Qin Zhen looked down at the young man on the ground. Without answering, he leaned down and scooped him up into his arms.
Shen Jin’an had not expected Qin Zhen’s action. Losing his balance, he instinctively frowned and grabbed the collar of Qin Zhen’s shirt, only to let go immediately once he reacted.
As if he had touched something filthy.
The summer night in late June was very muggy. Though the raindrops weren’t icy, Shen Jin’an felt a faint burning sensation at his fingertips. Raising his sharp gaze, he looked at the man’s clean-cut jawline, a wave of unusual strangeness rising deep within his heart.
Qin Zhen used his leg to push the car door open as wide as possible, tossed the person in his arms into the passenger seat, and then wiped the rainwater off his own face before getting in.
“I only know that no one wants to die. If you feel like you don’t want to live, you just don’t want to live in this current way.”
His voice was low and deep, seemingly using a tone that easily provoked favorable impressions to desperately save this life-despising villain.
Yet a few seconds later, he lazily added, “Anyway, just don’t die in my car.”
“…” Shen Jin’an’s expression grew stern. He stared at him for a second with completely temperatureless eyes, but instead of refuting, he simply said in a low voice, “Go to the private hospital.”
The battered little car hit the road again. Qin Zhen handed a tissue to Shen Jin’an, signaling him to stop the bleeding. He thought to himself that he must have run into some bad luck today, first System 999 and now Shen Jin’an.
With a teasing, half-smile tone, he remarked, “You’ve got quite a lot of demands. Pitch black as it is, aren’t you afraid I’ll take you away and sell you?”
Qin Zhen was blessed with exceptionally good looks. His profile lines were smooth, his features handsome, and a pair of long, narrow peach-blossom eyes gave anyone the false impression of being amorous and tender. It was hard to tell whether his words were true or false.
Shen Jin’an twisted a few tissues between his fingertips, moving slowly to wipe the blood. His slender fingers were blindingly white, as if he didn’t take the injuries on his body seriously at all.
Lowering his dark, gloomy eyes, he spoke with a weak breath, “Sell me if you want, provided you aren’t afraid of dying faster than me.”
Villains were mostly like this. Even with their very last bit of strength, they would still stir up trouble, accustomed to seeking victory in danger and burning their bridges behind them, ready to perish together at worst.
Finding it uninteresting, Qin Zhen shrugged and shut his mouth.
For the rest of the road, neither of them spoke much. Qin Zhen tried summoning System 999 with his mind for a long time, but 999 never showed up.
After driving five kilometers, the heavy rain gradually stopped. The car skirted around the inner ring highway, and about twenty kilometers later, they arrived at the private hospital.
When parking, Shen Jin’an’s lips had already turned pale, showing he was enduring the pain to the extreme. Qin Zhen originally wanted to tell him to get down quickly, but after a second thought, he still walked over to the passenger side, opened the door, leaned in halfway, and opened his arms.
Shen Jin’an frowned and retreated slightly, revealing the sharp edge of a dagger in his hand. “Get lost, I’ll go myself.”
Qin Zhen gave him an impatient look. He wanted to get lost too, but since the redemption target happened to be this person, well, carrying him once was carrying him, and twice made no difference.
Without another word, he leaned closer, placed his hands behind Shen Jin’an’s bent knees and back, and lifted him out of the car.
Shen Jin’an’s dark pupils shrank sharply, his body freezing instantly. The skin on his back pressed so close it burned with a scalding heat, and the dagger in his hand instinctively pressed against Qin Zhen’s chin.
“Do you want to fall a second time or what?”
As Qin Zhen finished speaking, his arms simultaneously dropped sharply, looking entirely ready to drop Shen Jin’an back onto the ground.
“You.”
Shen Jin’an’s chest heaved violently. The pain made it impossible for him to even finish a sentence, leaving him with no choice but to glare fiercely at Qin Zhen with those slightly uptight, cold eyes.
“Then you’d better put that knife away. I’m very frightened, and plus, looking like that in the middle of the night is easy to scare people to death. In a moment, the doctors won’t even dare to take you in. Besides, after saving you, you still tell me to get lost. Where is the logic in that? Hm?”
There was clearly not a shred of fear in this man’s eyes. Shen Jin’an frowned tightly, unable to understand why someone wouldn’t be afraid of the dagger in his hand.
And if he wasn’t afraid, why pretend to compromise? Was he a person sent by them?
