Huo Yunzheng had barely stepped out when the door of the infirmary was pushed open from behind him.
The person who entered was the old military doctor, Li Jianguo.
He was in his fifties, with graying hair, a stethoscope hanging around his neck and a clipboard in his hand.
“Comrade Tushan, good, you’re awake. I’ll give you another examination.”
He pulled over a chair and sat down, then placed Tushan Yao’s wrist on the pulse pillow.
Three fingers settled against it.
One second. Two seconds.
Old Li’s brows lifted slightly.
He changed his finger placement and checked again.
After a few more seconds, Old Li’s expression changed.
“That’s strange…”
He opened the earlier examination records and compared them, then placed his fingers back on her wrist to confirm his findings.
“Comrade Tushan, where did you receive treatment before this?”
Tushan Yao kept her eyes closed as she rested and replied weakly, “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” Old Li’s voice was full of astonishment. “Your pulse… logically speaking, with your qi and blood depleted to this extent, your heart meridian should have been severed already. But right now, your heart meridian—”
He considered his wording.
“It’s been protected. There’s a current of heat wrapped around it, as if someone had poured in a dose of life-saving medicine. What exactly did you eat?”
Tushan Yao’s eyelids lifted slightly, and she glanced toward the door.
What had she eaten?
She had eaten the yang energy of their regimental commander.
But she couldn’t say that.
“Maybe I drank a bowl of hot water on the way here,” she said perfunctorily.
Old Li clearly did not believe her, but he could not get anything more out of her.
He scratched down a few lines on the clipboard, then gave her a long list of instructions: she was not to get chilled, was not to exert herself, had to remain in bed, and so on. He also reminded the medical orderly to keep an eye on her infusion.
Before leaving, Old Li turned around at the doorway and looked at Tushan Yao.
In his thirty years practicing medicine, he had never seen a pulse this bizarre—a person who should have been dead, yet somehow had a thread of life holding her together.
Huo Yunzheng returned very quickly.
Inside the enamel basin were two bowls of dough-drop soup, a small plate of salted radish strips, and two mixed-grain steamed buns.
It was the military district cafeteria’s sick-person meal: thin soup with nothing in it. The dough drops had soaked until they were pale and swollen, with two pitiful-looking vegetable leaves floating on top.
Xiaobao poked his head out from the bed and took a look.
Inside the barrier, he was used to the finest medicinal cuisine prepared in the Shennong Pot—with century-old spirit ginseng as the base and thousand-year-old fo-ti for seasoning. Even if you casually tossed a rock into it and boiled it, the resulting fragrance would rival the dishes of the imperial kitchens.
As for the bowl of dough-drop soup before him, honestly speaking, there was more water than dough.
Tushan Yao did not even look at it.
But Xiaobao remembered Uncle Fengqi’s instructions before they left:
“Once you’re on someone else’s territory, put away all those bad habits of yours. Eat whatever they give you, and don’t let the cat out of the bag.”
He drew a deep breath, hopped down from the bed, accepted the enamel basin with both hands, and took a slurp of the soup.
It tasted as though he were licking a piece of salted wood.
“Wow—it’s so delicious!”
Xiaobao forced his eyes wide open, doing his best to make his expression appear sincere.
“Dad, this soup is so fresh! It’s… it’s much better than the food at our house!”
He carried the bowl over to Tushan Yao’s lips.
“Mom, try some! Dad brought the food. It’s especially fragrant!”
Tushan Yao lowered her eyes to the bowl of murky soup.
She had lived for a thousand years. Her palate was pickier than any ingredient.
“…Mm.”
She accepted it and took a small sip.
Salty.
Bland.
Starchy.
Three flavors that should never have appeared together had merged into perfect harmony.
Tushan Yao’s brows twitched almost imperceptibly.
“Not bad.”
Beside her, Xiaobao frantically gestured with his eyes.
Mom, put some feeling into your acting!
Huo Yunzheng stood to one side with his arms folded across his chest, watching Tushan Yao drink the soup.
The fingers holding the bowl were slender and pale, the knuckles prominent. After every sip, she had to stop and take two breaths.
