Chaos gradually subsided with Butcher's departure.
The piercing alarm stopped, the foremen's roars faded into the distance, leaving only faint disturbances coming from the direction of the central steam hub. The workers, as if their souls had been drained, returned to their usual numbness, each going back to their posts, continuing the endless, repetitive labor. It was as if the life-or-death conflict moments ago had been nothing but an insignificant farce.
Jin Wanzhao leaned against the cold metal wall, gasping for air. The spot on his back where the discipline baton had struck throbbed with fiery pain. He looked down at little A Xing, whom he had shielded behind him. The child was still clutching that warm iron ingot tightly, his thin body trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind, his large eyes filled with terror.
"It's okay." Jin Wanzhao's voice was hoarse as he reached out to pat his head, only to find his own arm trembling uncontrollably.
He withdrew his hand, clenched it into a fist, and his gaze fell back on the ancient gear pendant hanging on his chest. The pendant had returned to its icy touch; that faint trace of warmth from before seemed like nothing more than an illusion brought on by the steam burns.
The long thirty-six-hour shift finally ended. The shift-change bell sounded like a pardon. Jin Wanzhao, dragging legs as heavy as lead, followed the crowd as they shuffled back to the dormitory.
The dormitory was a hell on earth.
In a space of just over a hundred square meters, fifty bunk beds made of iron were crammed together. The air was thick with the nauseating stench of sweat, foot odor, and cheap machine oil all mixed together. Snores, sleep talk, and coughs rose and fell in succession, weaving together a symphony of despair. Outside the window, the lights of the Smelting Zone never went out, staining the sky a sickly dark red. Thick black smoke rose continuously, like struggling ghosts.
Jin Wanzhao found his bunk and lay down fully clothed. The wooden board beneath him was painfully hard, but he didn't even have the strength to turn over.
He closed his eyes, trying to sleep, but he simply couldn't.
The explosion at the central steam hub, Butcher's狰狞 face, the crackling arcs on the discipline baton, little A Xing's desperate screams... Scene after scene replayed in his mind over and over. To make matters worse, the mechanical roar that had accompanied him for over a decade became unusually clear tonight.
Every fall of the steam hammer felt like it was pounding directly on his heart. The sound of the distant drive shafts turning, the grinding of gear against gear, the hiss of steam flowing through pipes... These sounds were no longer chaotic noise but had differentiated into countless independent tracks, each thread, each wisp, drilling precisely into his ears.
Irritated, he turned over, pressing his cheek against the wall. Embedded in the wall was a thick steam pipe, through which scalding steam provided uninterrupted heating for the nobles in the Upper District.
Just as he unconsciously pressed his palm against that slightly warm pipe, a sudden change occurred!
Boom!
It felt like the entire world exploded inside his mind.
The darkness before his eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a grand and magnificent world beyond description. He "saw" it: countless gears of all sizes and shapes slowly rotating around him, meshing with each other with the precision of divine creations. Bronze, black iron, refined steel... they formed a boundless mechanical universe.
He "saw" the steam pipe under his palm. It was no longer cold metal but had transformed into a transparent crystal pipe. Inside the pipe, what surged was no longer steam, but a long river of energy formed by billions of coalescing light points. This river flowed endlessly, splitting into countless tiny tributaries that extended like spiderwebs, flowing throughout the entire Smelting Zone, injecting themselves into the depths of every machine, every component.
These energy flows, like the blood vessels of living creatures, pulsed within the steel bodies of the machines. They were the life force of the machinery!
Jin Wanzhao's mind went blank, utterly shaken by this scene beyond imagination. What was this? An illusion? Or had his mind finally snapped from exhaustion?
This magnificent vision lasted only a few short seconds before receding like a tide.
He yanked his hand back sharply, sat bolt upright on the bed, gasping for air. Cold sweat had already soaked the clothes on his back.
The dormitory was still the same as before, a mix of snores and sleep talk. The worker beside him turned over, mumbling something. The wall was still that dirty wall, the pipe still that cold pipe.
Nothing had changed.
Jin Wanzhao touched his forehead, then looked at his palms. There was only thick calluses.
"Crazy... I must be going crazy..." he muttered to himself, his heart pounding wildly. The searing pain on his steam-burnt cheek and back couldn't suppress the shock and terror within him.
He didn't dare lie down again. He just sat there,枯坐 until the sky began to lighten and the work whistle once again blared throughout the Smelting Zone.
A new day. New torment.
Jin Wanzhao walked dazedly towards his workstation, the strange experience of the previous night weighing on his mind. He tried to dismiss it as a nightmare, but that feeling of perceiving the very essence of machinery was branded into his brain.
He subconsciously looked up at a stamping press operating at high speed not far away.
It was a behemoth over five meters tall; every stamp made the ground tremble. In the eyes of other workers, it was just a cold, dangerous killing machine.
But in Jin Wanzhao's field of vision, something different appeared.
He seemed able to "see" through its thick steel shell, observing the operation of countless components inside. Faint or bright energy pathways crisscrossed and flowed within the machine.
Suddenly, his pupils contracted sharply.
Deep within the core area of that stamping press, on a tiny transmission gear no bigger than a thumb, a barely visible crack was slowly widening. A thread of ominous, pale red energy was leaking out, wisp by wisp.
Jin Wanzhao's heart seemed to stop.
He saw it clearly, perceived it clearly.
That machine was about to have an accident.