Outside Jianping County City, where the floodwaters had receded, countless twisted corpses emerged from the thick mud. The morning mist hung like a veil over the war-torn city. Xia Huai'an stood on the half-collapsed city wall, the bricks beneath his boots giving off a faint, cracking sound. He took a deep breath; the damp air was filled with a pungent, sickly-sweet stench—the smell of death and decay.
Below the city wall, shattered armor, broken weapons, and bloated, whitened corpses drifted in the turbid, muddy water. Some bodies had been washed up into tree branches, hanging like rag dolls; others were half-buried in the silt, with only a stiff hand exposed, as if still struggling for survival.
Behind Xia Huai'an, Wang Qingzhi's plain white dress had been stained an earthy yellow by the muddy water, its hem soaked and hanging heavily. Her slender fingers tightly clenched the corner of her tunic, her knuckles white with strain. The morning breeze ruffled her disheveled hair, revealing a pale face with red-rimmed eyes that stubbornly held back tears.
Chapter 162