The ambulance arrived quickly. Although this was the suburbs, a well-known public tertiary hospital had established a branch here to divert patients, and it happened to be not far from where Ruan Qing was.
With Ruan Qing guiding them by flashing her car lights while on the phone, the driver accurately located the spot and drove the ambulance off the road.
The medical staff had experienced all kinds of storms and could remain unfazed even in the face of gruesome scenes. This time, however, they took a few extra glances at the man in black due to his attire and topknot.
Ruan Qing followed the ambulance to the hospital in her own car. The doctor received the patient, checked his vital signs, confirmed he was in shock and unconscious, and asked Ruan Qing about the situation.
Ruan Qing hesitated for a moment before saying, "He… fell from a very high place."
He had fallen from mid-air, even denting her car roof. Just thinking about it made her wince.
The man was wheeled into the emergency room. Soon, a nurse brought some forms for Ruan Qing to settle the payment.
After paying the fees, Ruan Qing waited quietly in the hallway, her mind wandering through all sorts of thoughts.
Time seemed to pass slowly. After what felt like an eternity, a nurse finally came out and called, "Family member? The family member wearing Hanfu?"
"…" Ruan Qing hurried over. "Here."
Inside, the man was still unconscious.
The doctor explained the situation to her: "No life-threatening injuries. He has soft tissue contusions and some subcutaneous bruising. We'll need to monitor him for signs of a concussion."
The doctor then asked, "Are you a family member?"
"No," Ruan Qing replied. "I'm, well, just a passerby. I saw him unconscious and called the ambulance."
The doctor said, "I see…"
Ruan Qing sensed something in his tone and asked, "Is there a problem?"
"He has some wounds on his body. My preliminary assessment is that they're blade injuries," the doctor said.
Ruan Qing was taken aback. She hadn't noticed that, partly because it was dark and the riverside was poorly lit, and partly because he was dressed in black. She had smelled blood and knew he was bleeding, but couldn't see the wounds clearly in the darkness.
But then Ruan Qing remembered the long blade in her trunk and felt a pang of anxiety. "Should we call the police?"
The doctor hesitated.
The wounds were very neat, clearly made by a sharp blade.
But they weren't slash wounds or stab wounds. If they had been either of those, the doctor would have reported it without hesitation, as the hospital had regulations regarding such cases.
However, the wounds on this man dressed in Hanfu were puzzling—they were shallow cuts. Although they had bled quite a bit and looked alarming to an ordinary person, they had only broken the skin. From a medical perspective, they were actually very minor injuries.
Slash and stab wounds would require reporting to the police because they might involve fights or intentional harm. But these shallow, superficial cuts left the doctor deeply perplexed. He couldn't imagine under what circumstances such wounds would appear in multiple places on the body, all inflicted with such precise control—steady and shallow.
The doctor had never witnessed the fierce encirclement and pursuit atop a high cliff under a moon obscured by dark clouds, so of course he couldn't imagine that these wounds were the result of evasive maneuvers executed with exceptional skill in the narrow space between life and death, leaving only shallow cuts instead of fatal, gut-wrenching injuries.
"Where did he fall from?" the doctor asked.
Ruan Qing answered vaguely, "Just from the roadside. That area is by the river, much lower than the roadbed…"
The doctor was puzzled. "How did he fall then?"
Ruan Qing continued to be vague. "I didn't see it. By the time I saw him, he had already fallen."
The doctor finally decided, "It doesn't seem like a fight or brawl. Let's not call the police for now."
The doctor had more thoughts but didn't voice them. While treating the superficial wounds, he noticed many old scars on the man's body, all quite similar.
But it wasn't possible to call the police just because someone had old scars.
Hearing that the police wouldn't be called, Ruan Qing sighed in relief and asked, "When will he wake up?"
The doctor said, "That depends. The human body has a self-protection mechanism. He'll wake up naturally when it's time."
"Should I wait here then? Can I go grab a bite to eat?" Ruan Qing asked.
Because of the incident with her ex-boyfriend earlier, she hadn't eaten dinner yet and had been too afraid to leave until now. Her stomach was aching from hunger.
The doctor said, "If you're not a family member, you can leave. Oh, did you pay for his treatment?"