If he were a person sent by them, why would he be brought to a hospital? He could have just been dealt with on the way, dumped at the foot of the mountain by the highway where nobody would know. Even if he were discovered, it wouldn’t help; everything would already be a done deal.
All these suspicions slowly wove into a dead knot in his mind. A fleeting moment later, the dagger in his hand was finally lowered.
Biting his lip with an unkind expression, he waited to see what Qin Zhen would do next.
It was a little past 4:00 AM.
At the end of June, temperatures soared rapidly, and the air in Lian City was hot, humid, and sticky, the floating water molecules feeling almost substantive as they rushed to drill into people’s hearts and lungs.
Private hospitals at night frequently welcomed people with extremely high privacy requirements. Sometimes it was a secretly married celebrity doing a prenatal checkup, sometimes it was a kept mistress of some bigshot getting an abortion, and sometimes it was demanding wealthy individuals. In short, no matter how one calculated it, it would never fall on an impoverished person like Qin Zhen.
Walking through the exquisitely designed first-floor corridor, Qin Zhen, whose figure and looks were striking enough to grab anyone’s attention, was holding a blood-drenched man in his arms, making it hard not to attract the attention of others.
The nurse and doctor on duty saw them and quickly pushed over a stretcher. “Quick, push him into the emergency room.”
Two doctors and several nurses hastily moved the person into the emergency room, and the corridor fell silent again after a brief moment of bustle.
Qin Zhen’s face was full of worry, and only one thought filled his mind: the fees at this hospital were sky-high, but his pockets were cleaner than his face, and all the money-holding apps on his phone added up to barely a few pennies.
The emergency room didn’t need too many people; just a helping hand was enough. Before long, a nurse walked out.
Seeing such a rare and stunningly handsome big guy made the young nurse’s heart race, driving away more than half of her night-shift sleepiness.
Moreover, she had just watched this handsome big guy carry that person in with a deeply heavy expression, looking every bit like an affectionate and righteous man.
Closing the pen and notebook she had been recording with and holding them in her left hand, she offered some kind consolation: “The person inside is your friend, right? Don’t worry too much. The doctors inside checked and said there’s nothing major, just external wounds. They just need to stitch up the wounds.”
Seeing that Qin Zhen was still leaning against the wall at a complete loss, her heart softened again, and she added, “It’s very late. Why don’t you rest for a while on the chairs across the hall?”
Qin Zhen only looked at the nurse with worry, a pair of deep peach-blossom eyes capable of drowning anyone inside. Lost in thought, he didn’t answer.
The nurse’s gaze drifted downward, abruptly noticing something. Moving to leave, she said, “Your neck is injured too. I’ll go get you some disinfected cotton balls to wipe it.”
Actually, she had originally wanted to ask if they needed to call the police, but the director always instructed them during major meetings to mind their own business less. If the patient didn’t bring up such matters, it wasn’t easy for them to meddle either.
Qin Zhen didn’t take it seriously. Feeling his neck belatedly, he let out a hiss, muttering that his neck did seem a bit sore. Shen Jin’an really knew how to throw a punch.
No good deed goes unpunished; his sincere kindness was treated like a donkey’s lung.
The snake in The Farmer and the Viper was probably Shen Jin’an himself.
“Thank you, pretty sister, I’m fine,” Qin Zhen said, his frown slowly easing as his long, narrow peach-blossom eyes smiled at the nurse. “By the way, can you run a tab here?”
“Ah?”
“Meaning, owe it first,” Qin Zhen tilted his head toward the emergency room, lowering his voice to remind the nurse close to her ear. “The guy inside is extremely wealthy. If you let me run a tab, once he finds his family, he can probably pay double the money, or however many times you want, enough to donate and build another building for you guys.”
That didn’t sound like running a tab; it sounded more like the hospital was about to make a killing.
The nurse stiffly turned her head to look at him, her expression gradually shifting from astonishment to something indescribable. She only thought this man was talking absolute nonsense, and no matter how handsome someone was, it couldn’t withstand being this stingy.
Within seconds, the nurse picked up her phone to take a completely nonexistent call, her phone screen even remaining black. Nodding as she walked away, she said, “Alright, alright. Is it very urgent? I’m coming right now.”
Before her words faded, she had already briskly entered the nurse’s station.
Qin Zhen shrugged. He was just joking anyway. Shen Jin’an probably wasn’t poor, though he didn’t know exactly how wealthy he was. If he really wanted to donate a building, well, that was probably out of the question.