Autumn rain fell without cease. That afternoon, Commandant Hu Yan returned to the Eastern Capital.
With no time to see family or friends, he rode through Jianchun Gate, headed north along Heaven Street, crossed the New Central Bridge, passed Chengfu Ward, and went straight to the "island in the lake" where the Jing'an Directorate stood.
It truly was an island in a lake. This autumn rain had clearly affected an enormous area. The waterways around the Jing'an Directorate, which received drainage from Ziwei Palace and Shanglin Park upstream, had swollen visibly, flooding the banks and submerging the decks of several bridges connecting it to the outside. Not only that, the Luo River along his route had also seemed excessively high... This unsettled Hu Yan. He had spent many years at the Jing'an Directorate, having been there almost since it first came into use, yet had never seen anything like this.
It was not as though they had never had heavy rain or torrential downpours before. Surely the water had never risen this far?
"The Luo River's clogged." An older White Ribbon standing guard beyond the bridge readily supplied the answer. "Nobody's dredged it for two or three years."
"Clogged this badly?" Hu Yan was even more puzzled. "The river's so wide and deep..."
"It's not just the Luo River itself. The channels feeding into it are clogged too." The White Ribbon smiled bitterly. "Especially in the Western Park and Ziwei Palace. Nobody tends all the fancy grounds in there anymore. After a whole summer of drought, the channels were full of dead branches and rotten leaves. Then this downpour flooded the entire Western Park and washed everything into the river. The western water gate stayed clear, but the eastern outlet got blocked... The Jinwu Guard only has a handful of