Chương 111: Chapter 109

Consciousness returns to me slowly, and for a few seconds I cannot understand absolutely anything of what my senses are telling me. The first thing I notice is the darkness, an absolute darkness, of the kind that makes opening and closing my eyes mark no difference and makes my brain insist, again and again, on trying to form images out of nothing.

The second is the weight, since something is pressing me against the floor, or whatever it is I have beneath me, with sufficient force that breathing costs me more than it should but not enough to prevent me entirely. And the third is the smell, a smell of dust and broken stone and something else I cannot identify, a dry and mineral smell that fills my nose with each short inhalation I manage to wrest from the weight that is oppressing me.

I try to move and I manage, with some difficulty, to move my arms a few centimeters. My legs, as always, don't respond to me, but that is the only part of my situation that makes perfect sense. And then, all at once, the memory returns.

The corner we were about to turn, the boom, the building collapsing on top of us, Lianhua turning with the impossible speed of someone who has trained for this for years, and the last frame my memory preserved before going out, which is that of Lianhua covering me with her own body while Xia and the bodyguards disappeared from my field of vision.

My brain takes charge of the situation quickly and the conclusion comes to me like a punch, since it is certain that I am buried beneath the rubble of the building that fell on top of us, and the weight that is oppressing my chest is almost certainly Lianhua.

"Lianhua", I say out loud, or rather I try to, because what comes out of my throat is more of a rough and dusty croak that barely resembles her name. I cough, carefully, so as not to shake whatever I have on top of me, and try again.

"Lianhua", I repeat a bit more clearly.

"Lianhua, can you hear me?" But there is no answer. Not a sound, not a movement, not even the rustle of a breath I can distinguish among the dense silence that surrounds me, and that absence fills my chest with a cold that has nothing to do with the temperature of the place where I am trapped. I lift my arms slowly, move them above the weight that oppresses me, and begin to feel around with my hands in the total darkness.

What I touch under my fingers is cloth, and beneath the cloth a warm and recognizably human body, and although I already knew it from the moment I came to, the tactile confirmation makes something tighten inside me.

"Lianhua", I insist as I run my hand along what I believe is a shoulder, or perhaps the upper part of the arm, since the posture she is in completely escapes me in this darkness.

"Lianhua, please, answer me." I continue to receive no answer and I begin to trace with my hands what I can reach of her body, looking for something that will orient me, until my right palm finds an area where the cloth is soaked in something warm and viscous. I pull my hand back out of pure reflex, bring it to my face before processing what I am doing, and smell what has remained on my fingers. I don't need to see to know what it is, the smell of iron makes it absolutely clear.

"No", I whisper as I feel the hair on my arms stand on end.

"No, no, no, Lianhua, not this." I have to think, and I have to think fast, but for a moment I feel panic rising up my throat. I close my eyes, and breathe deeply twice to calm myself. And when I calm down enough to become functional again, I place my hands on Lianhua's body and begin to trace it again, but this time with a specific purpose, since I need to find her neck.

My hands go up along what I now identify as her arm, reach a shoulder, go up a bit more and finally find what is clearly a neck, so I rest my fingers in the hollow beneath the jaw as I hold my breath. During one terrible instant I notice nothing and my heart decides that it is a good moment to stop, but then, faint but definitely present, I feel the pulse beneath my fingertips. It is irregular and too quick, but it is there, and that means Lianhua is still alive.

I release the breath I was holding in a sigh so long that it surprises even me.

"It's all right", I tell myself in a low voice, almost like a mantra.

"It's all right, she's alive, it's all right." I force myself to pull my hands away from Lianhua's neck before the temptation to keep checking her pulse every two seconds consumes the little time I have, and I return to the reality of my situation with my mind only slightly clearer.

I review my situation, and that is that I am trapped beneath rubble, in total darkness, with Lianhua unconscious and injured on top of me, and somewhere out of my reach should be Xia, about whose state I prefer, out of pure instinct of mental self-preservation, not to think yet.

And the idea of staying here still waiting for a rescue team to appear, thermal blankets and a fireman with a megaphone saying that everything is under control, is exactly the kind of fantasy that would only occur to someone who still thinks she is in another world. There is no rescue here, or if there is, it won't arrive in time, which means I have to manage to get out myself.

Slowly and with all the care I am capable of, I lift my head a few centimeters from the floor, just enough to be able to look around, and I strain my vision trying to catch some thread of light, some glimmer, some clue of where the outside might be. But I see absolutely nothing in all the directions in which I manage to turn my head from my position. I rest my head down again carefully and breathe deeply once more. If I don't see light from here, the only option is to change position.

"Lianhua, forgive me", I whisper as I place my hands on what I calculate to be her torso.

"Please, forgive me if this hurts you more." And for the first time in my life, I stop holding back. I have spent all these years, since I finished the Tempering of the Muscles, moving with the same moderate strength I used before because it was really not something I needed, but right now it is clear that I am going to need all of its power. I inhale deeply, grit my teeth and push with everything I have, but the surprise I get upon doing so almost makes me drop Lianhua.

