svetikya Chapter 31 Chain
Chapter 31 Chain
The crane, located in the northeast corner of the P1 platform, was mostly corroded by salt spray. Its tracks were jammed, rendering it immobile. However, the boom's articulated structure remained intact. The hydraulic system had failed, but the manually operated mechanical locks were still functional. Xie Chengzhou walked around it, tapped the main beam of the boom, listened to the sound, and confirmed the structural integrity. Then, in his mind, he confirmed the first step of the construction plan: the boom was usable.
He mentally calculated the time: the boom extending across the gap between P1 and P2, about eighteen meters; laying the scaffolding, about twenty scaffolding planks, which were in stock at the work shed; fixing the nodes, which needed to be done in the concrete area, using the surge windows for movement. The total was about forty minutes.
He wrote the time down in his memo and then walked back into the crowd.
"I need three people," he said, "to help me move the springboard."
Hu Jian was the first to step forward. "I'll do it," he said. "I've worked as a welder, so I know how to fix things in place."
Old Chen also stepped forward, saying, "I'll follow suit."
Liu Feng didn't say anything, but he stood next to Hu Jian.
Xie Chengzhou nodded. "Okay," he said, then turned to the others. "The rest of you wait in the center of the P1 platform. Do not step onto the pier, do not knock on the steel structure, and remain still."
He glanced at Lin Xiao.
Her hands were still trembling.
Construction has begun.
Xie Chengzhou arranged most of the hammering operations at the tower crane base—that four-by-four-meter concrete area, the weakest point for vibration transmission on the entire platform. He had Hu Jian complete all the necessary hammering and fixing procedures there, while he himself was responsible for moving the device inside the surge window.
Progress was a little faster than he had expected.
Hu Jian was a true worker, not a novice entering the instance for the first time—his movements were clean, his fixed-point operations precise, without unnecessary actions or hesitation, completing each movement in the shortest possible time. Old Chen was responsible for passing materials, and Liu Feng was responsible for stabilizing the scaffolding at the edge of the concrete; the three of them cooperated better than Xie Chengzhou had expected.
Wu Ming was taking notes beside him, his notebook already filled with six or seven pages. He recorded the periodic data of each surge and reported it to Xie Chengzhou: "Eleventh time, 6.1 seconds. Twelfth time, 6.3 seconds."
The swell cycle is stable, with an average of 6.2 seconds and no significant changes.
Xie Chengzhou memorized the data and continued working.
The construction was completed in thirty-six minutes, four minutes faster than expected. The passageway extended from P1 to P2, consisting of twenty planks and three fixed nodes. Hu Jian's workmanship ensured that each node was clean and free of waste or unnecessary vibration. Xie Chengzhou checked the final plank's fixation at the edge of the P2 platform, pressing it down to confirm that the load-bearing capacity was sufficient before standing up.
"You can go through," he said. "Go in order, one at a time, three steps apart. Don't stop on the pier, and don't run on the planks."
He glanced at everyone. "Fang Yuan has a leg injury, so he'll be last. I'll pick you up in P2," he said. "Everyone else, go in the order I tell you to go."
He listed them in order: Qin Gong, Wu Ming, Lin Xiao, Dr. Cao, Lao Chen, Hu Jian, Liu Feng, Zhang An, Fang Yuan.
He was the first to step onto the springboard.
Lin Xiao is running.
Footsteps echoed across the steel plate, each step a vibration peak, exploding outwards from her feet in all directions, entering the steel structure, entering the range of the steel maggots' perception. Xie Chengzhou was at the edge of the P2 platform; he could no longer go back—he was at P2, Lin Xiao was in the middle of the pier, about fifteen meters away. The vibrations from him running over would superimpose on hers, only triggering the aggregation more quickly.
He didn't move.
"Stop," he said, his voice level. "Stop, stand still, and put your heels on the ground."
Lin Xiao didn't stop; she kept running, her breathing rapid and audible. She was running towards P2, thinking she would be safe once she reached it.
The steel maggots on both sides of the pier began to move.
It wasn't just one, it was a whole patch. They detached from their attachment points and gathered along the side of the steel structure towards the trestle. As they moved, the mineralized shells rubbed against each other, making a low, damp sound, as if something was being pulled out from inside the steel plate, pulled out from all directions at the same time, and gathering towards the source of vibration as Lin Xiao ran.
"Lin Xiao, stop," Xie Chengzhou said, this time in a louder voice, "Stop, now, don't move."
She stopped.