She had drunk only a third of the soup before setting the bowl down.
“I can’t eat anymore.”
“Have two more bites.” Xiaobao broke the steamed bun into pieces, soaked them in the soup, and pushed them toward her hand.
“My stomach is small.” Tushan Yao leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes.
Xiaobao sighed, then scooped all the remaining soup and steamed buns into his own mouth. In three quick gulps, he finished everything.
Afterward, he set the enamel basin aside, patted his stomach, and looked up at Huo Yunzheng.
“Dad, thanks for the food. Mom’s appetite has always been poor. Don’t take it personally.”
Huo Yunzheng said nothing. He merely took off his military overcoat and draped it over Tushan Yao.
Night fell deep.
The bulb in the infirmary had a faulty connection and occasionally emitted a crackling electrical sound.
Tushan Yao and Xiaobao were squeezed together on the army cot.
Xiaobao curled up in her arms, breathing evenly and sleeping soundly.
Huo Yunzheng moved a chair over and sat one arm’s length from the bed.
His back rested against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his chin slightly lowered, as though he were dozing.
But Tushan Yao knew he was not asleep.
Someone who had been trained as a special forces soldier would never completely lower his guard, even with his eyes closed.
She paid him no attention.
There was something more important to do.
Even if Huo Yunzheng did not deliberately release it, his pure-yang energy would naturally seep out at close range.
A physique of this caliber, a thousand years ago, would have been a walking spiritual spring.
And now—
Tushan Yao kept her eyes half-closed and regulated her breathing. She guided the last thread of spiritual power remaining inside her, like parched tree roots quietly stretching toward an underground water vein.
The pure-yang energy radiating from Huo Yunzheng swirled once inside her dantian before being greedily devoured by her shattered demon core.
Something stirred within her dantian.
It was extremely faint, like a frozen gear that had finally turned a fraction with a creak after being doused with hot water.
Tushan Yao’s heartbeat quickened.
Her demon core was circulating.
It was moving as slowly as a crawling snail, but it was truly moving.
This was the first time in two years that she had felt any sign of her dantian circulating on its own.
As the demon core weakly revived, the temperature of her body began to change.
The spiritual power that had been suppressed beneath her skin for far too long began to awaken, and a cold herbal fragrance seeped from her pores.
The scent was extremely faint, so faint that ordinary people could not detect it at all.
But it was spreading.
Through the gaps beneath the infirmary door and the cracks around the windows, it drifted into the night outside.
Outside the rear wall of the Military District Family Compound, in a thicket beside a drainage ditch—
Cripple Zhang was crouched in the shadows. He had already been there for more than two hours.
He was not actually crippled.
The limp in his right leg was an act, making it convenient for him to remain hidden around the military district for long periods under the cover of scavenging.
His mission was to determine the stationed troops’ rotation patterns and the location of the ammunition depot.
Tonight had originally been a routine observation of the sentries changing shifts. Then a night wind blew past, carrying a scent he had never smelled before.
Cold. Clean.
It possessed the same force as the fragrance released by century-old medicinal plants in a deep mountain forest after being struck by frost.
Cripple Zhang’s nose twitched several times.
In these times, a fifty-year-old wild ginseng root could be exchanged on the black market for three hundred yuan and an entire book of grain coupons.
Something over a hundred years old?
That was a priceless treasure—if it could even be bought.
He swallowed, followed the scent as he crept along, and finally stopped beneath the infirmary window.
Cripple Zhang pressed himself against the wall, slowly straightened, and brought his face close to the gap in the glass where air was getting through.
There were no medicinal herbs inside, only a single sickbed.
A woman and a child were sleeping on it, while a tall officer dozed against the wall.
Cripple Zhang was puzzled. He shifted forward half an inch.
His knee scraped against the broken brick beneath the windowsill, producing a dull scraping sound.
At the exact same instant that the noise rang out—
Huo Yunzheng’s eyelids snapped open.
Beneath the covers, Tushan Yao’s fingers bent slightly.
A force invisible to ordinary people shot out and pierced through the gap in the window.
Cripple Zhang was just about to retreat when a sharp blow struck the numbing point of his right elbow.
