Chapter 50: Rolling down the cliff, a world for two.
After completing the initial rescue and resettlement, and helping the young people from the village committee to roughly stabilize the temporary shelter, the five-member team did not dare to stay any longer.
The sky grew darker, and although the rain had eased, no one knew if it would intensify again or trigger new secondary disasters. The supplies they brought with them could not sustain them from staying where they were.
"We must go back quickly while we can still leave." Li Fu wiped the rain off his face, his tone solemn.
The return journey seemed even more difficult than the journey in. The immense physical exertion, coupled with the constant washing of rain, made the already slippery and muddy mountain road even more treacherous.
Not long after we started walking, the sky seemed to be torn open, and the rain suddenly poured down, heavier than ever before. The dense rain lines almost formed a curtain of water, and visibility dropped sharply.
"Be careful! Walk slower! Watch your step!" Li Fu had to shout louder to drown out the sound of the rain.
The mountain road became more difficult to walk on, and every step felt like struggling in a quagmire.
Chu Yi's physical strength had long been exhausted, and he was relying solely on willpower to hold on. His face was as pale as paper, his breathing was rapid and shallow, and every step he took was unsteady. He relied almost entirely on Zhou Ai's constant support and pulling to keep him from collapsing.
When passing a steep slope where a small landslide had just occurred, the soil under my feet suddenly loosened.
Chu Yi missed a step and lost his balance instantly. His screams were drowned out by the heavy rain, and he rolled uncontrollably down the steep and muddy slope.
"Chu Yi!" Zhou Ai's pupils suddenly contracted. He had been paying attention to Chu Yi and reacted almost the moment Chu Yi slipped.
He pounced forward and reached out to grab Chu Yi, but he only had time to touch his cold fingertips.
Under the huge impact, Zhou Ai himself slipped and was dragged along. The two of them, one in front and one behind, rolled down the slope in an instant.
"Teacher Chu! Teacher Zhou!!"
Li Fu and two young men from the village committee above were terrified and screamed in fear. They rushed to the edge of the landslide and tried to look down.
However, it was raining heavily and visibility was extremely low. Below them was a steep slope and rocks covered by rain and fog. They could not see the specific situation of the two people at all. They could only hear the terrible sound of rolling mud and rocks and crashing water.
"Hurry! Find a way down!" Li Fu was so anxious that his voice changed.
The two young men, sweating profusely, immediately tried to find a way down the slope. However, the heavy rain had made the slope extremely unstable, and the soil kept loosening and sliding. They tried several times, but after just a few steps, they almost slipped down themselves. There was no safe path at all.
"No! Doctor Li! It's too slippery! I can't go down!!" a young man shouted anxiously, his face covered with rain.
"Throw the rope! Take out the rope quickly!" Li Fu suddenly remembered the rescue rope he brought.
The three men frantically took out the rope, trying to fix one end to a relatively sturdy tree nearby and throw the other end down.
However, the rope was of limited length, and the wind and rain were so strong that the rope was quickly washed by mud and water and stuck to the slope, making it impossible to be sure whether it could be caught by the people below.
"Teacher Chu! Teacher Zhou! Can you hear me?! Grab the rope!!" Li Fu shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice sounding weak and powerless in the heavy rain.
The only response they got was the sound of the rain becoming more violent and the whistling of the mountain wind.
After trying various methods without success, a feeling of despair spread.
The rain was getting heavier, the sky was getting darker, and their location was beginning to become unsafe.
"Doctor Li! We can't wait any longer! It's not safe here either! We have to retreat back to the relatively safe place we were just now!" The young man from the village committee pulled Li Fu, who was almost out of control, and urged him loudly.
Li Fu looked at the chaotic and unresponsive steep slope below, his eyes red, and finally punched the tree trunk next to him in pain, and a mixture of rain and tears slid down his face.
He knew that the young man was right. If they went down now, not only would they not be able to save anyone, they would probably get themselves killed as well.
