Night fell, and the silence of the mountain village was like a heavy quilt pressing down until one could hardly breathe. Only the mournful sound of wind slipping through the broken window lattice reminded them that the house leaked from every side.
An oil lamp was out of the question. Oil cost money.
Su Jinxiu lit a small fire in the center of the room. Borrowing the flickering glow, she arranged her “operating table” — which was really just a slightly flatter broken wooden board wiped clean.
“Take off your pants.”
Without even turning around, she gave the order while boiling the silver needle pouch she never let leave her side in a pot of hot water.
Huo Chen leaned against the headboard. The eyes hidden in shadow shifted slightly, but he did not move.
“What are you shy about?” Su Jinxiu turned around, holding a cotton ball reeking of strong alcohol in her hand. She had secretly exchanged for medical alcohol earlier and poured it into a cracked bowl to disguise it as liquor. “Yesterday when I cut off your rotten flesh, what part of your body haven’t I already seen? And now you’re pretending to be some virtuous innocent man?”
Huo Chen’s face darkened enough to drip water.
“Su Jinxiu.” He gritted out her name through clenched teeth. “Do you truly have no idea what shame is?”
“Can shame fill your stomach? Or heal your leg?” Su Jinxiu rolled her eyes and walked over, immediately getting to work.
Rip—
The bandages were removed.
The wound looked better than expected, but the redness and swelling were still obvious, and some places oozed yellow fluid. The distinctive stench of rotting flesh spread through the cramped room.
Huo Chen instinctively tensed his muscles, waiting for the agony to come. Yesterday’s pain had felt like scraping poison from bone. Even a man like him still felt a chill down his spine when recalling it.
Yet the expected torment never came.
Su Jinxiu’s fingers were unbelievably nimble as she first cleaned the area around the wound with the cool cotton ball. The sting was sharp, but compared to yesterday’s dull flesh-cutting agony, it was nothing.
Then a small white pill appeared in her hand.
“Open your mouth.”
Huo Chen pressed his lips together warily.
“Poison,” Su Jinxiu said expressionlessly. “Eat it and you’ll become an obedient fool who only listens to me. If I tell you to go east, you won’t dare go west.”
Huo Chen stared at her for a moment, then suddenly opened his mouth and bit down on the pill.
Su Jinxiu blinked in surprise. “You’re not afraid it really is poison?”
“If you wanted to kill me, I had ten chances to die in your hands last night.” Huo Chen swallowed the pill, bitterness spreading through his throat. “And take back what you just said. If you want to control me… maybe in your next life.”
The medicine worked quickly.
The throbbing pain tormenting his nerves actually began to ease, the ache slowly fading away. Huo Chen looked at the woman busy at work with visible shock.
This medicinal effect was simply unheard of.
Su Jinxiu had no time to care about his thoughts.
She was doing something that consumed an enormous amount of mental energy — activating her X-ray vision.
[Scanning vision activated. Mental energy continuously draining…]
In her field of vision, Huo Chen’s lower leg was no longer flesh and skin, but a gray-white skeletal image. The fractured tibia had already been set almost perfectly, but many bone fragments still floated around the area. If they were not cleaned out, excessive bone growth would definitely form later. Even if the leg healed, he would still limp.
“Bear with it.”
She spoke softly as the tweezers in her hand probed deep into the wound.
Huo Chen let out a muffled grunt. Veins bulged at his temples, yet he did not cry out once. He could feel the metal instrument stirring between his bones. The nauseating scraping sensation traveled through his skeleton straight to his ears, tormenting him even more than the pain itself.
Su Jinxiu concentrated fully, beads of sweat rolling down her forehead and dripping onto Huo Chen’s leg one after another.
Ten minutes.
For Su Jinxiu, those ten minutes felt unbearably long. Excessive mental exhaustion made her head feel as though needles were stabbing into her brain, and darkness repeatedly blurred her vision.
“Done.”
As the final bone fragment was removed, all strength left Su Jinxiu’s body. She collapsed onto the floor, gasping heavily.
Her face was deathly pale, even worse than Huo Chen’s.
Huo Chen lowered his gaze to look at her.
Under the firelight, the woman’s profile appeared especially thin and fragile. She looked weak enough for a gust of wind to knock over, yet the focus and ruthlessness she displayed while treating him surpassed even battle-hardened military doctors.
No… more meticulous than military doctors.
And far stranger.
“Who exactly are you?”
This was already the third time he had asked that question.
After finally catching her breath, Su Jinxiu pulled herself upright by gripping the bedside. She no longer had the energy to continue acting affectionate and merely waved her hand weakly.
“I’m Su Jinxiu. Your foolish wife who got tricked into losing everything, and who’s now hoping that once your leg heals, she’ll finally be able to live a good life.”
She tidied up the remaining bandages and secretly hid the broken bowl of alcohol behind her back.
“Move over a little.” She pushed Huo Chen lightly.
Huo Chen’s entire body stiffened. “What are you trying to do?”
“Sleep, obviously!” Su Jinxiu replied as if it were perfectly natural. “This broken shack only has one bed. The floor’s crawling with rats and bugs. Where else am I supposed to sleep? You’re the patient, so I won’t fight you for the blanket. I’ll just squeeze in beside you for warmth.”
After speaking, without waiting for Huo Chen’s objection, she kicked off her worn straw sandals and swiftly crawled into the innermost side of the bed. Curling herself into a small bundle, she turned her back to him.
“Don’t overthink it. I’m not interested in you like this,” she muttered. “All bones and no meat. It’s uncomfortable.”
Huo Chen: “……”
His body stiffened, fully alert and ready for any movement behind him.
But the woman seemed truly exhausted. In just a moment, her steady, even breathing filled the room.
Listening to that sound, Huo Chen slowly relaxed the muscles that had long been tense.
Her scent—mixed with herbal medicine, the smoke of a kitchen fire, and a faint, indescribable bitterness—floated in the cold night air. Strangely enough, it was not unpleasant.
He turned his head slightly and looked at her curled-up back.
Since she had something she wanted, she was the easiest kind of pawn to control. Before his memories returned and his injuries healed, keeping her around seemed like a good choice.
The night wind howled, and the broken window paper rustled loudly.
Huo Chen silently pulled over the thin, worn quilt and tugged it slightly inward, covering the frail shoulder that had been left exposed.