Chapter 97: Landslide

Shen Chaoxi’s pale lips curved faintly.

“I’m not cold.”

But the man lifted his gaze and saw her huddled in the back seat, the girl’s voice soft and fragile. Shen Chaoxi looked at him; he was soaked through from head to toe. If anything, he was the one who seemed colder.

Yet Lu Yunzhou only arched a brow and kept his eyes on her. Then, without another word, he turned fully around, facing the girl, and draped his jacket over her.

The knuckles of his hand stood out faintly, his fingers long and well spaced, giving him an air of steadiness and authority. Those defined fingers pulled the coat snug around her.

In a low voice, Lu Yunzhou explained, “When we get there in a bit, the temperature will drop. You’ll catch cold.”

The downpour showed no sign of stopping, and the temperature was unstable. Perhaps by nightfall it would fall sharply.

She was dressed so lightly. What if she caught a fever?

Not to mention, she had not listened to him just now, had followed him out of the car, and gotten drenched in the rain.

Seeing the crease between his brows, Shen Chaoxi said no more.

Her whole body was soaked now. It was uncomfortable. Wrapped in his coat, she did feel much better.

Why refuse?

But all along the road, village embankments had been flooded and river water had surged backward. The filthy floodwaters had swept across the entire south of the capital region.

Shen Chaoxi took out her phone and stared at the messages on the screen.

As expected, there really was a criminal hideout in the south capital area.

Hidden in some nameless deep-mountain town.

If not for the flood, they might never have run into military personnel.

And Xiaoxiao’s team had just, half an hour earlier, destroyed the hideout in Tongshan Town in the capital region.

The criminals had reportedly resisted desperately and fled southwest with their people, possibly threatening other villagers.

She frowned.

Then, just as she was lost in thought, a voice came from the front of the vehicle.

“Captain, we’re here!”

But the rain was torrential.

The road was underwater.

The vehicle could not go on.

Lu Yunzhou frowned, opened the door, and glanced at the situation ahead. After weighing it in his mind, he immediately ordered in a cold voice, “Everyone, put on your life vests, take every tool you can use, get out of the vehicle, and proceed on foot for two kilometers. We are moving in for rescue and disaster relief!”

“Yes, sir!”

A thunderous response rose at once from the vehicle behind.

Behind this military vehicle were two cargo trucks from the base.

After receiving the order, dozens of soldiers in uniform, carrying life vests, sprang down from the military trucks and rushed toward the flooded town to rescue people.

“Captain, what about Miss Shen?” someone asked.

Earlier, because of the road conditions, the landslide, and the collapse, they had feared Shen Chaoxi would be in danger if she got out of the car. So they had kept her inside.

But now things were different.

Danger was everywhere here.

Staying in the vehicle was not necessarily safe either.

The man frowned as he looked at the girl, drenched by the rain and wrapped in a man’s coat, her figure seeming even thinner and more slight. A flicker of concern flashed through his dark eyes, and then he looked at Lu Fifteen.

“Watch her,” Lu Yunzhou said gravely.

“The rest of you, take the lifeboats at once and follow me to the town for rescue!”

“Yes, Captain!”

The soldiers answered in unison.

In the muddy rain, Shen Chaoxi followed Lu Yunzhou and the others forward, pressing on through the storm without any regard for her soaked clothes.

Shen Chaoxi was not actually that delicate. But given the situation before her, she did not dare show too much.

Even so, Lu Yunzhou was afraid she might fall behind, so he still had Lu Fifteen keep an eye on her beside him.

After all, he had to direct the men under him in the rescue effort. In emergencies, he might not always be able to look after her.

They moved on in the rain. The conditions were treacherous and difficult.

The military base in the south of the capital, the armed department, and the nearby garrisons had all mobilized rescue efforts at the fastest possible speed. And yet they still could not stop the disaster from unfolding.

It felt as if there were countless places desperately in need of manpower and rescue, while their own numbers were limited.

Even if troops from the capital or from the north of the capital were to hurry here, it would still take more than two hours.

At best, the nearest forces could only think of ways to help the trapped victims first.

The victims were stranded in the murky floodwaters. Trees had snapped and been swept away. Parents clung to their children inside apartment buildings on the verge of collapse, and there were also elderly people with limited mobility who needed help.

Almost everywhere one looked, the entire town had been flooded.

This town of three hundred thousand people had been swallowed by floodwaters overnight.

Multi-story buildings stood like constructions above the surface of a lake. Filth was everywhere.

