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After completing the initial rescue and resettlement, and helping the young people from the village committee to roughly stabilize the temporary shelter, the five-person team dared not linger.

The sky grew darker, and although the rain had lessened somewhat, no one knew if it would intensify again or trigger new secondary disasters. Their supplies were also insufficient to sustain them in their current location.

"We must hurry back while we can still walk," Li Fu said gravely, wiping the rain from his face.

The return journey seemed even more difficult than the way there. The significant depletion of physical strength, coupled with the continuous erosion from the rain, made the already slippery and muddy mountain path even more treacherous.

Not long after we started walking, it was as if the sky had been torn open, and the rain suddenly poured down, more intense than ever before. The dense rain lines almost formed a curtain of water, and visibility dropped sharply.

"Watch out! Slow down! Watch your step!" Li Fu had to raise his voice to shout in order to drown out the sound of the pouring rain.

The mountain path became even more difficult to traverse, each step feeling like struggling in a quagmire.

Chu Yi's physical strength was completely exhausted, and he was only holding on by sheer willpower. His face was as pale as paper, his breathing was rapid and shallow, and he staggered with every step. He was almost entirely supported and pulled by Zhou Ai from the side to keep from falling.

As I crossed a steep embankment where a small landslide had recently occurred, the soil beneath my feet suddenly loosened.

Chu Yi lost her footing and instantly lost her balance. Her screams were drowned out by the torrential rain, and she rolled uncontrollably down the steep, muddy slope.

"Chu Yi!" Zhou Ai's pupils suddenly contracted. He had been paying attention to Chu Yi and reacted almost the instant Chu Yi slipped.

He lunged forward, reaching out to grab Chu Yi, but only managed to touch his cold fingertips.

The immense force caused Zhou Ai to slip as well, and she was dragged along with him. The two of them tumbled and fell down the landslide in an instant.

"Teacher Chu! Teacher Zhou!!"

Li Fu and two young people from the village committee above were terrified and screamed in disbelief. They rushed to the edge of the landslide and tried to look down.

However, the torrential rain reduced visibility to extremely low levels. Below was a steep slope and jagged rocks shrouded in rain and fog, making it impossible to see the two people's exact situation. All that could be heard were the terrifying sounds of rolling mud and rocks and the crashing water.

"Quick! Find a way down!" Li Fu was extremely anxious, and his voice changed.

The two young men were sweating profusely with anxiety and immediately tried to find a way down the slope. However, the torrential rain had made the slope extremely unstable, with the soil constantly shifting and sliding down. They tried several times, but almost slipped down themselves after only a few steps, and couldn't find a safe path at all.

"No! Dr. Li! It's too slippery! I can't get down!!" a young man shouted anxiously, his face covered in rainwater.

"Throw the rope! Quickly, get the rope out!" Li Fu suddenly remembered the rescue rope he had brought.

The three of them hurriedly took out a rope, trying to fix one end to a relatively thick tree nearby and throw the other end down.

However, the rope was of limited length, and the wind and rain were too strong. The rope that was thrown down was quickly washed away by the mud and water and stuck to the slope, making it impossible to determine whether it could be caught by the people below.

"Teacher Chu! Teacher Zhou! Can you hear me?! Grab the rope!!" Li Fu shouted hoarsely downwards, his voice weak and powerless in the torrential rain.

The only response they received was the even more torrential rain and the mournful howling of the mountain wind.

After trying various methods to no avail, a feeling of despair spread through me.

The rain was getting heavier and heavier, and the sky was getting darker and darker. Their location was also becoming unsafe.

"Dr. Li! We can't wait any longer! It's not safe here either! We need to go back to the relatively safe place we just left!" The young man from the village committee pulled Li Fu, who was almost out of control, and urged him loudly.

Li Fu stared at the chaotic, unresponsive steep slope below, his eyes bloodshot. Finally, he angrily slammed his fist into the tree trunk beside him, rain and tears mingling as they streamed down his face.

