Chapter 168: Reunion
Lu Weiyi nodded and sat on the bed, holding Zhuang Ai Yi in his arms. Yun Lu sat on a stool across from him, scooped a spoonful of porridge, and brought it toward the child’s mouth.
“Lulu, cool it down before feeding him,” Guan Tong reminded her just in time.
Considering how long Yun Lu had been walking around in wet clothes and Lu Weiyi didn’t even notice or care, Guan Tong had no doubt that if she burned the child’s mouth, Lu Weiyi would turn hostile on the spot.
“Oh, right,” Yun Lu quickly replied, blowing on the spoon before gently trying again. “Ai Yi, be good—once you eat the porridge, you’ll feel better.”
*
The square-shaped wooden barrel boat wobbled through the floodwaters. At first, it drifted with the current, but when the Greenland Community came into view, changing direction became much harder. The poles were almost useless against the rushing water. They mainly relied on Gu Qingzhi manipulating his mutated ivy vines to wrap around objects and shift their path.
With the dropping temperature and the boat entirely surrounded by ice, the powered individuals were fine. But Zhuang Mingxu, sitting directly on the surface, soon turned pale from the cold.
“Is that a tree in the distance?” Gu Qingzhi wrapped the boat with ivy and secured it to a rooftop, wiped the rain from his face, shaded his eyes, and looked into the distance.
“…Yeah,” Ning Yuan shouted hoarsely. In the pouring rain, they had to yell to hear one another.
Everyone’s voice was strained by now. “It’s kind of far?” The vines had a limited range due to ability constraints.
Gu Qingzhi nodded. They looked around but saw no intermediate spot to use. A few hundred meters might as well have been a wall. They were stuck—no way forward or back—and everyone was getting anxious.
“What if I create an ice bridge from the floodwater? A few people could pull the boat across,” Ning Yuan suggested.
Li Zhuang shook his head. “That kind of distance could happen again later, and your ability can’t handle it every time. If you run out of power, the boat will leak.”
“Can we swim it?” Xiong Jie leaned down and dipped his hand into the floodwater, testing it.
They knew he was getting desperate. No one responded to his reckless idea.
“There’s a motorboat… hey… wait…” Wu Yue suddenly said, waving toward a boat in the distance.
The others waved too, trying to get attention. Luckily, their luck held—the boat was crewed by Liu Yang, who had been helping with rescue operations, along with Li Mu and a few older men. Behind the motorboat were a few bed boards tied together, carrying people who couldn’t be clearly seen.
“Where are you guys headed?” Liu Yang asked as he got closer.
“We’re going to the Greenland Community. The poles are useless. What about you guys?” Wu Yue shouted.
“Perfect. We’re headed there too. Tie that thing to our boat—we’ll pull you over. Sound good?” Liu Yang shouted back.
“Deal,” Wu Yue replied, looking for some rope or anything to tie with. But the boat was bare except for the passengers and poles. Gu Qingzhi simply generated a fresh length of his mutated ivy and tied it to the motorboat, securing the other end to the wooden barrel boat.
“You guys have a lot of space here. Let them come up and make do with it? I’m holding onto a wooden board and still worried about falling off,” Liu Yang pointed to the few people hanging on the wooden boards at the back of the boat.
“Alright, come up,” Wu Yue said.
Liu Yang shouted over, signaling with his hands, and soon people on the boat started pulling ropes. After a while, they managed to bring the people at the back of the boat over—it was Li Qinglei and a few others from the military.
With more than ten people on the barrel boat, it got a bit crowded. “Everyone squeeze in a bit. I’ll speed up, it’ll only take a few minutes,” Liu Yang said, getting everyone seated. He started the boat, and with the force from the ropes, the entire barrel boat quickly followed.
In just a few minutes, they arrived at the Greenfield Residential Area.
A window on the fourth floor had become a dedicated entry point. At that time, Lu Xi, who had been sent to pick them up, was still waiting for the boat to return.
When he arrived, he missed the boat that had dropped off Chen Zhong and the others. The rest were outside saving people, so the chance of them coming back soon was very low. There was no way to contact them, so he could only wait.
As soon as he saw the boat arriving, Lu Xi immediately waved his hand, shouting at the few men coming from the boat to lend a hand. He also shouted at Liu Yang, “Brother Liu, my child is sick. I need the boat to bring my family over. You can use it when we’re done.”
“Lu Xi, what did you say?” Liu Yang, standing at the back, could only see Lu Xi speaking but couldn’t hear him clearly. “Wait a second,” he turned to help those on the barrel boat come over to the motorboat.
Lu Xi, anxious to get onto the boat, saw a figure rushing over. With a strong push, the boat rocked a bit, almost throwing the others off. Before he could jump off, someone grabbed him. “Lu Xi, where is Brother Xi?”
“Brother Xiong?” Lu Xi called out in surprise. “Brother Xi is upstairs. I was just about to go pick you up. Are you alone? Who did you come with?”
“We’re a few people,” Wu Yue said, carrying Zhuang Mingxu, with Ning Yuan beside him guarding him. “Mingxu is worried about you. Move aside there.”
Lu Xi quickly withdrew from the window and pulled the others up. “Mingxu, go check on things. Ai Yi is sick and can’t take the medicine. My brother asked me to bring you all to help.”
“Lead the way,” Gu Qingyue flicked the water off his hair, following Lu Xi upstairs.
