Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 25 Night in the Lower Town

At six o'clock in the evening, Su Xinpei put the last application for renewal of his minimum living allowance into the dispatch basket and turned off his computer. He was the only one left in the office. The fluorescent lights were still flickering, the printer sat quietly in the corner, and the clivia on Aunt He's desk had just been watered, the water droplets still clinging to its leaves. He put on his coat, tucked his briefcase under his arm, said goodbye to Old Li, the security guard, and left the neighborhood office.

He didn't go home.

Forty minutes later, he sat in the living room of an old tenement building in the Beihe old district, holding a cup of cold tea. Across the coffee table sat an elderly woman with completely white hair, surnamed Song, seventy-three years old this year. Her husband had passed away many years ago, and she lived alone. Grandma Song had cataracts in her right eye, and her vision was no longer very clear, but she neatly arranged her ID card, household registration book, pension savings book, and her husband's death certificate on the coffee table, as if she had been doing it all her life. Su Xinpei helped her fill out the preferential treatment allowance application form. When he asked about the "spouse's former workplace" section, Grandma Song said that she used to be a stevedore at the Tiejicheng Port Authority, but the port authority was later dissolved, and she didn't know where her files went. Su Xinpei wrote "Former Tiejicheng Port Authority (cancelled)" on the form, and then took out a blank supporting documents form from his briefcase, telling her that she only needed to go to the community neighborhood committee to get it stamped and confirmed the next day—she didn't need to go in person; he would do it for her.

Grandma Song stood up to refill his water, but Su Xinpei said no need, put the watch away, and said goodbye. Pushing open the door to Grandma Song's house, the corridor of the tenement building was piled with old furniture and broken cardboard boxes, and the smell of stir-fried chili peppers wafted in the air. Someone was watching TV, and the sound came through the thin wall; it was the opening theme of the evening news.

He stood in the hallway, zipped up his coat, and waited for over ten minutes. By the time his phone vibrated in his pocket, he had already filled in all the information in the remarks section of the preferential treatment allowance application form, folded it neatly, and put it in the inner pocket of his briefcase. The vibration was a signal from an encrypted short number: two words: "Ready."

Su Xinpei exited through the back door of the tenement building where Granny Song lived, turned into an alley without streetlights, changed into dark casual clothes under a tin shed behind the vegetable market, stuffed his briefcase into a plastic bag behind a trash can, and took out a micro-communication chip from the bag, attaching it behind his ear. The chip activated with a very short beep, and Ye Xinghe's voice came through his earpiece: "Target location confirmed, the third workshop of the abandoned Beihe factory area. Two Beilian patrolmen are patrolling the perimeter and are expected to withdraw in twenty minutes. You have thirty-five minutes to clear the signal device."

Su Xinpei lowered his voice and said, "Received." He took out a portable toolbox from the plastic bag—a wrench, insulated pliers, a flashlight, and two spare talismans—and then crept along the back wall of the vegetable market toward the factory area.

The factory area at night was much the same as when he last came with Lao Tietou. Broken walls, shattered bricks, rusted steel bars, and the air still smelled of coal dust mixed with engine oil. Using the faint light filtering through the elevated tracks of the central urban area overhead, he crawled into the sewer network entrance he had passed before, easily navigating the pipe corridor, and climbed out through the maintenance passage on the north side of the workshop, crouching behind a rusty machine tool. The third workshop was smaller than the main workshop where the crack was located, filled with discarded conveyor belt parts and empty oil drums. The signal device, roughly the size of a fist, was installed by the Northern Union patrolmen on the outer wall of the ventilation duct on the north wall of the workshop. It had an adhesive pad on the bottom and emitted a very faint green flash, flickering like an upside-down firefly.

Su Xinpei didn't approach immediately. He crouched behind the machine tool and waited a moment, first releasing his senses. The perception he had developed through stance training and skin refining silently spread in the darkness—he could feel a slight temperature difference in the northwest corner of the workshop, the residual body heat left by the patrolling soldiers; a rat was crawling in the ventilation duct directly above, its fingernails scraping against the metal, making a very fine friction sound; the signal device itself emitted an abnormal coldness, which, in his perception, wasn't a point, but a cloud of cold mist spreading outwards, like someone had stuffed a block of dry ice into the wall. The coldness of the signal device was different from the coldness brought by the purple light of the crack—the coldness of the crack was alive, with a pulsating rhythm; the coldness of the signal device was dead, pure power consumption, as if it had drawn a small piece of the ambient temperature away.

He silently counted the remaining time after the patrolmen left, slowly emerging from behind the machine tool. Using the edge of the shadow to shift his position, he didn't stand straight, keeping his knees bent and back hunched, lowering his center of gravity. The solidity he had developed through stance training allowed him to maintain a semi-squatting posture for a long time without trembling. Each step landed on the densest angle of the broken bricks, the rubber teeth of his shoes biting into the dried cement mortar in the cracks, making no sound. He consciously avoided two areas that would resonate with his footsteps in the room—one was the empty conveyor belt frame in the middle of the workshop, and the other was the empty oil drums piled in the corner. He had already memorized these two locations when he released the air earlier.