"Chu Yi...Zhou Ai..." Li Fu's voice was choked with sobs, filled with a sense of powerlessness and immense guilt, "You must hold on..."
Out of desperation, the three had to temporarily give up the rescue and retreat with difficulty to a relatively stable rock they had passed earlier to avoid the heavy rain. Everyone's heart sank to the bottom, gripped by worry and fear.
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The world spun around him, mud, gravel, and broken branches constantly pelted him. In the terrifying moment of falling out of control, Zhou Ai's only thought was to protect the person in his arms.
Relying on his powerful core strength, he managed to use the force to hold Chu Yi tightly in his arms in the chaos, and used his back and the heavy backpack on his chest to bear most of the impact.
After rolling for an unknown amount of time, their backs suddenly hit an elastic obstacle, and their falling momentum suddenly stopped. The two finally stopped.
It was a pine tree that grew tenaciously from the cracks in the rocks. With its not-so-thick but tough enough trunk, it narrowly stopped them and prevented them from falling directly into the deeper and more dangerous area below. There was a rumbling sound of water from there, which was obviously a larger stream or a cliff.
Zhou Ai's vision went black after being hit, and his internal organs seemed to be displaced. Severe pain spread from his back. But he didn't care about himself and immediately lowered his head to check on the person in his arms.
"Chu Yi? Chu Yi! Wake up! Are you okay?" Zhou Ai's voice was hoarse due to pain and anxiety. He gently patted Chu Yi's cold and wet cheek, his fingers trembling.
Chu Yi seemed to have just fainted briefly. At Zhou Ai's call and patting, his eyelashes trembled a few times and he slowly opened his eyes.
The moment he regained consciousness, he shuddered from the severe pain and the cold rain, but his first reaction was to grab Zhou Ai's arm, his voice weak but urgent: "Are you okay?! Where are you hurt? Are your bones okay?"
He struggled to check on Zhou Ai's condition. He couldn't imagine the consequences of rolling down from such a high place.
Seeing Chu Yi awake and able to speak, Zhou Ai felt a sense of relief. He quickly restrained Chu Yi's trembling hands and, in the dim light, let him see himself. "I'm fine! Really! Look, the backpack cushioned it, so it's just a minor injury!"
He pointed to his face and arms. There were indeed many bloody scratches caused by weeds and sharp stones. It was burning painful, but it did not look like any serious fractures.
Chu Yi took a closer look and confirmed that his limbs seemed to be intact and his movements were unimpeded. He then breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back into Zhou Ai's arms as if he was exhausted. Only then did he feel pain all over his body as if it was falling apart, especially in his left arm and right ankle, which felt a dull pain.
The rainstorm showed no sign of abating, but instead grew heavier, pouring down from above them like a waterfall. They looked up and saw the steep slope they had rolled down was almost vertical in the rain, and it was so muddy that it was impossible to climb back up the same way.
The shouts of Li Fu and the others had long been drowned out by the sound of wind and rain, and there was no movement above.
"We have to get out of here!" Zhou Ai shouted loudly, overcoming the sound of rain. "This tree can't hold on for much longer. Too much rain will wash away the soil!"
Chu Yi nodded with difficulty and tried to stand up. He immediately felt a sharp pain in his right ankle, which made him groan and almost fall back.
"Your foot is injured?" Zhou Ai noticed it immediately and half-knelt down without saying anything. "Come up! I'll carry you!"
"No! You yourself..." Chu Yi wanted to refuse. This road was too dangerous.
"Stop talking nonsense! Hurry!" Zhou Ai's tone was tougher and more anxious than ever before. "If we stay any longer, we'll all be washed away!"
Chu Yi looked at the mud and water that kept washing down and the increasingly unstable pine tree, and knew that what Zhou Ai said was true.
He no longer hesitated, gritted his teeth, and lay on Zhou Ai's back.
