Blossom through the Cloud - Chapter 65

Chapter 65

"There is no medical personnel in the cabin!"

Ni Tong ran into the cockpit, bending over to check on the captain. A few strands of the hair that had been neatly styled at departure now hung loose. "Circling in the sky for so long has made many of the passengers restless."

With her peripheral vision, Ruan Suxian glanced at the captain, who had passed out in the pilot's seat. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Call Number Three in to look after the captain. You go outside and notify the passengers that we are preparing to land."

She cast another look at Ni Tong. "Fix your hair. Don't cause a panic."

Ni Tong instinctively reached up to cover her hair, but she didn't leave immediately. "The current situation... can we actually land?"

"Go now!"

Unable to squeeze out another word, Ni Tong turned and bolted out.

Two minutes later, the third flight attendant entered, buckled her safety belt, and sat down beside the captain.

Clasping her hands tightly together, she asked with palpable tension, "What's the situation?"

"It's fine," Ruan Suxian said. "Don't worry."

In truth, the situation was far from fine.

The captain's incapacitation was secondary; the primary problem was that the main runway, configured according to the year's most frequent wind direction, was currently unusable.

If the aircraft attempted a landing with a tailwind, it risked overrunning the runway due to insufficient length.

Yet the auxiliary runway was currently being lashed by a powerful crosswind, which could easily tilt the aircraft sideways. Furthermore, she could easily anticipate that the current surface drainage conditions might result in a hydroplaning hazard.

Even with a fully conscious captain, this would have been an exceptionally difficult landing.--

"Fifty percent."

After communicating with air traffic control, Ruan Suxian silently repeated the number to herself.

The crosswind intensity had nearly reached the regulatory limit, barely scraping past the minimum conditions for landing.

By her estimation, the probability of a successful touchdown was only fifty percent.

She had encountered far worse scenarios in the simulator, but the difference now was that the lives of hundreds of people in the cabin were weighing heavily on her shoulders.

With the captain incapacitated, she had no right to panic. She had to force her mind to remain extraordinarily clear, running every calculation at lightning speed.

The aircraft banked and entered the approach path.

"Ah..." Breaking through the cloud cover, the flight attendant beside her let out a long breath and murmured silently, "We can finally see the runway!"

Yet the moment the words left her mouth, the rainfall suddenly intensified again, turning the front windshield into a cascading waterfall.

The wipers couldn't keep pace with the downpour, and as they descended, her field of vision narrowed dramatically.

Ruan Suxian pressed her lips tightly together, peering at the runway ahead through the narrowest of gaps.

Feeling the jolt of touchdown, the flight attendant patted her chest and started to turn her head to offer Ruan Suxian some encouragement, only to catch sight of her deeply furrowed brow.

Following Ruan Suxian's gaze out the left-hand window, the attendant's heart suddenly leaped into her throat.--

The rain showed no signs of lessening as ground crew members in raincoats darted back and forth across the tarmac, working under airport coordination to keep the runway clear.

Inside the operations van, mobile phones rang continuously.

"How is the drainage on the secondary runway?"

Fu Mingyu asked.

"The rain is too heavy and came too fast; the water hasn't drained in time, and ground crew are currently handling it."

Glancing down at his phone, Bai Yang added, "The Civil Aviation Administration of China and the Jiangcheng Civil Aviation Bureau have already dispatched teams to Jiangcheng International Airport to assess the situation firsthand. Are you heading over?"

"Leave it to Director Hu. I'm staying right here."

Fu Mingyu pulled out his incessantly buzzing phone, opened WeChat, and let his gaze linger on Ruan Suxian's final message.

[Ruan Suxian]: Alright, alright, I get it. We're about to take off, shut up already.

Every single day, hundreds of flights crisscrossed the sky. Despite everyone's utmost care and the mobilization of every available resource to safeguard every journey, when the unpredictable shifts of nature struck, human effort appeared completely insignificant in comparison.

