Chapter 303| Chapter 304| Chapter 305
Chapter 303: Yi Yi’s Separate Small Bed
Hearing the voice from the storytelling machine, little Yi Yi tilted her head and looked over with intense curiosity. The childlike, playful cadence of the narrator fascinated her, holding her absolute attention.
Seeing that the baby was completely captivated and focused on the device, Sheng Wanyan quietly sat down at her desk nearby and turned back to her translation sheets.
When it came time for dinner, Sheng Wanyan simply retrieved a pre-cooked meal from her spatial domain, sparing both her and Gu Tingxiao from having to spend hours over a hot stove. She only needed to boil a quick, simple pot of egg noodles to pair with it. Thanks to the storytelling machine, little Yi Yi remained perfectly content, no longer requiring her mother’s constant, hands-on attention.
Sheng Wanyan checked her watch; it was already half past five. She moved into the kitchen to drop the noodles into the boiling water, waiting for Gu Tingxiao to return from the barracks.
The clock struck exactly 5:50 just as the food was fully prepared. Sheng Wanyan stepped back into the bedroom to switch off the storytelling machine and store it safely in her domain. The sudden silence didn’t cause Yi Yi to cry; instead, the infant blinked and looked around, seemingly trying to trace where the sound had gone. When she couldn’t find it, she didn’t throw a tantrum either. After all, her mother didn’t talk continuously when they babbled together, so she was already used to quiet gaps.
Sheng Wanyan sat on the edge of the mattress to nurse her, as the baby was genuinely ravenous by this hour.
Just as the infant finished her milk, the front door opened. Gu Tingxiao walked in from his shift, balancing a container of hot food from the officers’ mess hall. He had been worried his wife wouldn’t have enough time to cook while managing the baby solo, so he had proactively packed some dishes from the canteen.
The moment he stepped into the dining room and spotted the two hot bowls of egg noodles waiting on the table, a warm smile broke across his face. He knew his wife had made them. He opened his container, adding the cafeteria’s stir-fried dishes to the spread to create a proper feast.
“Did the little one give you a hard time today, sweetheart?” he asked, sitting down.
“Not at all. She was perfectly content, kicking her feet and making plenty of noise in her crib all afternoon,” Sheng Wanyan lied smoothly, her expression completely flawless.
“Tingxiao, could you craft a small mobile toy that we can mount directly across the top of her crib?” she requested, leaning forward. “It would be perfect if it had a few little bells attached that make a sound when brushed.”
What Sheng Wanyan was actually envisioning was the traditional infant crib mobiles of the modern era, which allowed babies to trigger delightful musical chiming whenever they kicked out their legs. It would serve as excellent physical exercise for Yi Yi, while simultaneously encouraging her cognitive development and conditioning her neck muscles as she lifted her head to look for the sound.
Gu Tingxiao listened to her description, his practical mind easily constructing a blueprint of the toy. To make it even clearer, Sheng Wanyan reached for a scrap of paper and sketched a basic diagram for him. It was a simple wooden framework designed to span the guardrails, fitted with a few suspended strings of bells that would chime at the slightest touch.
“Any small trinkets that generate distinct sounds will work,” Sheng Wanyan added. She wanted a variety of tones so that little Yi Yi wouldn’t grow bored of the audio cues.
Reviewing the sketch, Gu Tingxiao nodded with absolute confidence; the regiment’s maintenance workshops were bursting with spare scrap metal and jingling hardware. He was naturally resourceful, and if the market lacked a specific modern luxury, he would simply engineer it with his own hands.
He selected a few smooth iron fragments and sealed them securely within a miniature ball woven out of pliable bamboo splits; the moment the sphere rotated, the iron pieces rattled musically. He also combed through the props department of the military base’s art troupe, salvaging a handful of clean brass bells and any useless, discarded trinkets that generated a pleasant ring.
Back at his workbench, he scrubbed the materials thoroughly and painstakingly sanded every millimeter of the wood and metal with fine sandpaper, ensuring there wasn’t a single raw edge or splinter that could scratch Yi Yi’s delicate feet.
Once Gu Tingxiao proudly brought the finished mobile home and left for his afternoon shift, Sheng Wanyan retrieved her premium disinfectant, soaking the entire toy to sanitize it. After wiping it completely dry, she carefully secured the wooden frame across the crib. She calibrated the height perfectly, anchoring the dangling bamboo balls and bells just within reach of a tiny, extended foot.
