Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

Suhe turned her head.

The co-pilot looked out the window on his side, and Su He followed his gaze.

Looking down from 38,000 feet, the rapidly forming fissures resembled a zipper being pulled open on the Earth's surface.

The south side of the zipper is Da Yang, and the north side is Mongolia.

The width of the fissure is clearly visible from a height of 38,000 feet—five kilometers, like a thick, dark line embedded in the tawny grassland.

Su handed the control stick to the co-pilot, took out his phone, and took a picture of the view outside the porthole.

He photographed this route for eleven years, capturing sunrises over the Altai Mountains, sunsets over the Greater Khingan Mountains, blizzards turning the entire Gobi Desert white, and countless beautiful scenes along the border.

But this was the first time that the border line itself had been photographed.

……

"There's absolutely no way the wildfire will reach us now, right?"

"It's not entirely impossible."

"Five kilometers wide, I want to see what kind of wind can carry the fire that far."

"Don't forget there are still 500 meters deep."

"It's negligible now, even less likely than being struck by lightning."

"What a pity, the entire Rift Valley is within our country's borders... wasting 15,000 square kilometers of our motherland's land."

"Are you crazy?! You want Doflamingo to go and destroy other people's land?"

"You're saying Wall Street belongs to Y City as if it were..."

Is that the same thing?

"Let's avoid controversy; we'll just accept this loss."

"Forget about fighting for every inch of land; this is a one-time solution, and the cost is too low to be a waste!"

--------

We've arrived at the final stop.

Zhang Qiliang stopped falling and landed on a protruding bedrock along the southern edge of the fissure.

The lightsaber vanished from his fingertips, the last embers of light scattered by the wind and melted into the eastern sky.

The wind here is no longer the dry wind of the grassland.

The western foothills of the Greater Khingan Mountains gradually disappear here. The wind blowing down from the eastern mountains carries the scent of forests. Further east, the horizon reveals the undulating mountain ranges, with dark green pine forests stretching from the mountainside to the foot of the mountains, interlocking with the boundary of the grassland.

The cracks at the end, and the soil structure, are completely different from those 4,800 kilometers away: black calcareous soil, sub-clay, weathering crust, feldspar and quartz are arranged in an interlaced pattern... Under the sunlight, it shimmers with fine, fish-scale-like light spots.

Zhang Qiliang jumped down from the bedrock, and a dozen staff members jogged over from the direction of the port.

“Over here,” Zhang Qiliang turned around, “someone is cursing at me.”

The man in the lead, a middle-aged man in his early forties, paused for a moment upon hearing this.

Zhang Qiliang pulled a small notebook from his pocket, flipped through it, and tore off a page:

[ID “Bright Moon Shines on My Heart”: “What kind of family could raise such a psychopath? Regardless of whether it’s staged or not, this kind of violent coercion is extremely heinous! This is challenging the bottom line of the law, seriously provoking tensions between officials and the masses, and inciting antagonism! It must be thoroughly investigated!”]

[IP Resolution: A long, arc-shaped section indicating the province, city, banner, town, and a government agency dormitory building.]

ID card information: ***

What a petty person I am!

“…We will investigate.” The middle-aged man glanced at it, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"Nothing was found?"

The middle-aged man was silent for a few seconds: "...I suggest that the local authorities demand that he issue a public apology to you."

"Who cares!"

"Then how about a fine of two hundred?"

Zhang Qiliang rolled his eyes.

"I'll give you another two hundred."

"Add me on WeChat, and remember to transfer the money to me."

The middle-aged man was stunned for a moment.

Scan the QR code, add the contact, add the note "owes 200", and put the phone back in your pocket.

"gone."

--------

That afternoon, Jack Thompson ate grass ash the whole way.

After landing at Linjiang Airport, he changed vehicles three times.

The first trip was in an off-road vehicle. We drove north along the provincial highway for three hours, and the road surface changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to ruts.

The second trip was to a border herder's van. The back seat had been removed, and a generator and several barrels of diesel fuel were crammed inside. He huddled between the generator and the diesel barrels for an hour and a half.

The third time—the van dropped him off at a crossroads, where a young herdsman was squatting, wearing a helmet with a plastic flower made of twisted wire pinned to it.

"CNN?" The herdsman blurted out the letters with a heavy grassland accent, but his pronunciation was very clear.

"Yes."

"Come up."

CNN's satellite broadcast van, the US military's Black Hawk helicopter, Libyan rebels' pickup trucks, Syrian Kurds' donkey carts, and now, Jack Thompson's list of vehicles has been expanded to include a modified prairie motorcycle.

The motorcycle bumped along the grassland for forty minutes before stopping on a raised earthen embankment.

The herdsman turned off the fire, took off his helmet and held it to his chest, then gestured northwards with his lips. "We've arrived."

Jack got out of the car.

The photography team arrived half an hour earlier than him—two cameramen, one audio recorder, and a satellite transmission technician had already set up their equipment on the north side of the earthen embankment.

The camera was mounted on a tripod, with the lens pointed due north.

The technician squatted next to the satellite dish, a laptop on his lap, the screen displaying live feeds from the New York studio.

Jack walked over to the camera.

The earth suddenly disappeared before him; the embankment was the highest point on the southern edge of the rift valley, and three steps forward led to a vertical section five hundred meters deep.

Standing on the edge of the cut, the wind rushed up from the valley floor, carrying a scent he had never smelled anywhere before—wet, cool, mixed with the mineral smell of the exposed rock after it had been cut open, and water.

A large amount of water.

At the bottom of the rift valley, there was already a small river.

The water flow does not all originate from upstream.

At a depth of 500 meters, water seeped out from every layer of rock cut by the lightsaber.