He knew the young man was right. If they went down now, they wouldn't be able to save anyone, and they might very well lose their own lives as well.

"Chu Yi... Zhou Ai..." Li Fu's voice choked with emotion, filled with helplessness and immense guilt, "You two must hold on..."

Left with no other choice, the three had to temporarily abandon the rescue and retreat with difficulty to a relatively stable rock they had passed earlier to take shelter from the downpour. Everyone's heart sank to the bottom, gripped tightly by worry and fear.

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The world spun around him, and mud, rocks, and broken branches pelted his body. In the terrifying moment of his uncontrolled tumbling and falling, Zhou Ai's only thought was to protect the person in his arms.

With his powerful core strength, he managed to pull Chu Yi tightly into his arms amidst the chaos, using his back and the heavy backpack on his chest to absorb most of the impact.

After tumbling for an unknown amount of time, their backs suddenly slammed into a springy obstacle, abruptly halting their descent, and the two finally came to a stop.

It was a pine tree that had grown tenaciously from a crevice in the rock. With its trunk, which was not very thick but was strong enough, it had managed to stop them from falling directly into the deeper and more dangerous area below, where the sound of rushing water could be heard, which was obviously a larger current or a cliff.

Zhou Ai's vision went black from the impact, and it felt like his internal organs had shifted; excruciating pain spread from his back. But he couldn't care less about himself and immediately looked down to check on the person in his arms.

"Chu Yi? Chu Yi! Wake up! Are you alright?" Zhou Ai's voice was hoarse with pain and anxiety. He gently patted Chu Yi's cold, wet cheeks, his fingers trembling.

Chu Yi seemed to have only fainted briefly. With Zhou Ai calling and patting her, her eyelashes fluttered a few times, and she slowly opened her eyes.

The moment he regained consciousness, the sharp pain and the icy rain sent a chill down his spine, but his first reaction was to grab Zhou Ai's arm tightly, his voice weak but urgent: "Are you alright?! Where are you hurt? Are your bones broken?"

He struggled to check on Zhou Ai's condition; he couldn't bear to imagine the consequences of her rolling down from such a height.

Seeing that he was conscious and able to speak, Zhou Ai felt a huge weight lifted from his heart. He quickly pressed down Chu Yi's flailing hands and, in the dim light, showed him himself: "I'm fine! Really! Look, the backpack cushioned the damage; it's just some minor scratches!"

He pointed to his face and arms, which did indeed have many cuts from weeds and sharp stones, and they stung painfully, but they didn't look like he had any serious fractures.

Chu Yi looked him over carefully and confirmed that his limbs seemed to be intact and that he could move freely. Only then did she breathe a long sigh of relief and lean back into Zhou Ai's arms as if all her strength had been drained. Only then did she realize that her whole body ached as if it had fallen apart, especially her left arm and right ankle, which were throbbing with dull pain.

The downpour showed no signs of abating; in fact, it intensified, with rainwater cascading down from above like a waterfall. Looking up, the steep slope they had slid down appeared almost vertical in the rain, muddy and impossible to climb back the way they had come.

The shouts of Li Fu and the others had long been swallowed up by the sound of wind and rain, and there was no movement above.

"We have to get out of here!" Zhou Ai shouted, her voice cutting through the rain. "This tree won't last much longer; the rain will wash away the soil!"

Chu Yi nodded with difficulty and tried to stand up. A sharp pain immediately shot through his right ankle, causing him to groan and almost fall back down.

"You hurt your foot?" Zhou Ai noticed immediately and squatted down without saying a word. "Get on! I'll carry you!"

"No! You yourself..." Chu Yi wanted to refuse; this path was too dangerous.

"Stop talking nonsense! Hurry!" Zhou Ai's tone was more forceful and anxious than ever before. "If we stay any longer, we'll all be washed away!"

