Present Realm, East Xia.
Beneath the gloomy heavens, sunlight was nowhere to be seen. In the darkness, thunder rumbled without cease, while dazzling flashes of lightning brewed continuously within the black clouds.
A heavy curtain of rain poured endlessly from the sky, its low patter unable to spread far.
Because an even more soul-shaking roar surged up ahead.
The river.
The surging river raced beneath the embankment. At first glance, its muddy yellow waters stretched beyond sight, and all that lay in the depths was gloom that even massive searchlights could not illuminate.
Even under these appalling conditions, helicopters continued to thunder past overhead.
Between the distant hills, on the roads, an endless convoy struggled through the mud. The weight of countless loads of earth and stone sank their wheels deep into the mire.
Amid uniform shouts, the young men flushed red, straining with all their might as they pushed the trucks forward, inch by difficult inch.
Even more people rushed about inside and outside the hastily erected camps.
Patrolling the embankments for dozens of kilometers.
And at the very front, beneath a rain shelter, a disheveled young man sat on sandbags with a bowl in hand, shoveling soup noodles into his mouth.
Slurp.
The far-from-delicious noodle soup and dried noodles mixed together before being crammed into his stomach.
There was nothing left of the dignity of the director of the Jinling Social Security Bureau, nor any trace of his former bearing and poise. He looked just like a vagrant. Yet even a vagrant would have looked far better than everyone else around him.
They looked as though they had just crawled out of a swamp, drenched and caked in mud. Lying on blankets spread over the ground, some still held bowls in their hands as they began snoring loudly.