svetikya Chapter 54 Construction
Chapter 54 Construction
The main crack is located slightly to the right of the middle section of the dam face. When Xie Chengzhou was surveying the crack in Chapter 52, he drew an X on each end of the crack with chalk. Now, when you shine a flashlight on it, the two Xs are still there. The chalk lines have been blurred by the moisture, but the position has not changed.
The crack itself was a little wider than he remembered.
Not much, about one or two millimeters, but he remembered that the widest part was 18 millimeters when he measured it before, and now he estimated it to be close to 20 millimeters. He squatted down, held the flashlight close to the crack, shone the beam of light into the crack, and looked at the depth.
There's no bottom in sight.
It's not because the crack is deep, but because there's water inside. It's not accumulated water; it's seeping out from the inner wall of the crack. The amount seeping is very small, but you can see a damp sheen under a flashlight. It's the water pressure inside the concrete that's squeezing the water out of the crack.
He placed his hand on the dam surface next to the crack and felt it.
Concrete is cold. He knew that; he learned it in Chapter 52. But today it was colder than last time, not because the temperature had dropped, but because when he knelt down, his knees pressed against the exposed rough surface of the aggregate, and the edges of the aggregate pushed against his knees through his work clothes. It was that feeling of coldness and hardness coming at the same time, the feeling you get when you kneel down to inspect floor slabs on a construction site. But here, the dam surface was even more irregular than a floor slab, the aggregate was larger, and it pushed in even deeper.
The wind was still blowing from bottom to top.
Carrying moisture and that fishy smell, now there's another one—the smell of concrete powder. It's the fine powder that Li Gong has stirred up after taking out his chisel and gesturing near the crack. It's astringent, the kind of smell that leaves a layer in the back of your throat when you inhale it. It's not unpleasant, it's the smell of the construction site, the smell that Xie Chengzhou has been working in for twelve years, but inhaling it here feels different.
"Begin," he said.
Li pressed the chisel against the edge of the crack, raised the hammer, and brought it down.
The first strike was muffled, like concrete hitting metal—not the crisp sound of metal striking metal, but the deep, resonant sound of stone being cleaved. It was a sound with density, a sound where you could feel energy being transferred into the material. The second, the third strikes, were evenly rhythmic, the rhythm of someone who had done this many times.
Concrete dust rises up, appearing white in the flashlight beam, and slowly falls.
Xie Chengzhou stood to Li Gong's right, fixed the flashlight at the correct angle, and shone it on the crack for him. Old Zhao, behind them, leaned the formwork against the dam surface, sat down, placed his thermos on his lap, and didn't move. He was waiting, the posture of someone who knew he had no role to play at this stage.
After cleaning the seams for about ten minutes, Engineer Li paused for a moment.
"It's too deep," he said.
Xie Chengzhou shone his flashlight into the crack. Engineer Li had already cleared out the loose concrete at the edge of the crack, and now the cross-section inside the crack could be seen—the concrete layer, followed by a rusty color.
Rust is the color of steel bars.
"We've reached the steel reinforcement layer," Xie Chengzhou said.
"Yes," said Engineer Li, "and the rust on the steel bars isn't new, it's old, which means the cracks have been there for quite some time. Moisture got in, and the steel bars started to corrode." He paused for a moment, "The cross-sectional area of corroded steel bars will decrease, and their load-bearing capacity will drop."
Xie Chengzhou went through the information in his mind.
His previous calculations were based on the assumption that the crack depth reached the protective layer, but this assumption is now wrong—the crack has reached the reinforcing steel layer, and the steel is corroded. This means that the structural impact of the crack is greater than he anticipated, and that the repair will be more difficult than he expected.
However, their materials and timeframes are fixed, and the plan cannot be scrapped and restarted.
"There's enough waterstop strip," he said. "The corrosion of the steel reinforcement doesn't affect the installation of the waterstop strip, but it affects the long-term structural safety. But we don't need it to be safe in the long term; we need it to not leak for the next two hours." He paused. "Continue cleaning."
