The rain had fallen for five straight days, with no sign of letting up.
On the river dike of Yunyang Prefecture.
Four figures were trudging forward, one unsteady step after another, braving the wind and rain.
Leading the way was an old bailiff in his fifties, surnamed Lin, who had served in the prefectural yamen for half his life. Everyone in Yunyang — high and low — called him “Old Lin.”
He wore a straw rain cape that was already half-soaked, his bamboo hat pulled low, rain streaming off its brim and hanging in a watery curtain before his face.
In his hand he held a bamboo staff, and he walked at the very front.
Behind him followed three young bailiffs, also in straw capes and hats, necks tucked in, backs hunched, like quails beaten limp by the rain.
In years past.
With rain this heavy.
They would have mostly holed up in the yamen, shut the doors and windows, stoked a brazier of charcoal, roasted a few sweet potatoes, warmed a jug of cheap wine, and chattered away at each other, trading idle gossip and divination jokes.
They wouldn’t even have bothered to make their patrol rounds!
In weather like this, who would dare step outside?
You couldn’t even see a stray dog on the streets. Braving the rain to patrol was just asking for misery.
But times had changed.
Some days earlier, an order had arrived from the capital.
It had been delivered to the prefect by an eight-hundred-li express rider, stamped not with any ministry’s seal, but issued directly from the imperial presence.
It wasn’t an ordinary official document, but a complete flood-prevention emergency plan — a thick stack of papers, densely written, covering everything from warnings and mobilization to resettlement protocols, from river channel inspections to water-level monitoring, from supply stockpiles to refugee transfer. Every single detail was laid out clearly, item by item.
It was said the plan had been drafted jointly by the Hanlin Academy.
The Chancellor of the Academy had reviewed it personally before presenting it to the throne, and even His Majesty himself had nodded in approval, saying, “This is a good policy; it must be carried out swiftly.”
When word of that praise leaked out of the palace, no prefecture or county dared take it lightly.
The newly appointed prefect of Yunyang was surnamed Sun.
In his early forties.
A second-tier jinshi graduate, but unlucky in his assignments — sent out to a lower-ranked county as magistrate, where he’d toiled for half a lifetime just to reach this position. He was exactly the kind of man eager to make his mark.
Upon receiving the order from the capital, he summoned all the yamen officials that very night, read the entire plan aloud to them, then slammed his hand on the table and said, “The big shots in the capital have already drafted the plan for us. If we can’t even carry it out as written, what face do we have to take the court’s salary?”
A fine speech.
But fine words from officials — you take them with a grain of salt.
They sit in the yamen, warming themselves by the fire, sipping hot tea, approving documents, moving their lips — and the dirty work gets pushed down one layer at a time, until it lands on the shoulders of small fry like Old Lin.
Officials don’t personally patrol the river dike in the rain.
Old Lin didn’t mind much, though.
In his half a lifetime at the yamen, he’d seen through all of this long ago. Those above talk; those below break their legs running. It’s always been that way.
Patrol the river? Fine.
Better than rotting in the office staring at the faces of those paper-pushing gentlemen. At least it was something to do.
A gust of wind swept by.
With it came a pelting barrage of rain bullets. Even with his bamboo hat on, the drops slapped his face, dribbled down his collar, and sent a chill shooting through him.
Old Lin just wiped his face, adjusted his hat for better cover, and continued onward, staff in hand.
But the youngest bailiff behind him was starting to lose his patience.
This young runner was also surnamed Lin, the youngest in his family, so everyone called him Little Lin.
He was Old Lin's own nephew, brought into the prefectural office only last year. He had the least seniority among the four, and he was also the youngest, just seventeen or eighteen, at that restless age.
After being drenched by the rain for over half an hour, he was soaked to the bone, his boots filled with water, each step squelching noisily, as if he had just been pulled out of a river.
He could no longer hold it in.
"Honestly, I don't know what those bigwigs in the capital are thinking." Little Lin wiped the rain off his face, his voice laced with a mix of complaint and grievance. "Sending us out to patrol on a day like this. The river dike is repaired every year, what's there to inspect? Nothing's happened in all these years, has it?"
He paused, then hurried forward a few steps to sidle up to Old Lin, lowering his voice, his tone carrying a hint of coaxing plea. "Uncle, we've checked the water level—it's not that high, still nearly two zhang below the top of the dike. How about we call it a day? Let's head back and have a bowl of wine to warm ourselves up?"
The two runners behind him, at this, glanced at Old Lin in unison.
Those very words.
They had been lingering in their throats for a long while.
But unlike Little Lin, they weren't as close to him, so they had kept them bottled up.
All this rain and patrol duty, not a single day off in all this time—since when had they ever suffered like this? They missed the easy days, crouching by the fire in the office, drinking and warming themselves. That was a life worth living.
The three of them fixed their gazes on Old Lin, the meaning in their eyes unmistakable—Uncle, you say the word.
Old Lin stopped in his tracks.
He turned around.
Rainwater streamed off the brim of his conical hat, hiding his expression—only his eyes were visible, eyes that looked unusually stern on his lean, dark face.