Lu Yunzhou and the others, with their men, had already rescued more than a dozen villagers swept away by the flood.

Night was approaching.

The sky was leaden and dark.

Lu Yunzhou and his team used lifeboats, organizing the rescue in shifts.

Then Shen Chaoxi sat in one of the lifeboats, wearing an orange life vest, her brows tightly knit as she looked at the ruin before her.

What had once been a lively, bustling town had been battered by the flood until it was unrecognizable.

The roads ahead were blocked, leaving them no choice but to use this method: take people aboard the lifeboats and pass through the area where the water had risen the highest.

They also took the rescued villagers with them.

As they lifted a little girl down from the second floor and brought her aboard the lifeboat, the craft suddenly tipped from the uneven weight.

Shen Chaoxi nearly fell into the water.

A long, strong arm reached out from behind and caught her hand, steadying her.

The man’s eyes were deep and his face was colder than ice. His clear, cool gaze fixed on her, and in a low, husky voice he said, “Be careful.”

Shen Chaoxi nodded lightly.

Just now, she had been preoccupied and had not noticed the lifeboat’s condition. If not for Lu Yunzhou, she really might have had to take a bath in the floodwater.

The light of dusk was no different from night, the sky choked with black clouds.

“Captain, report! A new emergency has occurred ahead. A quarry has collapsed, and dozens of workers are trapped in the mine shaft!”

“What’s the situation there?”

Lu Yunzhou’s brows drew together, his voice ice-cold.

He looked at the rescue personnel before him, and one of them said, “Reporting to the Captain, the mine entrance has collapsed severely. It needs to be dug out by hand. And from what our people sent there observed, it looks like a major cave-in caused by a landslide.”

In other words, machinery could not be used to dig.

They feared it would collapse even deeper.

They could only clear it by hand.

And they would need to send people down into the buried mine shaft to pull the trapped workers out.

Just as Lu Yunzhou’s expression darkened and he was about to lead his men over, a pale, rain-soaked hand suddenly reached out and caught his clothes.

Lu Yunzhou’s eyes darkened.

He saw the girl tug at her lips. Her face had gone pale with cold, her slender, slight frame standing in the rain, and in her very small voice she said, “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

That was true enough.

Everywhere there were hidden flood dangers. It was not safe to leave her anywhere.

But if he took her with him, the place was a quarry, and the landslide triggered by the flood made it extremely dangerous.

Taking her there would make Lu Yunzhou worry a thousand times over.

And what Shen Chaoxi was thinking was, leaving me here?

Impossible.

If I have to be a burden, then I’ll be a burden all the way.

So be it.

To Lu Yunzhou, wasn’t she already a burden?

But she still had things to do. She could not stay here.

By calculation, the troops from the capital would arrive in another two hours.

“Captain, I think we should take her with us. This rain doesn’t know when it’ll stop, and the flood could strike at any time. There are hazards everywhere. If we leave Miss Shen here...” Someone stepped forward then, speaking up for Shen Chaoxi.

It was indeed a difficult choice either way.

If Shen Chaoxi was left behind, no one would be by her side.

Lu Yunzhou would be taking his men to rescue others.

If she stayed here and ran into danger, what then?

Thinking of that, Lu Yunzhou tightened his throat, staring at the girl before him, his voice deep.

“Then she comes with us.”

He decided to take her along.

He did not want to leave her behind.

But once they reached the collapsed quarry, Lu Yunzhou made her stand in a safe area and not go near the mine entrance or the place where the hillside had given way.

Because when a collapse like that happened, it was often accompanied by other dangers and sudden accidents.

“Captain, we’ve got it clear. There are at least thirty people still trapped below in the mine shaft.”

The man who had gone to assess the situation returned, breathing hard. It took him quite a while to steady himself before he reported to Lu Yunzhou.

They were all workers from the quarry.

The rain had come so suddenly.

They had not expected such danger.

So when the mine entrance collapsed, they were still inside, busy at work. Who would have thought the hillside would cave in and bury everyone below?

They had truly been buried.

The entire mine entrance was covered by a collapsed slope, completely sealed in.

If this continued any longer, and the water level kept rising, no one knew what the situation would become.

As for the author’s note: everyone should probably know what kind of day it is lately. I am also a little stuck, and I’m afraid the writing may not turn out well. The extra chapters will be posted tomorrow and the day after; there will be additional updates on both days. These two chapters have been revised a little. Waaaaah, I’m crying because more than a hundred of my paragraph comments are gone.