Free Web NovelChapter 20: Chapter 20: Scorching Heat
Fortunately, dredging a river wasn’t a supermarket sale. There weren’t many onlookers, and the evacuation was swift.
Officer Zhao was currently yelling into his walkie-talkie.
"You heard me right! There’s a monster in the river! We need SWAT, the fire department, and armed police support!!"
They were the only ones who couldn’t just run. Instead, they stayed near the buildings by the riverbank, using the walls as cover to observe the waterway.
One of the younger officers had the bright idea of climbing to the roof of a nearby building.
"HSSS... ROAR..."
From the center of the river, a bizarre, raspy sound echoed out as a thick stench spread from the water in a gaseous cloud.
Officer Zhao and the policemen beside him felt their heads grow heavy after inhaling just a single breath.
Nausea, accompanied by a wave of dizziness, assaulted their minds.
They only had time for the thought ’It’s poisonous’ to flash through their minds before they collapsed to the ground.
Qin Xiaoxia had already run to the roof of a nearby building.
The situation was that the water in the river hadn’t been completely pumped out, but the Nightmare Swamp was already starting to go berserk.
But he couldn’t worry about that anymore. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
The water might prevent the fire from killing the Nightmare Swamp, but it should be able to burn away the foul, toxic gas spewing out.
The Magic Power in his body was furiously mobilized by his will.
A faint purple light was even vaguely reflected in his eyes.
A wind began to blow.
If one were to look down from the sky, an invisible diagram of the winds would show breezes converging on the river from all directions.
Doudou was so nervous that it anxiously paced four or five meters away from Qin Xiaoxia, not daring to get any closer.
The world in Qin Xiaoxia’s eyes once again transformed into a strange, hybrid state of normal Visual Sense and magical Perception.
At this moment, his entire body felt unusually heavy. It took all his strength just to slowly raise his right hand.
He pointed it at the Nightmare Swamp in the river, which was spewing forth its foul, corrupting gas.
"He... di... s... Karon..."
The Magic Power on his arm flashed for a moment, like spiraling, pale purple threads, before vanishing.
In the next instant, half a meter above the Nightmare Swamp, several Magic Silk Threads appeared. They spun to form a symbol inside a triangular frame, one that resembled a stylized mountain.
In less than half a second, the symbol turned from purple to red and began to radiate an intense heat. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
In Qin Xiaoxia’s eyes, the color of the distant reflection was gradually turning red.
Perhaps it was a few seconds, perhaps it was an instant.
A golden-red light suddenly flared.
"BOOM!"
A deafening explosion erupted, catching everyone completely off guard.
At the same time, "CRASH!" "CRASH!" "CRASH!" "CRASH!" "CRASH!"... The glass windows of all the buildings near the river were shattered by the shockwave.
The gas spewing from the Nightmare Swamp and the converging flow of oxygen had created a high-pressure zone, causing an explosion the moment it ignited.
All the sludge in the river, thrown up by the explosion, shot into the sky, and a moment later, a rain of black mud began to fall.
The shockwave blasted all the fallen leaves, trash, and debris away from both banks of the river.
But the flames were not extinguished by the explosion.
After the initial blast, a violent fire raged on, like a raging pillar of countless, searing-hot spikes.
The river water at its base was instantly vaporized, the intense heat scorching it so thoroughly that not even white steam could escape.
The flammable gas from the Nightmare Swamp, combined with the continuous influx of oxygen, made for a spectacular phenomenon.
In that short time, the temperature in the large area of Qingzhen bordering the river rose dramatically.
It was as if a blazing sun had descended, as if a celestial furnace had been overturned!
Qin Xiaoxia’s body felt like it was about to split apart from the pain, and he was mentally cursing up a storm.
He couldn’t stop it!
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. His already limited reserves of Magic Power were gushing out at a terrifying speed, like a dam whose floodgates had been blasted wide open.
