Military District Personnel Arrive: This Educated Youth Is No Ordinary Soul
News that Su Qing had been appointed the “Military District’s Special Medical Consultant” spread like wildfire across Xiangyang Production Brigade overnight.
By the next morning, the tale had already gone through three iterations.
Version 1: “That new Comrade Su is from the military district—don’t even think about laying a finger on her.”
Version 2: “She’s got a family secret medical skill! The military district commander personally invited her here to treat the troops!”
Version 3: “Did you see how Commander Lu kicked Zhao Goudan the other day? Cracked two of his ribs! Mess with Comrade Su, and you’re picking a fight with the entire military district!”
Su Qing heard the third version as she squatted by the well in the educated youth compound, washing her face.
She’d mixed a tiny amount of spiritual spring water into the well water—just enough to keep her skin that unnaturally pale and smooth.
She splashed the cool water onto her face, sighing at the refreshing chill.
Soft footsteps sounded behind her.
“Comrade Su.”
It was Party Branch Secretary Liu—his voice ten times more deferential than it had been just a few days prior.
“Good morning, Uncle Liu,” Su Qing wiped her face and stood up, greeting him with a bright smile.
Secretary Liu rubbed his hands together, plastering a fawning grin on his face. “Comrade Su… I was wondering… my wife’s been having excruciating lower back pain for half a year—can’t even bend over. The barefoot doctor here has tried everything, but nothing worked. Would you… could you possibly—”
“Take a look at her?”
“Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m asking!”
Su Qing tilted her head, putting on a hesitant expression.
“I only know a little about herbal medicine… I’m not a real doctor, you know.”
“Now now, don’t be so modest!” Secretary Liu grew anxious. “You cured Comrade Ma’s itchy rash and Comrade Wang’s blisters—healed them in no time flat!”
Su Qing hesitated for exactly “the right amount of time”—three seconds.
Then she nodded.
“Alright then, let’s go see her.”
At Secretary Liu’s home.
A woman in her fifties lay propped up on the kang, grimacing as she supported her lower back, her face lined with pain.
When Su Qing walked in, Liu’s wife glanced at her, her eyes filled with open distrust.
A slip of a girl who hasn’t even grown all her hair—what could she possibly know about healing?
“Aunt Liu, let me feel your pulse first.”
Su Qing sat on the edge of the kang and placed two fingers lightly on her wrist.
She closed her eyes.
It was all for show—what she was really doing was using her perception, sharpened by the spiritual spring water, to run a full-body scan.
Three seconds later, she opened her eyes.
“Your fourth lumbar vertebra is slightly misaligned, and you have chronic strain in the muscles on your left side. Also—”
She paused, glancing at Secretary Liu.
“Also what?” He leaned forward, voice tight with worry.
“Did you fall a while back, Aunt Liu? There’s an old, lingering contusion on your left hip. It never healed properly, so you’ve been walking with an uneven gait—over time, that’s put extra strain on your lower back and made the pain worse.”
Liu’s wife’s eyes went wide.
“How… how did you know that?”
“Three years ago!” Secretary Liu slapped his thigh. “It rained hard and she slipped right onto her left hip! Took her straight to the county hospital—they took X-rays and said nothing was wrong!”
“X-rays don’t show soft tissue damage,” Su Qing said calmly.
The couple exchanged a look, and their gazes shifted completely.
This young educated youth… was no ordinary person.
“Can you fix it?” Secretary Liu’s voice shook.
“Yes.”
Su Qing pulled a small cloth bundle from her bag—inside were seven silver needles, glinting coldly in the sunlight.
“I’ll use acupuncture to realign the vertebra first, then make an herbal paste for you to apply for seven days.”
“After that, you’ll be walking and bending over without a problem.”
The silver needles pierced the skin.
Su Qing’s technique was flawless—every needle’s placement, depth, and angle was precise down to the millimeter.
As she worked, the soft, gentle mask she usually wore slipped away.
In its place was an intense, calm focus—sharp, almost fierce.
It was not the look of an eighteen-year-old girl.
It was the bearing of a master physician who had treated countless wounds and seen countless lives.
Twenty minutes later, she removed the needles.
“Aunt Liu, try bending forward.”
Liu’s wife sat up slowly, skeptical, and leaned forward carefully—
“It doesn’t hurt!”
She straightened up quickly, then bent again—
“Really! It doesn’t hurt at all!!”
Her eyes shining, she grabbed Su Qing’s hands excitedly. “Child! You’re a miracle healer!”
“Not quite,” Su Qing laughed, steadying herself as she was shaken back and forth. “The acupuncture only relieves the pain temporarily—you still need the herbal paste to heal it fully. As for the herbs—”
She glanced out the window.
“I can gather them from the mountains nearby. Won’t cost a thing.”
Those last four words meant everything.
In these times, a healer who asked for no money was nothing short of a living bodhisattva fallen from the heavens.