Because I lift Lianhua without as much effort as I expected. Quite a lot of effort, yes, because it is not only Lianhua's weight that I have to move, but also the weight of whatever is on her back, but less than what my mind had anticipated for what in theory should be a pile of stone pressing her against me. I maintain the push a couple of seconds, and then the possibility that my brain, still rattled by the events, hadn't considered occurs to me, and that is that perhaps I am not completely buried.

Perhaps, due to the posture we were in, due to the way the building fell, due to the way Lianhua turned before the impact, some kind of cavity has formed down here, and what I have on top of me is not half a ton of stone but only Lianhua and some loose rubble. There is only one way to check, so without releasing Lianhua I begin to shift her toward one side, slowly and carefully.

Lianhua's body moves with difficulty, her dead weight resisting each centimeter, and as soon as it begins to slide to one side, I hear a dry crack above me as I feel how a small shower of dust and small stones falls on my face and chest. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. I shut my eyes tightly, hold my breath so as not to swallow dust and keep pushing.

"Forgive me, Lianhua", I repeat mentally like a litany as I keep moving her.

"Forgive me, forgive me." Centimeter by centimeter, with an agonizing slowness, I manage to bring her to my left side until I feel that she no longer rests on my body but on what must be an irregular but firm surface. I settle her as best I can given my situation, praying that I have not worsened her condition. But it is done, and for the first time since I awoke I can fully stretch out my arms. I do so slowly, and my hands don't hit stone or anything solid above at the height they can reach.

There is space, a cavity that, I suspect, is very small, but exists.

"I knew it", I whisper with a small bitter triumph and, resting my hands on either side of my body, I sit up as much as I can until I am half-raised and look around again. But wherever I look, everything is still in darkness, without the slightest hint of light, and just when I am about to let out a curse that in my previous life would have made a truck driver blush, the whole floor shakes.

The boom arrives immediately, another explosion, distant but clearly powerful, and before I can process what is happening the rubble above my head begins to move and an avalanche of dust and small stones and not-so-small pieces falls upon us. I cover my head with my arms out of pure instinct, and as I hear the cracking of the rubble rearranging itself I have enough time to think that if the entire cavity decides to collapse right now, our problem is solved in the most definitive way possible.

But it doesn't collapse. It trembles, creaks, and sheds dust mixed with stone for what seems eternal before calming down, and when I dare to separate my arms from my head and look around again, there is something different, something my brain takes two whole seconds to recognize because after so much darkness it seems to me that I am imagining it. A thread of light. A very fine thread that can be glimpsed to my right, at a point that is closer than I expected.

I let out a sound that is halfway between a laugh and a sob, and I hurry to twist myself in the space I have, supporting myself with my arms and dragging myself as best I can until I am facing the source of light. The second explosion must have moved something, some wedged piece of rubble, and through that crack enters the first hint of the outside world I have seen since I regained consciousness.

"It's all right", I tell myself out loud, mostly to hear myself.

"It's all right. I have a way out and I just have to reach it." I begin by carefully feeling around the rubble surrounding the crack. Some are loose, others wedged in, and as I recognize them with my hands and by the faint light that makes me see a little better each time, I begin to move them aside one by one, separating by touch the ones I can move from the ones that seem to be holding the weight of something important. And while I do so, I am creating, without meaning to, a new problem.

Because the rubble I move aside I have to put somewhere, and the only place where I have space to put it is exactly where I have left Lianhua.

"Forgive me", I whisper to her again as I place carefully a piece of stone the size of a fist on what I calculate is her hip.

"Truly, Lianhua, forgive me, I swear that when we get out of this I won't complain even once for a whole week." I keep moving rubble and the thread of light keeps growing until it is a finger, then a hand, and then, when I manage to remove a particularly stubborn piece, I create a crack large enough to see, to truly see, what is on the other side.

And what is there is not very encouraging at first glance, because there is still rubble, but it is clearly illuminated, there is full natural light on the other side of the rubble and, most importantly, I calculate that barely a meter and a half, perhaps a bit more, separates me from the outside. A meter and a half that I am going to have to traverse inside a hole that I will have to dig myself, piece of rubble by piece of rubble, without knowing if at any moment it will collapse on top of my head.

I harden my expression and for an instant I allow myself a wry and bitter smile.

"Well", I murmur as I observe the hole.

"For once, being a runt has its upside." Because if I were an adult, that opening probably would not serve me. But I am a eleven-year-old girl with a body smaller than it should be, and that gives me a margin that I don't know whether I am going to manage to take advantage of, but at least it doesn't close the door on me before starting.

I keep enlarging the hole with everything my arms can reach from my position until I can no longer reach further without having to enter, after which I swallow my fear, make one last prayer to whoever may be listening, direct one last look of apology to the unconscious silhouette of Lianhua that I can barely glimpse beneath the pile of stones I have been depositing on top of her, and crawl into the improvised tunnel.

The space closes around me almost immediately, with my shoulders grazing the sides and my head touching the ceiling as I advance with my arms dragging myself like a worm toward the small brightness ahead. I arrive at where I had cleared and, there, the stones pile up before me in a compact wall, so I have no choice but to try it, so I place my hands, inhale deeply, and push with everything, absolutely everything, that my small body can give thanks to having finished Body Tempering.