Little Yi Yi was lying on her back, kicking her legs through the air as she usually did, when her foot suddenly clipped the lowest rattle. A sharp, clear jingling sound echoed through the nursery.
The baby froze, her wide eyes darting around the room in absolute bewilderment. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she seemingly assumed she was hallucinating. She paused for a moment, then pushed her leg out again for fun—and the musical chiming erupted a second time.
This time, Yi Yi looked straight down at her own feet, using all her strength to lift her head and peer upward toward the source of the magic.
Sheng Wanyan watched from the doorway, thoroughly satisfied. The makeshift mobile was a total success; her daughter could now actively exercise her core muscles entirely on her own, freeing Sheng Wanyan from having to constantly invent manual physical routines.
Yi Yi was so utterly engrossed in her new toy that Sheng Wanyan didn’t even need to bring out the automated storytelling machine for the rest of the day. A child needed to learn to build an attention span early on; flooding her environment with too many flashing stimulations would only scatter her focus.
With the new toy anchoring the baby’s attention, Sheng Wanyan found herself with a substantial pocket of personal freedom. She used the hours to sweep the rooms, organize the kitchen cabinets, and thoroughly audit the winter stores down in the cellar.
When the noon hour arrived, she skipped lighting the stove entirely, quietly pulling a fresh, ready-made lunch out of her spatial domain.
Once Gu Tingxiao returned from the barracks and finished his own meal, he seamlessly took charge of their daughter, settling in for their standard afternoon nap. Sheng Wanyan decided to join them for a rest. Since Yi Yi was perfectly content with her crib toys, Sheng Wanyan didn’t need to force herself to translate through her own fatigue.
Seeing that she had laid her pens down for the afternoon, Gu Tingxiao pulled her close against his chest to nap together, making sure she took the warmest side of the platform bed. He wrapped his large arms around her, using his broad palm to gently shield her eyes from the sunlight filtering through the window.
Although they had lined the window panes with a thick layer of cloth, it lacked the absolute light-blocking capabilities of modern blackout curtains, allowing a steady glow of afternoon light to seep into the chamber. Sheng Wanyan loved waking up to natural light; it brought a cozy warmth to the space and kept the winter gloom from weighing on her mind.
Gu Tingxiao maintained his protective shade, his other hand rhythmically and gently patting her back to lull her into deep comfort. Sheng Wanyan buried her face against his chest, her arms looping around his strong waist as she succumbed to sleep.
The family of three enjoyed a remarkably peaceful, slow lunch break, the little infant resting securely in her crib just inches away from her parents’ mattress.
When Gu Tingxiao’s military internal clock woke him right on schedule, his wife and daughter were still sleeping deeply. He carefully checked the corners of their quilts, tucking the edges tightly around their shoulders to trap the warmth, and pressed a tender kiss against each of their foreheads before quietly slipping out to report for his afternoon duty.
Sheng Wanyan didn’t stir until half past two. Knowing Yi Yi reliably slept until exactly three o’clock, she recognized she had a precious thirty-minute window to herself. She signaled Maodou to take his post at the base of the crib, then slipped back into her private spatial domain, utilizing the expanded time difference to rapidly power through her translation texts.
The next two weeks vanished in a flash, and winter officially descended upon Bing City with absolute, brutal force. The sky turned into a sheet of gray, dropping massive, heavy blankets of snow over the courtyard until the dirt roads were entirely buried.
Terrified that the freezing drafts drifting along the floorboards would cause Yi Yi to catch a cold, Sheng Wanyan stopped using the crib during the day, transferring the baby directly onto the heated brick kang bed to play. It was infinitely warmer and safer than the wooden nursery frame.
Studying the layout, Sheng Wanyan realized they needed a permanent winter solution. “Tingxiao, we need to construct a miniature, dedicated kang bed for the baby,” she noted that evening as the wind howled outside. “Once the true blizzards lock us in, having a small brick bed hooked into the heating flues will ensure she sleeps comfortably without freezing.”
A standard wooden crib lacked insulation; it was entirely unrealistic to expect an infant to survive the sub-zero reality of an Bing City winter in a standalone wooden bed.