At the twenty-first step, she stopped, planted her foot firmly, and stretched her arms out to the sides for balance. Her breathing was still rapid, but she stopped and her feet did not move.
The steel maggots were still moving.
They wouldn't stop immediately just because she stopped; they would continue moving forward due to inertia. Xie Chengzhou watched the whole process from the edge of the P2 platform and calculated in his mind: the gathering speed was about 1.5 times that of walking, and the closest group was about three meters away, arriving at her location in about two seconds.
"The next surge," he said, "is coming in about three seconds. Walk two steps, stop, and wait for my instructions."
Lin Xiao nodded, but her shoulders were still shaking.
two seconds.
The latest batch of steel maggots reached her feet, stopping and attaching themselves to the steel plate beside her. The phosphorescence brightened slightly after gathering, and the blue-green light spread out beneath her feet, as if something was sprouting there.
Lin Xiao glanced down.
She made a sound—not a scream, but the kind of sound that escapes from the throat when fear sees something, short and abrupt, cut off by herself—but her feet moved. Not running, but the kind of physical reaction that precedes consciousness in extreme terror; her foot moved a step to the side, a small step, about twenty centimeters, trying to get away from the light.
She reached the critical point of corrosion.
Xie Chengzhou had marked that location in his memo: the right side of the ninth node, where the corrosion was nearing its critical point. He was at the edge of the P2 platform; he watched her step onto it. He knew what would happen to that steel plate under her weight, and he knew when that sound would appear.
The voice appeared.
A low, short, metallic sound of internal collapse.
"Surge," he said, "now, move forward—"
But the surge hasn't arrived yet.
4.1 seconds have passed since the last surge, and there are still about 2.1 seconds left. The steel plate won't wait 2.1 seconds.
The steel plate was bending, bending downwards. Lin Xiao felt it. She took a step forward and stepped on the steel plate in front of her. There were two steel maggots gathered on that steel plate. The moment her foot stepped down, she stepped on one of them.
The corrosive liquid seeped out from the contact point.
It wasn't a slow process, but rather a speed at which it was squeezed out under extreme pressure. Lin Xiao's shoe sole began to dissolve within half a second. Not completely, but only at the point of contact. That part was dissolving, and the heat generated by the dissolution spread upwards from the sole of her foot—not a stinging pain, but a continuous, irremovable burning sensation that flowed upwards from the arch of her foot, as if someone had inserted a red-hot steel bar through the sole of her foot and then left it there.
She cried out.
This time it was a real scream, not a cut-off one, but a complete cry from the throat, sharp and carrying the kind of despair that only comes when pain completely overwhelms fear. It echoed on the steel structure, from P2 to P1, and from P1 to everyone still waiting on the P1 platform.
Zhang An is on the P1 platform.
He was the second to last to cross the pier. Before he even stepped onto the pier, he was standing on the edge of the P1 platform. He heard Lin Xiao's scream, he saw the steel plate under Lin Xiao's feet bending, he saw the phosphorescence gathering around her feet, and he saw her legs trembling. In that position, she could no longer hold on.
He stepped onto the pier.
"Zhang An," Xie Chengzhou said, "No—"
Zhang An was running. He was faster than Lin Xiao. He was fifty years old, but he had run on construction sites before. He knew how to run on uneven steel plates. His footsteps were heavier and more intense than Lin Xiao's. The vibrations spread from the soles of his feet in all directions, joining Lin Xiao's vibrations, the gathering signals of the steel maggots, and the vibration field of the entire pier.
He ran about ten meters and reached Lin Xiao's location.
He reached out and grabbed Lin Xiao's arm. "Come on," he said, "come with me—"
The steel plate beneath Lin Xiao's feet broke.
It wasn't slow; the moment Zhang An grabbed her, his weight plus her weight, plus the vibration of both of them, plus the steel plate that had already corroded to the critical point—the critical point had been reached. At that very moment, the steel plate began to tear from the edge of corrosion. The tearing sound was louder than Wang Bo's time, because this time two steel plates broke almost simultaneously: the one under Lin Xiao's feet and the one Zhang An had just stepped on. The corrosive liquid began to spread the moment he stepped on it. He didn't stand long enough for the corrosion to complete, but his weight was enough. At the moment of the breakage, both of them were in that position.
Xie Chengzhou watched from the edge of the P2 platform.
He did not move.
He knew he couldn't get there, he knew he wouldn't make it in time, he knew the relationship between that distance and that time; he had done this kind of calculation on the construction site, and he knew the result of that calculation.
