manynovel Chapter 366 Tribulation and Rebirth
Chapter 366 Tribulation and Rebirth
December 27, 1976, late at night.
On the open fields outside Tangshan, countless tents and makeshift shelters spread out like mushrooms after the rain.
Millions of citizens have spent their sixth night sleeping outdoors under mandatory orders. The summer heat lingers, mosquitoes buzz, children squirm restlessly in their parents' arms, and the elderly fan themselves with palm-leaf fans, gazing at the silhouettes of their homes in the distance in the darkness, muttering complaints.
At the resettlement site in Lunan District, Zhao Dazhu and his family of five squeezed into a military tent. His wife was already fast asleep, and his two teenage sons were snoring in the corner. Zhao Dazhu, however, couldn't fall asleep. He sat up, took out his pipe, lifted the tent flap, and went outside.
The night was deep, and the starlight was dim.
An indescribable oppressive atmosphere hung in the air. There was no wind, and the leaves were motionless. Occasionally, a dog barked in the distance, its voice hoarse and urgent, as if something were choking it. Zhao Dazhu took a deep drag on his cigarette, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper—the night was eerily quiet.
At the same time, in the Kailuan Coal Mine resettlement area.
Li Jianguo and his fellow workers lay under the canvas shed, staring blankly at the plastic sheeting above them. During the day, they had been organized to learn about earthquake preparedness and practice emergency evacuation routes. The mine's leaders repeatedly emphasized, "This is the greatest care the Party and the country can give us; it's better to be overly cautious than to be caught off guard."
"Jianguo, do you think there could really be an earthquake?" Mr. Wang, the janitor in the next bunk, rolled over, his voice weary. "It's been six days already..."
Li Jianguo didn't answer. He touched the canvas bag beside his pillow, which contained all his valuables—his plum blossom watch, two sets of Dacron shirts, half a year's worth of food coupons, and twenty-seven yuan and eighty cents. This was his entire fortune, and all the preparations he had made for "what might happen."
As night deepened, most people finally succumbed to sleepiness and fell into a deep slumber.
Nobody noticed—
At 3:30 a.m., an abnormal, faint bluish-white halo suddenly appeared on the eastern horizon.
3:42:53.8.
Earthlight arrives first.
The light didn't gradually brighten; it exploded outwards.
From downtown Tangshan to Fengnan, Luanxian, and Ninghe, the entire sky was instantly enveloped in eerie, multicolored light—blue and white, purple and red, orange and yellow, in stripes, patches, and spheres, intertwining and shifting, illuminating the earth as if it were daytime. The light was so intense that every astonished face and the color of every tent in the wilderness could be clearly seen.
"Oh God—" someone cried out first.
Then came the sound.
It didn't come from any particular direction, but rather surged up from beneath our feet, from all directions, from the depths of the earth. A deep, resonant, and continuously intensifying roar, like the simultaneous awakening and howling of millions of imprisoned ancient beasts. The sound drowned out human voices, the sound of the wind, and everything else.
Then, the earth awoke.
It was as if an invisible giant hand was gripping the land, violently shaking it up and down. The ground was like a deck in a raging storm, tossing everything up and down. Tent poles snapped, canvas canopies collapsed, and people in the open were thrown tens of centimeters off the ground before crashing down heavily.
Li Jianguo felt the ground beneath him suddenly jerk upwards, throwing him into the air. He instinctively grabbed his canvas bag, briefly losing his sense of direction in the air before landing sideways, a sharp pain shooting through his left shoulder.
"Earthquake! Real earthquake!" Screams erupted.
If bouncing up and down is rage, then twisting horizontally is cruel strangulation.
The earth began to twist like a wrung-out rag. The ground was no longer flat, but formed visible waves, advancing one after another from north to south. Cracks appeared—initially just lines the thickness of a finger, then expanding to the width of a palm, and then becoming ravines large enough to swallow a person.
In the tent area where Zhao Dazhu was located, a crack more than three meters wide and seemingly bottomless had appeared in the ground. A tent hung halfway in it, and a family of three inside clung desperately to the edge of the canvas, with the dark abyss below them. The man was roaring, the woman was screaming, and the child's cries were heart-wrenching.