Secretary Liu was so moved he nearly dropped to his knees.
“Comrade Su! From now on, you have my full backing here in Xiangyang! If anyone dares give you trouble—you don’t even need to call the commander—just come find me, Liu Sanzhu!”
Su Qing beamed. “Thank you, Uncle Liu.”
News of Secretary Liu’s wife’s cure spread faster than ever.
By that afternoon, as Su Qing hung quilts out to dry in the compound, three villagers were already lined up waiting to see her.
First was Aunt Zhao from the neighboring brigade—she’d had a splitting headache for two months. Su Qing felt her pulse and wrote a prescription for herbs that grew wild on the mountains.
Second was Old Man Zhang, who lived near the cattle pen—he’d had a persistent cough for half a year. Su Qing listened to his chest, diagnosed chronic bronchitis, gave him a salve recipe, and pulled three small white tablets from her bag.
Three tablets.
Just three.
But in this poor village where western medicine was rarer than gold, those three tablets were worth more than their weight in bullion.
Old Man Zhang’s hands trembled as he took them.
Third—
The third person didn’t line up.
He walked straight over to her.
Su Qing looked up.
An old man, around seventy, with thinning gray hair and a patched gray cotton jacket, hunched over like any other poor villager.
But Su Qing noticed two small details.
First, his hands—thin as they were, his fingers were long and elegant, knuckles even, nails trimmed clean.
These were not the hands of someone who’d spent a lifetime doing hard labor.
Second, his eyes—clouded with age, but holding a startling clarity beneath.
The kind of clarity only someone who had seen the whole world could possess.
“Girl,” he said, his voice rough with disuse, “that needling method you used on that woman earlier… was that the Green Turtle Probing the Cave technique?”
Su Qing’s fingers stilled.
Green Turtle Probing the Cave was an extremely obscure traditional acupuncture technique, lost to the world for nearly a hundred years.
Modern textbooks only mentioned its name—no records of how it was actually performed survived.
Su Qing knew it only because it was detailed in the ancient texts in her spiritual spring space.
How could a ragged old man living next to a cattle pen possibly recognize it?
Unless… he was far more than he seemed.
Su Qing showed no surprise.
She stood up, looked him straight in the eye, and gave a slight bow.
“You have a sharp eye, sir.”
“May I ask your name?”
The old man studied her for a long moment, then suddenly smiled.
It was a complicated smile—equal parts delight, wonder, and the relief of finding something he’d spent his whole life searching for.
“My surname is Shen.”
“Just call me Old Man Shen.”
Shen.
Su Qing’s mind raced, connecting the name to the technique.
Then she knew exactly who he was.
Shen Henian.
In her past life, she’d seen the name once—on a top-secret medical file, in the rolls of the country’s most prestigious medical institute.
The nation’s greatest physician.
The sage of traditional Chinese medicine.
Labeled a rightist and exiled in the 1950s, never to be heard from again—everyone assumed he was long dead.
And here he was.
Su Qing took a quiet breath, her expression unchanged.
She smiled sweetly.
“Grandpa Shen, have you come for treatment?”
The old man shook his head.
His gaze drifted to her silver needles, gleaming in the sun—like a master jeweler examining a priceless gem.
“Not for treatment.”
“To see you.”
“To see what kind of girl could master Green Turtle Probing the Cave at such a young age.”
Their conversation was cut short.
A military truck rumbled into the brigade.
It stopped right outside the compound, and two uniformed soldiers jumped down.
The one leading them was in his early twenties, sharp-eyed and upright, and saluted Su Qing crisply.
“Comrade Su! Commander Lu requests your presence at the military district clinic!”
Su Qing blinked.
“The clinic?”
“Yes,” the soldier lowered his voice, worry etched on his face. “The commander… his old injury has flared up again. The military doctors say they need—well, they just told us to bring you straight away.”
He clearly had no idea what exactly was needed—only that he had an absolute order to fetch her.
Su Qing paused for a second.
Old injury? No—more accurately, the calming effect of her spiritual spring water had worn off, and his PTSD was flaring up again.
And this time it would be worse. His body had felt relief—now the withdrawal would hit twice as hard.
She turned to Old Man Shen.
“Grandpa Shen, I have to go for a while.”
“I’ll come back and ask you more later.”
Old Man Shen waved her off, his eyes crinkling with amusement.
“Go on then.”
“No rush—I’m not going anywhere.”
Su Qing climbed into the passenger seat, and the truck roared off toward the military base in a cloud of dust.
Old Man Shen stood watching it leave, then stroked his thin white beard.
“Fascinating,” he murmured.
“Green Turtle Probing the Cave, the ancient needling path for the Spirit Platform point… and that Crane Soaring the Nine Heavens withdrawal technique…”
“Where did this girl learn her craft?”
He frowned.
None of the styles he’d seen belonged to any existing school of traditional medicine.
The techniques she used were from lost texts—ancient methods that hadn’t been practiced in over a century.
