The towering building had once stood in calm, dark silence against the night. Tonight, the flames it exhaled lit up half the sky — a savage red blaze, and black smoke that had swallowed this whole corner of the darkness.
Below, the crowd screamed.
Inside Huanyu Tower.
At the instant the explosion hit, the laughter and chatter of the entire venue went on entirely unaware.
Nan Chu stood holding her wine glass beside Shen Guanzong.
Old Master Jiang, leaning on his cane, had just taken the stage to deliver his congratulatory speech. Applause rang out across the hall, and everyone laughed and chattered and celebrated as though nothing in the world could be more joyful than this moment.
Then — a thunderous detonation, and every light went out.
The hall plunged into darkness. Chaos erupted through the crowd. Jiang Ge had barely given the order to send someone to check when the glass wall on the far side simply shattered inward, and a shockwave of scorching air burst through it, carried on a storm of glass shards.
The entire banquet hall ignited in an instant. A wall of flame more than ten feet tall roared in through the destroyed glass panels.
Those standing near the walls were blown off their feet, crashing to the ground. Cries of pain rose up everywhere.
In the wake of that first explosion — like a long tolling bell announcing what had arrived — panic seized the crowd.
The frantic flight for survival began. Every polished facade fell away, and what the primal urge to live tore open beneath it was something ugly.
In an instant, this glittering, opulent hall became a portrait of hell on earth.
Nan Chu and Shen Guanzong were swept apart by the surging crowd.
The floor was strewn with shattered glass and spilled liquor. The fire was everywhere now — sparks and embers raining down, igniting clusters of flame that leapt and spread, closing in from every direction.
In moments, a ring of fire and black smoke had sealed every possible escape route.
The temperature inside the hall shot upward with savage speed. The air was thick with the sound of cracking and snapping. Overhead, collapsed beams fell at intervals. The fire showed no sign of weakening.
The mass of trapped people was being driven deeper and deeper into the building by walls of advancing flame. In the blinding smoke, direction became impossible to determine. Then, in a cascade of crackling sparks, the last clusters of people were separated from each other entirely.
Nan Chu suddenly felt someone grab her hand.
Through the smoke, she made out Yan Dai, a piece of cloth pressed over her nose and mouth, crouching as she spoke to her: “Damn it, I’ve been looking for you forever.”
Nan Chu blinked in surprise. “Why were you looking for me?”
Yan Dai reached into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, tossing it to her. “Cover your face.”
Nan Chu looked at it with genuine alarm. “You didn’t put anything on this, did you?”
“Get out of here!”
The two of them lost their bearings in the smoke and pressed against a wall to rest. Yan Dai said, almost to herself, “I left you behind during the exercise last time. Consider this my way of making it up to you.”
“Then you’re getting the worse end of the deal.”
A moment of silence.
Then both young women, backs against the wall, somehow turned and looked at each other — and quietly, they smiled. The fire crackled and roared behind them both.
……
Lin Luxiao brought his small team through the perimeter.
Behind them, the noise of the crowd. The brim of his helmet cast a shadow over his face, but it couldn’t hide the hard precision of his expression now. “Attention!”
Every firefighter snapped to a sharp, loud stance of attention.
“Count off!” Lin Luxiao’s voice was low and steady.
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
“……”
“Ten!”
“……”
“Fifteen!”
All present and accounted for.
Lin Luxiao: “When this rescue is done, I want all of you back here to report — every last one of you. Clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
Against the roaring backdrop, they answered in one voice, eyes steady and certain.
Seven or eight more fire engines rolled in behind them. The captain of the second company jumped down and came toward Lin Luxiao. “Have you mapped out a route in yet?”
Lin Luxiao glanced upward. A signal had just come in from the third company: “The stairs are completely cut off. We’ll have to go through the emergency access corridor.”
The second company captain clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s move.”
There was something immeasurably sorrowful about this kind of scene — and yet every time they faced it, the drive was as fierce as ever.
High-rise fires were the most desperate kind.