"Hold on tight! Don't let go!" Zhao Dazhu threw away his pipe and lunged forward to grab the canvas.
Up and down, horizontal, rotational—forces from all directions intertwined. This was the most lethal blow.
In the distance, the urban area of Tangshan, illuminated by intense sunlight, presented an apocalyptic scene.
The houses, factories, and schools where Zhao Dazhu, Li Jianguo, and others had lived for decades began to stage a silent yet tragic collective death.
The brick-concrete residential building is like a toppled block, broken in the middle, with the upper floor collapsing and pressing down on the lower floor. The precast slabs are cut off like blades, dividing the space into individual cages.
The reinforced concrete factory frame groaned and twisted, then collapsed with a deafening roar, raising a cloud of dust hundreds of meters high. The water tower, like a giant severed in half, slowly tilted, accelerated, and finally crashed to the ground with a dull thud.
The most terrifying thing is the sound.
It wasn't the sound of buildings collapsing—that sound, though enormous, was still understandable. What was truly chilling was the sound emanating from the earth itself: a deep roar, a sharp friction, a low rumble, all blending into an inhuman symphony, proclaiming the absolute authority of nature's wrath.
The vibration lasted for about 23 seconds.
For those who have experienced it, it feels like a lifetime.
As the trembling of the earth finally subsided, the world fell into an eerie silence—which was then broken by human voices.
"Mom—Mom, where are you?!"
"My child! My child!"
"Help! My leg is trapped!"
The panic did not spread gradually, but rather swept through the entire resettlement area like a tsunami the moment the first wave of tremors subsided.
The root of the chaos lies in "losing direction".
Although one is outdoors and has made prior preparations, the rational defenses one has built crumble instantly when witnessing one's home collapse before one's eyes and when the land beneath one's feet becomes unfamiliar and dangerous.
At the resettlement site in Lubei District, a middle-aged woman suddenly screamed and rushed towards the city center—her elderly mother insisted on staying at home, saying she would rather die on her own bed. Two young police officers held her back tightly, and she frantically bit their arms.
In the resettlement area of Fengnan County, several men who had initially mocked the early warning as "a pointless fuss" now sat slumped on the ground, their faces ashen, their trousers soaked with sweat. They had witnessed a row of bungalows in the distance collapse to the ground like paper—houses they would have been sleeping in according to their original plans.
In Luan County, an elderly man in his eighties knelt on the ground, kowtowing towards the direction of his old house, blood seeping from his forehead: "The house is gone... the house passed down from our ancestors is gone..."
The greater panic stems from "uncertainty".
Although people are in a safe area, what about their relatives? What about their neighbors? What about those who stubbornly refused to evacuate completely?
Li Jianguo stood up despite the pain in his left shoulder. His first instinct was to rush towards the miners' dormitory area—his mentor, the stubborn old man who always said, "Miners are tough and not afraid of earthquakes," had secretly sneaked back to the dormitory last night to get a bottle of his treasured old wine, saying he would definitely be back before dawn.
"Master! Master Liu!" Li Jianguo roared, but was stopped by the militiamen maintaining order.
"It's dangerous over there! The building could collapse again at any moment!"
"My master is inside! Let me through!"
Pulling, crying, pleading, cursing… humanity reveals its most primal side under extreme pressure. Some are stunned, some are hysterical, and some—
Less than a minute after the tremors subsided, the first forces to maintain order were mobilized.
They weren't a rescue team that appeared out of nowhere; they were right there in the crowd.
The militia members, grassroots cadres, Party members, and veterans at the various resettlement sites—those who had been clearly assigned responsibilities in the advance deployment—almost instinctively began to fulfill their missions after a brief moment of shock.
At 3:44 AM, at the third resettlement site in Lunan District.
A man in his thirties climbed onto the collapsed tent frame and shouted hoarsely through a tin megaphone:
"I am Wang Zhenshan, a Communist Party member! All personnel, follow my orders! Do not wander off! Stay where you are!"
The voice wasn't loud amidst the noise, but the words "Communist Party member" seemed to have a magical power, quieting the crowd within dozens of meters around them down a bit.
