A Boundless Torrent

It was human instinct to seek a way to survive. When the flood struck, few would simply sit and await death. People in the surrounding area had instinctively converged on the church in an endless stream. By now, the battered, cavernous hall was packed to bursting; crowds of people were even huddled densely across the rooftop. In the pitch black, only two flickering lamps cast their light. On the steps before the entrance, amid the howling tempest, Elder Longge sat in his wheelchair. His withered hands gripped the railing with all his might, his strength nearly spent. His white hair was a tangled mess plastered to his face, leaving him in a sorry, disheveled state. The water—the water was still rising. In less than half a minute, it had already crept up another step. At that moment, seeing the motorcade thundering toward them, his grim, somber face twitched twice, as though he had finally breathed a sigh of relief. "Rescue! The rescue has arrived!" Cries of wild joy erupted, and heads instantly bobbed and surged. The crowd inside the church swarmed forward again, shoving desperately toward the entrance, heedless of the clergy's attempts to maintain order. Before the trucks had even come to a full stop, people were already jumping down from the upper floors, splashing through the waist-deep muddy water in an attempt to scramble under the tarpaulins and into the truck beds. A human tide surged. The last remnants of order collapsed completely. "Don't push, everyone! Stop pushing!" A young nun blocked the doorway, shouting hoarsely, "Let the children board first! Let the—" Before she could finish, she was shoved aside, nearly swallowed up and trampled beneath the crowd. A withered hand reached out and yanked her back. Elder Longge. It was hard to imagine such strength remaining in that crippled frame, with one hand gripping the rotting balustrade and the other hoisting her up from the ground. The other church members continued to shout, but it was useless. With survival dangling right before them, no one cared about order anymore. They fought tooth and nail to cram into the truck beds. Then, a massive mechanical hand reached out, clamping onto the neck of the burly man who had led the charge. It hoisted him as easily as a chick. Before everyone's eyes, the arm swung back, wound up, and hurled him outward! Boom! The muddy water churned violently, sending up a massive splash. Under the glaring headlamps, a civilian-model Riot Cat stepped down from the truck bed. The screen atop its head blinked with red lights and safety warnings, and its colossal loudspeaker blared at high volume, repeating the words of the church staff. Yan Fei scrambled onto the roof of the cab, raised his hand without a second thought, and fired a shot straight into the sky. Then, expressionless, he aimed the barrel at the faces still trying to climb up and warned them in fluent, native Mid-Continent speech: "If you can't understand human words, you're welcome to taste a bullet. I don't belong to the church." Someone refused to believe it and tried to squeeze forward anyway. But immediately afterward came a deafening crack, followed by a burning, searing pain across his forehead. A bullet had grazed the top of his skull, tearing open the scalp as blood gushed out like a spring. From beginning to end, Yan Fei's face remained utterly impassive. His eyes bored straight into the faces at the front of the pack—devoid of weakness, and even more devoid of mercy. Only under the threat of the muzzle did those eager to charge forward finally part to make a path. The grudging crowd fell back. Watching children being carried into the trucks one by one in the arms of church members, and sensing the water level rising yet again, they grew increasingly frantic. Amid the chaos, someone shrieked hoarsely: "The church is killing people! The church is abandoning us!" Another voice bellowed, "Don't trust them! The church wants to sell us out!" The crowd stirred for a fleeting moment, but soon settled back into silence. No one paid it any mind, and no one believed it. The name of the Church of Chongguang was answer enough. Amid those dwindling cries, Elder Longge's face remained stern and cold as he guarded the doorway, deaf to the noise, long accustomed to it. If one could not stomach the foulest depths of human nature, how could one ever become a baptized member of the church? It was merely a few doubts and slanders. Compared to the encroaching flood, they were not even worth mentioning. Yet in that brief lull, a distant, heavy racket grew sharper and louder, prompting everyone to instinctively hunch their necks and lower their heads in dread. Gunfire. It was coming from the direction of the city center. Longge froze for a moment, then seemed to understand. Gripping the armrests of his wheelchair tightly, he shut his eyes. "Go. Hurry and go." His lips twitched as he forced out a strained smile, waving a hand at Yan Fei. "Evacuate the children first. The second batch will be the elderly and disabled. The clergy and I will be the last to leave." Yan Fei did not dally. He slapped the side of the truck bed, and the engine roared to life as the vehicle sped away. Farther out, another convoy of trucks Ji Jue had just borrowed from Universal Heavy Industries was already en route. Amid the pitch-black mire, weeping, wailing, and curses echoed without pause. Yan Fei remained silent, not uttering a word. *** By the time the first group of evacuees arrived at Haian's factory, Old Gou had already led the remaining workers in setting up water heaters. Unable to find enough beds, they could only spread moisture-proof tarps across the floor. Inside the compound, defensive Riot Cats lined up in orderly fashion to unload mountains of relief supplies from the vehicles, while weeping or numb children were ushered into the temporarily cleared workshops. A sense of disarray gradually mounted. The second batch transported over consisted of patients, medicine, and medical staff from Tacheng Mercy Hospital. Amid the disorder, a semblance of order slowly took shape under the direction of the doctors. Old Gou liaised with the hospital director, taking note of urgently needed supplies while directing the factory hands to string up power lines as quickly as possible; the medical equipment demanded a tremendous amount of electricity. Elder Longge and his assistant were among the final group to arrive. It was fortunate that decisive action had been taken. By then, the floodwaters had surged up to the second floor, and the trucks had barely been able to drive through. The mud pits outside the city