Ruan Qing certainly couldn't say she had other reasons for staying. Paying was a good excuse, and she really had covered the costs, so she nodded in acknowledgment.
"Then go eat first. His vital signs are stable for now," the doctor said. "Leave your phone number, and we'll notify you when he wakes up."
Ruan Qing thanked the doctor, left the emergency room, and returned to her car in the parking lot. After hesitating for a moment, she opened the trunk.
The trunk was cluttered with various items. Although there was a light, it was still hard to see clearly. She turned on her mobile phone's flashlight, bent down, and stared for a long time—
The blade handle was wrapped in cloth strips, and from the look of it, it had been used for a long time.
Under the light, the blade gleamed with a cold, sharp edge.
It was undoubtedly a real knife.
Not to mention the bloodstains still on it, which looked quite frightening.
Ruan Qing couldn't help but swallow hard and slammed the trunk shut with a bang. When she looked up, she saw the dented roof of her car, reminding her that what had happened tonight wasn't a dream.
Sitting in the car, her heart was still pounding. After calming down for a while, she opened her phone to search for a nearby KFC to fill her stomach.
The hospital hadn't called her, which meant the man hadn't woken up yet.
The emergency room was chaotic and crowded, with not a single empty seat. Ruan Qing wasn't in a hurry to return, so she rested in the restaurant for a bit.
Today's events—one distressing, the other bizarre—had taken a toll on her mentally.
Suddenly, her phone rang, startling her back to reality. She picked it up and saw it was almost 11 p.m. An unfamiliar number, a landline.
Nian Qi, who had jumped from the high cliff, suddenly woke up! A masked person was leaning close to his face!
Without a second thought, Nian Qi grabbed a thin stick beside him and pressed it against the other person's throat! If the other person made any suspicious move, he could exert force and instantly pierce their throat, killing them!
"What are you doing! What are you doing!" a woman's voice shouted sharply. "Put it down! Put it down now! Lie down! We're examining you!"
The accent was strange but still somewhat understandable.
The key was… the sheer confidence in the other person's tone.
Immediately afterward, someone blocked his hand and snatched the thin stick from his grip.
The movements were quick, and the strength was considerable—but still only that of an ordinary person. In fact, as soon as they moved, Nian Qi knew they were all ordinary people, posing no threat to him.
So he remained calm and obediently let them take the thin stick from his hand and press him back down to lie still.
Everything was strange.
The house, the light on the ceiling as bright as daylight—
For a moment upon waking, Nian Qi thought it was daytime, but he immediately knew something was off. Even in broad daylight, even with all the partition doors wide open, it wouldn’t be this bright.
The light came from the ceiling, a cold, brilliant white glow that illuminated every corner of the room clearly.
Was it a lamp?
If this were a lamp, just one would be worth a fortune. How could there be several embedded in the ceiling?
Such extravagance!
The clothing, accents, and hair of the people were also strange.
There were two people, a man and a woman. The man wore a white long gown, while the woman wore a pink top and long pants.
This woman actually had her arms completely bare, without any hint of shame.
Though it was quite improper, Nian Qi didn’t make a fuss. He had traveled far and wide, seen much of the world, and had even encountered southern barbarian women who wore short skirts, exposing their calves.
The one who had just scolded him and snatched the thin wooden stick from his hand was this woman.
She casually tossed the stick into a round bucket on the floor and threw another one from the bedside table into it as well. She then called out to someone sitting on the other side of the next bed, "Family members, pay attention. Throw away the trash properly. Don’t leave empty food containers piled up here."
The next bed also had someone lying on it, with another person sitting on a round stool on the other side. After being called out, that person quickly stood up, murmured an acknowledgment, and hurried over to take two flat, strange boxes from the bedside table and throw them into the bucket on the floor.
Though lying down, Nian Qi’s gaze swiftly swept over everything around him.
The man in the white gown leaned down and pressed his head. "Don’t move."
This person’s body was relaxed, not threatening. Nian Qi didn’t move.
The man in white pulled a small object from a pocket on his chest, pressed a button with his finger, and the thing actually emitted light.
Nian Qi was startled again.
What kind of treasure was this? It could glow?
The man in white shone the light into his eyes, then turned it off, released him, straightened up, and asked, "How do you feel? Headache or dizziness? Nausea or vomiting?"
