The scene within the city was even more desolate. Many districts had been reduced to ruins.
Amidst the scorched, broken walls, fragments of buildings and personal belongings were scattered about.
The air was thick with the acrid stench of smoke, blood, and disinfectant.
Rescue workers bustled between the ruins, digging, carrying, and treating the wounded.
Temporary shelters were packed with civilians, still in shock and covered in injuries.
Low groans and suppressed sobs rose and fell, forming the most mournful soundtrack of the post-war city.
Beneath a half-collapsed residential building, Li Wen's gaze froze.
A little boy, no older than five or six, his face caked with dust, was fruitlessly shaking a woman who lay motionless on a pile of rubble.
His small hands gripped the cold corner of the woman's clothes as he called out again and again in a hoarse, childish voice, "Mommy… Mommy… Wake up…"