He did not move.
Lin Xiao's screams changed as she fell.
It didn't disappear, it changed—that sharp, painful scream transformed into another sound at a certain moment. Xie Chengzhou later couldn't write down what that sound was in his memo. He only wrote: "It wasn't a scream, it was a shout, the kind of sound that comes out of a person's throat the moment they completely lose their support. It wasn't fear, it was something that came before fear."
Zhang An remained silent.
During his fall, he still held onto Lin Xiao's arm with one hand and didn't let go.
Two sounds of water impact, approximately 0.3 seconds apart.
And then nothing was left.
A surge came and crashed against the bottom of the platform, causing the entire steel structure to vibrate. Then it receded, and the sea returned to normal, as if nothing had happened.
No one spoke on the P2 platform.
Old Chen sat down at the edge of the P2 platform. He placed his hands on his knees, lowered his head, and avoided looking at anyone. Those hands had worked on construction sites for thirty years, witnessing collapses, electrocutions, and people falling from scaffolding—yet he still lowered his head. His back heaved, not from crying, but from the kind of heaving that occurs after extreme stress, an attempt to control breathing, the body doing what the mind cannot.
Liu Feng stood with his back against the steel structure, his arms crossed, his expression unchanged, but Xie Chengzhou could see that his jaw muscles were tightening, the kind of tightening that was like biting something down and not letting it out.
Dr. Cao was on the other side of the P2 platform. His face was pale. He was covering his mouth with one hand and holding onto the steel structure with the other. His fingers were digging into the corrosion cracks in the steel structure, and his knuckles were white, but he didn't notice.
Wu Ming didn't move. He remained seated in his original spot, the notebook still in his hand, the pen resting on the paper, the ink spreading in a circle, but he didn't notice. He was looking in the direction of the pier, not writing anything down.
Qin Gong stood next to Xie Chengzhou. She placed her hand on the steel structure, felt the vibration, and then lowered her hand. Xie Chengzhou had no idea what she was thinking. He only saw her wipe her hand on her trouser leg after she lowered it; the movement was very light and quick, as if she was wiping something away.
Hu Jian was next to the equipment base of the P2 platform, touching the weld seams of the base with his hand. It was a professional habit that Xie Chengzhou recognized—he wasn't assessing the structure, but rather giving his hand something to do.
Xu Kai walked over to Xie Chengzhou's side.
"Two," he said. "Now we have seven."
Xie Chengzhou did not answer immediately.
"Seven people," Xu Kai said. "According to your classification, five assets and two liabilities."
Xie Chengzhou shifted his gaze from the direction of the pier and glanced at Xu Kai.
"What are you talking about?" he said.
"I'm checking the resource situation," Xu Kai said. "It's necessary."
"Lin Xiao is twenty-three years old," Xie Chengzhou said. "Zhang An is fifty years old; he has been a safety officer on construction sites for twenty years."
"I know," Xu Kai said, "but they're gone now. The problem now is how the remaining people will get through."
Xie Chengzhou glanced at him but didn't say anything.
He mentally went through Xu Kai's logic: the numbers were correct, there were seven of them, and they needed to pass the level—that was a fact. The deaths of Lin Xiao and Zhang An were already happened and couldn't be changed; things that couldn't be changed didn't consume resources in the project plan—this was Xu Kai's logic, Xie Chengzhou understood this logic, and he himself had used it.
But he couldn't apply that logic at this moment.
It wasn't because he was kinder than Xu Kai, but because he had seen this kind of thing too many times on the construction site—someone died, and then someone else had to keep working. Keeping working was the right thing to do, but before continuing to work, some things needed a little time, even if it was just a minute, even if it was just going through that person's name in your mind.
Lin Xiao. Zhang An.
He went over the two names in his mind.
He then turned his attention to the second pier in the P3 direction and began scanning.
They continued working in silence.
Wu Ming was next to Xie Chengzhou, still taking notes in his notebook, but his handwriting had changed—not more messy, but smaller, as if he was trying to write more compactly, squeezing more information into a smaller space.
Xie Chengzhou noticed this but didn't say anything.
He turned his gaze back to the pier, waiting for the next surge.
The remaining seven people are: Xie Chengzhou, Xu Kai, Wu Ming, Qin Gong, Lao Chen, Hu Jian, and Dr. Cao.
Fang Yuan, with a leg injury, is still waiting on the P1 platform.
There's also P3, a passageway, and the final exit.