Chapter 136: Panicked Su Yuqing

Though he’d decided to save the man, Chen Mo didn’t act rashly. First, he observed the drowning victim’s condition.

Seeing that the man’s struggles had weakened, he quickly stripped off his clothes and jumped into the water.

"Chen Mo!"

Seeing this, Su Yuqing couldn’t help but worry.

But since Chen Mo was saving someone’s life, she couldn’t bring herself to stop him.

"Ah Hai, hold on! Someone’s coming to save you! You have to hold on!" On the bank, seeing her son’s struggles weaken, the boy’s mother knelt and cried out.

By now, Chen Mo had already swum up behind the boy, Ah Hai.

When rescuing a drowning person, you have to approach them from behind. That way, you can prevent their flailing arms from dragging you under.

However, given the boy’s current state, he wouldn’t have had much strength to pull anyone down even if Chen Mo had approached from the front.

Still, Chen Mo took the safest approach.

After grabbing the boy from behind, he noticed the kid had stopped moving. ’He must have choked on water and passed out.’ He immediately started swimming back to shore.

But just as Chen Mo reached the halfway point, the boy jolted awake as if from a nightmare. Unaware of his situation, he mistakenly thought a water demon had grabbed him and was dragging him under. He immediately began to struggle frantically.

Even from behind, Chen Mo had a hard time controlling him and was forced to swallow several mouthfuls of water himself.

"Chen Mo!" Su Yuqing, seeing this from the bank, was in such a panic she almost jumped into the water herself.

Fortunately, after this last burst of energy, the boy quickly went still again. His soaked T-shirt clung to Chen Mo, and his head lolled back onto Chen Mo’s shoulder. It was clear he had fallen completely unconscious.

Soon, Chen Mo dragged the boy ashore, murky lake water dripping from both their hair.

"Back up! Give him some space!" After pulling the boy onto the shore, Chen Mo shouted at the small crowd to move back. He laid Ah Hai flat on the pebble beach and quickly felt for his carotid artery. The pulse was faint, like a candle in the wind, threatening to go out at any moment.

"Ah Hai!" Seeing her son was motionless, the mother burst into tears and cried out.

"Don’t panic! Help me tilt his head back!" Chen Mo ordered the mother without looking up, his hands already interlocked over the boy’s thin chest.

Every compression carried a desperate force. Soon, murky, foamy water trickled from Ah Hai’s pale lips.

The boy’s mother snapped back to her senses. She knew first aid, including rescue breathing.

She quickly got into position to help.

"Good, you’re quite professional," Chen Mo said, giving the boy’s mother a surprised look.

"I used to be a caregiver," she managed to reply, before continuing to coordinate with Chen Mo’s compressions.

After every thirty compressions, she would pinch the boy’s cold nose and lean down to breathe into his mouth.

Seeing that there was no response after a while, the surrounding onlookers also became nervous.

On the ninetieth compression, during the third round of rescue breaths, Chen Mo suddenly felt the chest under his palms tremble violently. At the same time, the boy turned his head and coughed up a large amount of dirty water.

"He’s alive! Ah Hai’s alive!" the woman cried, frantically trying to hug him, but Chen Mo blocked her with his arm. "Don’t move him! He needs to go to the hospital!"

He glanced around, took the woman’s handbag to place under Ah Hai’s neck, and kept his fingers on the boy’s wrist, monitoring his pulse.

Dark brown river water snaked down from the boy’s ear, gathering into a dark stream in the cracks between the pebbles.

"He’s out of immediate danger for now, but after choking on so much water, you still need to call an ambulance and get him to a hospital for a check-up."

After he finished speaking, Chen Mo stood up, shook the lake water from his body, grabbed his clothes from the ground, and put them back on.

But since he hadn’t dried off, his clothes were instantly soaked. Not wearing them was even worse, though. The temperature was already dropping, and even for someone with Chen Mo’s physique, standing in the cold wind while drenched would be too much for anyone to bear.

Even now, wearing his clothes, Chen Mo felt a chill as a gust of night wind blew past.

Just then, a warm and soft sensation pressed against him.

Chen Mo looked over in surprise and saw Su Yuqing hugging him from the side.

Her eyes were filled with nervousness and lingering fear.

When Chen Mo first went into the water, she was alright, but when she saw the boy struggling violently and nearly dragging Chen Mo down with him, her heart had leapt into her throat.

Now, she was terrified by what could have happened.

If something had happened to Chen Mo, she felt like she would have fallen apart.

She looked at Chen Mo with tears in her eyes, wanting to tell him never to do something like that again. But at that moment, the woman beside them had already knelt solemnly before Chen Mo and began to kowtow in thanks.

"Thank you, thank you, young man. Without you, our Ah Hai would be dead. Where do you live? Can you give me an address? I must come to your home to thank you properly another day," the woman said excitedly.

Seeing this, Su Yuqing couldn’t bring herself to say the words that were on the tip of her tongue.

Chen Mo was saving a life. And saving one life might not just save that person, but an entire family.

She thought about how heartbroken this woman would be if the boy had drowned, whether she would be blamed by her family when she got home, and the terrible chain reaction of tragedies that would follow.

Su Yuqing found she couldn’t tell Chen Mo never to do something like this again.

The weight of a human life could not be easily measured.

Chen Mo immediately helped the woman up and smiled. "You don’t have to thank me. This young man got into trouble trying to save someone else. That makes him a hero. If a hero is in trouble and no one saves him, it would be a sad day for everyone. I just did what I should have. But... it looks like the person he was trying to save is gone. I think you should probably call the police about that, too."

Hearing Chen Mo praise her son as a hero, the woman was even more moved by the young man’s character.

She was about to ask for more details, but Chen Mo’s words stopped her.

"I’m soaked and need to get home, otherwise I’ll catch a cold. I can’t stay. Ma’am, use your coat to cover this young man and keep him warm. Then call an ambulance and the police right away."

"Okay, okay." The woman immediately took out her phone and did as he said.

Just as the woman finished calling the ambulance and the police, she turned her head only to find that Chen Mo was already far away.

Thinking about how Chen Mo was soaked and wearing wet clothes, she didn’t have the heart to chase after him and delay him further.

But she really wanted to know which school this young man attended. A good kid like him deserved to be properly commended.