He stopped and looked up when he reached directly beneath the signal device. It was attached to the bottom of the ventilation duct, about 2.3 meters above the ground, out of his reach. He tucked his toolbox under his arm and climbed up using the protruding brick edges of the wall and the duct support—after a hundred days of standing meditation, his upper body strength was vastly different, and the stability of his smaller muscle groups after mastering tendon training was sufficient to keep him still in mid-air. He remained stable on the duct support for a sufficient time, then opened the toolbox and used insulated pliers to disassemble the signal device's casing, revealing a circuit board and a miniature energy module. The signal device was still working, the green light was still flashing, but there was no sound. He carefully removed the energy module with a wrench, placed the main body of the signal device into the anti-static compartment of the toolbox, and then wiped away the remaining absorbent pad marks on the outer wall of the ventilation duct with dry ash from broken bricks until only a simple rust mark remained on the metal surface.

After finishing, he closed the toolbox, jumped down from the pipe support, and landed with his knees slightly bent, his soles barely touching the ground. Ye Xinghe's voice came through his earpiece: "Signal loss confirmed—you dismantled the last one. The Northern Alliance patrol will return in a few minutes. Withdraw."

Su Xinpei tucked his toolbox under his arm and walked back the way he came towards the maintenance passage. He stopped just after turning past the machine tools. Two beams of flashlight were sweeping across the north wall of the workshop through the window that no longer had glass, moving along the bases of the rows of machine tools from the north side of the workshop to the south, only a few dozen steps away from him. The patrolman had returned ahead of schedule.

He took two steps back, leaning against the side of the power tool, and squatted down. The flashlight beam swept across the top of the tool, its edge brushing against his head. He could feel the coolness of the old metal plate on the soles of his shoes and the extremely fine vibration between the beam and the surface. He held his breath, placed the toolbox beside his feet, pressed his right hand to his chest, and slowed his heartbeat to its lowest point. Three fingers below his navel felt warm—the foundation of his standing meditation had automatically activated its circulation, the heat slowly rising along the Ren meridian, gently pulling his heart rate back from its accelerated state. The crevice in his left rib tingled slightly, then fell silent.

The flashlight beam swept across the workshop for an unknown amount of time before moving away. The patrolman said something in the Northern Union dialect, another responded, and footsteps echoed as they headed out of the workshop.

Su Xinpei waited a moment, then stood up, picked up his toolbox, and silently crawled back through the maintenance passage. As he emerged from the sewer, the night sky above Ironthorn City was bathed in a dark orange glow from the sodium lamps illuminating the distant edge of the city. The air was crisp and dry, and his collar was covered in dust from broken bricks. He crouched outside the fire door, hid his toolbox in a pile of trash, changed back into the dark blue work vest he wore at the street office, removed the communication chip from behind his ear, turned it off, and stuffed it into his pocket. The preferential treatment allowance application form was still in his briefcase, the paper pressed against the inside of his chest, only slightly warmed by his body heat.

It was almost midnight when he got back to his apartment. Su Xinpei put his briefcase on the table and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. There was some brick dust and a little bit of machine oil under his fingernails, and he had to wash them twice to get them clean. He changed into an old T-shirt, went to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water, and leaned against the kitchen counter to drink it slowly. The water was a little cold, but it warmed his stomach after he swallowed it. He mentally went over the events of the evening from beginning to end: the signal device was removed, and the remains of it were in the anti-static compartment at the bottom of his briefcase, so the patrolmen hadn't found him. Grandma Song's application form for preferential treatment allowance was filled out, and he would help her go to the community committee tomorrow; it would be approved quickly. Both things were done tonight. He mentally commented: "The preferential treatment allowance application form and the signal device—there's a subtle balance to them."

He placed the water glass on the table, took out the preferential treatment allowance application form from his briefcase, and examined it again under the light. Grandma Song's handwriting was messy—his own was too, but every column was filled in correctly. He tucked the form into the file book due tomorrow, then took the remnant of the signal device from his toolbox and placed it on the corner of the table. The panel was lit; the progress bars for tendon training and stance training remained quietly in their usual positions, while the progress bar for skin training had moved up slightly—accumulated from his stance training on the pipes that evening. He hadn't intentionally farmed experience; he'd just maintained a low center of gravity stance for too long, and the panel had automatically recorded a few entries. He locked the signal device remnant in the bottom drawer, placing it in the same compartment as the ring left by his master. Then he turned off the light and lay down on the bed.

In the darkness, he recalled the day he first moved into this apartment, lying on this very bed, listening to the light rail train whizzing overhead, thinking, "My life is like a cup of lukewarm water—not cold, not hot, just enough to survive." Back then, he didn't know what a crack was, what a reflection in the mirror looked like, or that a signal device could flash a green light on a ventilation duct. He only knew how to review applications for welfare benefits, how to mediate neighborhood disputes, and how to organize expired files. He still does those things now, but he also sneaks into the sewers at night to dismantle signals that don't belong to this neighborhood, using methods other than the Beilian encrypted signal system. He thought, these aren't two different lives. They're two halves of the same life—someone fills out forms during the day to apply for welfare benefits for the elderly, while someone else has to block those things at night that turn those forms into worthless paper.

I rolled over and pulled the blanket up to my shoulders. In the distance, the light rail rumbled past and disappeared.