With this question, Nian Qi immediately understood his identity—he was a doctor.
Though the surroundings were shocking, he felt reassured.
In this world, there was only one type of person he had to be completely honest with, and that was a doctor. Lying to a doctor was only harming oneself.
Nian Qi sat up and answered honestly, "I’m fine, no nausea. Just some pain in my body."
But his accent was too different from the doctor’s. After saying it once, the doctor didn’t understand, so he had to slow down and repeat himself before the doctor could make sense of it.
He then asked, "Where are my clothes?"
He was bare-chested, clearly having had his clothes removed while unconscious so the medical staff could treat and bandage his wounds.
The white gauze bandages looked very clean, and the bandaging technique was excellent, clearly indicating a clinic with very skilled medical expertise.
But where exactly was this?
The place where he had jumped off the cliff was in the wild mountains outside Jiangcheng, in the central plains. How could there be a clinic with such strange accents and clothing here? He had never heard of such a place.
The woman in the pink, sleeveless top bent down and pulled out a strange bag of unknown material from under the bed. It was transparent, allowing him to see what was inside.
She handed the bag to him. "Everything’s in here. Check if anything’s missing. When we treated your wounds, we stuffed everything we took off into this bag."
It was already apparent that the woman in pink was likely a maid assisting the white-robed physician.
The room contained over a dozen beds, with several pink-clad maids swiftly moving about and conversing with others, all of them efficient and clearly accustomed to their tasks.
All of this was taken in within a few glances, in the span of a few breaths.
In his line of work, quickly observing the environment and seamlessly blending in were essential survival skills.
Nian Qi said, "Thank you, miss," and took the clothes, pulling them on.
As he dressed, he observed that for some reason, after he uttered the words "Thank you, miss," the white-robed physician and the pink-clad maid both wore subtle, peculiar expressions.
Had he said something wrong?
The physician watched him dress and spoke slowly, explaining the situation: "For now, there are no signs of a concussion, but we’ll need to keep monitoring. If you experience nausea, vomiting, dizziness, or similar symptoms, seek medical attention immediately."
Nian Qi nodded. "Understood."
The physician continued, "Your injuries have been treated. I’ll prescribe an oral anti-inflammatory medication. Once you pay and collect the medicine, you’ll be all set."
Nian Qi had already fastened his belt and retrieved his purse from the strange-textured bag, securing it tightly at his waist.
Upon hearing "pay," he fished out a silver ingot from his purse and handed it over. "Thank you. Keep the change."
The clinic was clean and tidy, and the bandaging was skillfully done. Nian Qi was not short on silver, so the extra could be considered a tip.
However, the expected polite refusal or delighted acceptance of the silver tip did not come. Instead, the white-robed physician and the pink-clad woman stared fixedly at the object in his hand.
Their expressions were utterly bizarre. Could it be they had never seen a silver ingot before? That seemed unlikely. Just the brilliant, daylight-like lights on the ceiling alone must have cost a fortune, so this was certainly no impoverished or remote place.
Perhaps… they thought it was too little?
Considering the several luxurious lighting fixtures overhead and the strange glowing device the white-robed physician had held earlier… Nian Qi took out another silver ingot from his purse and said apologetically, "I’m not sure of your clinic’s fees. Is this enough?"
For treating external injuries, without procedures like bone-setting or cutting flesh, the cost shouldn’t exceed the value of two silver ingots. The ones he produced were five-qian silver ingots, two of which made up one tael—enough to feed a family of five for a month.
Yet the two of them fell even deeper into silence.
The pink-clad woman spoke first, hesitantly asking, "Is this… silver?"
The white-robed physician chuckled dryly. "Are you filming a TikTok video? The props are quite realistic."
Nian Qi had no idea what he was talking about. There were border tribes that didn’t use gold or silver, but they still spoke the Central Plains language. This shouldn’t be the case.
Genuinely puzzled, he said, "Is it not enough? Please state your fee clearly."
Although his accent sounded odd, the confusion in his eyes and the sincerity in his tone were unmistakable.
The white-robed physician and the pink-clad maid exchanged glances.
After a moment of silence, the white-robed physician pulled the glowing device from his pocket again.
"Let me check once more. Could there be a head injury?"