“Move! If you don’t want them to die, get the hell out of here!”
Su Man’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a bone-chilling coldness that made everyone feel as though they had fallen into an icy abyss.
Inside the temporary tent of the field hospital, the air was filled with a nauseatingly sweet, bloody stench—the smell of the new poison gas mixed with necrotic blood.
Seven or eight strong special forces soldiers were currently strapped to field beds, their entire bodies convulsing violently, their skin an eerie purplish-black.
Their fingernails had dug deeply into their flesh, and animalistic growls escaped their mouths. They were clearly enduring unimaginable pain.
Director Liu, sent over from the military district’s central hospital, was sweating profusely. Even the stethoscope in his hand was trembling.
“This is nonsense! Absolutely insane!”
Director Liu pointed furiously at the several black beetles still writhing in Su Man’s hand, so angry that his mustache nearly stood on end.
“These soldiers are suffering from a neurotoxin! They need immediate serum exchange and ventilator support!”
“And you think a few broken needles and these… these disgusting bugs are going to do anything?”
“Huo Feng! You’re the commander of an entire unit! How can you go along with this woman and lose your mind? If anything happens to these soldiers, can you bear the responsibility?”
Huo Feng stood at the entrance of the tent like a guardian deity, blocking everyone who wanted to rush inside.
He glanced at the men writhing in agony on the beds. They were brothers who had fought alongside him through life and death.
If he didn’t trust Su Man, they would die.
“If anything happens to them, I’ll pay with my life.”
Huo Feng’s voice was hoarse, but every word was as firm as a nail driven into wood.
He turned to Su Man, his eyes filled with nothing but the grim determination of someone making a desperate gamble.
“Do it. As long as you can save them, I’ll sell my blood to scrape together those fifty thousand yuan.”
Su Man scoffed, but her hands never stopped moving.
“Sell your blood? Your blood is too coarse. It’s worthless.”
She walked over to the nearest soldier. He was rolling his eyes back, foam spilling from his mouth.
Su Man raised her hand, and the silver needle between her fingers flashed coldly beneath the dim light.
“Pfft!”
The needle didn’t enter an acupuncture point. Instead, it pierced directly through the soldier’s brow.
Dark red blood immediately gushed out.
“Ahhh! She’s killing him!”
The little nurse beside them screamed in terror and covered her eyes, afraid to look.
Director Liu was even more furious. He nearly threw his surgical knife at her.
“Stop! That’s a fatal point! You’ll kill him!”
Su Man didn’t even blink. With a flick of her wrist, she drove another needle directly into the soldier’s chest.
Then she did something that made everyone’s scalp crawl.
She opened the blackened jar, used a pair of tweezers to pick up a bizarre beetle with two pairs of wings and a completely crimson body—
and shoved it directly into the bleeding wound on the soldier’s forehead!
“Ugh—!”
The soldier’s back suddenly arched straight, and a horrific scream that sounded nothing like a human cry tore from his throat.
The beetle actually followed the wound and forcibly burrowed into his skull!
“She’s insane! This is murder!”
Director Liu could no longer restrain himself. He shoved past the guards and tried to charge forward.
“Huo Feng! Look! This is the ‘miracle doctor’ you brought in? She’s putting Gu into a living person!”
Huo Feng’s hands clenched tightly into fists, his knuckles turning white, but he didn’t take a single step back.
He was gambling.
Gambling that the woman who had saved his life five years ago would never treat a human life as a joke.
“Shut up! Watch!”
Su Man shouted coldly as both her hands moved like butterflies darting through flowers.
She struck the soldier thirteen times in rapid succession, each palm carrying a strange gust of force.
“Ghost Doctor’s Thirteen Needles—Draw!”
With her low command, the soldier, who had been convulsing violently, suddenly went completely rigid.
The next second—
“Blegh—!”
The soldier abruptly turned his head and spat out a huge mouthful of black, glistening blood.
Amid the foul-smelling pool of blood, a beetle that had turned completely black struggled its way out. Its belly seemed swollen with some unknown toxin.