In fifty years of practice, Shen Henian had only ever read descriptions of them in a single burned manuscript.
He’d never seen them performed.
Not until today—by an eighteen-year-old girl from the city, doing it as naturally as breathing.
“Fascinating,” he said again.
“Truly fascinating.”
At the military clinic.
Before the truck had even fully stopped, Su Qing heard the commotion inside.
Crash—
Something heavy shattered.
Then a low, guttural roar, like a wild beast in agony.
“Commander! Please calm down—!”
“Stay back! Last time someone got close he broke Sergeant Chen’s nose!”
Su Qing hopped down.
The clinic door hung open; a military doctor stumbled out, clutching a gash on his forehead, blood streaming down his face.
Xiao Zhao stood guard at the entrance, pale as a sheet, and blocked her path.
“Comrade Su—don’t go in! The commander is… he’s not himself right now—”
Su Qing gently but firmly moved his arm aside.
“Let me pass.”
Her voice was soft, but carried an unshakable certainty.
Xiao Zhao stepped back instinctively.
Su Qing walked inside.
The room was a wreck.
Tables overturned, chairs splintered, the medicine cabinet’s glass door smashed, shards and spilled bottles scattered across the floor.
Lu Zhanye huddled in the corner.
Half-kneeling against the wall, one hand braced for support, the other clutching his hair so hard his knuckles turned white.
Veins bulged from his forehead all the way down his neck.
He looked like a volcano seconds from eruption.
His eyes were bloodshot—no tears, just the deep red of pure, unbridled pain.
Like a wolf cornered and bleeding out.
Su Qing stopped three paces away and looked at him.
He felt her presence and snapped his head up, locking onto her instantly.
For a heartbeat, she saw past the rage—
It wasn’t anger at all.
It was agony.
Three days without sleep, tormented by migraines and nightmares, pushed past the breaking point of what any human could bear.
Everyone else was terrified of him. But Su Qing didn’t flinch.
She stepped forward, walking over broken glass, straight toward the wounded beast.
“Comrade Su—!” Xiao Zhao cried out in horror from the doorway.
Su Qing didn’t look back.
She knelt in front of Lu Zhanye, meeting his eyes.
His gaze was already drifting—delirium taking over.
Su Qing reached out with both hands, cupping his face gently but firmly.
Her palms pressed against his burning skin.
The faint, soothing scent of spiritual spring water rose from her skin—she’d rubbed a little into her palms before coming.
The effect was instant.
His eyes focused again. The red faded from his irises. His grip on his hair loosened. The bulging veins smoothed out. His ragged breathing slowed to deep, steady inhales.
The wild beast had calmed.
He looked at her, voice rough and broken.
“You came.”
Su Qing brushed a tear he hadn’t even noticed falling from his cheek with her thumb.
“I’m here.”
Slowly, his hand came up to cover hers—large, calloused from years of holding a rifle, the same hand that had held a gun in battle and smashed tables in rage.
Now it rested on hers as lightly as if holding a fragile flower.
He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to her palms.
His voice dropped to a whisper only she could hear.
“Don’t leave.”
A pause.
“Please.”
Outside the door, Xiao Zhao and the doctors watched in stunned silence.
The most feared commander in the entire region—kneeling before a slender girl, his forehead resting against her hands like a wounded animal finally finding its only comfort.
No one breathed.
Xiao Zhao felt his entire worldview shatter—into finer pieces than the glass on the clinic floor.
An hour later.
Lu Zhanye was asleep.
Truly, deeply asleep. Since returning from the frontlines two weeks prior, this was the first time he’d managed to rest without waking screaming.
He lay on a makeshift cot, his brow smooth, breathing even—just a young man worn thin by too much pain, finally at peace.
Only one thing was strange: even asleep, his hand still curled tight around Su Qing’s wrist.
Su Qing sat on a stool beside the cot, resting her chin on her free hand, studying his face.
She had to admit—he looked better asleep.
Awake, he was like a drawn blade: cold, sharp, warning everyone to keep their distance.
Asleep, the blade was sheathed—all the harsh edges softened, and… well, he was actually quite handsome.
She glanced down at her wrist. His hand was big, warm, the calluses rough but familiar. His grip was firm, not enough to hurt, just enough to make sure she hadn’t gone anywhere.
Like he was checking she was real.
Su Qing sighed quietly.
Alright then. It seemed this deal was one she’d have to make.
He needed her—more precisely, his body needed the spiritual spring water to keep his PTSD at bay.
And she needed him. His rank, his influence, his protection—all she needed to stand firm in this strange new world.
A fair trade. Mutual benefit.
As for that quiet please…
Su Qing told herself it was just leverage. A moment of weakness from a desperate man.
Not to be taken seriously.
Never.
She looked down again at his hand, his fingers tapping softly against her pulse—like he was counting her heartbeat.
“Not seriously,” she whispered again.
Softer this time.