Thunder roared as towering waves surged; the Heavenly River spilled over, and the lone city teetered on the brink of collapse.
The rain still would not stop. The promised Sweet Rain had turned into floodwaters and Fierce Beasts ravaging the land. Now the Tang Emperor need not worry about starving refugees rebelling—one great flood would surely kill more than half of those displaced people who could barely survive to begin with. If the rain stopped only for scorching sunlight to follow, an epidemic would likely sweep through the disaster zone. After such repeated torment, how many people could possibly remain?
The surviving refugees stood atop the county town's low walls, gazing at the rolling river and weeping as they lamented the mercilessness of water and fire.
Inside the half-burned, ruined gate tower, a group from Chunyang Palace and a snake stared wordlessly at the floodwaters.
Bai Yujun knew more than the others.
The flood crest upstream had yet to arrive. Once it did, the county town might not survive. High mountains lined both banks of the great river, and only here at the county town was there a stretch of muddy flatland basin, like a natural flood channel. In ordinary times, it counted as a Feng Shui Treasure Land, but when the flood came, it could not escape calamity.
The upstream rains had gathered into floodwaters. While the mountains on both sides of the river confined the flood, they also left a gap here at the county town.
Run? Where could so many half-dead refugees, dragging along the old and the young, possibly flee? Rain poured everywhere, and the mountains were even more prone to landslides. At least inside the city, they had somewhere to shelter from the rain. Reality was always cruel.
Constable Yu, draped in a rain cape,