Engineer Li glanced at him, said nothing, and put the chisel back on.
The fourth and fifth counts resume the rhythm.
When the cleaning process reached the eighth minute, Xie Chengzhou felt a change in the frequency of his feet.
It's not the multi-point superposition frequency of a seepage group; it's a single, individual movement, approaching from inside the dam towards the dam surface. The frequency is about 0.3 Hz, faster than the rhythm of a seepage group but slower than a large individual. It's the vibration generated by a medium-sized object moving.
He shone his flashlight to the right side of the crack.
About forty centimeters to the right of the crack, there is a narrow fissure, no more than five millimeters wide. It is a natural contraction joint of the dam face. He had recorded this fissure during his previous inspection and determined that it was non-structural and would not affect the load-bearing capacity. However, the fissure is now wet. It is not a seepage, but something is pushing it outward from the inside. There is a layer of viscous liquid in the fissure, which is translucent under the flashlight and has a grayish-white tinge.
"Stop," Xie Chengzhou said.
Li's hammer stopped in mid-air.
Then something came out of that narrow crack.
It didn't come out as a whole, but rather seeped out—like something flattening its body and squeezing out from a five-millimeter-wide crack, first a section, then more, the kind of thing you know has volume, but can change shape as it passes through the crack. The seeping part re-expanded on the dam surface, grayish-white in color, with a viscous surface, its outline indeterminate, like a semi-solid mass trying to define its shape.
It is about the size of a cat.
Xie Chengzhou took half a step back and shone the flashlight on it.
It paused briefly in the light.
Then it lunged at Xie Chengzhou's right hand—not leaping, but flowing, the kind of movement where a liquid moves in a direction that exists outside of gravity. It was fast, faster than he expected, and before he could completely remove the flashlight, it touched the back of his right hand.
The sensation upon contact is cold and wet, like the feeling of putting your hand into sub-zero water, but it's not water; it's sticky, like the feeling of its slime clinging to your skin, the feeling of wanting to shake it off but it's still attached. Then there's the burning sensation—not a hot burning sensation, but a burning feeling that occurs on the skin after it has cooled to a certain degree. It's a misinterpretation of signals from the nerves under extremely low temperature stimulation, the moment when "cold" is translated into "scalding" by the brain.
Xie Chengzhou shook off his hand.
He almost dropped the flashlight, but caught it with his left hand and shook it twice with his right hand. Some of the slime was shaken off, but some remained on the back of his hand. He could feel a thin layer of something on his skin that was cool and astringent, slowly seeping down his skin.
My right hand fingers started to feel numb.
It wasn't numbness all over, but in my index and middle fingers, the two fingers with the largest area covered by mucus. It was a nerve reaction after contact with something, a numbness where the sensation was still there, but the feeling became inaccurate.
It regrouped on the dam surface and moved toward Li Gong's direction.
Li Gong did not withdraw.
He turned the chisel over, pointed the hammer handle at it, and struck it in the middle of its body with a "thud".
The feeling when he hit it was wrong—Li later said that he thought he would hit something hard, but the hammer handle went in soft, like hitting semi-solid mud. It felt like the energy was being absorbed and there was no rebound. It felt like you hit it hard, but the point of impact seemed to disappear.
Its body dented at the point of impact, then expanded again. Its shape was not permanently changed, but merely briefly disrupted. After the disruption, it paused for about a second, as if reconfirming its orientation.
"Hot water," Xie Chengzhou said in a flat voice, "Old Zhao, hot water."
Old Zhao had already stood up, and the lid of the thermos was already unscrewed. He tilted the thermos towards that thing.
The sound of hot water being poured on something is a "hiss," not the sound of water itself, but the sound produced when heat comes into contact with something. It's like the tiny cracking sound you make when you pour hot water on ice and the ice contracts instantly. It's the sound of a material not having enough time to adapt when the temperature difference is too great.
