Everyone was happy, except An Xiuqing, who felt disappointed. Gu Liancheng had returned, so Jiang Zhen wouldn’t become a widow.
Gu Liancheng walked toward them with the rising sun behind his back. Against the light, a clear halo surrounded his figure. How had she never noticed before that he was so tall, imposing, reliable, and reassuring?
An Xiuqing felt very dejected. Her determination grew stronger—Doctor Qi, she had to obtain Doctor Qi.
…
Gu Liancheng stood outside the house, calming the frightened crowd.
“The bandit suppression went very smoothly. During the encirclement, almost none escaped. Everyone should go to work and continue their normal lives. There’s no need to worry excessively.”
The few scattered bandits who escaped were like birds startled by the mere twang of a bowstring. They wouldn’t be able to stir up any trouble.
But what about Qi Junshan? Jiang Zhen could only wait to ask him privately.
Banditry around Fan City had plagued the common people for decades. When Gu Liancheng announced the result, everyone burst into cheers.
“The sky has finally brightened! Come on, come on—today we must buy half a pound of meat to celebrate.”
Gu Jiaoxia was delighted. Now that the bandits had been suppressed, Gu Liancheng should be coming home, right? She quickly asked, “What about you? How much longer will you be busy before you can come home?”
Actually, Gu Liancheng shouldn’t have come back at this hour. Saying he was worried about home was just an excuse for returning alone.
He said, “Big Sister, I need to trouble you to watch the children for half a day today. There are several wounded bandits in the mountains. It’s not convenient to send them to the hospital, so Jiang Zhen needs to come with me to give first aid.”
“There’s no one else in Fan City’s hospitals who can be sent? How can you ask Jiang Zhen to go? Are you deliberately ordering your own family around?” Gu Jiaoxia complained unhappily.
Jiang Zhen immediately understood. There had been a fierce battle last night and some bandits had escaped. Gu Liancheng needed to participate in the follow-up search, and he had come back for her—probably because of her ability.
It was time to earn merit and build up her own bargaining power. Jiang Zhen was willing to cooperate.
“Big Sister, it might not be convenient for outsiders. I’m Liancheng’s wife, so it’s appropriate for me to go.”
Jiang Zhen’s affectionate attitude toward Gu Liancheng reassured Gu Jiaoxia. “Then hurry and go. If you can’t come back tonight, don’t worry. I’ll take the children home with me.”
…
Gu Liancheng had driven a military jeep back, which showed he had been in a hurry. As soon as Jiang Zhen got in, she asked, “Is Qi Junshan dead?”
“I’m sure I hit him, but when we cleaned the battlefield we didn’t find his body.” Gu Liancheng’s brows were tightly knit.
That was bad. If Qi Junshan didn’t die, he would eventually return for revenge. Jiang Zhen was about to complain, but when she saw his heavy expression she stopped. At this moment he was even more worried and distressed than she was.
Jiang Zhen reached out and rubbed the space between his brows. “Stop frowning. It can still be fixed. If Qi Junshan is injured, he’ll definitely look for help. Keep an eye on the few people he might turn to, and you might catch him.”
Gu Liancheng had expected to be scolded, but Jiang Zhen instead reached out to brush away his unease. Sometimes feelings stirred suddenly. Gu Liancheng secretly thought this was bad—how many days had it been? He quickly pulled himself together to focus on business.
“We want you to go to the mountain and check the corpses. Find out exactly how many bandits escaped, how many weren’t on the mountain, and how many people below the mountain had dealings with them. Those people will need close monitoring in the future.”
“Understood.” Jiang Zhen looked ready to get to work.
Gu Liancheng couldn’t help worrying. “We wiped out more than a hundred bandits this time. With that workload, how many days will you need?”
Jiang Zhen fell silent for a moment and muttered softly, “Can I finish it in one day?”
Gu Liancheng: …
Fine. If she really finished this job in one day, they’d have to set up an altar and worship her.
…
Jiang Zhen touched the corpses one by one while speaking. Two soldiers beside her took turns recording everything: the names of the killed bandits, things people had said to them. Jiang Zhen only selected useful information. Ordinary bandits had little useful information; the leaders had much more.