To help fight the immediate chill, Sheng Wanyan carried a coal stove into the master bedroom that evening, lighting the fuel until a comfortable warmth spread through the space.
“The temperature is dropping too fast; the ambient air is freezing at night,” she murmured, checking the frost on the window panes. “We absolutely must build a small brick kang for Yi Yi’s corner.”
Gu Tingxiao nodded without hesitation. Even though they had lined the crib with their thickest wool blankets, the bitter northern winter could easily cut through layers of cotton if the fire died down.
“Let Yi Yi sleep between us for the next few days,” he decided, wrapping an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’ll coordinate with your brother to haul some bricks and clay mortar back from the depot tomorrow morning.” Although he deeply cherished sleeping with his wife cuddled tightly in his arms without a third wheel, his daughter’s survival was the absolute priority.
By the following afternoon, Gu Tingxiao and Sheng Wanze arrived at the gate, balancing a heavy load of construction bricks and refined clay soil on a handcart.
They designed the miniature kang to mirror the dimensions of a standard children’s daybed, calibrating the length so it would easily accommodate her growth until she was five years old. To keep the nursery footprint tight, they mapped the structure to anchor directly against the foot of the master bed. Gu Tingxiao manually shifted Sheng Wanyan’s elegant wooden vanity, sliding it neatly flush against her translation desk to clear the necessary floor space.
Fortunately, their master bedroom was remarkably spacious, easily absorbing the new brick addition without feeling cramped.
Gu Tingxiao and Sheng Wanze moved with practiced, military efficiency, utilizing their lunch breaks and evening hours to systematically lay the bricks and connect the heating flues. Before they mixed the mortar, Sheng Wanyan retrieved several large bolts of spare fabric from her closet, meticulously covering the vanity, desk, and wardrobe to shield their belongings from the fine construction dust. Dust on fabric didn’t worry her; she could easily run the clothes through a sanitized wash once the labor concluded. She then carried little Yi Yi across the corridor into Mother Gu’s vacant guest room, staying clear of the workspace so the infant wouldn’t inhale the heavy dust.
A newly constructed brick kang couldn’t be slept on immediately; they had to keep a low fire burning through the internal flues for a few days, allowing the moisture to bake out of the clay mortar until the surface was completely bone-dry and solid.
That night, Gu Tingxiao lit the internal flues of the main beds, dutifully crawling out of the covers in the dead of the night to stoke the firewood. The family of three spent the evening nestled comfortably in the guest room across the hall, which kept them perfectly warm while the master bedroom dried.
By the following evening, the mortar had set flawlessly. The newborn was officially installed atop her very own miniature heated kang, fitted with a custom wooden guardrail along the edge to ensure she couldn’t roll off during the night.
Chapter 304: Avalanche
With the installation of the heated brick bed, the old wooden crib was moved out to the living room, and little Yi Yi officially began her indoor hibernation. There was no longer any need to carry her and her heavy blankets back and forth, as she spent her days comfortably bundled in the warmest parts of the house.
The winter snow this year was far harsher than in previous winters. Even Grandpa and Grandma Sheng, who lived just across the lane, were highly reluctant to step foot outside. By early morning, the snowdrifts on the ground were already waist-high. Though the station’s soldiers cleared the pathways first thing in the morning, the heavy snowfall would pile right back up to a person’s calves by noon, making every step an exhausting struggle.
Sheng Wanyan had absolutely zero desire to venture out into the freezing wind; she didn’t even want to step foot into the courtyard.
Across the street, little Huzi threw a tantrum, babbling and shouting that he wanted to go find his baby cousin. However, Pan Yue was terrified he would catch a severe chill and didn’t dare take him out. Once Huzi looked out the window and saw the ferocious, blinding blizzard for himself, he grew quiet, thoroughly intimidated by the weather, and stopped crying for his sister.
Sheng Wanyan moved the coal stove into the center of the living room and lit the fuel. As a comfortable warmth filled the space, she settled onto the sofa to relax and eat some fresh fruit. Nearby, Yi Yi lay on her heated bed, happily kicking at the bamboo and iron toys Gu Tingxiao had handcrafted for her, letting out cheerful little coos from time to time.
After weeks of practice, Sheng Wanyan had grown thoroughly accustomed to managing the nursery logistics completely on her own. She could organize her hours efficiently, and her childcare skills had become entirely seamless.