"How many times have I told you?" he began, his voice not loud, but steady and firm, each word landing heavily in the curtain of rain. "Don't speak carelessly, and don't think about cutting corners or shirking."
Little Lin shrank his neck under that gaze, his lips twitching as if to speak, then swallowing the words back.
Old Lin didn't look at him again.
He turned around.
And continued forward, leaning on his bamboo staff.
His straw rain cape swayed gently in the wind, his back slightly hunched, yet his steps were steady, treading on the rain-soaked dike, one step after another, never giving ground.
"Is your insight broader than the officials up there?" his voice came from ahead, mixed with the wind and rain, slightly hoarse, tinged with earnest advice. "Do you see further than the gentry in the capital? Since they ordered us to patrol, there must be a reason."
He paused, his tone growing heavier. "As the saying goes, it's better to be safe than sorry. Keeping a sharp eye is always wise—better than being caught unprepared when trouble strikes. Understand?"
Little Lin hung his head, his voice muffled: "I understand."
The mood turned somber.
The three young men kept their heads down, following behind Old Lin, none of them saying another word.
The rain continued to fall, the wind kept blowing, the straw capes rustled noisily, and their boots sank into and then pulled out of the mud, emitting dull, squelching sounds.
This rain!
This wind!
This river dike with no end in sight!
It was as if it meant to grind away every last bit of their spirit, drop by drop.
Old Lin stopped and looked back—the three young men were hunched over, heads tucked, like three bedraggled chicks drenched through.
His heart softened.
They were young folks, after all, new to the job, and used to an easy life before being suddenly dragged out to suffer like this. A little resentment in their hearts was only human nature.
As the elder among them, he had already given them a scolding; he couldn't very well keep a stern face on top of that.
"Patrolling in the rain really is a rough assignment," Old Lin said, his tone softening a notch from moments before. "But not much longer—just the next stretch, and we're done, then we can head back."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the three young faces, the corners of his mouth curving just slightly—a faint smile on his lean, dark face that nevertheless carried a warmth befitting someone older and wiser. "Perk up. Once we're back, I'll buy you all a drink."
A drink.
The moment those two words left his mouth, the young men's eyes lit up almost in unison.
When someone else was paying, now that got their attention. Gone was the droopy, dispirited look from a moment ago, replaced by a genuine, eager anticipation.
County runners didn't earn much to begin with—after food and daily necessities, there was hardly a copper left over. Drinking usually meant mooching off someone else, a free round whenever you could get it.
But Old Lin, as the head of the runners, was better off by a fair margin.
One round of drinks!
That he could still afford.
"Really?" Little Lin's mouth was already stretched ear to ear.
"Have I ever told a lie?" Old Lin shot him a look. "Do your job right, and the drink will be waiting for you."
The young men's steps instantly grew lighter.
Their spirits lifted.
Even their backs straightened a little.
Old Lin watched the scene, gave a helpless chuckle, and shook his head. These young lads—every last one of them, no ambition at all. A single round of drinks could pull their souls right back.
But he said nothing more, just turned his gaze away and kept walking, tapping his bamboo staff with each firm step, one footprint after another.
As for the court, he was honestly convinced.
Not the blind, unquestioning kind of faith—it was the kind you could see with your own eyes, the kind proved out over decades of living.
He had lived forty-six years, spent all forty-six in Yunyang Prefecture, gone from a snot-nosed kid in open-crotch pants to a gray-haired old man. This great river—he had watched it change bit by bit with his own eyes.
He'd never personally lived through a truly terrible flood, but the stories his elders had told him were like marks carved into bone, impossible to forget.
In his grandfather's time, the river had been muddy.
The color of yellow broth.
Carrying God knows how much silt, churning and roaring like a wild beast ready to lash out at any moment. The riverbed rose year after year, and the embankments could only be built higher and higher to keep up, forcing the channel into a hanging river that seemed to hover above the land.
The folk living by the river spent every rainy season on tenterhooks. At night, they didn't even dare take off their clothes, terrified they'd wake up with water seeping into the house.
Now, when he looked at the river again, it was a whole different sight.
The murky yellow water had gradually cleared, and the current had slowed, no longer carrying that fierce, devouring menace of the old days.
Upstream, they said, in Gansu and Shaanxi.
The court had issued strict orders.
No more plowing farmland on steep slopes along the riverbanks—trees had to be planted instead to hold the soil and water.
At first, the common folk didn't understand. They thought it was a crime to take good land away from crops and force them to plant trees instead. Wasn't that cutting off their livelihood?
But the years had proven the court right.
They said the yellow-earth slopes of Gansu and Shaanxi had been stubbornly transformed into stretches of forest, and the waters upstream had gradually run clear, free of silt, so the riverbed here no longer rose.
If the court hadn't insisted on flood-control efforts all these years, pouring in so much thought and so much labor, how could they live so peacefully now?
So Old Lin didn't feel there was anything to complain about when it came to inspecting the river on rainy days.
If the court ordered an inspection, then you inspected—do what needed to be done, shoulder what needed to be shouldered. Just do that one thing properly. Nothing more.
