The train attendant checked the letter of introduction and continued her questioning, ”You’re heading to Nanyu Island. The letter says you’re visiting relatives—who exactly are you going to see?”
Her furrowed brow never relaxed.
Seeing such a young girl traveling alone, she worried she might have been deceived, so she couldn’t help asking a few more questions.
Shen Zhiyao smiled. “I’m going to see my parents. My father is in Jinsha Village—his name is Shen Chengren. Someone will be waiting to pick me up when I get to the port.”
It was a bit of a white lie, just to put the attendant’s mind at ease.
Only then did the attendant’s brow smooth out. So she really was visiting family.
She smiled and said, “All right, if you have any questions, come find me. I’m the attendant for Car 07—Zhao Qian. I’m just up ahead.”
She pointed forward as she spoke.
“Okay, thank you.”
Seeing that the young girl was not only pretty and refined but also polite and well-mannered, with a gentle, pleasant voice, Zhao Qian could tell she was a well-educated, sensible person, and her impression of her improved even more.
After finishing her questions with Shen Zhiyao, she walked down the aisle and saw an elderly man leaning on a cane, slowly rising to his feet. “Sir, are you feeling unwell anywhere?”
“No, no. Thank you, comrade.”
The old man’s aged voice sounded weak and lacking in vitality as he responded.
His words successfully drew Shen Zhiyao’s attention.
Shen Zhiyao frowned as she watched the old man’s staggering steps, his hunched back, his hands clasped behind him.
Although the other party had imitated it very, very well—so well that ordinary people, even most people, couldn’t tell—certain details were hard to fool a top medical student like her.
His bone age was simply different.
So she stayed alert and quietly followed behind him, keeping a careful distance—not too close, not too far.
Until he entered the washroom at the corner, leaving the door open a small crack.
There were other people in the washroom, and a flash of army-green uniform passed by.
Shen Zhiyao froze for a moment, then breathed a sigh of relief.
Oh, so it’s the People’s Liberation Army.
Then it’s fine.
She had a thing for uniforms—she liked men in uniform and instinctively saw them through rose-tinted glasses.
One of the reasons she’d chosen to go into medicine was that white coats looked good too.
Still…
Shen Zhiyao tilted her head, pondering.
Were they on a mission?
Then it wasn’t her business to worry about.
Her taut nerves finally relaxed, and she shook her head and walked away.
As long as the person in disguise wasn’t a child kidnapper or a villain, it was fine.
The old man leaned against the door, withdrawing his gaze from the crack, his eyes sweeping over the man before him, dressed in a defense-green Type 65 military uniform with a Type 85 red collar insignia on his shoulder.
At this moment, the “old man’s” cloudy eyes turned clear and sharp, gaining a hint of coldness and authority.
Standing up straight, he was a full 1.9 meters tall, like a sword drawn from its sheath.
Apart from that face with its glued-on mustache and wrinkles, his figure was unmistakably that of a young man.
The man asked in confusion, “Commander Lu, I noticed you lingered in Car 07 for a while just now. Is something the matter? Could those people have an accomplice in Car 07?”
Lu Zhaoli said in a flat voice, “Nothing. All comrades, remain vigilant. Don’t alert the enemy.”
At this moment, what came out of his mouth was a deep, young male voice.
Who would have thought, who would have thought.
While on a mission, by a twist of fate, he had run into his fiancée—the very woman he’d gotten engaged to after exchanging marriage contracts—Shen Zhiyao.
Thinking of the scene just now—the girl standing in the sunlight, dancing orange flecks of light catching in her hair, making everything behind her seem like a mere backdrop—
A hint of interest colored the corners of his mouth and his eyes.
Though the young girl was delicately pretty, she was quite sharp—not someone easily fooled.
She had actually seen through his disguise. He had deliberately exposed himself just now to put her at ease.
It seemed that on this long journey, there was no need to worry about her.
Lu Zhaoli said flatly, eyes fixed straight ahead, “I have a distant relative in that carriage.”
So that was it.
As Hang Yong let down his guard, he raised an eyebrow.
But he’d never heard that Commander Lu had any distant relatives.
