Chapter 007: Two Extremes of Ice and Fire, Part 2

Blisters!

I could clearly see dense blisters rising on Gu Meijuan’s cheeks and thighs—a direct reaction from severe burns caused by high temperatures. Her once-beautiful, proud face swelled grotesquely, and from within the box came the occasional crackling sound of dry roasting.

“Zheng Yan! My face! My face! I’m about to be burned alive, save me! Please, save me! Sob…”

I knew Gu Meijuan was reaching her limit. By now the surface of the glass box must have reached at least sixty degrees Celsius—a temperature at the very edge of human endurance, the stage where Gu Meijuan began to truly suffer under the relentless heat.

I had no other choice but to resort to desperate measures. Turning around, I swung the axe in my hand and brought it down hard on the box’s power cable interface, hoping to break the firebox’s power supply in time.

But as I had expected, the conduit at the cable’s joint was nearly solid metal. Even using all my strength, I only managed to make two shallow notches at the edge. Breaking through the steel pipe in a short time was simply impossible.

“I can’t take it anymore! It burns! It burns! Zheng Yan, damn it, get me out of here!”

Blisters rose all over Gu Meijuan’s exposed skin, turning bright red as if on the verge of igniting. I was seething with frustration, hacking madly at the cable with the axe, desperately hoping for a miracle. But nothing changed. The reaction inside the firebox had reached a fever pitch; the glass walls glowed red-hot, and then with a sudden whoosh, a bright flame leapt up inside.

Her long hair caught fire first. In the next instant, Gu Meijuan herself was engulfed in flames, her frantic struggles accompanied by blood-curdling screams.

“Du Jiang, I was wrong! I was wrong! Let me go, I beg you...”

The raging fire drowned her pleas, and the massive glass box cracked noisily before finally collapsing into a charred, blackened corpse in the center.

Gu Meijuan was dead. I didn’t know if she deserved it. Maybe Du Jiang had never intended to give me a chance; perhaps the firebox was designed without a flaw, and I had been doomed to watch her burn to death, powerless to prevent it.

I had no time to mourn her fate. On the other side, Xu Meijing had already drunk the water. The freezer cage continued its work, the water level now at its absolute peak, completely submerging Xu Meijing.

She was unconscious, her limbs and hair floating in the icy water, her eyes rolling back with only the whites showing—one breath away from death.

Damn it. Because I’d been distracted by Gu Meijuan, I’d missed my best chance to save Xu Meijing. Now, it was too late to try scoring the glass with cast iron—by the time I broke through, she’d already be dead.

What should I do? Gu Meijuan had burned to death, and now would I have to watch Xu Meijing drown before my eyes as well?

Gurgle… gurgle…

Xu Meijing, still unconscious, swallowed several more mouthfuls of water, the sound like a death knell, urging me to act as my mind went completely blank in this life-and-death moment.

Crash!

Just as I stood frozen with panic, the firebox cage on the other side suddenly exploded, shattering into pieces. The box that had seemed impossible to open was now in fragments after Gu Meijuan’s body burned to a crisp. The entire galley shook, and even the ceiling above rattled.

This must have been due to the heat—no matter how strong tempered glass is, it can’t withstand the tremendous pressure of extreme heat and eventually bursts.

Wait—pressure?

That word flashed through my mind.

Tempered glass can be shattered not only with something extremely hard, but also by overwhelming pressure. Why hadn’t I thought of that before?

If I could apply enough force, both glass cages could be destroyed at once.

I couldn’t generate that kind of pressure myself—but the ship could.

I looked up at the ceiling. It was made from a double layer of steel plates, suspended and secured at four points by heavy chains. The firebox and freezer were both centered beneath the ceiling, each at a crucial load-bearing point.

Damn! If I broke those supports at the same time, both cages would be crushed simultaneously!

I cursed myself, wishing I could slap my own face. I could have saved both women, but I’d let myself be misled, overlooking the simplest, most effective solution. The seemingly flawless cages had a hidden escape all along.

Where was my head before?

I made short work of hacking through one of the support chains, then the second, third, and fourth in quick succession.

With a thunderous crash, the massive iron ceiling plate plunged down, landing squarely atop the glass cages. The immense force smashed the cages open; icy water poured out, and Xu Meijing’s body rolled free.

...

I scooped up Xu Meijing. She was still breathing, so I quickly wrapped her in my shirt, gave her mouth-to-mouth, and rubbed her hands to restore warmth. Gradually, her body regained some heat.

I collapsed to the floor, utterly spent and aching all over—yet, I had managed to save at least one life.

About ten minutes later, Xu Meijing stirred weakly in my arms. The moment she saw me, her nose crinkled and she burst into tears. “Zheng Yan, I really thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to drown in that box…”

I could feel the raw emotion of someone who had just survived a brush with death. She trembled in my arms, unable to calm herself for a long time.

Once she realized she was still in my embrace, she instinctively pulled away, her face turning bright red. Quickly, she changed the subject to ease the tension. “Zheng Yan… do you think we’ll make it off this ship alive?”

I stood up, listening to the distant whistle of a ship’s horn across the water, wondering when the endless night would finally give way to dawn. This place was a remote bay—there was no cell signal, and we were as good as lost to the world.

Furthermore, Du Jiang’s ship was an abandoned vessel, rarely noticed by anyone. Unless the police mounted a large-scale search, it might take four or five days to find us. But for us, that would already be the limit. In the end, we could only rely on ourselves. If we wanted to survive, we’d have to climb our way out step by step.

“Zheng Yan, why did Du Jiang do this? Why does he want us dead?”

That was the question nagging at me too. By now, everything was clear—our homeroom teacher’s death, Gu Meijuan, Xu Meijing—they had all played a role in the fire years ago. Du Jiang’s motive for revenge had grown from a personal grudge to a crusade for social justice.

But why was Du Jiang the one behind this?

I even began to suspect that the real mastermind wasn’t Du Jiang. Whether it was the gear in storeroom nine or the ceiling mechanism in the galley, these details seemed trivial but turned out to be the vital keys to solving the deadly traps. Such ingenious design could hardly have come from an ordinary person.

And the voice inside the red smoke box giving us orders didn’t sound like Du Jiang’s, but rather that of a total stranger.

“Zheng Yan, if it wasn’t Du Jiang, then who? Only he suffered enough pain to harbor such a burning desire for revenge. Honestly, I don’t hate him. He spoke the truth—I did make mistakes back then. This box of ice water has truly awakened me…”

If not him, then who?

Xu Meijing kept talking, but I barely registered her words. My mind was racing through memories of the “mobile meat grinder” and the “fire and ice cages,” every detail sending a chill down my spine. I suddenly realized I had seen the blueprints for these contraptions somewhere before.

I’d seen them in someone’s work notes.

And that person was none other than my late father—Zheng Guangxian.