Immediately afterwards, the woman in the tree was also pushed over by the man. Jiang Chan and the man, who had just caught his breath, worked together to pull the woman up as well. Finally, the man released the tree trunk and jumped into the boat.
The hovercraft suddenly sank and almost capsized, but was then pushed away from the life-saving tree by the current.
The air was thick with the smells of mud, sweat, and the gasps of fear from those who had survived the ordeal.
The rescued woman held her child and cried loudly. The man, on the other hand, was panting heavily and trembling all over.
Jiang Chan wiped the water from her face, her tense nerves relaxing slightly. She didn't speak, but gripped the rope even tighter, watching the water ahead warily.
"Thank...thank you, young lady..." The man caught his breath and thanked her in a hoarse voice, his eyes filled with gratitude and lingering fear.
"Look ahead!" Jiang Chan suddenly shouted.
Ahead, in the floodwaters, a figure was seen clinging to a thick piece of driftwood, spinning in the whirlpool, about to be swept into an even more turbulent undercurrent!
"It's Old Li!" the man recognized him.
Jiang Chan's eyes narrowed. She observed the water flow again, then suddenly leaned to one side, propelling the hovercraft towards the edge of the whirlpool. As she approached the driftwood, she shouted to the man called Old Li, "Let go! Hold on to the boat!"
Old Li clearly saw them too, and hope ignited in his eyes. The instant the hovercraft brushed past, he abruptly released the driftwood and lunged towards the hull!
The man on the boat and Jiang Chan simultaneously reached out and grabbed Old Li's soaked clothes, pulling him aboard together. Old Li collapsed on the boat, coughing violently and spitting out several mouthfuls of water.
The boat was even more crowded, making it difficult to even turn around. Everyone was soaked and shivering from the cold. Fear and lingering dread permeated everyone like ice water.
The current seemed to have slowed down, and a relatively open body of water appeared ahead. In the middle of the water was a slightly elevated earthen slope, like a small island, on which a few trees and some remnants of thatched huts that had not been completely washed away still stood stubbornly.
"Go over there!" Jiang Chan pointed to the earthen slope. The people on the boat immediately understood that there was hope for survival, and they all nervously watched the direction of the current. Jiang Chan once again used her body weight to propel the hovercraft towards the higher ground, coordinating with the current.
After a great deal of effort, the hovercraft was finally pushed to the edge of the earthen slope. The people on board scrambled off the boat, wading through knee-deep mud and water, helping each other climb up to the relatively dry higher ground.
Jiang Chan was the last to get ashore, and she dragged the hovercraft up the slope to prevent it from being swept away by the water.
On the high ground, a dozen people slumped in the mud, panting and coughing, some sobbing softly. Jiang Chan leaned against a half-fallen tree, also feeling a wave of exhaustion.
The man who was rescued was named Er Gou.
The woman was his neighbor, Aunt Zhang, and the child was called Little Stone. Old Li was also a river worker. Including the two river workers who swam over later and the villagers, there were a total of eleven people on the high ground.
They all looked like they had been pulled out of the mud, covered in wounds, cold, hungry, and scared.
"Water...water..." Little Stone's lips were chapped, and he whispered.
Jiang Chan took out a water bag from her "pockets," which contained clean drinking water.
She didn't say anything, but handed the water pouch to Aunt Zhang. Aunt Zhang was taken aback for a moment, then looked at Jiang Chan gratefully and carefully fed Little Stone a couple of sips.
The water bladder was passed from hand to hand among the survivors, and each person only took a small sip to moisten their throat; no one dared to drink more.
Jiang Chan then took out a few hard, multigrain cakes wrapped in oil paper, broke them open, and distributed them to everyone.
Each person received only a small piece, but in this desperate situation, this little bit of food was like a life-saving rain.
After eating something and drinking some water, everyone calmed down a bit. The fear was temporarily suppressed, but grief and anger began to surge up.
“It’s all over…it’s all over…” A villager who had swum over looked at the vast expanse of water around him and murmured in despair, “Our home is gone…our food is gone…”
Er Gou slammed his fist into the muddy ground, his eyes bloodshot. "What kind of bullshit dam is that! It's as thin as paper!"
His words were like lighting a powder keg.
Old Li also got excited: "Yes! I carried so many sandbags! What kind of stuff is that in the dike? It collapsed with just one blast!"
Jiang Chan's eyes sharpened. She stood up and walked to the edge of the high ground. The floodwaters were slowly receding, and some debris washed ashore was visible in the muddy water at the edge of the high ground. Among them, several broken "wooden stakes," as thick as a bowl, stood out conspicuously.
She bent down and picked one up. It was heavy, but something felt off. She squeezed it hard with her fingers—
Click!
The seemingly thick wooden stake had its surface cracked and peeled off like rotten soil! What was exposed inside was not a solid wood core, but a blackened, worm-eaten, and powdery rotten wood!
Everyone gathered around, staring in shock at what Jiang Chan was holding.
"This...this is a stake used in the dam?" Old Li's voice trembled. He snatched another stake in disbelief, broke it easily with a forceful snap, and exposed its rotten core.
"And this too!" Aunt Zhang, with her sharp eyes, pulled a clod of earth the size of a washbasin from the mud. The clod was yellowish in color and looked like rammed earth.
Jiang Chan took it and dug hard with her fingers—
Whoosh!
A large clod of earth easily crumbled apart. It wasn't compacted soil at all, but rather a sparse mixture of grass stems, gravel, and even some tattered strips of cloth and straw!
"This is rammed earth?! This is utter garbage!" Er Gou was so angry that he trembled all over. He grabbed a clod of inferior soil and slammed it to the ground! The clod of soil instantly shattered into pieces, turning into a pile of powdery debris.
Everyone stared at the scattered garbage and rotten wood chips, then at the pile of rubble on the ground. The high ground was deathly silent, save for the rushing sound of the receding floodwaters.
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