Zhou Ai took a deep breath, endured the severe pain in his back, and stood up steadily.
He observed the terrain and moved with difficulty along the edge of the landslide, in a relatively flat area with dense bushes and grass, trying his best to avoid the dangerous area where the landslide had just occurred and the soil was extremely soft.
Every step was mired in mud, and the rain blurred his vision. Zhou Ai relied on his amazing willpower to carry Chu Yi on his back, stumbling forward in the heavy rain and mud.
Chu Yi lay on his back and could clearly feel his heavy and rapid breathing and the trembling of his muscles due to extreme exertion. His heart felt like it was being tightly gripped by something, and it felt sore and swollen.
After trudging along for about two hundred meters, just when Zhou Ai was about to run out of energy, Chu Yi suddenly pointed to a dark depression in front of him and said, "Zhou Ai! Look there! It looks like a cave!"
Zhou Ai's spirits lifted, and he walked towards that direction with all his might. As he got closer, he discovered that it was indeed a small natural stone cave, the entrance of which was partially obscured by dense vines.
The most surprising thing is that a large stream of water falls from the top of the cliff and flows over a huge rock at the top of the cave, forming a natural water curtain, which cleverly blocks some of the rain that directly hits the cave entrance.
The terrain here is relatively high, and there is no danger of mud and water backflow for the time being.
Zhou Ai, carrying Chu Yi on his back, almost stumbled into the cave. They both collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath, the fear and exhaustion of surviving the catastrophe washing over them like a tide.
The cave wasn't large, but it was large enough for the two of them to take shelter from the rain. The air inside was damp, but it offered a temporary respite from the raging world outside. The deafening sound of the downpour outside and the clatter of water crashing against boulders overhead filled their ears.
Zhou Ai took a deep breath, and the first thing he did was to move closer to Chu Yi and check his ankle in the faint light coming through the cave.
"Don't move, let me see."
Zhou Ai endured the dull pain in his back, took out a flashlight wrapped in a waterproof layer from his rescue backpack, and turned it on with a click.
A beam of light cut through the darkness of the cave. He squatted down carefully, and the light focused on Chu Yi's exposed ankles.
The once fair skin was now red and swollen, with a large dark bruise appearing in the middle, which was particularly glaring under the flashlight. Zhou Ai's fingers lightly touched the edge of the swelling and felt an abnormal heat beneath the skin.
"Fortunately, the bone should be fine, it's just twisted, which is a bit serious." Zhou Ai breathed a sigh of relief, but his brows were still furrowed. "Does it hurt a lot?" He looked up and asked, with unconcealable heartache in his eyes.
Chu Yi shook his head, his attention focused on the suppressed gasp Zhou Ai let out when she stood up. "I'm fine. How about you?" He glanced sharply at Zhou Ai's back. "You were hit pretty hard just now. Take off your clothes and let me see."
Zhou Ai subconsciously wanted to refuse: "No, I'm really fine..."
"Take it off." Chu Yi's tone left no room for doubt, even though he was still sitting on the ground in a mess, his face pale.
Zhou Ai couldn't persuade him, so she had to grit her teeth and endure the severe pain of the muscles pulled in her back as she slowly took off her windbreaker jacket, revealing the equally wet black tight-fitting inner wear underneath.
Chu Yi gestured for him to turn around. Zhou Ai sat down with her back to him. Chu Yi took a deep breath, endured the pain in his ankle, and carefully rolled up the hem of Zhou Ai's inner garment.
Under the flashlight, the condition of Zhou Ai's entire back was exposed - a large, shocking purple bruise stretched across his strong back muscles, and the center was even a little black, obviously an impact injury caused by hitting the pine tree just now.
Chu Yi's breathing hitched for a moment. His fingertips subconsciously reached out to touch him, but stopped mid-air, afraid of hurting him. He closed his eyes, suppressed the turmoil in his heart, and tried to keep his voice steady: "Turn around."