His entire arm immediately lost all feeling.
He could no longer hold on to the short knife with the blood groove. It slipped from his hand and fell into the mud.
Clatter.
Huo Yunzheng moved.
He did not bother with the door. Bracing one hand against the window frame, he drove forward with his long legs and vaulted bodily through the half-open window.
His military boot landed on the ground, the heel precisely pinning down the fallen short knife.
Before Cripple Zhang could react, an iron-clamp-like hand had locked around the back of his neck.
Using the momentum of his landing, Huo Yunzheng slammed him heavily into the ground.
Cripple Zhang’s face struck the frozen earth, and blood spurted from his nose.
“Hold still.”
Huo Yunzheng planted one knee firmly against the man’s back. His right hand reached out, drew the pistol from his waist, and pressed it against the back of Cripple Zhang’s head.
His left hand searched Cripple Zhang’s body.
From the inner pocket of his jacket, he pulled out half a sheet of folded yellow paper.
Huo Yunzheng unfolded it with one hand.
By the light shining out through the window, the paper clearly displayed the military district’s defensive lines and patrol times.
Huo Yunzheng’s expression darkened.
“Guard Company!”
His powerful roar cleaved through the night.
In less than two minutes, disorderly footsteps and the sound of brass whistles surged from the direction of the barracks.
The Guard Company commander led his men in binding Cripple Zhang hand and foot and taking him away.
When they learned that the regimental commander had vaulted out through the window and subdued the spy with his bare hands, several soldiers did not even dare to breathe too loudly.
After giving his instructions for the interrogation, Huo Yunzheng walked to the water trough in the courtyard.
He twisted open the rusted faucet. Freezing water washed the mud and blood from his fingers.
He shook his hands dry and strode back to the infirmary.
He pushed open the wooden door.
On the army cot, Tushan Yao lay on her side with one hand resting on Xiaobao’s back.
Neither of them had changed position at all.
Huo Yunzheng turned around, pulled the two wooden window panels tightly shut, and slid the iron bolt into place.
He dragged the wooden chair over.
This time, he did not lean it against the wall. Instead, he placed it directly between the sickbed and the window.
He sat down with the imposing ease of a general, his back to the mother and son and his face toward the window.
Beneath the covers, Tushan Yao opened her eyes.
She stared at the man’s broad back. His uniform was stretched over his bulging muscles, forming smooth contours. His sturdy, solid frame radiated an intimidating air that warned strangers to keep their distance.
Tushan Yao closed her eyes again.
This human-shaped miracle medicine was indeed very useful.
Outside the infirmary, a sentry passing by during the shift change glanced through the crack in the door, then hurriedly pulled his head back.
The regimental commander was sitting there upright, standing guard through the night for a mother and child.
There was no way to keep that news contained.
Early the next morning, before the reveille had even sounded, the entire camp was already buzzing.
“Regimental Commander Huo sat stiffly in the infirmary all night.”
“I saw it with my own eyes! He was acting as a door guardian for that young wife!”
When this strange rumor swept into the military family compound, Political Commissar Zhao was crouched beside the water basin at home, brushing his teeth.
A communications soldier ran in to report what had happened.
Old Zhao had a mouthful of white toothpaste foam, and the toothbrush in his hand stopped in midair.
He spat a mouthful of water into the chipped enamel basin, then raised his sleeve and roughly wiped his face.
“Good lad.” Old Zhao slapped his thigh. “You’ve finally done something decent!”
He grabbed the military cap hanging from the clothesline, jammed it onto his head, and strode toward the regimental headquarters building.
“Tell Regimental Commander Huo to come to my office immediately! Is the marriage application ready or not?!”
————————Those who dislike little skits may skip this section————————
Little Skit:
Xiaobao: “Mom, this soup is really delicious!”
(Inner thought: Help, it’s like chewing on salted wood…)
Tushan Yao: “Mm, not bad.”
(Inner thought: I miss my Shennong Pot. I miss my spirit ginseng…)
Huo Yunzheng: “Since you like it, I’ll go get two more bowls tomorrow.”
Mother and son: “…”
(Inner thought: There really is no need!)