A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

Lu Yuan grabbed his upper body.

The force was great; his arms were wrapped around Zhao Xiujie's back, lifting him up and making him roar as he looked up at the edge of the pit, his face covered in mud.

"Rope! Throw the rope down quickly! Teacher Zhao has choked on water!"

Old Jin was lying on the edge of the pit, clutching a nylon towing rope he had torn from the equipment truck. He saw two people standing in waist-deep, foul-smelling water; one had broken ribs and his face was ashen, while the other was tightly protecting the other in his arms.

"Damn, this kid's a real man." Old Jin threw the end of the rope down.

The rope drew an arc in the air and landed not far from Lu Yuan.

Beneath the water's surface, Lu Yuan's left hand moved.

Five fingers passed under Zhao Xiujie's armpit, with the fingertips touching the junction of the seventh and eighth ribs, the broken ends.

The thumb presses down, a rotating inward push. The force travels from the thumb pad into the fractured periosteum, forcing the displaced bone fragments to compress the intercostal nerve plexus.

The intensity of this pain input is three to four orders of magnitude higher than that of the fracture itself.

Zhao Xiujie's mouth was agape to its limit.

The scream didn't come out because the diaphragm was locked while the chest cavity was spasming and contracting violently, preventing air from being expelled from the vocal cords.

His eyes bulged out, and he only made a short "hoh" sound from his throat, like a chicken being grabbed by the neck.

"My foot slipped!"

Lu Yuan shouted and his body suddenly lurched to the right.

He twisted his left foot on a rotten wooden plank at the bottom of the water, his knee sank into the mud, and he lost his balance. His right hand grabbed Zhao Xiujie’s head.

Press down!

Zhao Xiujie's face was pressed into the grayish-green murky water.

Looking down from the edge of the pit, the two men were tangled and struggling in the muddy water. Lu Yuan was kneeling in the water, desperately trying to pull Zhao Xiujie up, but his feet were too slippery, and he slipped and fell every time he tried. The scene was extremely chaotic.

Beneath the water lies another world.

Lu Yuan's right wrist was locked on the back of Zhao Xiujie's neck, his five fingers gripping the back of the skull, precisely blocking any possible leverage point for the opponent to lift his head.

Zhao Xiujie's nasal cavity and mouth were filled with muddy water, mixed with sawdust, foam fragments, and unidentified humus. The foreign object invading his trachea triggered a violent coughing reflex, but each cough only caused him to inhale more water.

The limbs are spasming.

The water splashes up when you slap the surface of the water with your palm.

It is a drowning person struggling.

Lu Yuan's brain was keeping track of time.

Underwater breath-holding time for a normal person is between 40 and 60 seconds. When choking on water, the effective window of consciousness shortens to 15 to 20 seconds. Impaired ventilation due to fluid buildup in the lungs begins to cause irreversible confusion starting at the 20th second.

Zhao Xiujie's struggles peaked at the twelfth second. They began to subside at the fifteenth second. At the eighteenth second, the frequency of the spasms dropped sharply.

"That's enough, anyone else will die!" Lu Yuan released his grip.

They grabbed Zhao Xiujie by the collar and pulled him out of the water.

The moment Zhao Xiujie's head broke the surface, the act of opening his mouth to inhale triggered a chain reaction. The sewage in his trachea surged into his stomach and then gushed out, black vomit mixed with stomach acid and silt dripping from the corners of his mouth, and he shrank into a shrimp-like shape.

Lu Yuan grabbed a rope, looped it under Zhao Xiujie's armpits, and the four people above pulled together. Lu Yuan, from below, used his back to push against Zhao Xiujie's body, inching upwards.

The entire scene, viewed from any angle, is a textbook example of selfless rescue.

Zhao Xiujie was dragged up, his eyes rolled back. He was breathing heavily, the broken bellows being pulled to its limit, his chest gurgling with a bubbling sound.

Lu Yuan followed closely behind, his clothes soaked and clinging to his body, mud dripping from his hair, making him look like he had been pulled out of a septic tank.

He knelt down beside Zhao Xiujie with a thud.

With trembling hands, he tried to wipe the mud off Zhao Xiujie's face, but he couldn't get it clean; the more he wiped, the dirtier it became.