The sandy soil layer seeps out thin, light gray streams; the gravel layer seeps out turbid water mixed with fine sand and gravel; the sedimentary rock layers seep out clear, mineral-lustered water lines; and the bedrock fissures seep out karst water with extremely high calcium content and a milky white hue.

Countless streams cascade down the cut surfaces of the two walls, forming a 500-meter-high waterfall that flows simultaneously. The streams converge into smaller waterfalls halfway down the cut surface, which then merge into larger waterfalls. The larger waterfalls fall to the bottom, crashing onto the rock debris accumulated at the bottom of the fissure, splashing up wave after wave of water mist.

The water vapor was swept up by the wind at the bottom of the valley, forming a continuous band of fog in the air above the rift valley, stretching from the western horizon to the eastern horizon.

As the setting sun shines from the west, it passes through the mist and stretches from the western end of the rift valley to the eastern end, forming a rainbow embedded in the crack of the earth.

Jack Thompson now understands why Quedexia cut the entire Rift Valley into the territory of Dayang.

133 Sell everything

[The day]

“Let’s connect,” Jack said.

The technician tapped a few times on the keyboard, and the small red light on the satellite antenna changed from flashing to solid.

The footage from the New York studio came through a laptop screen—the presenter was sitting at a table, wearing headphones, with Jack's report on the border fires, which he had sent back from the Mandula border crossing the day before.

"Jack, can you hear me?"

“I heard you.” Jack took the microphone from the cameraman and took another half step toward the edge of the cut surface.

The wind blew up from the valley floor, blowing his golden-gray hair back and revealing his forehead, which was reddened by the prairie sun.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am Jack Thompson. I am standing on the border—to be precise, about two kilometers south of the border, on the edge of a fissure that just appeared in the earth this afternoon.”

He turned to the side, letting the camera lens pass over his shoulder.

"About six hours ago, the Da Yang Superman, affectionately known as 'quedexia' by audiences around the world, traversed the borders of Da Yang, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, from the easternmost foothills of the Greater Khingan Mountains to the westernmost foothills of the Altai Mountains, carving out this fissure in the earth."

"The fissure is 4,800 kilometers long, 5 kilometers wide, and 500 meters deep. I am standing in the middle of the fissure—from here to the west, the fissure extends all the way to the foot of the Altai Mountains; to the east, it extends all the way to the edge of the forest of the Greater Khingan Mountains."

Jack paused, turned around, and faced the camera again.

"We must admit that CNN's news coverage in Dayang was not enough to make us one of the first media outlets to arrive on the scene. The scale of the fissure, its precise direction, and the rock strata texture on the cut surface that are as neat as geological specimens—you have seen these things countless times in aerial footage from other media outlets."

As he spoke, Jack spread his hands slightly: "So, now, we won't repeat these things anymore."

"But there is one thing, I came at the perfect time."

Jack turned his head and gestured to the cameraman.

The camera pans away from the panoramic view of the rift valley.

The focus shifts from the depths of the scene, and the sky and the edge of the canyon recede into the background, replaced by the gray, pebbly ground beneath our feet—the most common type of ground in the Gobi Desert: light gray pebbles embedded in the sand, some as big as a fist, others only the size of a fingernail, their edges smoothed by wind and sand, gleaming with a dry, grayish light in the setting sun.

The camera's focus continued to fall, until it landed right at Jack's feet.

Jack crouched down.

His finger reached in from the right side of the image, his index finger pointing among the pebbles.

"Please look here."

The camera zooms in.

In the cracks between the rubble, a small clump of sand was pushed aside by something.

Several tiny cracks extend from the center outwards, and at the center of the cracks is a speck of green.

A tiny grain of rice, so tender it's almost transparent, a green that squeezes out from the gap between two pieces of gravel.

The cotyledons were not fully unfolded yet, curled up together, like a young animal that had not yet opened its eyes.

The stem is as thin as a sewing needle, semi-transparent, and you can vaguely see the vascular bundles inside that are transporting water upwards.

The roots burrowed shallowly into the sand beneath the gravel—the camera zoomed in close enough to see the tip of the thinnest root, not yet fully embedded in the soil, like a tentacles cautiously probing the temperature of the world.

Jack's fingers didn't touch it.

"A total of 6 hours, 37 minutes and 15 seconds have passed since Quedexia cut this fissure."

"At this time, most plants' seeds are basically unable to complete the imbibition process, which under normal conditions takes 24 to 48 hours."

"But it's not like that here."

Jack withdrew his finger, and the photographer cooperatively zoomed out again to bring the rift valley into the frame.

Under the setting sun, on the 500-meter-deep cut surface, countless thin streams seep out from the cross-section of the rock strata, converging into small waterfalls halfway down the cut surface. The small waterfalls fall and merge into larger waterfalls, which then crash onto the rock debris at the bottom of the valley, splashing up wave after wave of water mist.

“Quedexia has cut through all the underground aquifers,” Jack’s voice came from off-screen. “A moist mist permeates the entire rift valley, which means that the moisture conditions are instantly met for every seed on the edge of the rift. Six hours ago, this was a dry and barren desert; now, it is a humid zone filled with mist. Here, the power to activate life does not need to continue to follow the regular schedule.”

Jack stood up, looked down at the little blade of grass, and the iridescent light fell on the tip of the blade, making that tiny bit of tender green shine.

"Just like the rift valley itself."

“A ‘artificial’ inland canal that is 4,800 kilometers long, 5 kilometers wide, and 500 meters deep—or perhaps a ‘artificial’ inland lake in the future—does not need to follow conventional engineering schedules or conventional engineering budgets.”

He paused for a second.

"I'm Jack Thompson, CNN, the border between Da Yang and Mongolia. This is our full coverage from the edge of the Rift Valley."

--------

【Day 2】

Northeast, western suburbs of a coastal city.

8:40 PM.