Even when the "dam" had run dry, the overwhelming torrent didn’t weaken in the slightest.
With his current mental and spiritual strength, he couldn’t even begin to resist it.
His lips were chapped, his face was sallow, and his eyes were dim.
On his head, some of his hair began to turn white, starting from the roots.
Magic Power is an energy produced by both the body and the soul, and it is inextricably linked to Life Force.
’I’m not... going to die, am I...?’
With that last thought.
Qin Xiaoxia collapsed, and the fluctuations of Magic Power around his body finally subsided.
Seeing the raging Magic Power die down, Doudou, who had been frozen in a daze the whole time, finally dared to run to Qin Xiaoxia’s side.
"Cousin, Cousin, are you still alive? Don’t die on me!"
It touched him with a hand.
Seeing that Qin Xiaoxia looked completely dead, and that shaking him did nothing, Doudou truly began to panic.
"You’re the only person I know here! Without you, they’ll capture me and dissect me!"
Fortunately, help finally arrived twenty minutes later.
Within half an hour of the incident, a dozen fire trucks and a long line of ambulances had rushed to the scene from all over Kehua District and even other parts of Yue City.
Even some SWAT and armed police units arrived.
And thanks to Doudou’s desperate shouting, Qin Xiaoxia was among the first patients to be treated.
...
Forty minutes after the incident.
The Yue City Chief of Police and the captain of the Yue City SWAT team stood together on the riverbank, which was still radiating residual heat.
The Winding Loach River had been completely burned dry. The riverbed was scorched to a grayish-white.
The fire department and employees from a sanitation company were hastily reinforcing a temporary dam to prevent the precarious structure from breaking and allowing water from upstream to cover the "crime scene" on the riverbed.
"Old Tian, what do you make of this?"
SWAT Captain Tian Zhuang frowned, studying the marks on the riverbed. He then looked up at the sky, as if an unseen observer was watching them from above.
"It’s hard to say..."
This incident was no small matter, especially given the distress call they had received from the officers at the scene right before it happened.
"We’ll just have to wait for Zhao Ning and the others to wake up. Also, how is the treatment of the civilians going? Are the casualties severe?"
Hearing the police chief’s question, Tian Zhuang just shook his head with a wry smile.
...
Kehua District Central Hospital.
The doctors and nurses were so busy they wished they could grow three heads and six arms.
As it was the nearest major hospital, nearly all of the severely injured were sent here first.
Every surgical suite and emergency room was occupied with patients being treated.
Outside Emergency Room 2, Doudou sat with its head hanging low, accompanied by Gou Junbao, who had skipped out of work.
"The patient’s blood pressure is too low and his blood viscosity is too high! Arrange an emergency transfusion!"
"Check his blood type."
During the transfusion, a nearby nurse thought to herself.
’It’s like his blood was cooked dry.’
...
"Patient has no heartbeat."
"Get the defibrillator. Charge to two hundred joules."
...
After more than half an hour of emergency treatment, Qin Xiaoxia was finally wheeled out of the ER. A big and a small figure immediately crowded around him.
"He’s out, he’s out! Doctor, how’s my friend?"
"Doctor, is he okay?"
The lead doctor took off his mask and began the routine of reassuring the family.
"The patient’s condition stabilized quickly after the transfusion. He can be moved to the inpatient ward now..."
Before he could finish, a nurse rushed past, pushing a gurney with an injured person whose stomach was distended.
"Make way, make way! Doctor, internal bleeding!"
"Quick, quick! Prepare to drain the fluid! Get ready for a transfusion!"
...
It wasn’t until the third day that a listless Qin Xiaoxia finally opened his eyes.
Beside him were Doudou, who had never left his side, and Huang Jiutian, who had rushed over from a neighboring city.
Gou Junbao was coming tomorrow.
The two other patients in the room were also victims of the incident; one had a broken bone, and the other was under observation for inhaling toxic gas.