Gales, torrential rain, hail, and thunderclouds—he could stand safely inside the relative security of the operations vehicle, while his girl, with her slender waist and bright eyes, someone who deserved to be cradled in the palms of someone's hands and cherished for a lifetime, faced the brutal reality of constantly battling the forces of nature.

The sound of rain outside swelled and faded, but Fu Mingyu remained entirely silent, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the runway ahead.

An oppressive, heavy aura radiated from him, keeping everyone else in the van at a distance, while Bai Yang by his side didn't even dare to draw a full breath.

If not for the flashing exterior lights and the movement of personnel outside, Bai Yang might have felt as though time itself had frozen.

The wristwatch on his wrist ticked away second by second.

After an indeterminate length of time, Bai Yang's eyes lit up. "They've touched down!"

Fu Mingyu's dark gaze remained deep and unreadable. He said nothing, his eyes tracking the flashing lights moving in the distance.

Yet the next second, as Bai Yang checked a real-time update sent to his phone, his expression fell. "But they've severely veered off the centerline!"--

Buffeted by the fierce crosswind, the aircraft had drifted far away from the indicator lights on either end of the runway. It was nowhere near the centerline, and if things continued this way, the plane ran a high risk of sliding off the pavement entirely.

The flight attendant's heart hammered wildly against her ribs as she gripped the armrest, her palms slick with sweat. Yet when she looked at Ruan Suxian's expression, an inexplicable sense of calm settled over her.

"Do you need help?" she asked, seeing Ruan Suxian stamp desperately on the rudder pedals in an attempt to use the rudder on the vertical stabilizer to alter the plane's heading.

Unlike airborne flight, the ground taxiing speed remained quite high. Ruan Suxian was using both feet while simultaneously operating the thrust reversers and the nose-wheel steering tiller with her hands. It looked like an awkward, contorted posture, yet she didn't appear flustered in the slightest.

"Deflect the ailerons to maximum right," Ruan Suxian commanded, her voice even colder and more detached than usual. "First row, first item on the secondary instrument panel. Don't panic."

Sitting right beside the captain, the delicate and pretty young girl was touching aircraft instruments for the first time in her life. Though tense, her physical control was exceptional, without even a hint of tremor.

"Is this good?"

She asked.

Ruan Suxian didn't reply. Turning her head, the attendant saw that the indicator lights were now running almost parallel to the fuselage, and she let out a microscopic breath of relief.--

Even Yan An had caught wind of the news and rushed to the airport. Braving the rain, he stepped into Fu Mingyu's operations van and brushed the water droplets off his jacket. "What's the situation?"

"The aircraft has returned to the centerline." Composed as Bai Yang usually was, his voice carried a trace of panic now. "But because of standing water on the ground and tire hydroplaning, the plane isn't decelerating properly."

"What the hell... a seaplane?!" Yan An froze entirely, his hand suspended in mid-air as a sudden chill washed over his entire body.

Fire trucks and ambulances were stationed along the perimeter. The approach lights cut brightly through the curtain of rain, casting a wash of flashing red lights that reflected deep within Fu Mingyu's pupils.

Seeing his state, Yan An parted his lips slightly and asked in a low voice, "Is she on that plane?"

Still silent, Fu Mingyu kept his eyes locked ahead. Under the glare of the navigational aids, the rapidly sliding shape of the aircraft was already faintly visible.

Yan An held his breath. The air pressure inside the van felt compressed to its absolute limit.

Over on the shuttle bus, cousins Jin Ya and Jin Xuan sat in a silence as heavy as the crowd around them.

"Do you think we should just give up and leave today?" Jin Xuan muttered under his breath. "This weather is terrifying."

"Can we even leave now? We're already on the shuttle bus." Jin Ya's palms were slick with sweat. Because the first-class shuttle wasn't crowded, she had room to pace back and forth. Biting her lip every few seconds, her heart felt ready to leap out of her throat. "If I were on that flight, I'd be scared out of my mind. The captain suddenly incapacitated, the plane must be bouncing all over the place!"

With that, she pulled out her phone to check the news again. "It's been this long, why isn't there any news about a successful landing? Did something happen? Wuwuwu, I don't want to fly anymore."