"Young and able-bodied men, step forward! Assemble by production team or street! First, check for casualties around you; second, clear passageways to prevent stampedes; third, await further instructions!"
The instructions are simple, clear, and executable.
Gradually, people emerged from the panic and began to respond. One, two, ten... the spark of order was ignited at each of these junctures.
At 3:45, on the outskirts of Tangshan city.
The vanguard of an artillery regiment stationed in Tangshan, led by Regiment Commander Zhang Jianshe, has completed its assembly. They are part of the 50,000 People's Liberation Army troops deployed a week in advance, and their camp was originally located in an open area on the outskirts of the city.
"The entire regiment, assemble!" Zhang Jianshe's voice was hoarse with excitement, but every word was resolute. "Comrades, the thing we least wanted to see has happened. But now is not the time for grief! Our mission is to save lives! Save as many lives as possible!"
There was no pre-battle mobilization, no grand pronouncements.
"First Company, search for survivors along Xinhua Road from east to west! Second Company, clear the road leading to the Workers' Hospital! Third and Fourth Companies, follow me to No. 1 and No. 2 Middle Schools; there may be students stranded there! Remember—aftershocks could come at any time, be careful! Let's go!"
The military vehicle started up, its headlights piercing the dust-filled dawn. The soldiers' faces still bore the bewilderment of being just awakened, but they gripped their shovels and steel picks tightly.
The "field general hospital" set up in Phoenix Mountain Park underwent a severe test the moment the earthquake struck. Although the medical tent itself did not collapse, the violent shaking caused some medical equipment to fall from the shelves, medicine cabinets to tip over, and two nurses on night shift were hit on the head by falling IV stands.
But just five minutes later, Dean Zhou Mingren—a veteran military doctor who had participated in battlefield medical care during the Korean War—was already standing in the command position.
"Everyone who can move, take stock of the losses of medicines and equipment!"
"Surgical team, prepare to receive the wounded! Internal medicine team, set up the second surgical tent!"
"Notify all medical stations at resettlement sites: treat minor injuries on-site, and transfer seriously injured patients here!"
Orders were issued one after another. Medical staff rushed about, the hems of their white coats fluttering in the morning breeze. Many of them were pale—their homes were also in Tangshan, and the fate of their loved ones was currently unknown. But not one of them asked to leave their post.
At 3:55 a.m., the first batch of wounded arrived.
They were not rescued from the collapsed building, but were injured outdoors.
An elderly woman in her sixties fell when the ground cracked, twisting her right leg at an abnormal angle—an open fracture.
An eight-year-old boy was struck on the head by a pole when the tent collapsed. He was disoriented, had a lacerated scalp, and was covered in blood.
A pregnant woman, frightened, went into premature labor and was groaning in pain on a makeshift stretcher.
"Surgical tent, a patient with fractures!"
"Surgical tent number two, head injury!"
"The obstetrics and gynecology tent is ready to receive a baby!"
Shouts echoed through the medical area. Scalpels reflected the cold light under the emergency lights, and the sounds of hemostats opening and closing, suction devices humming, and doctors' brief, urgent instructions intertwined to form the prelude to the battle to save lives.
At 4:10, near Tangshan No. 10 Middle School.
The soldiers of the first company encountered their first real problem: a four-story dormitory building had collapsed in a "kneeling" position, with the first two floors completely compacted and the third and fourth floors piled on top. Faint cries for help could be heard coming from the cracks.
"There are people down there!" Squad leader Chen Dayong lay on the ground, pressing his ear close to the crack.
"Help...help...me..." The voice was weak; it belonged to a woman.
"Hold on! We're getting you out of here right away!"
Without heavy machinery or modern life detectors, the soldiers could only resort to the most primitive method—digging with their bare hands.
Bricks, cement blocks, broken steel bars… they moved them aside one by one. Their gloves quickly wore through, and their fingers were cut by the sharp edges, but no one stopped. Because everyone knew that every second could mean the difference between life and death.
Aftershocks are coming.
The earth trembled again, and the already loose ruins emitted a teeth-grinding grinding sound.