Seventy-six floors — to say nothing of it, but even with current domestic firefighting equipment, hydraulic ladder trucks could only reach about fifty meters — roughly the height of a dozen or so floors. Water hoses couldn’t be extended that high. High-pressure water cannon trucks couldn’t project water at that range. The tallest aerial platform ladders topped out around the fiftieth floor. And inside high-rise buildings, the construction was complex and sealed — reinforced concrete walls, which cracked and burned faster than ordinary concrete.
Smoke spread rapidly, visibility dropped to almost nothing, and the prospect of actually fighting the fire from outside was essentially hopeless.
The moment Lin Luxiao entered the fire zone, he knew this rescue would be brutal. The third company captain had led his people through the fire line multiple times and been driven back each time by the savage heat. The fire had spread far beyond where Lin Luxiao had feared — it was consuming everything it reached, as though it intended to devour this building whole.
The second company captain was older than the others, seasoned over many years, and had taken part in a major high-rise rescue back in 1984 — he had the most experience. “This is likely the origin point of the fire. Let’s sweep the immediate area first.”
Lin Luxiao took Shao Yijiu and worked through the other half of the floor. Every time they lifted a slab of fallen concrete and found a living person underneath, his heart clenched — terrified of the moment he might turn one over and see Nan Chu’s face.
The smoke was growing denser and more violent. Visibility inside was nearly nil.
The sound of explosions continued behind them. The fire was ferocious.
The radio crackled twice.
Lin Luxiao pulled it off his shoulder. Yang Zhenggang came through: “What’s your situation?”
“Still searching.”
Yang Zhenggang: “I just received the roster. Nan Chu’s name is on it…”
From the moment this started until now.
He had somehow absorbed the fact, and had grown steadier. “Hmm.”
Yang Zhenggang knew this young man’s temperament well enough. When he’d seen Nan Chu’s name on the roster, his own heart had lurched. He knew Lin Luxiao would not come out of this building until he had found her. With a heavy sigh: “You have to keep yourself safe.”
Lin Luxiao planted a boot on the steel rebar and debris in his path and kicked it aside, then clipped the radio back on his shoulder, his voice empty of emotion. “Don’t worry. I’m not dying.”
They cleared half the floor, then returned to regroup with the other two companies at the middle level.
The third company had found something. One of their members had sketched a rough diagram on a piece of paper, pressed flat on the floor. “Two glass doors. On this side — an older man and a young woman. On the other side — two young women. We can’t get in from the front and get them out. The older man probably doesn’t have much longer.”
At the words young women.
Lin Luxiao’s eyes tightened — a visible, involuntary reaction.
He straightened up and immediately proposed, “Use rappel lines. Break the windows.”
The third company captain said nothing.
Rappelling in a high-rise fire was the worst possible choice.
In every high-rise command handbook, rappelling was to be avoided — first, because the domestic equipment wasn’t up to standard; and second, because rappelling relied on static ropes, and with the fire having already spread from the seventy-sixth floor up to the roof, a single explosive detonation along the way could ignite and sever the rope in mid-air.
The second company captain also found this problematic. “We don’t have a clear picture of what’s happening at the roof level. A hundred-floor rappel has never been attempted here. We can’t guarantee the safety of anyone suspended in the air.”
Risk was inherent in any rescue — if they refused to act wherever there was risk, they would never act at all.
Lin Luxiao refastened his helmet. “That’s exactly why we have no time. A rope can survive dozens of nearby detonations in a single minute without snapping. Not every floor has a detonation point. Go to the roof first and assess the situation! Don’t forget what we pledged.”
He clapped both captains on the shoulder, then turned and led his team back through the fire line.
Sworn to serve the people unto death.
How could they forget.
The two captains exchanged a glance. In each other’s eyes they saw the same thing: resolution, and an itching, barely-contained eagerness. “Move!”
Between men, a certain understanding requires no elaboration. All three had worked together many times before. Both captains had deep respect for Lin Luxiao’s capability, and for the untameable instinct in his blood. The moment they had their answer, they were already moving — one of them sprinting after him, calling out: “You wait for us, you bastard!”
……
Outside in the dark night, a commotion rippled through the crowd below.
From street level, the roof was barely visible, but there were shapes moving up there — small as ants against the sky.