"Will you shut up!"

A female passenger further back couldn't stand Jin Ya spreading panic any longer. Shooting her a disdainful glare, she snapped, "If the captain has an issue, there's still the first officer, isn't there?! What mode of transportation doesn't have accidents? We're still waiting for news, so why are you being such a doomsayer? Honestly, sitting here crying doom like that—aren't you afraid of scaring the little kids on the bus?"

Turning her head, she offered a reassuring smile to a young boy who looked on the verge of tears. "Don't be afraid, little brother, it's going to be fine. Look, even when the windshield cracked nothing happened, so everything will be fine now. You have to trust the grown-ups, okay?"

Inside the cabin at that very moment, the flight attendant watched in horror as the aircraft flashed past taxiway B4 in the blink of an eye. The breath she had just exhaled caught in her throat again, her fingernails digging unconsciously into her palms.

There was very little runway left ahead of them, yet the plane still hadn't successfully decelerated and was hurtling forward at high speed.

At this rate, the aircraft was going to overshoot the runway.

Ruan Suxian pressed down on the brake pedals, channeling every ounce of her strength into her legs, yet the plane stubbornly refused to slow down.

The attendant didn't dare make a sound to disturb Ruan Suxian, but the lights lining both sides of the runway blurred backward at terrifying speed. The runway was shrinking fast, and the aircraft was barreling toward the very end.

Lowering her gaze to Ruan Suxian's legs, she felt as though she had wagered her entire life and existence on those limbs.

With only a few hundred meters of runway remaining, Ruan Suxian had mere seconds left.

What could she do...

What could she do...

There was only one remaining option.

"Ah!" The attendant watched in sheer disbelief as Ruan Suxian suddenly released the brake pedals, nearly fainting from terror.--

In the passenger cabin, believing that the plane had already landed, most people had turned on their phones, setting off a continuous wave of text notification chimes.

Ni Tong sat rigidly in her seat, feeling that the aircraft had not yet slowed down. Her entire body tensed up as the chaotic noise in the cabin seemed to recede into a vacuum.

It'll be fine.

She comforted herself silently.

Situations like this weren't entirely unprecedented.

It was definitely going to be fine.

Suddenly, a surge of momentum shoved Ni Tong forward. She bolted upright, staring at the exit sign out the window, her breathing completely stalled.

"What kind of crazy pilot slams the brakes this hard?"

Unaware of the gravity of the situation, a passenger couldn't help muttering complaints.--

The exact second she released the brake plates, Ruan Suxian threw all her might into stomping them back down. The plane's forward speed plummeted abruptly, maximizing the braking effect instantly.

The flight attendant beside her felt as though she had been brought back from the dead, her ears ringing loudly.

She found it utterly incomprehensible that Ruan Suxian's sudden release of the brakes had been a deliberate maneuver to reapply maximum braking force.

"Exit at B3!"

The air traffic controller issued another order.

Unfortunately, by this point, they had already sped past B3.

"Exit at B2!"

Even with the maximum braking effect, the aircraft hurtled past B2 as well.

Only B1 remained.

The absolute end of the runway.

"Exit at B1!"--

The atmosphere surrounding Fu Mingyu's operations van was initially thick with absolute suffocation, especially when everyone watched the plane streak past B2, plunging their hearts into darkness.

An aircraft that should have turned off at B4 had failed to make the turn even past B2.

Everyone present understood precisely what that meant.

Directly ahead lay the end of the runway, flanked by endless stretches of open fields.

Fields were said to represent hope, but tonight, they represented pure despair.

It seemed all too easy to foresee this aircraft meeting its end in those fields.

The lives of everyone on board, the future of the entire airline, and the manufacturing company that built the plane—none of them could escape this fate.

That final second was stretched out to feel as long as a century.

The rain fell as heavily as ever, swallowing the night sky even under the glare of floodlights.

The sound of breathing inside the van vanished, dropping to its lowest ebb as gazes and thoughts froze solid.

Yet in the blink of an eye, the collective demeanor of the line of ground crew and mechanics outside the van shifted dramatically, erupting two seconds later into a delayed wave of cheers.

