The chapter opens in Beijing in 1967 amid open factional warfare between Red Guard groups. The Red Union attacks the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, but its commander fears that the defenders may detonate explosives and kill everyone. In the chaos, a fifteen-year-old girl from the brigade appears on the roof to wave a flag and perform revolutionary bravery; she is shot, impaled, and used for target practice, establishing the chapter’s atmosphere of political fanaticism and dehumanized violence.

The narrative then shifts to a mass struggle session at Tsinghua University, where thousands gather to humiliate so-called reactionary academic authorities. The chapter explains that intellectuals have been beaten, driven numb, or pushed into repentance and suicide during repeated denunciations. Ye Zhetai, a physics professor, stands out because he still refuses to repent or submit. Because Ye Zhetai remains intellectually defiant, the Red Guards reserve him for the climax of the session and burden him with especially heavy iron punishment gear.

Ye Zhetai is questioned by his former students and younger Red Guards about teaching relativity, quantum mechanics, and the big bang theory. Ye Zhetai calmly defends scientific method and experimental evidence, which only makes him appear more dangerous to his accusers. To break him, the Red Guards bring out his wife, Shao Lin, who publicly denounces him and repeats ideological attacks on modern physics. Her participation shows both her desperation to survive politically and the collapse of private loyalty under public terror.

When logic fails to overpower Ye Zhetai, the younger female Red Guards turn to violence. They beat him with belts and metal buckles while the crowd shouts slogans, and Ye Zhetai is eventually struck down and killed onstage. Shao Lin, pushed past endurance by the spectacle and her own role in it, suffers a mental break and begins laughing uncontrollably. Ye Wenjie, Ye Zhetai’s daughter, has tried to reach her father but is restrained by two janitors; after the crowd disperses, she sits beside his body and places his pipe in his hand before leaving.

After the session, Ye Wenjie returns home and hears Shao Lin’s deranged laughter from the apartment, making clear that she has effectively lost both parents in one day. Ye Wenjie then goes to the home of Professor Ruan Wen, her advisor and closest confidante, hoping for refuge. Instead, she finds that Ruan Wen has taken an overdose and died after suffering persecution herself. By the end of the chapter, Ye Wenjie is emotionally numbed by successive losses, and the violence of the Cultural Revolution has decisively marked her inner life.