"I'm sorry, Teacher Zhao... the ditch was too slippery... I couldn't pull you back just now..."

An honest man trembled with guilt after causing trouble.

When Su Qinghan ran over, one of her heels was broken. She took uneven steps as she rushed over and squatted down to look into Zhao Xiujie's pupils.

The sirens of ambulances were already coming from the entrance of the film set.

Zhao Xiujie regained some of his consciousness.

He saw Lu Yuan's face: worry, self-blame, and fear. Zhao Xiujie couldn't believe anyone else could act out such concern.

But his ribs remembered the force of the hand underwater.

"It's him—"

Zhao Xiujie brushed Lu Yuan's hand away. Ignoring the excruciating pain in his ribs, he propped himself up, pointing his finger at Lu Yuan. His vocal cords were hoarse from being soaked in mud and water.

"He deliberately choked my bones! He held my head underwater! He wanted to drown me!"

The film set fell silent.

Su Qinghan slowly stood up, glanced at Zhao Xiujie, and then at Lu Yuan.

Old Jin stood to the side, the water from the towel he wrung out pooling at his feet.

The gazes of more than a hundred people shifted back and forth between the two individuals.

Everyone witnessed what happened. Zhao Xiujie forced Lu Yuan towards the edge of the pit, pushing him against his chest with force far exceeding what was required for the performance. Lu Yuan was almost pushed in, but Zhao Xiujie himself couldn't control his strength and fell headfirst into the pit.

Then Lu Yuan jumped down to save him.

All that everyone saw was one scene: Lu Yuan desperately trying to lift Zhao Xiujie up from waist-deep, stinking water.

Zhao Xiujie now says the other party wanted to drown him.

No one spoke. Judging from Zhao Xiujie's eyes, he was a gambler who had lost everything and even mistook the winner's kindness for a conspiracy.

Lu Yuan lowered his head.

Muddy water dripped from his forehead and landed in the muddy puddles on his knees. His shoulders were trembling slightly.

He didn't speak, didn't defend himself, and didn't look up.

Zhao Xiujie was still roaring when he was lifted onto the stretcher, but his vocal cords were mostly ruined, and the syllables he squeezed out were indistinct, more like the babbling of a mentally unstable wounded soldier.

Medical staff put an oxygen mask on him and pushed him into the ambulance.

Lu Yuan stood still, covered in mud, without moving.

The stagehand draped a military overcoat over his shoulders.

"Yuanzi, change your clothes first, don't catch a cold."

He nodded, his voice muffled: "Big sister, Lao Liu is still on the equipment truck. Could you keep an eye on him for me?"

---

The back of an ambulance.

"A security advisor will be in the vehicle." She flashed her work badge at the medical staff in the driver's seat and got in without waiting for a reply.

Zhao Xiujie was being cared for by medical staff on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask covering half of his face, occasionally coughing up a few mouthfuls of black liquid.

Lu Yuan huddled in the corner of the carriage, wrapped in a foil thermal blanket, revealing a face covered in mud, like a cat's.

Jiang Yan leaned over from the folding chair opposite her.

"Let me check if you have a neck strain."

Her right hand reached around Lu Yuan's neck and pinched his trapezius muscle. As her left hand returned, it subtly rested on the inside of Lu Yuan's right wrist.

Press the pads of your index and middle fingers on the radial artery pulsation point.

Lu Yuan didn't dodge; instead, he cooperatively pushed his sleeves up a little.

The pulse beats beneath the fingertips.

Uniform. Stable.

Sixty times per minute.

Ten minutes earlier, this person had experienced being pushed into a deep pit, jumping into two meters of foul-smelling water, struggling in the mud, and dragging a 160-pound adult male up a steep slope.

Sixty strokes.

She herself was sitting in the stable carriage, and her heart rate was above 75.

Jiang Yan withdrew her hand.

A person who falls from a height of two meters into a sewage pit and gets into a physical entanglement with another adult male underwater is physiologically unlikely to recover to a fully resting heart rate within ten minutes.

Unless his autonomic nervous system has undergone some kind of extreme, long-term, and systematic modification, the function of fear has been removed from his system.