Its body contracted where it came into contact with the hot water.
It's not a small contraction, it's a large one. It's the kind of stress contraction that happens when something is strongly stimulated, like a hand instinctively pulling back after being burned. But its whole body is contracting towards one point, towards that narrow slit. It's retreating, it's retreating back to where it came from.
It retreated into the crevice faster than it had come out, at a speed where it no longer controlled its shape and pressed directly into the crevice. The mucus left a trail on the dam surface, from its final position to the entrance of the crevice, which was translucent and visible under a flashlight.
Then it disappeared.
There was still mucus in the crevices, but the vibration was gone. The 0.3 Hz frequency had disappeared, and only the large entity with a 0.1 Hz frequency remained under my feet. It was still there, but had not moved.
Xie Chengzhou looked at his right hand.
Most of the sticky substance on the back of my hand has been shaken off, but there is a light red mark on the skin surface—not a scratch, but contact congestion, a vascular reaction of the skin under low temperature stimulation. It is a vibrant color, but the color is wrong, too red, too concentrated, the kind of red that you know is repairing but has over-repaired.
My index and middle fingers are still numb.
He clenched his fist, then released it, then clenched it again. He could still feel it, but it was dulled, like the feeling after wearing a thin glove. It was a decrease in the precision of his perception, not a loss of perception itself.
He mentally noted it down: right index and middle fingers, contact with mucus, low-temperature burning, numbness, decreased precision. Subsequent effects: decreased stability when holding a flashlight, worse feel when installing the waterstop strip.
"Is there still water in the thermos?" he asked.
"And there's more," Old Zhao said, "more than half a cup." He screwed the lid on, held the thermos in his hand, and didn't put it back.
Xie Chengzhou shone his flashlight into the narrow crack one last time to make sure it wasn't coming out again, then turned to Engineer Li.
"Continue," he said, "clean the seams."
Engineer Li put the chisel back on, raised the hammer, and brought it down.
On the sixth and seventh beats, the rhythm resumed, but this time Lao Zhao did not sit back down. He stood behind them, holding his thermos cup in his hand, his eyes scanning the dam surface.
Fifteen minutes into the cleaning process, Xie Chengzhou sensed a change.
It wasn't something I heard, but something I felt through my feet.
The 0.1 Hz vibration was still there, from that large individual, but there was another frequency—higher and denser, the rhythm of the movement of the infiltrator group, which he had felt when he entered the corridor in Chapter 48; it was the frequency superimposed when many individuals moved simultaneously.
But this time the direction is wrong.
He had conducted foundation bearing capacity tests on construction sites, using a vibratory hammer to strike the ground and then measuring the propagation of the vibrations at different locations to determine the structure of the underground soil layers based on the direction of propagation. He is now using the same method—feeling the vibrations with his feet to determine the direction of the vibration source.
The source of the vibration is moving upstream.
They are not coming towards them, they are retreating.
He didn't say it aloud because he wasn't sure—it could be a misjudgment on his part, or the seepage vectors might have naturally moved in that direction inside the dam, and it might have nothing to do with their construction activities.
But he memorized this time: fifteen minutes after construction began, the group of people affected by the seepage started moving upstream.
"Water level," he said.
Old Zhao raised his wrist. "5.81 meters," he said. "It's grown since the last time I saw it."
It rose 0.02 meters in two minutes. The rate of increase is accelerating.
Xie Chengzhou mentally recalculated the timeline: five minutes for cleaning the joints, ten minutes for the waterstop strip, thirty minutes for setting up the formwork, fifteen minutes for grouting, and curing. A total of sixty minutes of work time remained. The water level was 2.19 meters from the warning line; at the current rate of rise, approximately ninety minutes remained.
The error was reduced from thirty-five minutes to thirty minutes.
That's enough.
But that's enough.
The seam cleaning was completed in the twentieth minute.