Down below, Meng Guohong raised his binoculars. When the figures came into focus, his expression turned cold in an instant. He seized Yang Zhenggang’s radio and snapped into it, “Lin Luxiao — what the hell are you lot doing up there?!”
Lin Luxiao was already strapped into his rappelling harness, standing at the edge of the roof, exchanging a look with the second company captain.
His radio crackled. He unclipped it, pressed the transmit button, and curved the corner of his mouth slightly. “Saving lives.”
Meng Guohong: “You think I don’t know rappelling is off the table in a situation like this? You fall from up there, they won’t find a whole body!”
Lin Luxiao put a hand on his hip. “Then what do you suggest, sir?”
Meng Guohong: “Stay exactly where you are and wait for the helicopter!”
Lin Luxiao bent his head to double-check the carabiner at his waist, clicked it into place, and gave it a firm tug. “When does it arrive?”
“Twenty minutes!”
He gave a short, dry laugh. “Coming all the way from Haibei, is it?”
He meant nothing by it — but it ignited Meng Guohong entirely.
“Does a helicopter just come at a snap of the fingers?!”
“No offense intended — but in twenty minutes, the people inside will be cooked.”
The situation truly was desperate.
The heat inside that building was beyond imagining.
Meng Guohong was frantic. “Eighty floors up — if you fall, there won’t be a whole body left! Do you think the country trains people like you easily?!”
Under these conditions, rappelling was genuinely inadvisable. Heavy fog, multiple detonation zones, inadequate protective measures. If it succeeded, there would be nothing to say. If it failed, the cost would be two brave company captains. Trading one life for another was never a sound rescue strategy.
Developing a commander of this caliber was not the work of a single day — and someone like Lin Luxiao least of all. Tonight, this situation had pushed Meng Guohong to the edge of his composure.
The standoff continued until finally.
If disobeying orders was what it came to, then so be it.
Lin Luxiao had run out of patience. He simply unclipped the radio.
“Lin Luxiao! I am ordering you to come down immediately!”
“This is a direct violation of orders—”
Several bursts of static, and then he switched the radio off entirely, passing it to Xiao Jiu’er behind him.
“Keep it off. We settle the rest when we’re back on the ground.”
In a fire, it was the people standing inside it who read the situation — and it was they alone whom the trapped could call on for help.
If even they gave up.
The people inside would have every reason to lose faith in their public servants for good.
The second company captain would go down with him. The third company would remain at the top to manage the ropes and prevent free-fall.
Both men finished securing their harnesses, turned their backs to the edge, and lowered themselves into position.
One hundred floors. The air this high was thin.
Neither had ever rappelled from three hundred meters before. Their training heights had never reached even a tenth of this.
Suspended in the air, the second company captain glanced over at Lin Luxiao, forcing a bit of bravado into his voice: “Hey, kid — you sure you’ve got this?”
Lin Luxiao said nothing. He let the corner of his mouth pull up into a slight smile, planted both feet flat against the wall, and pushed off — rope in hand — leaning out. Both legs together, straight out at ninety degrees from his body, he let himself fly downward along the rope in one clean, controlled descent.
The second company captain followed immediately.
The crowd below watched with hearts in their throats.
The speed of the descent — in a single blink, both figures had come to rest outside the seventy-sixth floor.
The crowd erupted — gasps, screams, a collective clench of the chest.
Some of the young women pressed their hands to their burning cheeks. “That is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”
On the sidewalk, a small child stood holding an adult’s hand, craning their neck up at the two figures suspended in the darkness above, shouting in a high, clear baby voice: “Mama, fireman! fireman!”
The young woman scooped the child into her arms and corrected him, word by careful word: “They’re firefighters.”
The child repeated it clumsily: “Mama, what is a firefighter?”
“They’re the people who protect us.”
……
The last thread of Nan Chu’s consciousness before she lost it — she thought she saw someone descend from the sky, and with a single decisive blow, shatter the glass of the window nearest her, then pull her out of the sweltering room.
At the same moment.
The door behind her was consumed by fire, exploding inward. She felt as though she had been dropped into a furnace.
In that last fragment of awareness before everything went dark.