"Danger! Retreat!" the deputy company commander roared.
But Chen Dayong didn't back down. He had already poked half his body into the hole he had just dug and saw the trapped person—a girl of about twenty years old, trapped between the collapsed precast concrete slab and the iron bed frame, her face covered in blood and dust.
"Girl, grab my hand!" Chen Dayong stretched out his arm.
Just as their fingertips were about to touch it, another aftershock struck. The floor above slid and sank—
In the nick of time, the three soldiers rushed forward at the same time, using their shoulders and backs to brace themselves against the falling floorboards.
"quick!"
Chen Dayong grabbed the girl's arm and pulled her outward with all his might.
The person came out.
Almost simultaneously, the floorboards that the soldiers were supporting crashed down, kicking up clouds of dust.
The girl was rescued. Of the five soldiers who rescued her, three sustained minor injuries, while Chen Dayong suffered a broken left arm after being hit by a falling rock.
This is just one of hundreds of rescue scenes in the first hour after the earthquake.
At 5:30 a.m., it was dawn.
The morning sun pierced through the smoke and dust, shining on the ravaged land.
People finally saw clearly what had happened overnight—
Tangshan, once a bustling industrial city with its towering chimneys and roaring machinery, now resembles a piece of waste paper crumpled and discarded by a giant hand. The vast majority of buildings have collapsed or been severely damaged; streets are buried in rubble; twisted railway tracks point skyward like pretzels; rows of utility poles have fallen, and broken power lines drag on the ground like dying snakes.
But at the same time, people also saw another scene—
On the edge of the ruins, in the open spaces of the resettlement sites, and on every passable road, people are moving about.
The green of the People's Liberation Army, the white of the medical staff, the navy blue of the police, the khaki of the militia, and the various colors of ordinary people's clothes converge into flowing lines of color, standing out vividly against the gray and black background of the ruins.
Zhao Dazhu and his neighbors rescued the family of three who had fallen into the crevice. The man had a broken leg, while the woman and child only suffered minor abrasions. They hugged each other and wept bitterly, then kowtowed to Zhao Dazhu.
Li Jianguo finally found his mentor—the old man had taken the liquor the night before, but on his way back to the resettlement point, he was encountered by patrolling police officers and "escorted" back to the safe zone. Now, he held the surviving bottle of old liquor, its label soaked with sweat, staring blankly in the direction of the mine. There, in the mine where he had worked for thirty years, the shaft was twisted and deformed.
"Master, the wine is still here," Li Jianguo said softly.
Mr. Liu turned his head, two lines of tears streaming down his cloudy eyes: "The house is gone... but we're still alive."
Yes, the person is still alive.
Although their homes were destroyed and the pain was profound, the vast majority of people survived thanks to the seven-day advance warning and the costless evacuation.
This is a rewriting of history.
Lin Yan hovered above Tangshan, feeling gratified that his efforts hadn't been in vain. But more than that, he felt a tremor in his heart; he had changed the fates of so many people—the will of Heaven had its eyes on him!
At 7:00 AM, the Central Earthquake Relief Headquarters broadcast its first message to the nation and the world via a temporarily restored radio station:
「1976年7月28日凌晨3时42分，河北省唐山市发生7.8级特大地震。由于提前预警和紧急疏散，人民群众伤亡程度大幅降低。目前救援工作已全面展开，灾区秩序基本稳定……」
The news sent shockwaves throughout the country.
Then came a long, choked silence.
Many people only realized at this moment what everything that had happened in the past seven days meant. The coercive measures they had complained about, the "waste of manpower and resources" they had suspected, the inconvenience and complaints about sleeping in the open... all had an answer at this moment.
The cost remains heavy. Buildings continue to collapse, causing injuries and deaths; rescue workers continue to perish; and families continue to be torn apart. But compared to the tragedy of 24 deaths and 16 serious injuries in another time and space, this is already a miracle.
As dawn broke, the rescue operation continued.
On the ruins, at resettlement sites, in hospital tents, and everywhere they were needed, people used their wounded hands to pry open the bricks and stones, hold each other's hands, and lift up lives.
A new day begins.
And this race against death will continue for a very, very long time.