Right at noon, Gu Tingxiao pushed through the front door, covered in a flurry of wind and snow, balancing a heavy mail package in his hands. It contained her literary royalties from the previous month, alongside her next batch of manuscript assignments.
The three volumes she had translated last month had been packed with complex, technical vocabulary, netting her a staggering 1,800 yuan, and the capital editorial office had wasted no time routing new materials to her desk. Sheng Wanyan skimmed the introductory sheets and noted a distinct shift: these three new texts weren’t focused on military firearms, but rather detailed Western medical science and surgical practices. It was clear the state departments were systematically trying to elevate the nation’s medical infrastructure.
She organized the sheets and set to work translating as usual. She didn’t involve herself in the state’s long-term administrative strategies, choosing to simply focus on executing her own professional duties flawlessly.
By the time December rolled around, a sudden, violent hailstorm descended upon Bing City. Sheng Wanyan stood by the window, her brow furrowing as she watched the ice chunks strike the frozen earth. The hailstones were remarkably large; if a stray piece accidentally struck a person on the head, it would easily cause a severe injury.
The longer she stared out at the dark, turbulent sky, the more an unsettling, heavy anxiety tightened in her chest. How could a winter storm produce hail this monstrously thick?
“Sweetheart, it’s freezing by the glass,” Gu Tingxiao murmured, stepping up behind her. “Don’t stare out there.”
Sheng Wanyan turned to him, her frown deepening. The weather was entirely too unnatural. “Tingxiao, has Bing City ever witnessed a hailstorm of this magnitude before?”
“We’ve experienced winter hail in the past,” Gu Tingxiao replied, looking out at the gray horizon, “but the stones have never been this massive.”
He was well aware that the climate had taken a dangerous turn this year. Over the past few nights, the roof of their cottage had rattled and cracked relentlessly under the barrage of falling ice. “Don’t let your imagination run wild, Wanyan,” he added, gently taking her hand to lead her away from the window. Yet, despite his reassuring words, his tone carried a distinct, rigid tension.
Sheng Wanyan kept her mouth shut, not daring to voice her terrifying suspicion that this unnatural weather was a textbook precursor to a major natural disaster.
“I have to report back to the barracks early,” Gu Tingxiao announced, his features tightening into a hard frown. Without even pausing to consume his lunch, he grabbed his cap and hurried out into the storm.
He had undoubtedly reached the exact same grim conclusion she had, but for an active-duty soldier, natural disasters represented the most terrifying, helpless battles they would ever have to fight.
Right at midnight, the sharp, piercing wail of the military emergency bugle shattered the silence of the compound. Across the residential quarters, soldiers and their families bolted out of their beds, frantically scrambling into their heavy clothes.
Sheng Wanyan threw on her thick winter coat and hurried out into the snowy courtyard alongside Gu Tingxiao. Outside, they found Political Commissar Xie already organizing a crowd of anxious neighbors who had rushed out into the dark.
“What on earth is happening? Why is the emergency horn sounding in the middle of the night?” the whispers flew. The regiment strictly reserved that specific bugle cadence for catastrophic emergencies.
“Commissar! Commander!”
A young messenger soldier sprinted down the snow-packed lane, gasping for breath as he slid to a halt before the officers.
“Reporting to the Political Commissar! One of our nearby mountain sectors just suffered a massive avalanche!” the soldier cried out, his face covered in a layer of fresh snow.
Gu Tingxiao’s pupils constricted instantly, and Political Commissar Xie shot him a grim, heavy look. Gu Tingxiao had explicitly pulled him aside that afternoon to warn him that the atmospheric pressure and snow accumulation were highly unstable, but neither of them had anticipated the mountain would give way this very night.
“What is the scale of the damage? Have the villagers been reached?” the Commissar barked.
“Dozens of residential structures in the lower valley were completely crushed by the initial impact! There are massive casualties, sir!” the soldier reported frantically. “A significant portion of the civilian population has been left entirely homeless in the sub-zero temperatures, and the number of injured is climbing rapidly. Countless elderly folks and children are currently trapped out in the open without shelter!”
Hearing the sheer gravity of the crisis, Political Commissar Xie didn’t waste a single second, immediately shouting for all active-duty personnel to form up for an immediate search-and-rescue deployment. The civilian wives gasped, thoroughly shell-shocked by the horrifying news.
