathing had been reduced to about six breaths per minute, and the charcoal in his dantian was firmly settling below the Guanyuan acupoint; everything was correct. Then the crease twitched, and his eyes opened on their own.

Master Chen stopped slicing the jujube pit knife. He glanced at Su Xinpei, asked no questions, and simply stood up, walked to the medicine cabinet, opened the top drawer labeled "Dragon Bone · Calcination," and took out two wax pills, placing them on the low table. The wax pills were old, their wax shells slightly yellowed.

"The lesson will stop here for now." Master Chen pushed the wax pill forward half an inch. "The purple wax pill is now under your tongue. Keep the yellow one safe. Tie Zheng knows you're here with me—he just left through the back door of the martial arts school."

Su Xinpei pressed the purple wax pill under his tongue. An extremely bitter medicinal taste spread from the back of his tongue to his throat, stirring up all the saliva under his tongue. The back of his head, which had been slightly tense due to the throbbing sensation, felt as if it were being supported by an extremely broad and steady hand. The tension receded to the surface of his skin, and his consciousness became clearer than before. He put the yellow wax pill into his coat pocket, stood up, bowed to Master Chen, and then pushed open the wooden door of the old medicine alley and rushed into the alley.

The air in the alley had changed. When I arrived, the air was cool with the scent of autumn and herbs. Now, the air was stuffy, the pressure much lower than usual, and I could feel a thin layer of oppression in my ears, like the moment your eardrums suddenly cave in and don't bounce back when you're riding a light rail through a long tunnel. The city lights were still on overhead, but the color of the light had turned purplish—not the purplish of neon lights, but a dark purplish that seeped through cracks, coating the blue brick walls of the old herbal medicine alley with a thin layer of cold color. There was a very faint fishy smell in the air, not blood, not rust, but more like the dampness rising from the earth before a storm, only colder and thicker, like some enormous living thing exhaling its first long breath somewhere very close.

Su Xinpei started running.

From the old medicine alley to the old Beihe district, a normal bike ride would take more than ten minutes, but he ran there in less than half that time. For the first time after achieving mastery of the Tendon Refining technique, he pushed his thigh extensor muscles and hip muscles to their limits—each step on the blue brick floor felt like his golden tendons burning beneath his fascia, his breathing was compressed to five or six beats per minute in a fetal breathing rhythm, his heart was beating extremely slowly but heavily, and with each beat, he could feel the ground vibrating against his Yongquan acupoint. The purple wax pill given to him by Master Chen continuously released its extremely bitter coolness under his tongue, and a refreshing, minty sensation filled his throat, keeping his heart rate below the peak of his Tendon Refining technique—fast but not erratic.

The factory area was under martial law. The two outer alleys were blocked off by military portable roadblocks and yellow warning tape, and two black vans from the Special Meteorology Bureau and a squad of fully armed bio-engineered soldiers were parked at the intersection. Su Xinpei circled around from the side alley to the ruins of the tenement buildings on the east side of the old district, and was about to crawl into the entrance of the sewer network when a loud bang came from the direction of the factory area.

It wasn't an explosion. It was metal being torn apart. The sound came from inside the factory workshops, piercing through concrete walls, through the ground, through all obstacles, like an old iron bridge being twisted in half by an unseen hand, the groan of steel lingering for a long time before finally settling at the bottom of the valley. The ground beneath Su Xinpei's feet trembled slightly in the aftershocks, and the old paint bucket that had been sitting in the corner for who knows how many years rolled twice with a clatter. Then a second loud bang came from the direction of the factory area—shorter and harder than the first, as if something had been struck more than once in a very short period of time, each time making the air tighten. Then came a long silence.

Su Xinpei didn't go through the sewers. The entrance to the sewer network was sealed off by the military—not with seals, but with a brand-new riveted steel plate, the rivets still reflecting light. He continued running north along a side alley on the east side of the old district, climbed over a half-collapsed brick wall, went around through the back gate of the old agricultural machinery factory, and squeezed through a gap in the wall on the southeast side of the factory area that had been knocked down by the man in the mirror last time. The gap was very narrow, and as he squeezed sideways, the anti-scratch material on the shoulders of his old military vest scraped against the bricks, sending them falling in a rustling sound.

He climbed into the outer perimeter of the workshop and saw Old Tie Tou sitting on a collapsed machine base.

The workshop was unrecognizable. Two steel beams of the dome had been torn off, half of them lodged at an angle in the ruins, the broken ends gleaming a dark blue from the intense heat of the tearing. The concrete floor was riddled with cracks, some of which still faintly shimmered with a purple light, like countless half-open eyes. The crack in the center of the workshop had widened considerably compared to a few days ago, but the crack itself was twisted and deformed, no longer a smooth fissure—the edges were crushed into jagged fragments, as if a giant hand had gripped both sides of the crack, forcibly pried it open in opposite directions, and then brute forcefully snapped it back together just before the metal reached its fatigue limit.

Old Iron Head was sitting on the collapsed machine base directly below the crack.

