Courtyard House: First, kill the hypocrites, leave none alive.

B2 floor of the building.

On the timer for the first explosive, the second hand is still ticking.

The timer is mechanical and has no electronic components.

The outer shell is made of iron and painted black, similar in color to C4 explosive.

He wrapped them together with tape, so they were not visible from the outside.

He glued the last piece of explosive to the load-bearing column at the exit of the underground parking lot.

The load-bearing columns are made of cast concrete with a rough surface.

When C4 was pressed down, it made a slight "hissing" sound as the soft plastic adhered tightly to the rough cement surface.

Chen Feng lowered his eyes.

In the instant the building collapses, the load-bearing walls on the B2 level will break first.

Concrete is as fragile as a biscuit in the face of the shockwave of an explosion.

After the wall is blown up, the floor above loses its support and will collapse like an unbalanced seesaw.

It pressed down on the floor below, and that floor also crumbled. One floor after another, one floor after another.

He calculated that the entire building would collapse in no more than ten seconds from the start of the collapse to its complete collapse.

ten seconds.

Thirty-two floors

Includes three underground floors.

He didn't care whether the people inside could escape.

They deserve to die for making a move on Xiaoyu!

There is no wind.

There wasn't a breath of wind on the rooftop.

That flag—the American flag on the roof of the building across the street—dangled motionless on the flagpole, as if someone had pressed the pause button.

The night sky became very low, and the clouds pressed down, obscuring the moon.

Ten numbers.

ten.

Nine.

Eight.

seven.

six.

five.

Four.

three.

two.

One.

boom.

Flames erupted from the bottom of the building.

From the location of those load-bearing walls that support the entire building.

The earth trembled at that moment, and the entire Queen's Road shook.

He squatted on the roof of the old building across the street and felt the floorboards beneath his feet swaying slightly; it wasn't a hallucination.

The tremors coming from deep within the earth's crust were like a hand, climbing up the outer wall of the old building until they reached the spot where he was crouching.

The explosion of the first explosive was like a signal.

The second explosive detonated immediately afterward, even louder than the first.

The flames spread from the second basement level to the first floor, as if the magma underground had found an outlet to erupt.

The third one exploded.

The fourth piece.

The fifth piece.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten—the explosions were so dense they sounded like drums.

Thirty pieces of explosives were detonated one after another, exploding from the second basement level all the way to the ground in less than ten seconds.

The entire building began to collapse.

It wasn't the kind of collapse that slowly tilts and falls; it shattered directly from under your feet.

After the load-bearing wall on the B2 floor was blown up, the floor above lost its support, like a building block with its base removed. In that instant, the entire weight of the building pressed down on the already broken ground floor.

The concrete pillars at the bottom could not withstand the weight of tens of thousands of tons and cracked in the middle. The steel bars burst out from the crack and twisted into a ball in the firelight.

The building crumbled from bottom to top—the first floor crumbled, the second floor crumbled, the third floor, the fourth floor, the fifth floor—the speed of the crumbling was faster than the sound of an explosion.

He couldn't hear the sound of falling rubble because the loud noise of the entire building collapsing drowned out everything else.

The sky was filled with dust.

Debris flew out of the collapsed building, some landing on the opposite street, some hitting the roof of the building next to it, and some flying over the old building where he was squatting.

Broken glass peeled off the building's curtain wall, falling like a torrential rain, thousands upon thousands of pieces, shimmering with countless tiny lights in the firelight.

Chen Feng squatted on the edge of the rooftop.

Moonlight peeked out from behind the dispersed clouds.

The building across the street is gone—it's now a ruin, a pile of rubble dozens of meters high, gleaming grayish-white in the moonlight.

Dust rose from the ruins and drifted in the night wind.

The ruins are still burning.

Flames leaped out from the cracks in the rubble, like countless red tongues licking the night sky.

Most of the dust raised by the collapsed building has already dissipated.

The air was filled with the smell of concrete powder, burnt plastic, and some indescribable chemical.

He walked through the park and into a narrow alley.

The black sedan was parked at the entrance of the alley, its body covered in a layer of dust.

Chen Feng opened the car door, got in, and inserted the key into the lock.

The engine started after turning twice.

He shifted into gear and stepped on the gas.

As the car drove out of the alley, he glanced at the rearview mirror.

The pile of ruins receded into the distance.

His bombing destroyed not only a building, but also the CIA's headquarters on Hong Kong Island.

The third basement level is the core area of ​​the CIA's Hong Kong Island station, containing encrypted communication equipment, intelligence files, personnel lists, and operation records.

If that floor is destroyed, the CIA's entire intelligence network on Hong Kong Island will be paralyzed.

There may be survivors, but how many?

Central, Hong Kong Island.

The section of Queen's Road Central was closed off. From Ice House Street to Pedder Street, all intersections were cordoned off with barricades and rows of metal barriers blocking the road.

The police car was parked across the intersection, its front facing outwards, the engine still running and ready to start at any moment.

Reporters carrying cameras and microphones crowded outside the police cordon, but were stopped by the police and could only stand on tiptoe and crane their necks to look inside.

Thick smoke rose from the ruins, tinged grayish-white in the morning light, scattered and gathered again by the wind, like some kind of huge creature breathing slowly.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of concrete dust and burnt plastic, wafting out from behind the police tape and permeating the entire street.

The British troops arrived faster than the police.

Dozens of military green trucks were parked at both ends of Queen's Road Central. The truck beds were covered with tarpaulins. Soldiers jumped out of the truck beds, wearing jungle camouflage uniforms, carrying L85A2 rifles, their faces expressionless, their eyes fixed on the still smoking ruins.

The officer in charge spoke quietly with several CIA agents in dark suits inside the cordon, then waved his hand, and the soldiers dispersed, setting up defenses along the cordon, one every few meters with their guns pointed outwards, completely surrounding the area.

Hong Kong Island police were kept on the outermost edge.

The uniformed police officers and plainclothes detectives stood behind the British soldiers, craning their necks to look inside, but they couldn't see anything.

A senior detective in a white shirt went over to negotiate with a British officer, but after a few words, he was told not to come back.

The young detective following behind him asked a question, but he shook his head, didn't speak, and led his men to retreat to a more distant location.

The British army wouldn't let them in.

The CIA won't let me in either.

The grayish-white smoke was still rising, but it was lighter than before, and it was dissipating more slowly in the morning breeze.

Occasionally, something would slide down the ruins, and rubble would roll down the pile of tiles, making a clattering sound.

The creaking and twisting of metal could be heard from inside the collapsed building, like the groans of some dying animal.

Several people in white hazmat suits climbed up from the side of the ruins, wearing gas masks, carrying oxygen tanks, and holding detectors. They moved slowly across the rubble like a few clumsy white beetles.

They swept across the surface of the ruins, the detector emitting a soft beeping sound. At each location, the beeping became more rapid, so they stopped, squatted down, and searched through the rubble.