“Pass the word down the lines!” Commissar Xie roared. “Every single able-bodied soldier has exactly ten minutes to kit up! Assemble at the main security gates!”
“Yes, sir!” the messenger soldier saluted sharply before sprinting toward the adjacent apartment blocks to rouse the remaining platoons.
“Merciful heavens… a real avalanche?”
“Did the entire mountain peak collapse?”
“Are we safe over on this side of the valley?”
“Thank goodness those villages are settled on the far side of the ridge. Is our sector completely clear?”
The compound wives huddled together, their voices overlapping in a wave of raw panic. Everyone was terrified that a secondary tremor or an shifting snowpack would trigger a parallel avalanche directly above their own residential quarters. A profound fear rippled through the crowd as they stared up at the dark, snow-heavy slopes.
Sheng Wanyan’s hands began to tremble violently. It’s true… my worst fears are actually coming to pass.
Gu Tingxiao caught her trembling hands, immediately guiding her back across their threshold and shutting out the wind. He quickly reached for his heavy regulation military coat, wrapping his arms around her to offer whatever comfort he could. “Wanyan, look at me. You’re going to be alright. Don’t be afraid.”
Sheng Wanyan’s eyes turned a brilliant, watery red. The mountain valleys were densely populated with farming villages—how could anyone possibly emerge from a collapse of that scale unscathed? Worse still, her husband was marching straight into the heart of the disaster area. If he ran directly into a secondary avalanche during the rescue operations, the consequences would be lethal.
“Tingxiao… this is a catastrophic natural disaster…” She couldn’t finish the thought, her voice breaking as a torrent of hot tears spilled down her cheeks.
Gu Tingxiao pulled her tightly against his chest, cradling the back of her head. “Sweetheart, these are forces we mortals cannot hope to resist. Your only responsibility right now is to keep yourself and little Yi Yi completely safe inside this house. Lock the doors, stay by the heat, and wait for me to come back.”
Sheng Wanyan buried her fingers deep into the fabric of his uniform, clutching him with terrifying strength, utterly terrified to let him go. How could she simply stand by and watch her husband march directly into the jaws of death right under her nose? She understood the nobility of his deployment; she knew with absolute certainty that he was a proud, sworn protector of the people. But even with the advanced technology and heavily equipped rescue teams of the modern era she had left behind, surviving a natural disaster was a matter of pure, terrifying luck. What about this primitive, unequipped era?
How many young soldiers would be buried alive beneath the white sheets tonight? How many families would be shattered forever? Gu Tingxiao wasn’t an invincible god; he was a human being made of flesh and blood.
“Wanyan… promise me you’ll wait for me,” he whispered.
Before she could speak, he leaned down, capturing her lips in a fierce, desperate kiss that burned with a quiet, obsessive devotion. Sheng Wanyan instantly threw her arms around his neck, holding him to her with everything she had. She bit his lip hard, a copper taste of blood filling her mouth. She knew her husband far too well. Duty commanded him, and he had to go…
Gu Tingxiao cupped her face in his large hands, staring into her eyes with a lingering, heartbreaking intensity, before he consciously, ruthlessly unlooped her arms from around his neck. He adjusted his heavy regulation cap over his brow, ignored the faint smear of blood at the corner of his mouth, and spun on his heel, striding out into the blizzard without casting a single glance back.
Sheng Wanyan watched his retreating form through a blur of tears. She stumbled blindly toward the porch, clutching the wooden doorframe to keep her knees from buckling beneath her.
“Gu Tingxiao!” she screamed into the wind, her voice cracking with pure emotion. “If you don’t bring yourself back to me alive, I swear I will remarry and give our daughter another father!”
Down the path, Gu Tingxiao’s rhythmic footsteps paused for a fraction of a second. He didn’t turn around. He simply adjusted the brim of his cap against the wind and continued marching toward the barracks.
He stepped past the courtyard gate and pulled the heavy outer door closed, sealing her inside. He had his sacred code of righteousness to uphold, and she possessed her own fierce, unyielding fortitude.
The exact moment the door clicked shut, Sheng Wanyan’s strength evaporated, and she collapsed directly onto the cold floorboards. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the wooden doorsill, weeping silently as her body shook with heavy, agonizing sobs.