The last person to board was Li Qing, who stopped Li Zhuang to ask about Lin Yimu’s condition before letting him go.
“After Ai Yi and I fell into the water, my brother grabbed us, but Brother Xi drifted too far away. It took a while to find him. After finding him, we originally planned to go back, but the current was too strong, and there were a lot of things floating on the water. It was hard to swim against the current, so we could only get here,” Lu Xi explained as he walked in front. “Not long after we arrived, Ai Yi started vomiting. When I came down earlier, he was already burning with fever.”
“Brother Xi also has a fever,” Lu Xi said with frustration. “My brother and I couldn’t manage everything. My brother told me to bring you all to help.”
As soon as Xiong Jie heard that Xi Shi had a fever, he immediately panicked. Gu Qingyue patted his shoulder. “It’s okay, I’m a doctor. We have medicine, he’ll be fine.”
“That’s right, he’ll be fine,” Xiong Jie mumbled, not sure if he was saying it to others or trying to convince himself. His steps up the stairs became hurried.
“Has he seen a doctor?” Zhuang Mingxu asked, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
“Yes, the military doctor came and said it was just shock, nothing serious. He clung to my brother and wouldn’t let anyone touch him. He was weak, and I couldn’t get the medicine into him. My brother… panicked,” Lu Xi explained.
“Hmm, what about Weiyi? Is he injured?” Zhuang Mingxu asked.
“He protected me and Ai Yi on the way. He bumped into something, but it wasn’t serious. He’s already applied medicine,” Lu Xi scratched his head, feeling a bit useless.
Zhuang Mingxu nodded, letting out a sigh of relief.
“Enough about others. Mingxu, aren’t you feeling unwell? Your face looks terrible,” Ning Yuan, who had been staying by Zhuang Mingxu’s side, asked with a frown.
“He’s freezing. Normal people don’t have the same endurance as those with abilities,” Wu Yue, carrying Zhuang Mingxu, replied. As they were so close, he could feel that Zhuang Mingxu’s body had no warmth.
As soon as they reached the sixth floor, they saw Lin Mo outside the door. Lu Xi greeted him, introduced the others, and they walked towards the room.
“Over here,” Lu Xi opened the door, letting Wu Yue, who was carrying Zhuang Mingxu, enter first. “The bedroom on the left.”
As soon as Wu Yue entered, he saw the bedroom door left ajar, Guan Tong standing at the door, and Yun Lu sitting opposite Lu Weiyi, feeding Zhuang Ai Yi with a spoon.
Outside, the wind and rain were pouring, and the flood was rampant.
It made the small world inside feel even more peaceful and warm.
It also made the people, struggling with the cold, feel like their long journey was almost a joke.
“Xiaoyi!”
Zhuang Mingxu’s voice was calm and composed, sounding like the calm before a storm.
“Zhuang Mingxu!” Lu Weiyi looked up in surprise, quickly standing up.
Yun Lu, who was very close, was startled by his sudden movement. A bowl of porridge she had just served tilted, spilling all over her legs.
“Ah!” The hot porridge made Yun Lu scream as she stood up, pulling at her wet pants to avoid touching her skin. Guan Tong quickly rushed over, grabbing a cloth to wipe the hot porridge off her pants. Even though she was fast, Yun Lu must have been burned.
Yun Lu held back the pain, silently crying, while Guan Tong, feeling sorry for her, looked around for a place to take her clothes off and check for burns. Unfortunately, the place was too crowded.
“Master Lu, could you all step outside for a moment? I need to check on Yun Lu’s burns,” Guan Tong asked Lu Weiyi.
Lu Weiyi swiftly took out a tube of burn ointment from his space and handed it to her. Without any mercy, he said, “Go somewhere else, Ai Yi is sick and can’t catch a cold.”
“Weiyi…” Yun Lu’s voice was filled with tears, and Zhuang Ai Yi, in his infantile tone, called out, “Big Daddy.”
Lu Weiyi’s attention was immediately diverted to Zhuang Ai Yi. He turned to Zhuang Mingxu and said, “Come over quickly, Ai Yi has a fever, and he’s vomiting. He won’t eat anything, he…”
“Xiao Yi, don’t panic, it’s fine, it’s fine…” Wu Yue stepped forward, pushing aside Guan Tong and her daughter who were about to approach, and placed Zhuang Mingxu on the stool where Yun Lu had just been sitting.
Zhuang Mingxu reached out to hold Lu Weiyi’s hand, comforting him as he had clearly started to panic, while also looking down at Zhuang Ai Yi and softly asking, “Ai Yi, why aren’t you eating?”
“Big Daddy,” Zhuang Ai Yi reached out, wanting Zhuang Mingxu to pick him up.
“Big Daddy’s clothes are wet, I’ll hold you later,” Zhuang Mingxu said.
“Lu Weiyi, hurry and bring dry clothes, we’ve been soaking in the rain all the way here. Mingxu can’t handle it,” Ning Yuan said.
Gu Qingyue walked in and bent down to check on the tightly wrapped Zhuang Ai Yi. “I’ll check on him first.”
Xiong Jie had already reached the bedside, leaning in to look at Xi Shi, but he didn’t dare to touch him because he was also wet.
The room, about ten square meters, felt cramped with the large men, especially since they were all either lean or muscular. Yun Lu and her daughter seemed out of place, like lambs among wolves.
Yun Lu was quietly crying, and Guan Tong quickly pulled her into the empty bathroom without paying attention to anything else.