The person bent over her with something like reverence — as though she were something infinitely precious — and pressed his lips to her forehead. A voice, low and unhurried, reached her ear. “Nan Chu…”
Every last piece of his calm, every wall of his self-control, came undone all at once the moment the little woman lay still and steady in his arms.
She was unconscious, her fair little face smeared with ash, without so much as a flicker of awareness — only the faintest, fragile breath. He couldn’t stop himself from lowering his head and pressing his face softly against hers.
He thought: there was still so much time ahead of them. So many more years to look after her properly.
Yan Dai was put into the ambulance alongside Nan Chu.
Yan Dai still had some trace of consciousness. As Lin Luxiao turned to leave, she reached out and caught his sleeve. “Squad Leader.”
Lin Luxiao, his own face covered in ash, looked down at her.
Yan Dai’s voice was barely a thread of sound. “This time I didn’t leave her behind. I didn’t betray my comrade.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was trying to prove, or to whom — it felt incomplete to say nothing, even knowing he likely wouldn’t care either way. But she wanted to tell him: she, Yan Dai, was not that kind of person.
She hadn’t just failed to abandon Nan Chu — the moment the lights went out, her first thought had been to locate where Nan Chu was.
In some ways, the two of them weren’t entirely unlike each other. This young woman also had a streak of pride in her bones — she just expressed her emotions more outwardly than Nan Chu did.
Lin Luxiao pressed out a quiet sound: “You were both brave.”
Yan Dai gave him a faint, exhausted smile. “Nan Chu told me earlier — you told her that every star in the sky is the life of someone who fell in the line of duty. That was a beautiful thing to say…”
Her voice began to trail off as she spoke.
She wasn’t sure what she was actually trying to express anymore. It was just that, in this moment of having come through the fire and back to the other side, she found she needed to say something to him.
She murmured, slowly, “You two… are really something.”
Lin Luxiao gave a low, quiet laugh. “Thanks.”
Then he took one last look at the small figure on the stretcher to his left — lying still, eyes closed, as peacefully as though she were simply asleep. He reached out and traced his thumb gently across her brow, then smoothed aside the tangled hair from her face.
How long had it been since he’d seen her.
And now, having barely found her at all, she couldn’t even open her eyes to look at him.
Lin Luxiao stepped down from the ambulance.
Two more stretchers were being wheeled toward him — Xu Zhiyi and an older man.
Xu Zhiyi had one hand clamped over half her face, blood at her hairline. The second company captain had followed close behind. Lin Luxiao reached out and stopped him. “What happened to her?”
The second company captain said quietly, “When we pulled them out, the older man had used her to shield himself from the exploding glass.”
……
When Nan Chu woke up, the first thing she saw was Yan Dai in the bed across from her.
That young woman was dressed in a hospital gown, one arm raised in a plaster cast slung in a brace, a cigarette dangling from her lips — apparently smoking her awake.
“You’re smoking in the hospital ward?” Nan Chu sat up, pressed her fingers to her temple, and found that every small movement made her whole body ache.
Yan Dai stubbed out the cigarette. “The doctor said you needed some stimulation to wake up…” She gave a cold hum. “Turned out cigarette smoke worked when even Squad Leader Lin couldn’t manage it.”
Nan Chu’s mind was slow to come back online.
She searched through the fog of her own memory for a good while before she could match the name Squad Leader Lin to the face that belonged to it.
“How long was I unconscious?”
She glanced toward the window. Bright sunlight, fierce and golden. For a disoriented moment, she thought it was summer.
Yan Dai made a nonchalant sound and said with deliberate casualness: “About ten years.”
Nan Chu snapped her head around and stared at her, studied her for a beat, then curved the corner of her mouth. “Then why do you still look exactly the same as ever?”
“Who knows,” Yan Dai said.
A rare lightness.
Nan Chu allowed herself that rare small smile. Both young women, surface prickly as always toward each other, felt, underneath it all, something genuinely warm.
Survivors. Former adversaries turned something closer.
The door was pushed open at that moment. Both of them looked instinctively toward it — and at the sight of the figure in the doorway, Nan Chu’s smile slowly froze, and she said in a low, careful voice: “Mom.”