When those cheers reached inside the van, ambulances and fire engines were already screaming toward the tarmac.

"Holy shit..." Yan An stared blankly ahead, murmuring, "Unbelievable..."

Fu Mingyu's furrowed brow finally relaxed. He pushed open the van door and stepped out into the pouring rain.--

The moment the controller issued that final order, the aircraft finally decelerated enough to safely negotiate a turn into the taxiway.

Seeing the telemetry data, the controller on the other end of the headset let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.

"Did the braking take effect?"

He asked.

A soft voice came back through the headset.

"Mhm, I released the brake plates and reapplied them."

The controller's half-exhaled breath froze in his chest.

Had that decision to re-engage the brakes been delayed by even a single second, the plane would have plowed straight past the indicator lights at the end of the runway, with catastrophic consequences.

Yet reapplying the brakes like that was the most daring maneuver he had ever witnessed in his entire career.

Without re-engaging them, optimal braking could never have been achieved, and the plane was guaranteed to overrun the runway.

Re-engaging them offered a glimmer of hope, but it was also the riskiest move possible. In such a split-second crisis, if the operator had been delayed by even 0.1 seconds and failed to slam the brake plates down to the floor instantly, the resulting outcome would have been far more horrific.

The controller had worked his position for nearly a decade, witnessing every kind of emergency imaginable, yet he found himself entirely speechless.

What baffled him even more was that the person who dared to pull it off was a woman.--

The flight attendant beside Ruan Suxian felt as though she had returned to the land of the living.

Leaning back against her seat, she looked over at the still-unconscious captain, feeling an unexplainable sting behind her eyes.

She had never imagined that a captain who looked so robust would fall suddenly ill mid-flight.

Nor had she expected to run headfirst into extreme weather at precisely the same time.

The moment she got off this plane, her very first priority would be buying that handbag she had been eyeing for half a year without daring to purchase.

The aircraft came to a smooth halt on the tarmac.

Ruan Suxian relaxed her limbs, tilting her head back to look at the lights shimmering through the rain, and finally exhaled.

She felt as though she hadn't taken a proper breath this entire time.

The sensation of cheating death drained away every ounce of her strength. The lights before her eyes seemed to spin, and her mind replayed scenes like a fast-forwarded film.

Her father, her mother, and various memories buried away for years all swirled before her eyes.

And in the very final frame as she steadied her emotions, the face that appeared before her was Fu Mingyu's.

Thank goodness I didn't die, otherwise handing a man like this over to some other woman would be an absolute loss.--

The mobile boarding stairs were swiftly rolled into place, and medical personnel rushed into the cockpit as the first wave, wheeling away the unconscious captain on a stretcher.

She unlocked her phone, and over a hundred missed call notifications and text alerts nearly crashed her device.

There was no need for her to reply individually; news outlets had undoubtedly already broken the story.

She was unlocking her phone now simply because she had promised Fu Mingyu before takeoff that she would report in safely upon landing.

[Ruan Suxian]: Landed safely.

[Fu Mingyu]: Mhm.

So cold?

I just saved your plane, your passengers, and your employees, you know!

Ruan Suxian put her phone away, stood up, and pushed open the unlocked cockpit door.

Fu Mingyu was standing right outside the threshold. His clothes were nearly drenched through, and a few stray droplets of water still trickled down his hair.

He stared intently at Ruan Suxian, his dark eyes seemingly filled with countless things he wanted to say.

In the end, however, he uttered only four words.

"Are you hurt?"

Ruan Suxian shook her head. The next second, she was pulled tightly into his embrace. Her taut nerves hadn't quite unwound yet, and she still wanted to tell him all about what had just happened.

"That..."

"Don't move."

Fu Mingyu applied pressure with his hands, pressing the back of her neck. The rainwater from his hair seeped into his fingertips. "Let me hold you for a moment."

His remaining reserves of patience completely exhausted, his arms banded around Ruan Suxian tightly enough to make breathing difficult.

