Without anyone realizing it, the only high slope outside Wuling City had become packed with people.
The torrential rain showed no signs of stopping. The cold wind whipped the rain against their bodies, freezing them until their teeth chattered.
A woman knelt on the ground.
In her arms, she held a child of about five or six.
The child's face was pale and blue, his lips an unhealthy grayish-purple. His small body shook like a leaf in the wind, but gradually, the shivering began to slow down.
“Physician Liu! Please, I beg you, look at my child! He suddenly stopped shivering, and he isn't even crying anymore!”
Tears streamed down the woman's face in her panic. Holding her child, she crawled through the mud on her knees until she reached Physician Liu, clutching the physician's robe tightly, her eyes filled with desperate pleading.
“Don't panic, let me see.”
Physician Liu squatted down and pressed her fingers against the side of the child's neck. Then she pulled out her silver needles to administer acupuncture, her brow furrowing deeply.
“He is freezing. We must warm him up immediately.”
She looked around and called out loudly, “Does anyone have spare clothes? We need to wrap him up, the more layers the better. Otherwise, a child this small definitely won't survive.”
A dead silence fell over the crowd.
Having barely escaped the flood with their lives, everyone was dripping wet from the tips of their hair to the soles of their shoes. Their lips were white with cold, and their teeth were chattering. No one could bear to take off their own clothes, and they all instinctively took half a step back.
Physician Liu pressed her lips together. She suddenly raised her hands, preparing to unbutton her outer tunic, but a pair of hands firmly stopped her.
“Physician Liu, I don't want your clothes!”
The woman looked up, her face a miserable mess of rain and tears. She tightly gripped Physician Liu's wrists, her knuckles turning white from the sheer force of her hold. “If you catch a cold because of this, how could I ever live with myself?”
As a fellow woman, she understood all too well.
For a woman to undress in public was, at best, a breach of propriety, and at worst, a loss of chastity and reputation.
If Physician Liu stripped off her clothes today, she would not only risk her health and life, but she would likely also have people pointing fingers at her back for the rest of her life, making it impossible for her to ever hold her head high again.
Tears welled up in the woman's eyes once more. “I know, Physician Liu, you are a good person, and you want to save my child. I will remember your kindness for the rest of my life!”
As she spoke, she tightly hugged her child, pressing her ice-cold cheek against his pale, blue little face.
A long silence ensued.
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the crowd.
A white-haired old woman tremblingly took off her gray cloth outer jacket. She wrung the water out of it with all her might before handing it over.
“Put this on the child.”
The woman accepted it with shaking hands. The fabric was cold and heavy, but the old woman's gesture was heartwarming.
Wrapping the jacket around her child, she looked up, wanting to say something, but the old woman had already turned and walked away. Her hunched, frail figure shivered in the wind. She was so small and thin, yet she commanded immense respect.
The woman's tears fell in large drops onto her child's face. For a moment, she could not describe the overwhelming mix of emotions in her heart.
Just then, someone else walked over.
The crowd parted on both sides as a tall figure stepped through the curtain of rain and stood before the woman.
“General Shen?”
Shen Jue paid no heed to the surrounding calls. He silently unbuckled his heavy armor.
The iron armor hit the muddy ground with a dull thud.
Right after, he began to unfasten his battle robe underneath.
When untying the drawstrings, his fingers paused for a moment.
It was not out of hesitation, but because the fabric was damp and stiff, and the knot had soaked in water, tightening into a dead knot. He had no choice but to rip it apart. He stripped off all his upper garments, leaving nothing behind.
Rain ran down his shoulder blades, washing over the overlapping layers of old and new scars on his back, making them stand out starkly.
He handed the inner shirt, which still retained a trace of his body heat, to the woman. His voice was low. “Wrap the child in this.”
The woman looked up in a daze.
She remembered this young general and even had a deep impression of him. He was a man of few words and rarely smiled. He was absolutely ruthless when punishing those who caused trouble or disobeyed orders. Everyone feared him, and she was no exception.
Shen Jue immediately knit his brows and said in a deep voice, “What are you staring for? This shirt will get soaked in a moment too.”
The woman hastily took it. “Thank you, General Shen...”
Hurried footsteps echoed from behind. Pei Du pushed through the crowd and rushed over, unfastening his belt as he ran.
“I have clothes here too!”
However, before he could reach the woman, he was stopped by several Zhenbei Army soldiers.
“Military Advisor Pei, you're a scholar. How could your constitution compare to us martial artists?”
“Exactly! I was just thinking that wearing armor in the water makes it hard to move around anyway. Might as well take it off to save people!”
The soldiers all began unbuckling their armor and removing their inner linings.
Clothes were handed to the woman from all directions.
Some were thick, some thin, some dry, and some wet.
“Sister, quickly wrap the child up.”
“Use mine, this one is thick.”
“Even though my shirt is wet, my wife made it for me. She sewed two layers, so it's very thick and warm.”
“And mine...”
Soon, the woman's arms were piled high with clothes. She was sobbing so hard she could barely catch her breath, and her hands shook too much to wrap the child properly.
Seeing this, a young soldier squatted down and clumsily helped her drape the layers over the child one by one.
Physician Liu administered another round of needles. Finally, a trace of color returned to the child's pale lips. His weak breathing stabilized, and his eyelashes fluttered.
“He's alive, he's alive! Thank you so much.” Holding her conscious child, the woman wept tears of profound gratitude.
“Thank you... You are all such good people...”
Her tears of joy were like a ray of light breaking through the endless storm, shining on everyone's soaked faces and planting a seed of hope in their hearts.
Shen Jue glanced at the child, his gaze softening.
“Leave a squad on the slope to guard and protect the citizens,” he ordered as he walked. “The rest, follow me down to rescue more people. We cannot abandon a single soul!”
Before his voice could fade, he was already the first to step back into the water.
The floodwaters instantly rose to his waist.
Behind him, the splashing of water echoed in unison as the soldiers waded in one after another.
The water grew deeper and swifter.
In the distance, an elderly man clinging to a half-submerged rooftop saw the moving shadows in the water and cried out hoarsely.
“Help...”
Two soldiers swam over and rescued the elderly man, whose lips had turned purple from holding onto the roof beam for so long. As they supported him from both sides and swam back, the old man was still muttering.
“My granddaughter is still back there.”
Hearing this, Shen Jue tied a rope around his waist and waded forward another three zhang against the current. Behind a tilted cabinet, he pulled out a little girl curled into a ball.
Upon the muddy waters, the soldiers of the Zhenbei Army seemed tireless, swimming back and forth to rescue dozens more.
One soldier looked at his pale comrade. “If you're tired, don't go back in. I can manage alone.”
The other grinned. “My Body Tempering Technique is much better than yours. If you're not tired, why would I be?”
The two plunged back into the water.
Before long, most of the citizens trapped in the city had been brought to the relatively safe high slope by the Zhenbei Army.
Just as Shen Jue was about to order a retreat, a sudden flood peak surged forward without warning, threatening to swallow everything in its path.
“Run! Quick, run!” he roared.
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