In his haste to report for duty, her husband hadn’t even dared to step into the nursery to catch a final glimpse of his sleeping child…
Sheng Wanyan lay huddled against the threshold, her quiet tears freezing against the wood as she wept into the dark.
Gu Tingxiao had barely marched a hundred meters down the snow-choked road when he heard the rapid crunch of boots behind him. He looked over his shoulder to find Sheng Wanze jogging to catch up with his pace, a heavy rucksack slung over his shoulder.
Standing a short distance back near the entrance of the lane was Pan Yue, her eyes red from crying, flanked by her two aging, deeply worried parents. Neither man uttered a single word. They simply fell into a synchronized, military stride, marching shoulder-to-shoulder toward the designated assembly point.
“Go back inside, children,” Grandpa Sheng sighed heavily, resting a hand on his wife’s trembling shoulder. “The boys have chosen their own path in life. Whether it leads to honor or tragedy, a soldier must walk his path to the very end.” He turned and slowly guided his family back toward the warmth of their cottage.
Grandma Sheng watched the broad silhouettes of her grandson and grandson-in-law dissolve into the swirling white abyss, her eyes swimming with tears, before she finally forced herself to close the door against the cold.
Pan Yue remained frozen on the path for several long minutes, her vision blurred by tears as her husband’s figure grew increasingly faint before vanishing entirely into the storm. All around them, dozens of young soldiers were pouring out of the residential quarters, leaving behind a trail of weeping wives and silent, terrified households.
Chapter 305: Flood
A profound sense of helplessness and deep anxiety—the heavy, inescapable burden of a military wife—filled her heart.
The sudden, sharp wail of her daughter cutting through the silence of the cottage finally broke Sheng Wanyan out of her trance, and she forced herself to stand up.
The moment she tried to put weight on her feet, her legs felt so entirely numb and weak that her knees buckled. She nearly collapsed back onto the floor, only managing to steady herself by grabbing the wooden doorframe.
She stood still for a few moments, gently shaking out her limbs until the circulation returned. Closing the front door to lock out the howling wind, she wiped the tears from her face and hurried into the bedroom to check on little Yi Yi.
The baby was weeping hysterically. Sheng Wanyan checked her diaper, but it was perfectly clean and dry; she tried to nurse her, but the infant stubbornly refused to take her milk, continuing to cry at the top of her lungs.
Sheng Wanyan scooped her up, cradling her close against her chest as she walked the floorboards, whispering soft, soothing endearments. Hearing her mother’s familiar voice, the baby’s frantic whimpers slowly began to quiet down.
“Your father will bring himself back to us safely,” Sheng Wanyan whispered, pressing a soft kiss to the baby’s forehead. “Don’t be afraid, my darling.”
To soothe her back to sleep, Sheng Wanyan began rhythmically swaying, softly singing a traditional lullaby as she gently patted the infant’s back.
“The dark sky hangs low, with bright stars following… The insects are flying, the insects are flying… Who are you missing?”
…
By the following morning, Sheng Wanyan had forced herself to brace her spirits. She rose before the sun, marching out into the courtyard to clear the fresh snowdrift, feed the hens, and light the kitchen stove to prepare breakfast. She systematically took over every single domestic chore that Gu Tingxiao usually managed around the homestead.
The military base was eerily silent today; there was no sound of morning drills or echoing commands. Not only had every single platoon been deployed to the disaster zone, but the entire medical staff from the military hospital had also been mobilized. Even the procurement officers and logistics personnel had rushed to the front lines to assist with the emergency operations.
The only residents remaining in the compound were the anxious military wives, a skeleton crew of young guard soldiers stationed at the security checkpoints, and a few high-level administrators like Political Commissar Xie, who stayed behind to systematically manage the rear area.
Emergency survival supplies were being routed to the affected valley in continuous batches. Right now, the absolute priority was establishing immediate shelter to shield the shivering civilians from the brutal wind and freezing rain. The rescue teams could only pack the displaced families into the few remaining residential structures that hadn’t been obliterated by the snow slide, but safe buildings were few and far between. Ultimately, thousands of villagers had no choice but to huddle together in a vast, open clearing, freezing as they waited for the military to organize relief.
