A Star Reborn: The Queen’s Return

Xia Ling felt a block of ice hit her face.

She was about to look up when Li Lei shielded her with his body. “Danger! It’s an avalanche!”

She felt her head spin, and before she even had the time to let out a scream, she had plunged into darkness, unconscious.

When she woke up, the glare of the sun made everything worse as her vision had not cleared up. Black spots were appearing in her line of sight and she could not make out her surroundings properly. Every once in a while, ice chunks would fall from above and some would hit her face with an icy sting she did not like.

She tried to move.

The arms she was lying in held her even firmer.

Only then did she realize that she was lying in someone’s embrace, against the warm, sturdy chest of another person. He appeared to be her only source of safety in a world of calamity.

Xia Ling slowly regained her senses.

She remembered where she was and what had happened — right after the tourist had screamed, a huge avalanche occurred and ice boulders came rushing down the mountain, swallowing the people on it. Her last memory was of Li Lei shielding her, which meant that the person carrying her must be Li Lei.

But…

Shaohui…

Where was Shaohui?!

She started panicking and struggling as she tried to scan the surroundings.

Li Lei could feel her attempts to wrest herself out of his embrace. “Don’t move, Xiao Ling. The avalanche is not over.” His voice was kind and calm. All the years of surviving in the wild and on the battlefield made it instinctive for Li Lei to rush into a small gap between the boulders and hide behind it. It was a small space, but it was safe enough to keep them alive.

Xia Ling struggled nonetheless, while speaking almost inaudibly, “Hui… Shaohui…”

Li Lei managed to figure out what she was saying. He kept quiet for a while before saying, “He’ll be alright. Xiao Ling, stop moving about, it’ll be bad if another wave occurs. You have to get through this well and fine before we can look for Shaohui when it’s safe.” His tone was firm and convincing, not to mention miraculously reassuring.

She was still worried but tried her best to suppress her desire to look for Shaohui there and then.

She waited anxiously and felt as if time was passing more slowly than ever. The howling of the winds could still be heard, and some time passed — minutes, hours, she had no idea — before it finally stopped.

Xia Ling climbed out of Li Lei’s embrace and was about to stand when she realized she couldn’t — they were caught in a small space between a few boulders, and there was no way she could straighten up without knocking her head.

“I want to look for Shaohui!” She said in a panic as she tried to dig at the snow beneath her.

Li Lei grabbed her hands. “Don’t move! Once it collapses, we’ll all be buried under!”

Xia Ling was on the verge of tears. “Then what do we do? He’s so young, he won’t make it long in the cold!” She couldn’t bear to imagine how Little Shaohui was doing all alone in the cold.

Li Lei said, “He’s a brave boy, he’ll be fine.” This was an attempt to console her as much as it was to console himself. He made her stand behind him and said, “I’ll dig.”

He was much more experienced than her and knew which spots were safe for digging and exert pressure on.

Xia Ling took a few steps back and watched in worriedly. They were trapped in a place with little sunlight, and only when he dug a little more to allow light to enter did she realize —”Your head is injured?!”

She suddenly recalled the blood she tasted before that. So, she wasn’t the injured one.

Instead, it was him.

Li Lei wiped the blood off with his arm. “It’s nothing big.” A hailstone had smashed into his head when he was shielding her. It had hurt for a while and bled, but in this cold, the blood had clotted faster than usual.

Her heart hurt for him. She dug into her belongings for a while before finding a bandage for his wound.

When the bandage touched his wound, he felt so much like telling her there was no need to waste emergency supplies this way — if his teammate or subordinate had done this, he would have kicked them out of the team. Out in the wild, even a little bandage or medication could save a life, how could it be used on such a minor wound?

And yet, she was not his subordinate.

She was simply a woman who cared for him too much to think rationally.

Li Lei felt warm inside as the cold words of chiding melted away. As they said, those in love were blind and irrational — Li Lei left her to attend to his wounds as she wished. When she was done, he took a bandage from his bag and put it in hers to replenish her supplies.

Xia Ling asked, “What for?”

Li Lei said, “My bag’s too heavy.”

Xia Ling looked at the chisel and shovel in his bag and believed him, allowing him to transfer all of the emergency medical supplies into her bag instead.

Li Lei carefully dug a little path in the snow, and finally, sun rays came pouring in. He got onto his feet cautiously and climbed his way out before helping Xia Ling out as well.

Xia Ling had regained her footing on the ground outside.

The avalanche finished as quickly as it started. The sky had cleared to show a cloudless blue, hanging as a backdrop to the beautiful mountain landscape.

The ground had undergone major changes, and there was no way to tell where they had come from previously.

Xia Ling scanned her surroundings and did not see Shaohui, nor any trace that he had left behind. “What do we do now? Where are we supposed to find him?!”

Li Lei took his compass out — thankfully, it was just slightly demented but still fully functional. He figured their position and said, “Shaohui should be somewhere near the foot of the mountain. We should go in that direction.”

He pointed the direction to her.

And Xia Ling hurriedly walked along.

Li Lei grabbed her hand. “Follow behind me.”

The snow was soft under their feet after the avalanche, and that spelled danger since there was no way to figure out if a hole in the ground or the edge of a cliff lay beneath. There was no way he was letting her take the step before him.

She suppressed her desire to overtake him and walk in front. “Hurry, Shaohui is so young, he can’t hold it out for long.” She was about to burst into tears again but realized this was not the time to be vulnerable. Wiping off her tears, she followed Li Lei closely.