He pulled his thoughts back and, out of habit, glanced at the river surface beyond the levee.
Then.
His footsteps stopped.
The rain was still falling, thudding densely onto the river, smashing out countless tiny spray blooms.
The water at the river's heart was murky—nothing strange about that. Rainy days always made rivers muddy, and frankly, this water was far cleaner than what he'd seen as a child.
But the water hugging the levee was muddy in a way that stood out unfairly. Not the usual rain-stirred silt, but something thick—like it was churning up from underground, spreading in blobs through the water like undissolved ink.
The river slapped against the levee's base, and each receding wave seemed to carry a layer of something away.
That density of murk was far heavier than at the river's center, far heavier than the water coming from upstream, as if something beneath the levee itself was dissolving, bit by bit, washing away piece by piece.
Old Lin's heart clenched tight.
What it meant when the water at the levee's foot was especially muddy—though he'd never seen it before, the answer crept into his mind: the earth at the levee's base was being gouged out by the river.
Not from the outside by scouring, but from the inside, like something digging away, hollowing out the foundation of the dyke, little by little.
He suddenly turned.
Looked back at the stretch of levee he'd just walked.
The rain was still falling, hammering densely onto the embankment. The levee, which had seemed fine just moments ago—blue stone laid out neatly, seams filled with glutinous rice mortar, solid and secure.
But now.
Under the torrent's rush, the earth at the levee's base was shifting.
Not just a piece or two loosening, but an entire expanse sliding downward. The apparently sturdy dyke was, at a speed visible to the eye, cracking open.
The fissures spread like a spider's web, mortar flaking off in showers, gaps between the blue stones widening with every second. The river poured into the cracks and squeezed out the other side, smashing the already loosened soil into disorder.
The levee was trembling.
Not the wind. Not the rain. It was a real, physical tremor rising from underfoot—a dull, muffled vibration. So faint that you'd miss it if you weren't paying attention, but Old Lin felt it. His soles were pressed against the embankment's surface, and the tremor climbed up through his bones, like something underground was struggling, ready to burst through the earth at any moment.
His pupils contracted sharply.
“RUN——!”
That shout was ripped from the deepest pit of his chest, instantly shredded by the wind and rain, but the terror and urgency in it drove like a steel spike, straight into the ears of the three young constables.
Little Lin was still bent over, wringing water from his sleeve.
Hearing the shout.
He looked up, bewildered.
He saw his second uncle's face, ordinarily as steady and unmovable as a boulder, now twisted beyond recognition. His eyes were wide, bulging as if they might pop out of their sockets, his lips trembling, every wrinkle on his face pulled taut with strain.
He had never seen his second uncle like this.
Never.
Little Lin instinctively followed his uncle's gaze toward the stretch of riverbank behind him.
And then.
He saw it.
That stretch of levee, perfectly fine just moments ago, was now crumbling like a slab of tofu soaked through with water, falling away piece by piece. Mud, rocks, sod—all cascaded into the river below, splashing up murky spray. The cracks spread at an almost inconceivable speed, from the bottom upward, from the edges inward, as if some colossal beast beneath the water had opened its maw and was biting away at the very foundation of the embankment.
Little Lin's legs felt as though they were nailed to the ground.
He wanted to run.
But his legs wouldn't obey.
The two constables saw it too, their faces turning pale. One of them, quicker to react, grabbed Little Lin by the arm and shouted "Run!" at the top of his lungs before sprinting ahead.
That tug snapped Little Lin back to his senses.
Run.
Run for his life.
The four of them sprinted along the levee, straw rain cloaks flapping loudly in the wind, muddy water splashing over their bodies. None of them paid it any mind. Old Lin ran at the very back, shouting hoarsely as he went, urging the others to hurry, his voice cracking from the strain.
Behind them, the cracks chased their footsteps, spreading faster and faster, denser and denser. The levee was collapsing, chunk after chunk sinking away, and water surged through the gaps—first a thin trickle, then thicker and wilder with each passing moment.
Then.
Boom—
A deafening roar, as if a thunderclap had detonated deep underground, swallowed every other sound. That entire section of levee—fully a dozen zhang in length—gave way all at once.
The murky floodwaters, carrying mud, rocks, and splintered timber, charged through the breach like a beast breaking free of its chains, roaring as it rushed toward Yunyang Prefecture.
And beside the breach.
Four small figures crawled on hands and knees through the mud. Behind them, no more than ten paces from where the levee had caved in.
Just those ten paces—a few seconds slower and they would have been not crawling on the ground, but swept away in that churning yellow flood, washed out of sight without a trace.
Old Lin lay face down in the mud, gasping for breath, his whole body trembling uncontrollably. Rainwater poured down his back, mixing with mud and leaking through the holes in his rain cloak. He paid it no attention.
Rain dripped down his forehead.
In his eyes.
Reflected that gap, still widening, still collapsing, reflected the surging, churning flood that seemed as though it would never stop.
He did not blink.
He just stared, fixedly, at that breach.
The rain kept falling, with no sign of letting up…