“A corpse can only be checked once. The second time I won’t get any memories. And my memory isn’t that great—I might mix things up or forget. Please make sure you record everything clearly.”
Jiang Zhen had explained beforehand. Each corpse was labeled with a number, and the notes were recorded according to the number. By noon, several groups of recorders had already rotated in shifts, compiling and organizing the information.
On the surface Jiang Zhen looked fine mentally, but Xiao Jianzhou was worried and asked Gu Liancheng to check on her.
After a while Gu Liancheng came back with a strange expression.
“She says she can keep going, but she’s hungry. She asked if she can eat something while working.”
Xiao Jianzhou: …
No need to ask about her psychological resilience. The environment she came from must have been at least ten times worse than this. She had clearly seen such things before.
“Get her some sweet potatoes. Anything with a strong smell might make the recording comrades throw up.”
“Yes, sir!”
…
After checking more than a hundred corpses, Jiang Zhen was actually fine. She only had to speak, and she kept her mind empty—once she finished describing one, she threw it out of her mind.
They worked for seven or eight hours, from dawn to dusk. The comrades who rotated through recording and organizing the information had worked very hard.
Jiang Zhen used water that Gu Liancheng poured from a canteen, lathered soap, and washed her hands several times. After smelling them herself, she stretched them toward Gu Liancheng’s nose.
“Smell them. No corpse smell anymore, right?”
She had worn medical gloves and washed several times. Aside from the scent of soap, there was nothing else.
“No smell. It’s fragrant.”
Jiang Zhen sniffed again. After touching more than a hundred dead bandits, she felt extremely disgusted, but the harvest was still worthwhile—she now knew where Qi Junshan was.
“He has a mistress down the mountain. He probably won’t dare go to his family, so he might go to her.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t he… incapable?”
Jiang Zhen glanced at Gu Liancheng. “Can’t it be emotional support?”
“…It can.” Gu Liancheng confirmed the address. “I’ll go arrest him personally. I can’t let him escape again. Can I have someone send you back?”
Jiang Zhen hesitated, and Gu Liancheng noticed immediately. “If you have concerns, say them.”
“I just think Qi Junshan is at the end of his rope. He’ll definitely resist desperately, and he might be shot on the spot. But the Qi family still has people there, and there are children in that house. If you’re the one who arrests him, won’t they hate you for it? It would be better if the Public Security officers or unfamiliar soldiers arrest him. That’s more appropriate. You could go catch other fugitives instead.”
The two families already had bad relations. Ji Fengmei and Gu Liancheng’s elder sister were practically enemies. If Gu Liancheng captured Qi Junshan, no one knew how crazy Ji Fengmei might become.
Gu Liancheng realized she had a point. He sent Jiang Zhen to the foot of the mountain, where a car was waiting to take her home.
“Jiang Zhen, don’t you want to ask when I’ll come back?”
Jiang Zhen smiled. “As long as you come back before next month’s allowance is issued, that’s fine. If you can’t come back, that’s fine too—just send the household money to me.”
Gu Liancheng: …
“It won’t take that long.”
…
Jiang Zhen’s verbal descriptions while checking the corpses produced more than a hundred files. They involved many people. Most were innocent, but those who had assisted the bandits would be closely monitored.
Xiao Jianzhou held the thick stack of files and felt deeply shaken. What an incredibly useful—and terrifying—ability.
If Jiang Zhen ran away, or even went abroad, it would be an enormous loss.
With these files, none of the escaped bandits would be able to run forever.
…
Before nightfall, Jiang Zhen went to Gu Liancheng’s sister’s house, planning to take the children home after dinner.
The scene on the mountain was impossible to describe. After she mentioned just a little, they couldn’t bear to hear more. Only then did Jiang Zhen realize that her performance that day had actually been abnormal.
But Gu Liancheng’s brother-in-law didn’t say anything. At noon he had even brought her washed sweet potatoes. At the time she had wondered—such exhausting work, shouldn’t there at least be buns or steamed bread? Now she realized they had only given sweet potatoes because they were afraid she might vomit.
Seeing that Gu Jiaoxia’s family was eating sweet potato and millet porridge for dinner, Jiang Zhen suddenly realized that the rice she had eaten earlier was probably her sister and brother-in-law’s own rations. She felt truly guilty.