Before long, a steady stream of casualties—injured elderly folk, terrified children, and patients suffering from severe frostbite and trauma—began flooding into the military hospital. The makeshift wards filled with the sound of collective wailing as the villagers sat on the cold cots, weeping over their losses.
Having lost their homes in a single night, they faced an entirely blank, terrifying future. Those cottages were structures they had built with their own blood, sweat, and tears—the hard-won culmination of generations of family labor. With their homesteads erased, they had absolutely nothing left to their names.
Since the standing structures couldn’t hold the massive crowd, the soldiers on the scene worked relentlessly through the storm, using axes and tarps to build makeshift timber sheds to provide basic cover for the shivering crowd.
By dawn, the falling hail finally ceased, only to be replaced by a torrential, blinding downpour. The temperature remained brutally low, and the crudely constructed timber sheds offered minimal protection against the driving rain, leaving the refugees thoroughly drenched and shivering.
Worse still, the primitive mountain infrastructure lacked any semblance of a drainage or sewer system. As the hours ticked by, the massive volume of rainwater had nowhere to go, and the valley village slowly began to flood.
Before long, the rising floodwaters reached a grown man’s waist. The soldiers had to deploy heavy rescue boats, lifting the terrified children high above the swirling currents to keep them from drowning.
“Get up the ridge!” the shouts echoed through the downpour. “The lower valley is completely flooding! Evacuate to high ground!”
Gu Tingxiao led his platoon straight into the freezing currents, wading through the torrent to rescue the children. He scooped them out of the water one by one, passing them securely up the ridge line toward the newly constructed shelters on the mountain, where the medics scrambled to dry them off.
Working under the relentless downpour, the soldiers hacked down mountain timber to rapidly expand the shelters. The villagers crowded inside the cramped structures, clutching their family members tightly to share whatever body warmth they had left. Several women were weeping so violently from the trauma that they repeatedly fainted into the arms of their relatives.
Yet, the moment the desperate villagers caught sight of the green military uniforms moving fearlessly through the currents, a surge of profound hope rallied their spirits, and the collective weeping slowly began to die down.
“Every able-bodied man, form up with the soldiers to move survival supplies and fortify the lines!” the village chief roared, stepping onto a wooden crate to command the crowd. “Women, focus entirely on stoking the bonfires to keep everyone warm!” At a critical junction like this, the chief knew he had to exercise absolute authority; if the crowd dissolved into a paralyzed panic, half the village would freeze to death before sunset. “We must unite as one if we want to survive this crisis! Are there any strong men willing to step forward and volunteer for the rescue teams?!”
The exact moment the chief’s request echoed through the timber shelter, the crowd fell completely silent. The village men looked at the floorboards, not a single soul daring to raise his hand.
Stepping into that raging current is a death sentence! the collective thought rippled through the clearing. Even the trained soldiers navigating the torrent were barely managing to keep their own footing while pulling others out of the depths. The downpour showed zero signs of stopping, the sub-zero wind was cutting to the bone, and the water levels were rising by the minute. Voluntarily wading into that freezing abyss was nothing short of suicide.
A few younger men opened their mouths to offer their help, but their wives instantly clutched their sleeves, pulling them back with frantic, terrified whispers. “You absolutely cannot go! Those soldiers have endured years of rigorous survival training for this exact scenario, but you’ve never touched a flood line! Keeping yourself alive to protect our own household is the only thing that matters right now!”
The villagers refused to meet the chief’s gaze, their eyes swimming with unvarnished terror and dread.
“I’ll go!”
A sharp, clear voice cut through the silence as a young man stepped out of the crowd, looking straight at the village chief.
The chief’s eyes turned a brilliant, watery red the moment he recognized his own son. The boy was only eighteen years old—his only male heir. How could he let him march into that lethal current?
“Father, let me go,” the boy insisted, his jaw set. “I want to help protect our village and our neighbors!”
The chief swallowed the lump in his throat, his voice cracking. “You won’t regret this choice?”
“Never! You are the chief of this village; how could I play the part of a coward while you stand here leading the line?”
The chief’s wife instantly threw her hands over her mouth, bursting into frantic tears. This boy was her only son—the literal lifeblood of her entire existence. If he stepped into that freezing torrent and vanished beneath the current, she would never survive the grief.