The gossip bubble in his mind had barely begun to form when that voice—calm yet inherently commanding—came through: “No prying.”
“…Understood.”
Hang Yong wouldn’t dare defy Commander Lu.
In the army, the one he feared most wasn’t Political Commissar Zhai—it was Commander Lu.
Commander Lu was usually fairly easy to talk to, but once you violated a principle he’d set, his gaze could devour you alive.
The story of how he’d punched a bear to death right in front of his blind date still circulated in the ranks to this day.
If Commander Lu showed no mercy even in front of a girl’s family, let alone for the likes of them, lowly soldiers.
Meanwhile, Shen Zhiyao took a few bites of the sesame flatbread she’d brought. Covered in sesame seeds, it smelled and tasted quite good.
This body was 1.65 meters tall but weighed barely over forty kilos.
Good genes, too—the flesh had all gone exactly where it should. As a result, her waist and arms looked all the more slender, like a delicate willow swaying in the wind, as fragile as Lin Daiyu, as if she’d topple at the slightest breeze.
So Shen Zhiyao could indulge in good food all the more fearlessly, without worrying about gaining weight.
Besides the flatbread, she’d also brought some jingguo pastries, White Rabbit creamy candies, and the like.
Having sold her job, and then sold off the things she’d reclaimed from that scumbag, she counted as a minor rich woman in this era.
After eating, the incandescent lamp overhead came on, and she went back to reading.
A voice carried over from nearby: “Look at her, and then look at yourself!”
“You said it was too noisy on the train to read—I let that slide! Then you said you’d read after eating—I let that slide too! Now you’ve eaten, and you still won’t read. You’re even picking at your fingernails.”
A middle-aged woman was pointing at a girl with a fresh ear-length bob with curled-in ends, scolding her in a nonstop stream, her face full of bitter disappointment. “Look at that young girl—about your age. She’s been sitting there quietly reading all afternoon, and after eating, without anyone nagging her, she went right back to it.”
The middle-aged woman planted her hands on her hips, so furious her face had turned purple. “It’s because I’ve been too good to you, spoiled you too much, that you’ve turned out so capricious!”
“Mom…” Zhen Zhen was utterly aggrieved. “Could you not berate me in public? I have human rights too, you know.”
“You…” Mother Zhen glared at that mouth of hers—the mouth that always had an excuse ready but never once looked for the fault in itself. “I’m not just going to scold you. I’m going to hit you!”
With that, she rolled up a newspaper and started swatting at her.
Though she didn’t use much force, aware that plenty of people around were watching, after the chaotic scuffle Zhen Zhen’s face flushed red, and even her eyes reddened.
She knew her mom meant well. She didn’t want to be a nurse—she thought nursing was too hard, too exhausting—and had resolved to take the college entrance exam.
She also knew that this year huge numbers of “Old Three Grades” students were returning to take the exam too. It had been like that last year, when the admission rate was a mere eight percent.
Her mom was right—this was one of those things where thousands of troops squeeze across a single-log bridge.
But when it came to studying, how could focus just switch on at will?
Working twice as hard for half the results—wouldn’t that just be a losing deal?
Zhen Zhen pouted, her face dark with humiliation, her body still aching dully from the beating.
Just a few days ago her mom had been perfectly fine. What madness had suddenly come over her?
She shot a resentful glare across the room.
At the end of the day, it was all that girl’s fault. What was with all the acting!
Reading for so long without blinking once—didn’t her eyes get sore?
No way Zhen Zhen believed it!
She looked again at the title of the book.
—Medical Microbiology.
Zhen Zhen’s brain short-circuited.
She couldn’t remember the titles of most books, but this one she remembered.
Last time, her supervisor had been reading this very book.
She’d leaned over to sneak a few glances and gotten dizzy just looking at it.
It was all bacterial morphology, staining, biochemical reactions, serological identification, plus dense tables and little black diagrams.
Her supervisor was a college graduate, and even she said this kind of obscure medical textbook was unreadable—like it was written in an alien language.
Let alone this delicate, clear-eyed girl across the way, who looked barely in her late teens or early twenties.
Zhen Zhen’s lips twisted even harder.
Hmph. She was faking it, just as she’d thought.