Li put away the chisel, wiped the edge of the crack with his gloves, and swept the remaining concrete powder into the crack—not to clean it, but to increase the friction of the waterstop strip on the rough surface inside the crack. This detail wasn't told to him by Xie Chengzhou; he did it himself, relying on the feel of someone who had worked in water conservancy projects for twenty years.
Xie Chengzhou, standing next to him, tore open the packaging of the waterstop strip.
The waterstop strip is made of rubber, with a rectangular cross-section, 20 mm wide and 15 mm high. It is dark gray in color, feels dense and elastic to the touch, and is the kind of material that deforms when squeezed and springs back when released. It is water-swellable, expanding three to five times its original size, with the expansion time depending on water temperature and pressure.
He aligned one end of the waterstop strip with the crack and pressed it inward with his finger.
I got in smoothly. The first section, about twenty centimeters long, had the water-stop strip stuck in the crack and didn't fall out.
He continued pressing backward, the second section, the third section, following the direction of the crack, going up from the bottom of the crack.
The problem occurred in the fourth paragraph.
The crack here is narrower than in other places, about 16 millimeters wide. The waterstop strip is 20 millimeters wide, so he needs to press the waterstop strip in forcefully. When he presses it in, the waterstop strip will deform, and after deformation, its elasticity will push it outward. He knew this, he anticipated this, and he used more force when pressing it in.
But there was water in the crack.
When the waterstop strip comes into contact with the water inside the crack, it begins to expand.
It didn't expand slowly; it expanded quickly, faster than he expected—the water temperature in the crack was lower than he estimated. At low temperatures, the expansion rate of the water-swellable sealing strip would actually be faster because low-temperature water has a higher density and greater osmotic pressure. This was a variable he hadn't considered in his calculations.
The pressure generated by the expansion of the waterstop strip pushed one end out of the crack.
It protruded about five centimeters, as if something was pushing it out from the inside. The end of the waterstop strip curled up, protruding from the surface of the crack and hanging in the air.
Xie Chengzhou did not hesitate.
He pressed his palm down, pushing the raised waterstop strip back, using the weight of his palm to keep it pressed against the crack surface and prevent it from popping out. The waterstop strip continued to expand under his palm, and he could feel the pressure. It wasn't pain, but the feeling of fighting against a material you thought you could control, but it wasn't doing what you expected. It was the material exerting force, not you.
"Template," he said, "give me one."
Old Zhao had already stood up, handed over a template, and didn't ask why.
Xie Chengzhou took the template and pressed it down on his palm, letting the template continue to hold down the waterstop strip in place of his palm. Then he took out the expansion bolts and hammered one at each end of the template—not at the planned intervals, but for emergency fixation, to hold down the waterstop strip and prevent it from continuing to move outwards.
The sound of bolts being driven into concrete is "tap tap tap," the sound of an electric drill working on the dam surface, with vibrations transmitted from the hand to the arm and then to the shoulder.
After the first bolt was driven in, the template was fixed in place, and the waterstop strip stopped pushing outwards.
Xie Chengzhou shone his flashlight on the crack and checked the condition of the waterstop strip.
It stopped expanding outwards; the expansion was still ongoing, but it was held down by the template. The direction of expansion was forced to turn inwards into the crack, which is exactly what it was supposed to do—expand into the crack, fill it, and form a seal.
He mentally calculated the lost time: about seven minutes.
The installation of the waterstop strip took seventeen minutes instead of the planned ten.
The error was reduced from thirty minutes to twenty-three minutes.
That's enough.
But that's enough.
Start with the template.
According to the plan, the template should cover 10 centimeters on each side of the crack and be fixed with expansion bolts at intervals not exceeding 30 centimeters. Xie Chengzhou marked the position of the first bolt on the left side of the crack, pressed the electric drill against it, and started drilling.
The drill bit went in about three centimeters, and the sound changed.