The stones yield a couple of centimeters, so I push again and I notice them yield another few centimeters. And then, as I drag myself a bit further forward through my minimal progress, I hear the cracking and feel the ceiling of the tunnel above my back beginning to loosen. I inhale deeply, fill my lungs as much as I can in order to hold my breath, and push again and again as the ceiling cracks more and more.

I feel how the stones in front are yielding, but I feel that not quickly enough, since this either gets me out of here or leaves me buried forever. When I have no air left in my lungs and feel that an eternity has passed, when I already feel how the rubble falls on my back and begins to threaten to bury me together with the tunnel, the stones in front yield all at once.

The sunlight strikes my face with the violence of a punch, but that doesn't prevent me from dragging myself forward with the force of desperation, my hands clawing at the dusty ground outside as the whole tunnel behind me collapses with a dry crash, and I almost make it, almost. But the almost is collected by my legs.

Just when I get my entire torso out into the open air, the last pieces of rubble fall and the lower part of my legs is trapped beneath them, and the sharp pain that runs through my body from the calves upward draws a scream from me. I let it escape without holding it back, because between the pain and the relief of being out and the dust and the light and everything else, I am not capable of doing anything else.

And as my breathing gradually stabilizes after my scream, a part of my mind reminds me that I have finished the Tempering of Bones and Tendons, which ought to be enough so that they don't break with something like this. I have probably given myself a nasty wound, it probably is not going to be a clean wound, but the bones should be all right, or so I hope. And then, with my head a bit clearer now, I lift my gaze to see where I have ended up, and my brain almost disconnects again.

Because what I expected to see, vaguely, was a crowd, people, some scene of confused chaos, screams of wounded, all that one might expect after an entire building collapsed onto a very busy street. But what I see instead is a man. A man alone, in the middle of the rubble, with a sword whose edge is surrounded by flames and with his clothing in tatters and dark stains that can only be blood. He is standing over a second man, this one lying on the ground among the stones, clearly dying.

The man seems to notice me, since he looks for a second toward where I am, but as I try to process the scene, the swordsman pulls his gaze from me and sinks his blade into the chest of the one on the ground with a clean and professional movement that makes the dying man emit one last death rattle. The swordsman withdraws his weapon, leans over the corpse, efficiently unties a pouch from its waist, and as he does so, somewhere far away but clearly approaching, the coordinated shouts of the city guard can be heard.

The man curses out loud, a blasphemy that reveals that he clearly was not expecting the guard to arrive so soon. And then, after throwing me one last glance, he gives a leap that hurls him cleanly from ground level up to the rooftops of the nearby buildings that have survived the collapse, and before I can finish processing what I am seeing, the swordsman is no longer there.

I remain a few seconds looking at the empty space of the rooftop as I begin to understand that I have perhaps just witnessed something I certainly should not have witnessed.

"Today is definitely one of those days", I murmur to myself, thinking about everything absurd of the situation. And then I remember Lianhua, I remember Xia and the two bodyguards, and that I have things much more urgent to do than philosophize about the absurd things that sometimes happen to me. I bring my hand to my chest, where the small pouch I carry crossed in a bandolier fortunately still hangs intact despite everything that has happened, and my fingers begin to untie the cord as fast as I can.

"Here!" I shout toward the place from which the footsteps are coming as I do so.

"Here, I'm here!" A few seconds later, a guard appears running across the rubble, sword in hand and with his face reddened by the effort. He is a man of middle age, with poorly shaven beard and uniform covered in dust, and upon seeing me he stops dead in his tracks with the expression of someone who has just found exactly a problem he was not expecting to find.

"Child!" he says approaching with a gaze laden with pity, crouching slightly to my level.

"Calm down, little one, don't move. We will get you out shortly, but you will have to wait a little, there are other things that…" I don't let him finish, since I finish untying the cord of the pouch, put my hand inside, take out the dark green jade seal, and lift it firmly so that he can see it well as I pin him with the coldest face I am capable of composing given my situation.

"I am Zhāohuán Sun Wen", I tell him with a voice that, to my surprise, comes out clear and without trembling.

"And by the power that my rank grants me, I take command of the situation and of all the city guard present." The guard goes blank upon hearing me, and for a couple of entire seconds the only thing he does is look at me. Then, slowly, his gaze drops to the seal I am still holding aloft, then his eyes rise slowly back to my face, as if asking me to confirm with my expression that this is not a joke, and upon seeing that it is not, they drop again.

But this time they don't stop at the seal, this time they continue dropping to my legs, which are clearly trapped among the rubble. I see, in real time, how all the color abandons his face and how a sheen of sweat appears on his forehead and begins to break out across his temples, and how he remains paralyzed for an instant that seems eternal to me. And then the man, without taking his eyes off my legs, opens his mouth and begins to shout with an urgency that in any other context would be almost comical.

"BUTOU!" he shouts at the top of his lungs as he turns half-way toward the place from which the other guards are coming.

"BUTOU, OVER HERE! HERE, QUICKLY, BUTOU, BY THE HEAVENS, HERE!"