were pure chaos, and the factory was hardly much better—noisy, messy, and filled with unending cries and shouts. Worse still, the winds were continuing to pick up, and the torrential rain showed no sign of letting up. Even though this typhoon had merely grazed the edge of Tacheng, waiting out its aftermath would take at least four or five days. In Ji Jue's perception, the true peak of the disaster had not even arrived yet. Elder Longge had lost his wheelchair somewhere along the way. Now, fitted with prosthetic legs and leaning heavily on crutches, he hobbled toward Ji Jue. Dirty water dripped steadily from the hem of his clothes, leaving him in a wretched state. His habitually austere face strained to offer a faint smile. "Mr. Ji, could you—" Ji Jue raised a hand, cutting him off. "It's just a few more mouths to feed. We've stockpiled plenty of compressed biscuits—more than we can finish. Until the typhoon passes, please have the church stay here. At least we won't run out of water or power. There's no need to say thanks, Elder." Longge fell silent for a heartbeat, the smile on his face giving way to a trace of bitterness and sorrow. "Because aside from thanks, I have nothing left with which to repay you." "Then it ought to be me repaying the church instead," Ji Jue smiled. "Consider it Haian's way of returning the favor to the Church of Chongguang. When one receives goodness, one must repay it—isn't that the very tenet of the church that you taught me?" "I stand corrected." Longge forced a small smile and finally breathed a sigh of relief. His legs nearly buckled beneath him, but Ji Jue caught him by the arm, and soon enough, a Riot Cat brought over a wheelchair. "I recall donating prosthetics to the church in the past," Ji Jue remarked with a slight frown. "Were they embezzled?" "No, I sold them. Forgive me." Longge patted his bare knees awkwardly. "There are shortages everywhere, and so many places need money. A wheelchair is quite convenient anyway." "It doesn't matter." Ji Jue shook his head nonchalantly, thought for a moment, and suddenly said, "Haian won't be breaking into the wider market anytime soon anyway. How about I trouble the church to help sell our prosthetic exoskeletons? It'll save me some hassle, and even if it doesn't bring in massive profits, it'll at least be a steady source of revenue." The elder hesitated for a second, then nodded decisively: "Then I won't refuse." Pride? What good was pride? Could pride feed anyone? There were deficits at every turn. Once this typhoon passed, they wouldn't even have the money to rebuild the church; any source of income was better than none. Besides, when the church rejected sponsorships, they were merely refusing to let military-industrial conglomerates use charity as a shield; they refused to wallow in the mire with them. As for Haian Industries, the church held shares in it. Whenever the exoskeleton prosthetic project and its promotion were mentioned, Old Deng, stingy as he was, could never suppress a grin, bragging about it endlessly. Why turn away clean, honest money? Items like that never lacked a market in the Mid-Continent. For a rare moment, a faint smile surfaced on the elder's grim, somber face. It vanished in the blink of an eye. A shout rose nearby. At the entrance of the workshop, a limping figure walked inside—a survivor brought in by the last truck. The man's skin was dark and weathered by the sun, and his entire body was coated in mud, yet an irrepressible grin spread across his face. A jumble of plastic bags was tied around his waist, seemingly containing his entire life's possessions. His arms were wrapped tightly around a bulky bulge under his clothes. One could vaguely glimpse colorful plastic carefully cradled in his embrace. As though celebrating the New Year, he called out a name, looking left and right, repeating it over and over. But when no one responded, he faltered. He froze stiff. He began grabbing church members one by one to ask, his back bowing lower and lower with every shake of their heads, his steps stumbling. Until finally, an empathetic member guided him toward a corner. In an open space at the edge of the workshop, something beneath a tattered cloth formed a faint, still mound, devoid of any motion. He stared blankly. Summoning all his courage, he lifted the cloth, yet dared not look. Only the few bags of puffed snacks he had risked his life to salvage slipped from his embrace and tumbled to the floor. Ji Jue looked away, unable to watch any longer. Crying broke out—yet another sound of weeping, torn and heartbreaking, instantly drowned beneath the clamor, utterly unremarkable. Only then did Ji Jue realize that, without him noticing, the sound of weeping had filled every corner. It was as distant as the horizon, yet right beside him. A disheveled, gaunt woman pushed past the church members trying to stop her and grabbed hold of Elder Longge's clothes. Falling to her knees, she wailed and begged for something. It was not standard Mid-Continent speech, but a heavily accented dialect spoken at a blistering pace, and Ji Jue could not make it out clearly. He could only see the tear tracks washed clean through the mud on her face. She had no tears left to shed. Longge listened in silence, and after a long while, he shook his head helplessly. At that, the woman collapsed to the floor like an empty husk, stripped of all strength to struggle. "What happened?" Ji Jue asked. Elder Longge hesitated for a brief moment, then let out a raspy sigh. "Her son owed money and was taken away to work in a factory... That kind of factory. The church cannot get involved. The slums of Tacheng are full of all sorts of riffraff and crooked operations." Including production lines for illicit drugs. "She said her son was locked in the basement, and someone saw him when they fled," Longge explained after a pause, speaking frankly. "By now, I'm afraid he's already..." Anyone could figure it out with half a brain. When the flood struck, why would drug traffickers fleeing for their lives spare a thought for slaves locked in a basement? "...I see." Ji Jue thought for a moment and nodded. "I'm quite free right now anyway, so it's a good time to go take a look. Leave it to me." The elder opened his mouth as if to speak, but raised no further objections. After asking for the exact location, Ji Jue turned and pushed through the door, racing against the clock. Perhaps there was still hope; perhaps there was still a chance; perhaps there was none. He simply wanted to step outside and catch his breath. Doing anything was fine. He just didn't want to hear the crying anymore.