The solid "hum" has become a hollow "hum," the sound of a drill bit with a cavity underneath. The frequency of the sound has decreased, and the sound is the sound of energy spreading in an empty space rather than being transmitted in a dense material.
Xie Chengzhou stopped.
Old Zhao, who was next to him, had already heard it. "It's empty here," he said. It wasn't a question, but a statement. It was the judgment of someone who had listened to all kinds of sounds on construction sites for thirty years. "If you drive it in, the bolts will loosen, and the formwork won't be fixed."
Xie Chengzhou held the flashlight close to that spot and took a look.
It wasn't visible on the surface; the concrete surface was intact, without cracks or gaps, but it was hollow inside. This is a common defect in concrete pouring—insufficient vibration, causing the aggregate to be loosened and forming internal cavities. This cavity was about three centimeters below the surface, which is why he hadn't noticed it during his previous visual inspection.
"Move to the left," Engineer Li said, "move it ten centimeters and change the position to shoot."
Xie Chengzhou moved the bolt position twelve centimeters to the left and drilled it again.
This time the sound was correct; it was solid, the sound of dense concrete, the sound of energy being absorbed within the material. The bolts were driven in, tightened, the formwork was pressed down, and it was secured.
He moved to the right side of the crack and repeated the process.
There was no cavity on the right side. Smoothly, in ten minutes, all six bolts were used to fix the template.
Old Zhao stayed beside him the whole time, without saying a word, but his flashlight was constantly illuminating Xie Chengzhou's work area at the exact angle Xie Chengzhou needed. It wasn't just random shining; he was observing Xie Chengzhou's work and then directing the light to where Xie Chengzhou needed it. Xie Chengzhou hadn't asked for this; Old Zhao did it himself.
"Water level," Xie Chengzhou said.
Old Zhao glanced at it and said, "5.86 meters," adding, "2.14 meters from the warning line."
Since I last saw it, about 25 minutes have passed, and the water level has risen by 0.05 meters.
Rate of increase: 0.002 meters per minute.
It's faster than before.
Xie Chengzhou mentally recalculated the remaining time: 15 minutes for grouting, 40 minutes for curing, and then evacuation. A total of 55 minutes were needed. At the current rate of rise, the water level would reach the warning line in approximately 107 minutes.
Error: 52 minutes.
He paused the number in his mind for a second.
The error has increased—not because they've gotten faster, but because the rate of water level rise has slowed down.
He felt the soles of his feet.
It's still at 0.1 Hz, but it's a little weaker than before.
It didn't disappear; it retreated a little, like the large entity moving upstream. The movement was slow, but the direction was definite.
This is consistent with the direction of movement of the infiltrator group.
They are all retreating upstream.
"Grouting," he said. "Let's begin."
The grouting machine is manual, and pressure is applied by a handle. Engineer Li operates it, while Xie Chengzhou watches the position of the grouting nozzle.
The grouting nozzle was inserted into the pre-drilled hole at the bottom of the template. Engineer Li started to apply pressure, pressing the handle down. The pointer of the pressure gauge went up to 0.3 MPa and then stopped. The mortar began to flow from the grouting nozzle into the crack.
The sound of the mortar entering was very faint, almost silent, with only the pressure gauge needle vibrating slightly—the tiny resistance generated as the mortar filled the cracks. Xie Chengzhou placed his hand on the formwork surface and could feel a slight vibration, the minor impact of the flowing mortar on the formwork.
Start from the bottom of the crack and go upwards.
After about three minutes of grouting, the pressure gauge needle started to jump up – not slowly, but suddenly by 0.05 MPa, and then stabilized.
"It's full," said Engineer Li. "This section is full."
He moved the grouting nozzle upwards, inserted it into the second pre-drilled hole, and continued to apply pressure.
During a break in their work, Xie Chengzhou swept his flashlight around the dam surface.
The seepage victims have disappeared.