Half of his tank top was torn off, exposing his left shoulder and upper arm. His old military tactical vest draped over his knees. He was wrapping his left forearm with a torn shirt sleeve, his hand steady as he did so, but blood seeped through the gauze, already dripping around his feet. Scattered at his feet were three large fragments—all shards, purplish-black pieces slowly evaporating. Each fragment was several times larger than the mirror image Su Xinpei had shattered last time. The largest pile of fragments still retained its approximate body cavity shape, the inner structure exposed after the outer shell shattered emitting a slight hissing sound as it evaporated. Mirror Lords. Three of them.

Old Tie Tou smiled when he saw Su Xinpei running over. His face was covered in dust and sweat, and his smile etched deep lines around his eyes. "Damn it, I almost didn't make it back. My hand slipped."

Su Xinpei didn't speak. He placed the first-aid kit he had brought on the machine base, took out hemostatic powder, bandages, and a roll of medical tape, then took out the cheap liquor that he hadn't returned to Lao Tietou from another pocket, unscrewed the cap, and placed it next to Lao Tietou. Lao Tietou was stunned for a moment—this kid had run straight over from Master Chen's pharmacy; the pharmacy was about three or four miles from here, and he had run at full speed, yet he hadn't forgotten to bring a bottle of liquor. He picked up the bottle and took a big gulp.

Su Xinpei waited until Wu Xiong finished drinking before reaching out to remove the makeshift bandage from his sleeve. The sleeve was soaked in blood, and some fibers clung to the wound edges as he removed it. He carefully picked the fibers apart one by one with his fingertips, his movements slow but steady. The sleeve was removed, revealing the wound on his forearm—not a knife wound, not a blunt force injury, but a complex injury caused by compression and tearing. The skin from his wrist to his elbow had been torn open from the inside out by some immense pressure. The edges of the wound were irregularly turned up, and beneath the fascia layer, purplish-black filaments could be seen slowly seeping between the dermis and fascia, like countless extremely thin wires embedded in the muscle. Su Xinpei cleaned the edges of the wound with an alcohol swab, poured on styptic powder, covered it with gauze, and then wrapped it tightly with a bandage, layer by layer. While wrapping, he started from his left wrist to his elbow, each loop overlapping the previous layer by exactly two-thirds, and the last loop made a bend above the elbow to seal it. He was even more meticulous than when he bandaged Wu Xiong with sandbags, but his movements never stopped from beginning to end.

Old Tie Tou watched him carefully wrap the bandage under the dim emergency light and suddenly realized that this kid, who couldn't even find his footing when he first started practicing standing meditation, could now wrap a tourniquet more steadily than a military medic even in extremely chaotic environments. After finishing the bandage, Su Xinpei spoke. "Where's the yellow wax pill that Master Chen gave you?" Old Tie Tou took the yellow pill out of his pocket and placed it on the base. Su Xinpei picked up the wax pill and pinched it with his thumb. The wax shell cracked in two, revealing a ball of dark brown ointment inside, with a stronger smell than any medicine from Master Chen's pharmacy. He applied the ointment to the wound on Old Tie Tou's forearm outside the gauze. As soon as the ointment touched the gauze, the pungent medicinal smell immediately lessened, and the purplish-black threads under the gauze twitched slightly, slowing the seepage.

"Those things—those lords," Old Ironhead took another sip of his drink, "squeezed out of the rift all at once. Before, it took half a task force over three hours to hold off just one lord; tonight, three came out at once. Holding them off—enough for the Special Meteor Bureau to seal the rift. I haven't promised many people, He Meiqing is one. She gave me the key to the third row of iron cabinets in the archives that year so I'd have something to look up when the rift came. Your grandmaster is one. That old fox Yan Tong is half. And you."

Su Xinpei remained silent. He put away the first-aid kit, picked up the flask, and took a sip—this was the second time he had drunk Lao Tietou's liquor. The first sip was to break the coldness of the person in the mirror, but this sip didn't need to break anything. The liquor was extremely spicy as it went down his throat, followed by a warm sensation that traveled from his throat along his sternum to his dantian, colliding with the qi sensation from his standing meditation and pushing away most of the fatigue that had accumulated in the gaps between his ribs from running.

The crack behind Old Ironhead was completely sealed, the edges of the debris making a very slight clicking sound as they cooled. The jagged marks from the seal stretched from the workshop floor to the dome, not the smooth burn marks left by any standard technique, but rather the result of Old Ironhead's pure brute force—the expanding force that tore the crack open was countered with a burst of energy, and then he forcefully pried it back together with the finger strength of his mastered bone-refining technique. This method of sealing was so brutal that the air near the crack trembled slightly, but it was indeed sealed.

Su Xinpei placed the wine jug on the base, took off his coat, folded it, and placed it behind Lao Tietou's back. Then he squatted beside the ruins, waiting for the Special Meteorological Bureau's medical rescue. The purple light slowly dimmed in the workshop, and another light rail train rumbled past on the elevated track overhead.