Chapter 11 Only God Can Save Them
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Translator: JayM
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Only God Can Save Them
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Just as Che Yongchang was still somewhat at a loss, Chu Lin seemed to have already come to his senses.
"Mr. Shen, you've come at just the right time!"
A look of pleasant surprise and enthusiasm spread across his face as he strode forward and extended both his hands toward Shen Yi.
"I'm the one in charge of this team. Just call me Chu Lin. In fact, we were just troubled by our inability to obtain more detailed on-site intelligence. To think that you would actually come at this time…"
It was at moments like this that the differences between people became apparent.
While everyone else was still reeling in shock over something so entirely unexpected, Chu Lin had already skipped past deliberating over things that couldn't be explained, and instead shifted his attention to what needed to be done next.
Shen Yi extended his right hand and gave both of Chu Lin's a shake, and he was also somewhat taken aback by how young the person in charge turned out to be.
He had initially assumed that the one leading this operation would be a bit older.
But he didn't dwell on it.
People like Che Yongchang and Chu Lin were different from Mo Yuanbai. Conversing with them was, to some extent, like conversing with an entire collective.
"Give me the coordinates of the airport." Shen Yi skipped past the pleasantries and said this directly.
"Understood." Chu Lin was equally straightforward.
With the coordinates in hand, Shen Yi didn't say another word, and his figure vanished directly before the eyes of everyone present, disappearing into a ripple.
It drew startled cries from quite a number of personnel.
Even Che Yongchang couldn't help but murmur softly to himself.
"Well, at least he still needs coordinates."
"Yes indeed. Coordinates." Chu Lin cast the man a glance that carried a deeper meaning.
On the other side, Shen Yi arrived directly above West Asia Airport via a long-distance spatial jump.
The moment he appeared, a loud peal of thunder enveloped his ears.
Streak after streak of lightning was no longer merely dancing through the sky, but was connecting the ground to it in an unbroken succession, and the intense flashes of light illuminated the earth again and again, while the thunderous reverberations were so powerful that they seemed to make the very heavens and earth tremble.
Without a doubt, the thunderstorm depicted in the weather forecast hadn’t been this bad.
And yet, no one had paid this any mind.
Ordinary people were unable to judge the severity of a thunderstorm from visual observation alone, and the airport staff, sheltered safely indoors, had merely chuckled and cracked a joke that "this weather's got some real kick to it," before going on to direct the landing of the next aircraft.
Even so, their workload was already considerably heavier than usual.
"A3562, you have a strong gust approaching from the southwest ahead. Wind speed… Approximately fifty kilometers per hour."
"Fifty kilometers?" The captain's voice still sounded relaxed. "That kind of wind speed could blow rooftops off."
"Only if we're talking about those old-style rooftops from a decade or two ago, especially those Eastern-style imitation ones." The tower personnel were equally in the mood for jokes.
It was clear that none of them were paying the howling crosswind any mind.
But Shen Yi had noticed it.
‘Fifty kilometers per hour?’
A blue glow lit up within his eyes, and layer upon layer of intricate magical patterns surged and swirled within his pupils.
The reading had indeed been fifty kilometers per hour just moments ago, but now, the speed of the howling gale was changing at an extreme rate.
Sixty, sixty-five, seventy...
By Shen Yi's calculations, the moment the wind collided with the aircraft, its speed would have reached at least eighty-five kilometers per hour. A crosswind of this magnitude, coming in from the side, was more than sufficient to shear the right wing of this aircraft — already over a decade old — clean off.
‘So this was the cause of the plane crash…’
The light within Shen Yi's eyes suddenly blazed intensely as he conducted a full-force analysis.
The concentration of magical energy was normal.
Its level of activity was also normal.
The sudden and drastic surge in wind speed had nothing to do with magical energy.
Having essentially confirmed this, Shen Yi could rule out the vast majority of supernatural factors.
‘What a headache…’
He let out a sigh. However, even though he lacked scientific means of measurement, he could still make out a general picture. The state of airflow was operating within a set of parameters that were inconsistent with normal conditions, and this was the fundamental reason behind the inaccurate forecast — after all, weather prediction relied heavily on specific calculation formulas and parameters.
And furthermore—
Shen Yi looked toward the left side of the aircraft, which was to say the northeast, where a new hurricane was taking shape at a terrifying speed and was bearing down directly on the aircraft.
"Tower, tower, what's going on?" The captain had already begun to feel the aircraft lurching violently. "Why’re the instruments showing wind pressure coming in from the northeast as well?"
"Uh, let me check..." The tower personnel glanced at the instruments, then let out a startled cry. "God, how is this possible?"
There was indeed a hurricane coming in from the northeast, and it was accelerating the approach of the thunderstorm clouds.
But that wasn't the critical part…
The critical part was that if this hurricane collided with the southwestern gale from just moments ago, the resulting airflow had a very high likelihood of giving rise to an enormous tornado.
And Flight A3562 was positioned right at the center of the tornado's eye!
The tower personnel seemed to already be able to foresee what was about to happen — this aircraft was going to be torn to shreds!
"Quickly, A3562! Turn around now!" The personnel frantically waved the rest of their colleagues over while shouting on the channel at the same time. "It's a tornado! A massive tornado!"
"Damn it!" The captain couldn't help but let out a curse. "It's too late!"
The aircraft was losing control.
It was like a lone leaf on a small boat, battered back and forth by mountainous crashing waves. The lights inside the aircraft flickered on and off in rapid succession, and the passengers were already screaming amid the violent turbulence that rivaled a roller coaster. The oxygen masks came clattering down all at once, yet there were very few passengers who could manage to grab hold of their mask in the midst of such violent shaking.
At this moment…
The terrifying plane crashes they had seen on television in the past, along with their catastrophic aftermath, replayed over and over in people's minds.
Fear and panic swept over everyone.
"Do something!" The captain gripped the control stick with white-knuckled hands as the cockpit's warning alarms erupted into total chaos.
And what could the tower personnel possibly do?
They fell silent and pressed themselves against the windows, and by the light of the lightning that continued to blaze across the sky, they could see it clearly — a massive vortex was forming high in the air, twisting and writhing toward the earth like a great serpentine dragon, while the roar of thunder and lightning created a scene of overwhelming, terrible grandeur. And the aircraft carrying all one hundred and fifty-seven lives seemed as though it had been placed there to add a note of tragic drama to the scene.
"Sir." The voice of the tower personnel carried a certain trembling within it. "I'm very sorry, but at this moment, I'm afraid that only God can help you now."
He didn't know what kind of feelings he was supposed to have right now, nor what his mind was supposed to be dwelling on…
Was it anxiety over the harsh investigation that would follow the crash?
Or was it a prayer that there might be survivors?
Neither.
Over a hundred lives were about to vanish before his very eyes, and yet he and everyone else were utterly powerless to do anything about it. In this moment, what he felt was the empathy that came from being a fellow human being.
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T/N - Oh, the drama! Perfect, time for the MC to save the day! I don’t know how accurate this is to actual airports and whatnot, but it sure is engaging. Also, Chu Lin immediately figured out how the MC got in. Pretty impressive. He also adapts to unexpected situations pretty quickly. No wonder he was assigned as the response team’s leader.