It wasn't that it completely disappeared; rather, the dense, low-frequency, multi-unit superimposed vibrations on the dam surface within his perceptible range vanished. It didn't disappear suddenly; he realized it was gone at some point after the grouting process began. He didn't know when it disappeared, only that it was no longer there.
He planted his foot firmly and felt it in different directions.
There is a distance upstream, but it's far away—the kind of distance you can sense but can't quite perceive; it's the remnant left after the signal has been attenuated during propagation.
They withdrew.
It didn't retreat completely; it retreated far away, to the edge of his perception range.
"0.1 Hz," he noted in his mind. "Current location: approximately 150 meters upstream, estimated. Retreat time: approximately two minutes after grouting begins. Trigger condition: mortar is injected into the crack, and the repair process enters its final stage."
Then he felt the large object under his feet.
It's still at 0.1 Hz, but the frequency has changed—it's not 0.1, it's 0.09. It's a little slower, it feels like something is slowing down, not stopping, it's adjusting.
He had seen similar situations on construction sites: a large piece of equipment was running, and suddenly its speed dropped. It wasn't a malfunction; it was because it sensed a change in the external load and was automatically adjusting its output power.
The larger entity is adjusting.
It sensed something.
He didn't know what it was sensing, but it was adjusting itself, adjusting in the direction of slowing down, retreating, and moving in the same direction as the infiltrator group.
Grouting was completed in thirteen minutes, two minutes faster than planned.
Li lowered the handle of the grouting machine, pulled the grouting nozzle out of the last pre-drilled hole, stood up, and wiped his hands on his work clothes. He rubbed his left ring and little fingers hard as he did so, as if to confirm that he could still feel them—a gesture made by someone who had experienced loss of sensation and needed to check every so often.
"It's done," he said.
Xie Chengzhou did not speak immediately.
He shone his flashlight across the formwork, checking the edges for any mortar seepage—no, the seal was good. He glanced at the pressure gauge one last time; the needle was steady at 0.3 MPa, showing no drop, indicating that the mortar inside the crack was maintaining pressure and not leaking outwards.
"Maintain," he said. "Wait for forty minutes, then remove."
He wrote two lines in his memo:
"Construction completed in 82 minutes (7 minutes over time, waterstop strip malfunction and wear at the joint) • Formwork fixed • Grouting completed • Sealing condition: Good."
"Seepage Flower Retreat - Timing: Approximately two minutes after grouting begins - Retreat Distance: Approximately 150 meters upstream - Large Individual Frequency: 0.1 → 0.09 Hz, deceleration, direction: retreat. Inference: Construction changes rules - Triggered - To be verified: Whether retreat continues after curing is completed."
Old Zhao sat down next to him, unscrewed the thermos, took a sip, and then screwed the lid back on.
"The rate of increase has slowed down," he said.
Xie Chengzhou checked the water level: 5.88 meters.
From the time the grouting was completed until now, about three minutes have passed, and the water level has only risen by 0.02 meters.
Rate of increase: 0.007 meters per minute.
It's slower than before.
He paused for a moment in his mind for the number, then remained silent.
He knew what this meant, but he didn't want to say it, because saying it meant he was relying on an inference he hadn't fully verified—that the repair behavior triggered the rules, the seepage creatures retreated, the larger individuals slowed down, and the transmission of water pressure thus slowed down.
Each step of this deduction is reasonable, but it is a chain, and each link in the chain needs to be verified, and he has only verified one link so far.
"Wait," he said, "forty minutes."
Old Zhao nodded without asking why.
The wind on the dam was still blowing upwards, carrying moisture, a fishy smell, and the stench of concrete powder and mortar mixed together, seeping into Xie Chengzhou's collar—cold and damp.
He stepped firmly onto the concrete of the dam surface to feel it.
The exposed rough surface of the aggregate, cold and steady, remained motionless beneath his shoes.
It's still at 0.09 Hz, but it's continuing to slow down.