The instant the blood was expelled—
the soldier’s formerly purplish-black face began visibly returning to its normal pallor. There was still no color in his face, but that sinister purple hue had disappeared.
His breathing also changed from the rapid, wheezing sound of bellows to a faint but steady rhythm.
The tent fell deathly silent.
Director Liu’s mouth hung open. His glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose, yet he had completely forgotten to push them back up.
How… how was this possible?
That was a new type of neurotoxin that even the most advanced blood-purification machines had difficulty removing!
And it had actually been drawn out by a bug?
“Next.”
Su Man casually wiped the fine sweat from her forehead, her voice still lazy, as if she had merely swatted a mosquito.
“What are you standing around for? Get a basin and catch the blood.”
“If it gets on my shoes, you’re paying extra.”
Only then did the little nurse snap out of her daze. She hurriedly brought over a basin, and the look she gave Su Man had completely changed from fear to admiration.
How could this be some village girl?
She was practically a deity descended to earth!
The next half hour was, for Director Liu, nothing short of a complete collapse and reconstruction of his worldview.
He watched helplessly as the woman dressed in Miao attire used those terrifying insects and silver needles to drag one soldier after another—men who had already been sentenced to death—back from the gates of hell.
When the last soldier finally spat out the poisonous blood and fell into a deep sleep, Su Man let out a long breath and swayed slightly.
The intense acupuncture and Gu manipulation had taken a tremendous toll on her as well.
A strong arm firmly caught her around the waist.
Huo Feng had somehow appeared behind her. Those hands, accustomed to holding a gun, were unusually gentle at that moment.
“Are you all right?”
Using his strength, Su Man steadied herself. She pushed him away disdainfully, but he didn’t budge.
“I’m fine. I’m just hungry.”
“Remember, fifty thousand yuan. If you’re short even one yuan, I’ll sell your son to cover the debt.”
Looking at her tired yet still strikingly beautiful face, the corners of Huo Feng’s lips curved into the faintest smile.
“Fine.”
“If the entire unit can’t scrape together enough, I’ll sell myself to you.”
At that moment, Director Liu finally came back to his senses.
He staggered over to Su Man, his expression an incredibly complicated mixture of emotions.
There was shame, shock, and above all, the fervor of someone who had just discovered an entirely new continent of medical science.
“Comrade Su… what kind of medical technique is this? What’s the principle behind that insect? Could you perhaps—”
Su Man put her silver needles back into the bamboo basket and sealed the jar filled with poisonous blood. She glanced at him indifferently.
“No comment.”
“This is a secret passed down in Miaojiang. You want to learn?”
“Take off that white coat of yours and go to the Hundred Thousand Mountains to feed poisonous snakes for three years. If you survive, I’ll consider whether to accept you as my disciple.”
With that, she ignored Director Liu’s face, which had turned from red to white and back again. Barefoot, she stepped over the mess covering the ground and strode out of the tent.
The sunlight outside was warm and bright.
Two little heads were peeking cautiously inside.
Huo Xiaoman was sitting astride the wild boar’s back, chewing on an apple she had somehow gotten her hands on. She shouted indistinctly through the mouthful:
“Mom! Are you done? Dahua says it can smell the dining hall serving food!”
Huo Xiaoxie, meanwhile, was still coolly coiling the golden krait around his hands. But the moment he saw Su Man emerge, he quietly loosened his tightly clenched fist, releasing the handful of poisonous powder he had been holding.
Su Man looked at the two children, the giant wild boar, and herself, then stretched lazily. The silver bells on her body chimed with a crisp, pleasant sound.
“Done.”
“Come on. Let’s go eat Huo dry.”
Huo Feng followed behind them, watching the backs of his family.
The morning sunlight spilled over them, gilding the strange little group with a golden glow.
For some reason, he suddenly felt that this chaotic life might actually have something to look forward to.
What he didn’t know was—
this was only the beginning of the chaos.