He said nothing more, ignoring the people streaming past them and casting curious glances their way, refusing to let go.

The familiar scent radiating from him possessed a profound, grounding comfort.

Her brain, locked in high alert for over an hour, finally relaxed. Ruan Suxian didn't raise her arms to hug him back; she simply leaned closely against his chest.

A false alarm of this magnitude was enough to drain every last drop of human energy.

At that moment, the shelter of his embrace alone filled every corner of her heart, crowding out all residual fear.

After holding her quietly for a long while, Ruan Suxian gave his back a light pat.

"Capitalist, you owe me a raise."

As if he hadn't heard a word she said, Fu Mingyu gently stroked his palm across her back. After a lengthy pause, he murmured, "I'm entirely yours already. What more could you want with a raise?"

"Even brothers settle accounts clearly." Ruan Suxian gave his back a playful punch. "Are you giving me a raise or not?"

Fu Mingyu released her. "Close your eyes."

Ruan Suxian shot him a suspicious look, but perhaps utterly bewitched by his face, she obediently closed her eyes.

And braced herself to receive a deep, passionate kiss.

A second later, warmth pressed gently against her eyelids.

After a lingering, tender pause, she heard Fu Mingyu say, "Let's go. The folks from the Civil Aviation Bureau are here."

"Oh..."

Perhaps today's events had been far too harrowing, but from such a shallow, brief kiss, Ruan Suxian actually felt a little dizzy as she walked down the steps of the aircraft.

She had completely forgotten to follow up on her entirely reasonable demand for a pay raise!

Down below, the ambulances had already departed, and the passengers were disembarking one by one.

Ni Tong and the other flight attendant had already recovered their poise, standing by the cabin door to bid farewell to the travelers individually.

"Have a safe onward journey, please mind your personal belongings, and we wish you a pleasant trip."

Wearing exquisite makeup and pristine uniforms, they stood with dignified grace and gentle warmth.

Some disembarking passengers returned the smile, while others kept their heads down, striding straight down the stairs without a clue of what they had just walked through.

When Ruan Suxian and Fu Mingyu stepped onto the crew transport vehicle, the first shuttle bus for passengers was just pulling away.

Some passengers, disgruntled by the delayed arrival, hauled their luggage with rough, aggressive movements.

Others dashed into the shuttle bus while shielding themselves from the downpour with their coats.

Only a few caught sight of the fire engines parked nearby, wearing brief expressions of confusion before dismissing it and hurrying onto the bus.

They only knew that the landing had been exceptionally bumpy and terrifyingly rough; they had no idea that mere seconds ago, they had brushed shoulders with death.

Upon entering the operations building, a designated conference room had been opened up for the Civil Aviation Bureau officials and the flight crew.

Fu Mingyu didn't go inside; he still had numerous tasks waiting for his attention.

However, when the doors to the conference room clicked shut, he didn't leave immediately. Leaning back against the cold wall, he stood there for a long time, listening to the muffled sounds of tense or relieved dialogue echoing from within.

The true terror of delayed shock only slowly began to wash over him now.

What if she had panicked in that moment? What if she had been off by even a single second—

Fu Mingyu didn't dare imagine the consequences.

Whether it was a catastrophic accident resulting in total loss of life, or simply this woman vanishing entirely from his life.

It wasn't until he saw the plane parked securely on the tarmac, the dust settling at last, that something within him burst forth alongside the surrounding cheers.

He had once felt a strong desire to conquer this sharp-tongued, beautiful woman, a sense of curiosity, and the most primal sexual attraction.

Those were the most common origins of affection.

Yet all of those impulses had been cast aside the exact moment he saw her walk out of the cockpit safe and sound, replaced by a swelling, aching fullness in his chest.

It felt akin to reading of ancient generals in history books, or beholding monarchs standing at the pinnacle of the world during one's youth.

The shift in his heart was profound and undeniable. She had branded herself into his soul like a searing iron, burning hot and deeply etched.

He thought to himself: There's no escaping this lifetime anymore.

He surrendered utterly to her, yet wanted her in his possession for all eternity even more.