“Good. You’ve truly grown into a man,” the chief whispered. He abruptly turned his head away, wiping a stray tear from his cheek, not daring to watch his son depart.
The young man turned back to face the crowd, his gaze sweeping over the silent, abashed village men, his eyes dripping with unvarnished disdain. “You aren’t even willing to lift a finger to safeguard your own neighbors or defend your own valley,” he spat, his voice laced with disgust. “You are all nothing but cowards! The soldiers’ families don’t reside in this valley, yet they are perfectly willing to risk their lives in the freezing water to keep us from drowning! But look at you—you’re content to huddle here trembling like frightened children. Cowards, the lot of you!”
With that final insult, the chief’s son turned and strode resolutely out into the storm. The moment his boots cleared the shelter and he witnessed the true scale of the devastation outside, tears welled in his eyes.
Dozens of soldiers were currently hauling heavy, rain-soaked sandbags, their boots slipping against the mud as they waded through the freezing, chest-deep winter currents. They were desperately trying to build a physical barrier to break the momentum of the flood and shield the refugee camp.
Gu Tingxiao stood right at the edge of the torrent, balancing two heavy sandbags across his broad shoulders as his booming voice directed the engineering teams through the downpour. “Move faster! We need to plug the main drainage gap right now!”
“Yes, sir!!!” the soldiers roared back. Battling the sub-zero chill with raw, gritted teeth, they hoisted sandbag after sandbag, their muscles burning as they threw their bodies against the rising tide.
“Captain! We have a catastrophic situation!”
A young lieutenant came stumbling through the current, his face pale and his eyes wide with frantic anxiety as he slid to a halt beside his commander.
“Stop stuttering and spit it out!” Gu Tingxiao barked, not lowering the sandbags.
“The secondary flood run-off has breached the eastern ridge! The current is surging directly toward the military base! If we don’t intercept the flow immediately, the family compound will be completely submerged within the hour!”
The exact millisecond the words cleared the lieutenant’s lips, Gu Tingxiao’s pupils constricted into pinpricks, and the surrounding soldiers froze entirely in their tracks.
“Captain, our manpower is already stretched past the breaking point,” the lieutenant cried out over the rain. “The Political Commissar has already transmitted an emergency request to mobilize reserve units from the city, but under ideal weather conditions, it takes a minimum of four hours for transports to navigate the mountain passes! With the current road washouts and heavy snow accumulation, it will take our comrades from the city at least half a day to reach this sector! Captain, our quarters cannot wait that long!”
Gu Tingxiao spun around, his gaze tracking the churning white torrent at the base of the ridge. The floodwaters had already swallowed the lower structures halfway, creeping steadily up toward chest height.
“Captain! Our wives and children are all sitting entirely unprotected inside those staff quarters!” the lieutenant screamed, his voice cracking. They were standing out here risking their lives to rescue strangers, but who on earth was going to save their own flesh and blood? “Captain, we are facing two critical breaches! We have to contain the torrent here in the valley, but we also have to deploy an engineering line to block the flow headed toward the family compound!”
The soldiers’ eyes turned a brilliant, bloodshot red. Constructing a secure sandbag barrier required an immense amount of time and physical labor; it was a mechanical impossibility to successfully plug both outlets with their current headcount.
Worse still, they were completely out of time. They were forced to make a horrific, binary choice. The family residential quarters hadn’t been directly breached yet, meaning if they abandoned their posts in the valley and transferred their entire headcount to the eastern ridge, they could easily safeguard their own families.
But if they pulled every single able-bodied soldier out of the valley to protect the staff compound, what was going to happen to the helpless civilians huddled on the ridge?
Gu Tingxiao ruthlessly slammed the heavy sandbags down onto the muddy earth, using a wet palm to hard-wipe the freezing rain from his face. “Damn it!”
A low, furious roar tore from his throat, and he drove a powerful fist straight into the trunk of the adjacent evergreen tree, his eyes burning a lethal, bloodshot red. His beautiful wife and his darling, tiny daughter were currently sitting completely isolated inside their cottage in those staff quarters. And the families of every single man under his command were anchored right beside them!
“Captain! What are your orders?!” the men screamed, crowding around him through the downpour. “Are we truly supposed to abandon one side to the current?! Captain, if our own families are wiped out while we stand here saving strangers, what is the point of any of this sacrifice?!”