Zhou Ai turned around obediently.
Chu Yi stretched out his hands, placing his palms on the corresponding spots on Zhou Ai's chest and back, and gently squeezed inwards: "Take a deep breath... Does it hurt? Do you feel any stinging inside or difficulty breathing?"
Zhou Ai took a deep breath and exhaled as he was told, felt it, and shook his head: "It's okay, it's just muscle pain, not bone pain." He could feel Chu Yi's slightly cool palm against his skin, with cautious strength, and a strange feeling covered the pain in his back.
Chu Yi carefully examined and pressed several key areas, confirming that Zhou Ai had no signs of broken ribs. He finally breathed a sigh of relief, his tense shoulders relaxing slightly. "Thankfully, it's just a flesh wound."
After checking the injuries, Zhou Ai regained his spirits and began to count the supplies in their backpacks. There was still enough food and water, and the emergency items in the rescue bag were basically intact.
He picked up some dry branches and dead leaves in the corner of the cave, and with great effort ignited them with a flint, making a small fire.
After doing all this, Zhou Ai quickly took off his wet black inner wear, revealing his muscular upper body. Under the light of the fire, the bruises on his back and the bloodstains on his front caused by branches became more obvious.
He was completely unaware and walked to Chu Yi with the wet clothes in his hand. He naturally and carefully wiped his still dripping hair.
Chu Yi froze for a moment, but didn't move away. Warm body heat permeated the slightly damp fabric, carrying Zhou Ai's unique scent, a mixture of the freshness of rain and a hint of blood. He lowered his eyes, allowing Zhou Ai to move.
After wiping Chu Yi, Zhou Ai used his wet clothes to wipe the water droplets off his face and hair. Then he found a relatively straight branch, spread out his wet clothes, and hung them over the fire to dry.
The dancing flames illuminated his well-defined profile and upper body, and the bruises on his back looked somewhat hideous as his muscles moved.
"There are clean clothes packed in sealed bags at the bottom of my bag." Chu Yi pointed to the location of the backpack, and then took off his windbreaker with difficulty. Fortunately, both of their windbreakers and pants were made of special waterproof fabrics.
However, water still got into the inner layer when it rolled down, and it was very uncomfortable because it stuck to my body.
Chu Yi didn't have time for pretentiousness, so he turned around and stripped off his soaking wet underwear. Zhou Ai found some spare clean clothes in her bag and turned around to see Chu Yi, shirtless, sitting by the fire, looking at his injured ankle in the flames.
The orange-red flames were like the most delicate paintbrush, slowly painting on Chu Yi's body.
It was a whiteness that was almost cold in tone, completely different from Zhou Ai's honey-colored skin that was full of power and vitality.
Long-term indoor work and rigorous life have made Chu Yi's skin rarely exposed to the sun. His skin is so delicate that the pores are almost invisible. At this moment, under the reflection of the fire, it actually exudes a jade-like warm and fragile luster.
Light and shadow defined his figure with distinct lines. The dancing light of the flame cast bright and dark shadows on his slender shoulders, slightly raised collarbone, and flat, firm abdomen.
Every curve is perfectly accentuated by light and shadow. His figure is thin, but not frail, with flexible lines formed by years of self-discipline.
The firelight even cast a deep shadow in the slightly concave groove of his spine, which appeared and disappeared with his slight breathing.
Zhou Ai had turned around at some point, holding the clean and dry clothes she had taken out of Chu Yi's bag, but her movements stopped mid-air.
He looked at Chu Yi beside the fire, and saw that her fair skin was coated with a warm color by the warm firelight.
Chu Yi seemed to notice his gaze and raised his eyelashes slightly to look over.
The firelight danced in his clear eyes, reflecting a small cluster of bright spots. There was a hint of fragility and confusion in his eyes that had not yet completely subsided, and it struck Zhou Ai's heart directly.
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