Looking at the mud and water constantly being washed down and the increasingly unstable pine tree, Chu Yi knew that what Zhou Ai said was true.

Without further hesitation, he gritted his teeth and climbed onto Zhou Ai's back.

Zhou Ai took a deep breath, enduring the sharp pain in her back, and stood up steadily.

He surveyed the terrain and moved with difficulty along the relatively flat and densely shrubbed edge of the landslide, trying 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 entirely on an amazing willpower to carry Chu Yi on his back and stagger forward through the torrential rain and mud.

Chu Yi lay on his back, able to clearly feel his heavy, rapid breathing and the trembling of his muscles from the extreme exertion. Her heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by something, both sore and swollen.

After struggling for about two hundred meters, just as Zhou Ai was about to exhaust herself, Chu Yi suddenly pointed to a dark depression to her side: "Zhou Ai! Look there! It looks like a cave!"

Zhou Ai's spirits lifted, and she strode towards that direction. Upon closer inspection, she discovered it was indeed a small natural stone cave, its entrance partially obscured by dense vines.

The most surprising thing is that a sizable stream of water falls from above the cliff and flows over a huge rock at the top of the cave, forming a natural water curtain that cleverly shields the cave entrance area from some of the direct impact of rainwater.

The terrain here is relatively high, so there is no immediate danger of mud and water flowing back in.

Zhou Ai, carrying Chu Yi on her back, stumbled into the cave. Both of them collapsed to the ground, exhausted, panting heavily. The fear and fatigue of surviving the ordeal washed over them like a tidal wave.

The cave wasn't large, but it was big enough for the two of them to take shelter from the rain. The air inside was damp, but at least they were temporarily away from the raging storm outside. All they could hear was the deafening roar of the downpour outside and the rushing sound of water washing over the boulders above.

Once Zhou Ai had caught her breath, the first thing she did was to go to Chu Yi's side and check his ankle using the faint light coming through the hole.

"Don't move, let me see."

Despite the dull pain in her back, Zhou Ai rummaged through her rescue backpack and pulled out a flashlight wrapped in a waterproof layer, then snapped it on.

A beam of light pierced the darkness of the cave, and he carefully crouched down, focusing the light on Chu Yi's exposed ankles.

Her once fair skin was now red and swollen, with a large, dark bruise visible in the center, which looked particularly glaring under the flashlight beam. Zhou Ai's fingers lightly touched the edge of the swelling, feeling an abnormal heat beneath the skin.

"It's alright, the bone should be fine, it's just a sprain, it's a bit serious." Zhou Ai breathed a sigh of relief, but his brows were still furrowed. "Does it hurt a lot?" he asked, looking up, his eyes filled with undisguised heartache.

Chu Yi shook his head, his attention entirely focused on the suppressed gasp Zhou Ai had let out when she stood up. "I'm fine. How about you?" He sharply scanned Zhou Ai's back. "You bumped into something pretty hard. Take off your clothes so I can see."

Zhou Ai instinctively wanted to refuse: "No need, I'm really fine..."

"Take it off." Chu Yi's tone left no room for argument, even though he himself was still sitting on the ground in a disheveled state, his face pale.

Zhou Ai couldn't persuade him otherwise, so she had to grit her teeth and endure the sharp pain in her back muscles as she slowly took off her windbreaker, revealing her equally wet black inner layer.

Chu Yi gestured for him to turn around. Zhou Ai sat down with his back to him. Chu Yi took a deep breath, enduring the pain in his ankle, and carefully rolled up the hem of Zhou Ai's inner garment little by little.

Under the flashlight beam, Zhou Ai's entire back was clearly visible—a large, shocking purplish-blue bruise stretched across his muscular back, with the center even turning black, obviously from the impact of hitting the pine tree earlier.