“Big Sister, I’m sorry.”
Gu Jiaoxia was startled. “What’s wrong? Did you and Gu Liancheng quarrel?” Had they argued so badly they didn’t want to live together anymore?
Jiang Zhen hurriedly explained, “No. I accepted whatever you sent, but I didn’t realize that you and Brother-in-law only eat this at home. Don’t send us food anymore.”
Gu Jiaoxia laughed and scolded lightly. “You scared me. I thought it was something serious. Fine—if I have extra, I’ll send it.”
…
Around the time dinner was finishing, a neighbor came upstairs to talk.
“Jiaoxia, Qi Junshan is dead.”
“Dead? How did he die?” Gu Jiaoxia immediately put down her bowl and chopsticks and pulled the neighbor outside to talk.
Jiang Zhen felt happy inside. Qi Junshan had finally died. She needed to find a way to touch the corpse—then she could find out who had hired someone to kill Jiang Tang and Jiang Zhao’s mother.
The neighbor whispered secretly, “They say he died of ‘sudden frenzy on horseback’ while on top of a widow. Just think about it—last night the artillery for the bandit suppression was roaring, but instead of touching his new wife at home, he ran off to find a widow. Serves him right.”
Gu Jiaoxia said bitterly, “Serves him right indeed. Luckily he died in someone else’s house. Otherwise they’d try to blame our family.”
Jiang Tang had sharp ears. Children didn’t understand.
“Mom, what is ‘sudden frenzy on horseback’?”
Jiang Zhen didn’t really know either, but from the phrase “dying on a woman,” she guessed it meant dying during sex. The Qi family certainly couldn’t accept such a reason, but since Qi Junshan’s impotence probably wouldn’t be mentioned, they would have to swallow it silently.
“I don’t know either,” Jiang Zhen said. “But it’s not a good phrase. Forget it.”
Jiang Tang nodded obediently.
Gu Pan stuffed rice into her mouth. “Auntie, we’ve finished eating. Let’s go home.” She couldn’t wait to go to the space and check how the seeds were doing.
…
When they returned home, the house next door was silent—probably everyone had gone to identify the body.
Jiang Zhen closed the courtyard gate, locked the main door, and took the four children into the space.
After only one day, some seeds had already sprouted. Two tiny cotyledons poked out of the soil like soaked soybean halves. In just a few days, the entire bed would be covered with green shoots.
“Mom, is it because they’re in the space that they sprouted so quickly? Then why didn’t the two little chicks grow faster?” Jiang Zhao asked.
Jiang Zhen said, “Living creatures aren’t affected. That’s actually good—otherwise if we stayed in the space too long, we’d grow old.”
The children weren’t worried about that at all.
“We want to grow up quickly.”
“Just wait,” Jiang Zhen said. “Let’s go out and sleep.”
…
That night the house next door became noisy again. The commotion was so loud Jiang Zhen could hear everything clearly.
Qi Junshan was gone, and the conclusion given was that he had died from “sudden frenzy on horseback.” The Qi family had to swallow their bitterness silently.
Ji Fengmei didn’t want An Xiuqing to remain a widow. “Go back to your parents’ home and remarry!”
But An Xiuqing had been waiting for Qi Junshan to die—how could she possibly leave?
“Mom, Qi Junshan hasn’t even been buried yet and you’re already driving me away?”
Qi Junhai couldn’t bear it. “Mom, at least wait until my brother is buried.”
Jiang Zhen sent the four children into the space so they wouldn’t be poisoned by the shouting next door.
Early the next morning she took the children to the hospital to find Gu Jiaoxia. While Gu Jiaoxia took the children to the cafeteria to buy breakfast, Jiang Zhen ran to the morgue.
Sure enough, she ran into Gu Liancheng waiting there.
Jiang Zhen smiled. “I guessed you would guess that I’d guess you’d be waiting here. Looks like we really are in sync.”
Gu Liancheng had originally planned to go home first, but then he thought that being Jiang Zhen’s teammate required a bit of tacit understanding. Once Qi Junshan died, she would definitely come to touch the corpse to find out who had hired the killer.
Sure enough, he had waited for her right outside the morgue.
Gu Liancheng said, “Now that it’s cleared out, let’s hurry.”