Autumn, the thirty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign.
On the border of the Zhili River, a boundless flood has just passed through. All the fields have been flooded, and the villages have drifted away. Looking around, there is only a piece of turbid yellow mud and fallen grass. The autumn wind carries a damp and cold air, blowing on people's faces, like a dull knife cutting slowly, even the bones are stiff and cold.
The half-collapsed mountain temple next to the official road has long become the last refuge for refugees. The broken wall was leaking, and most of the roof was missing. Weeds grew wildly from the cracks in the bricks, and the smell of mold, sweat, and a faint smell of corpses lingered in the cold air.
Shen Yan huddled in the innermost corner, with a layer of dry thatch picked up under his body, which was so thin that it could barely block the cold air from the ground. He only had a tattered short brown shirt on his body, which was cracked in many places, revealing his skinny limbs covered with bruises and bruises. The face that was supposed to be delicate and upright was now only gray and withered, with sunken eye sockets and bulging cheekbones. Only a pair of eyes, when occasionally opened in the darkness, still retained a bit of light that refused to be extinguished - that is the almost stubborn vitality that can only be found in people who have crawled back from the edge of hell.