Chu Yi's breath hitched. His fingertips instinctively reached out to touch him, but stopped mid-air, afraid of hurting him. He closed his eyes, suppressing the turmoil in his heart, and tried to keep his voice steady: "Turn around."

Zhou Ai obediently turned around.

Chu Yi reached out and placed her palms on Zhou Ai's chest and back, respectively, gently pressing inwards: "Take a deep breath... Does it hurt like this? Do you feel any stinging pain or difficulty breathing inside?"

Zhou Aiyi took a deep breath and felt it for a moment, then shook his head: "It's okay, it's just muscle pain, not bone pain." He could feel Chu Yi's slightly cool palm on his skin, with a careful pressure, and a strange feeling overshadowed the pain in his back.

Chu Yi carefully checked and pressed several key areas, confirming that Zhou Ai indeed showed no signs of rib fractures. Only then did he truly breathe a sigh of relief, his previously tense shoulders slumping slightly. "Fortunately, it's just a superficial injury."

After checking their injuries, Zhou Ai rallied and began checking the supplies in their backpacks. Food and water were plentiful, and the emergency items in the rescue kits were mostly intact.

He gathered some dry branches and leaves in a corner of the cave, and painstakingly lit them with a flint and steel, creating a small fire.

After doing all this, Zhou Ai deftly took off his soaking wet black undershirt, revealing his muscular upper body. Under the firelight, the bruises on his back and the bloodstains from the branches on his front were even more noticeable.

Unaware of his surroundings, he took the wet clothes and walked over to Chu Yi, gently and naturally wiping his still dripping hair.

Chu Yi stiffened for a moment, but did not dodge. Warm body heat wafted through the slightly damp fabric, carrying Zhou Ai's unique scent, mixed with the freshness of rain and a hint of blood. He lowered his eyes, letting Zhou Ai do as she pleased.

After wiping Chu Yi, Zhou Ai haphazardly wiped the water droplets off his face and hair with his own wet clothes. Then he found a relatively straight branch, spread the wet clothes out, and placed them next to the fire to dry.

The flickering firelight illuminated his sharply defined profile and upper body, and the bruises on his back looked somewhat grotesque as his muscles twitched.

"I have clean clothes in a sealed bag at the bottom of my bag." Chu Yi pointed to the backpack and then struggled to take off her windbreaker. Fortunately, both of their windbreakers and pants were made of special waterproof material.

However, the inner layer still got wet when it rolled down, and it felt very uncomfortable sticking to my body.

Chu Yi didn't have time to be coy and turned around to take off her soaking wet undershirt. Zhou Ai found a spare clean shirt in her bag and turned around to see Chu Yi sitting by the fire, shirtless, looking at her injured ankle by the firelight.

The orange-red flames, like the most delicate paintbrush, slowly painted over Chu Yi's body.

It was a pale, almost cool-toned white, quite different from Zhou Ai's honey-colored skin, which was full of strength and vitality.

Long hours working indoors and a strict lifestyle meant that Chu Yi's skin was rarely exposed to sunlight. Her skin was so delicate that her pores were almost invisible. Now, under the firelight, it shone with a warm and fragile luster like jade.

Light and shadow defined a clear boundary on his body. The flickering light of the flames cast shadows of varying intensity on his smooth, slender shoulders, slightly protruding collarbones, and flat, taut abdomen.

Every curve and undulation is emphasized perfectly by light and shadow. He is slender but not weak, possessing supple lines honed by years of self-discipline.

The firelight even cast a deep shadow in the groove of his slightly concave spine, appearing and disappearing with his soft 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 were frozen in mid-air.

He looked at Chu Yi by the fire, watching her fair skin bathed in the warm glow of the firelight.

Chu Yi seemed to notice his gaze and slightly raised her eyelashes to look over.

The firelight danced in his clear eyes, reflecting a small cluster of bright spots. His gaze held a hint of vulnerability and bewilderment that had not yet been fully concealed, striking straight into Zhou Ai's heart.