"This earthquake is really severe..."

"Yeah, I really hope our compatriots are all right."

In the camp, stretchers carried one injured person after another from the earthquake into the medical area. Because the tent was already crowded with the wounded, the rest had no choice but to be placed outside, covered with blankets.

Among them, a six or seven-year-old Pakistani boy had his head bruised, with blood constantly flowing down his forehead, even blinding his eyes. Yet, he could only clutch his wound, sitting on the ground, crying loudly.

A female nurse from the medical team couldn’t stand it anymore.

Because no matter in which country, the elderly and children always need priority rescue.

"Why is no one helping him with his wound?"

The nurse called out twice, but her voice was soon drowned out by cries and screams. Helpless, she walked over to the child.

She took out iodine and gauze from the medical kit she carried and asked in English, "Where are your parents and family?"

"Woo, woo, woo, I, I don’t know. The house suddenly started shaking. Mom threw herself over me, and then I slept. When I woke up, a man with a red hat brought me here..."

The little boy sobbed as he wiped his tears.

Everyone sighed when they heard this. If the rescue team had only found this child, it meant his family had most likely perished in the earthquake.

While everyone was feeling sad for the little boy,

Suddenly, Gu Ji noticed that not far from the boy, a middle-aged Pakistani man started coughing violently and kept grabbing at his throat, as if something was stuck and he couldn’t breathe.

"Help, help..."

He kept clutching his throat, even scratching it raw, his lips turned purple, and his face flushed red.

Gu Ji immediately realized he was suffocating.

He quickly hurried to the man’s side, asking him to open his mouth, but found nothing blocking it.

By this time, the middle-aged man was already losing consciousness due to lack of oxygen and passed out.

Gu Ji ripped open the man’s shirt and found no obvious wounds, but he saw a bruise on the side of his ribcage, likely caused by pressure, and the man’s chest was unusually swollen, like an over-inflated balloon.

It was a tension pneumothorax caused by lung injury!

His medical emergency knowledge quickly made Gu Ji realize this.

Tension pneumothorax is the most severe form of pneumothorax, where air accumulates in the pleural cavity, affecting the lung’s ability to breathe, leading to suffocation and death.

The treatment is simple: just pierce the pleura to relieve pressure.

So he ran to the nurse treating the child, grabbed a syringe from the medical kit, removed the plunger, and swiftly inserted it into the seventh intercostal space on the midaxillary line of the man’s side chest.

"Hey! What are you doing!"

"It’s a tension pneumothorax; I’m performing a chest puncture."

"Tension... Hey! Aren’t you from the search and rescue team?"

The nurse was helping the child bandage his head. She saw a figure run over, not recognizing who it was until Gu Ji inserted the needle into the patient’s chest, realizing he wasn’t from the medical team.

"It doesn’t matter who I am; if I don’t do this, he’ll die!"

"But if you stick him randomly, you might also harm..."

"Xiaoqin, his insertion site is correct."

The nurse was about to stop Gu Ji when another voice came from behind her. She approached Gu Ji. "I’ll take over from here."

"Hiss!"

The syringe made a hissing noise as it released air. The man’s chest slowly deflated, and he resumed breathing. Only then did Gu Ji turn around.

A fair-skinned female medical staff squatted beside him, in her late twenties, with bright eyes and delicate features, looking somewhat familiar.

It was the nurse from the military hospital whom he had previously saved on the hillside.

Gu Ji glanced at her name tag, which read "Ying Wanyu."

"I was scared on the hillside earlier. Later, you were always leading the team in front, and I never got the chance. Thank you for saving my life."

"You’re welcome, just doing what I can."

For medical professionals, chest puncture is a basic skill, especially for emergency personnel dispatched from the military hospital. So Gu Ji let Ying Wanyu take over.

As for saving lives, he didn’t think much of it.

Not to mention Wang Yuexi and Ying Wanyu were his teammates; even if they were strangers, if something happened in front of him, he would lend a hand if he could.

"That’s impressive, Mr. Zhan, I didn’t know you also knew medicine!"

"Learned it during emergency training in the army, not much to it."

Back in the team, Gu Ji casually deflected Wang Yuexi’s astonishment. "Seeing these Pakistani victims, I’m more worried about our compatriots. I wonder how the contact with Mr. Han went..."

As he said this, the search team leader, Zou Lei, glanced at him again.

However, Han Yue happened to step out of the tent at this point.

Before he could approach, the rescue team members gathered around, asking about their situation, when Mr. Yian and the others could join them, when they could start searching for and rescuing compatriots, and so on...

Han Yue raised his hand, signaling for silence.

Then he spoke, "I’ve contacted the military garrison at Lahore Airport through military satellite communications, and in another 12 minutes, the Russian International Rescue Team will land. I’ve provided them with the coordinates of Mr. Yian’s location, and they’ve agreed to bring personnel and equipment to join us!"

"Great, Mr. Han, what do we do next? Wait for them here?"

Han Yue raised his wrist and glanced at his watch, "It’s been 2 hours and 23 minutes since we landed. Our compatriots from the Xia Kingdom are still waiting for us. Everyone, prepare immediately, set out at once, and head to the disaster site."

"Yes!"

Since Saudi Arabia’s transport vehicles needed to return to pick up other team members, Gu Ji and the others returned to advancing on foot.

Fortunately, they were all military members of the engineering corps, used to hardship during training.

No one complained.

On the march, Han Yue spread out a map, pondering where to go first.

The second quake area was on the outskirts of Lahore’s metropolitan region, in a county called Sutes. Many scattered villages and towns were also affected, and because the locations of trapped compatriots varied, some were hundreds of meters apart, others seven or eight kilometers apart, with severely damaged roads making travel back and forth take at least an hour or two.

He had to make a choice.

Finally, Han Yue chose to prioritize reaching the northern area of Sutes.

The reason was the main seismic point was here. Nearby shops and schools were the most severely damaged. If compatriots were trapped, it would certainly be most dangerous.

On the way,

there were constant cries and screams, never ceasing. Helicopters kept flying overhead, and the city’s buildings had all collapsed into ruins. Concrete dust hung in the air like the morning fog.

Some surviving Pakistani residents climbed onto the rubble, desperately clawing at the concrete bricks, trying to rescue those buried underneath. Others held the bodies of rescued companions, sitting and crying bitterly on the ground. Still, others knelt, begging passersby for help.

This city seemed entirely shrouded in suffering.

Fifteen minutes later, Gu Ji and his team finally climbed out from the rubble to the northern area. Being in the quake’s core, it was even more badly damaged, with no buildings standing on the street, and the cracks in the ground were even wider than a small car.

Looking at the stretch of rubble, several Pakistani disaster survivors wandered aimlessly like lost souls.

Among them, a woman raised her arms, as if holding something, but her arms were empty, holding nothing.

Han Yue wanted to ask for directions.

But she kept muttering something, either a name or something else, ignoring everyone. Helplessly, Han Yue spread out the map again, confirming and reconfirming that this was where their trapped compatriots should be.

"Search team, rescue team, pick up the shovels, crowbars, and jacks, and get ready to start rescuing!"

"Mr. Han..."

Just as Han Yue was giving orders, one rescue team member spoke up, "Didn’t Mr. Yian tell us to observe first and wait for the experts to arrive before acting? Rushing like this..."

"There’s no time; we can wait, but our trapped compatriots can’t. Rescuing lives is the first priority. Follow my orders and start the rescue. Report any situations to me immediately. I’ll take full responsibility!"

"Yes!!"