The hospital entrance was packed with people.
An ambulance screeched to a halt.
The doors flew open.
Several doctors rushed out carrying a stretcher, shouting hoarsely.
“Make way! Everyone, make way! Emergency! Hurry!”
The crowd scattered in alarm.
Lin Yan stayed close beside the stretcher, not missing a step.
Just moments ago, on the road,
Panpan’s heart had stopped three times.
Each time the doctors fought to revive her with chest compressions, his breathing seized.
Her tiny body jerked weakly under the electric shocks, then fell back down.
At last, the waveform on the monitor began to pulse again.
Only after Panpan had been wheeled into the emergency room and the red “Resuscitation in Progress” light had come on
did Lin Yan seem to have all his strength drained away. He leaned his back against the cold wall.
Just then, a middle-aged man in a light blue shirt, his expression composed, strode over.
His gaze paused for a moment on the scar across Lin Yan’s face, then he held out his hand.
“Hello. I’m Zhao Yonggang, the dean of this hospital. Is the little girl inside the one you brought here?”
Lin Yan looked at him and nodded, but did not take his hand.
His hand was still stained with Panpan’s blood and the dust and grime from the journey.
Zhao Yonggang didn’t mind and withdrew his hand.
“Young Master Su has already spoken with me. Don’t worry. The hospital’s best emergency team is inside, and we’ll use every resource at our disposal to treat her.”
“Thank you, Dean Zhao. I have only one request: keep her alive.”
Lin Yan’s voice was hoarse.
Feeling the weight in Lin Yan’s gaze, Zhao Yonggang nodded solemnly.
“We’ll do everything in our power.”
The red light above the emergency room door shone glaringly.
The seconds ticked by.
Lin Yan leaned against the wall, motionless as a statue.
After an unknown amount of time,
“Bang!”
The emergency room door was flung open!
A nurse rushed out. Her eyes above her mask were full of urgency, and she spoke rapidly:
“Dean Zhao! The patient’s condition is critical!”
Lin Yan’s body went rigid.
Zhao Yonggang immediately stepped forward.
“What’s going on?”
“Her blood oxygen keeps dropping, and her blood pressure is nearly undetectable!”
The nurse spoke at a frantic pace.
“Severe malnutrition has caused organ failure, and on top of that, she’s hypothermic, infected, and has multiple injuries... The child can’t withstand the intensity of the resuscitation! Her heart is about to stop!”
“Give her plasma! Double the dose of cardiac stimulants!”
Zhao Yonggang strode toward the emergency room, issuing orders without looking back.
“We’re already doing that, but it’s having little effect!”
The nurse’s voice carried a barely perceptible tremor.
“The child’s blood vessels are too thin and fragile, and she has multiple old subcutaneous hemorrhages. It’s difficult to maintain an IV line...”
“And—and the deep whip wound on her back is severely infected. It’s led to a risk of septic shock!”
Whip wound... infection... shock...
Each word struck Lin Yan’s heart like a heavy hammer.
The scene in the pigsty seemed to rise before his eyes again.
The horrific wound on Panpan’s back, its flesh torn open.
It hadn’t happened yesterday.
It had happened much longer ago.
And it had been draining the life from this five-year-old child, again and again.
“Use the best antibiotics! Contact the blood bank and prepare a large supply of fresh plasma! Activate the highest-level pediatric ICU support protocol!”
Zhao Yonggang’s voice was firm and decisive.
He pushed open one half of the emergency room door.
Inside, the monitor’s alarm blared without pause.
The nurse acknowledged him and was about to turn back inside.
She hesitated, then lowered her voice and quickly added to Zhao Yonggang:
“Dean, the child’s will to live... is very weak. Her poor vital signs are one thing, but... she seems to have almost no instinct to survive. That’s very unusual. Usually, children this young...”
She didn’t finish.
But her meaning was clear.
Prolonged abuse and torment might have extinguished a five-year-old child’s most basic desire to stay alive.
Pain had become the norm; darkness, her refuge.
Even her body was instinctively giving up.
Lin Yan squeezed his eyes shut.
“Group Leader... my daughter... she’s only five...”
Wang Li’s faint voice exploded in his mind.
He opened his eyes again and spoke, one word at a time, through the gap in the door as it was about to close:
“Tell her...”
“Tell her that her father’s name is Wang Li.”
“Tell her I’m Lin Yan, her father’s brother.”
“Tell her... her father has been waiting to come home and see her.”
“Keep her alive. That’s an order.”
Those last four words
were not a plea, nor a prayer.
They were an order from a former special operations commander to his subordinates in the face of absolute despair.
Zhao Yonggang gave Lin Yan a deep look, nodded firmly, then slipped into the emergency room.
The door closed again, shutting out the life-threatening alarms.
Silence once more fell over the corridor.
Lin Yan slowly stepped back and leaned against the wall again.
He raised his hand and looked at his callused palm.
It seemed he could still feel Panpan’s warmth there.
He slowly closed his hand into a fist, the joints creaking faintly.
Ring, ring...
His phone rang.
Lin Yan glanced at the screen. It was Su Mufeng.
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the murderous rage surging in his eyes, and answered.
“Brother Yan, how is she? Have you made it to the hospital?”
Su Mufeng’s voice on the other end was anxious.
“Yeah, we’re here. Thanks for this, Mufeng.”
“Hey, no need to thank me!”
Su Mufeng sounded a little more relaxed, then pressed him for details.
“By the way, what exactly happened? You sounded so urgent on the phone...”
Lin Yan was silent for a moment, then briefly told him what had happened to Panpan.
There was silence on the other end.
Then,
Su Mufeng’s furious roar suddenly rose in volume:
“Damn it! Those animals! They’re not even human!”
“Brother Yan, don’t worry! Leave this to me! That damn Wang Family Village—I’ll send people over right now and raze that wretched place to the ground! And that vicious woman, I...”
“Mufeng.”
Lin Yan cut him off.
His gaze rested on the tightly closed emergency room door, his voice icy:
“Do something for me.”
“Name it!”
“Get the woman who abused Panpan under control. Don’t let her escape.”
“Got it! I’ll handle it right away! I guarantee she won’t even get out of the village!”
The call ended.
Lin Yan slowly slipped his phone back into his pocket and leaned against the cold wall once more.
He, Lin Yan, had never been a particularly forgiving man.
In the Azure Wolf, there was one most primitive rule:
A blood debt must be repaid in blood.
That rule had led him to ignore all laws and consequences and personally execute Luo Bin before a gravestone in the rainforest.
Li Shufen, and all those cold-hearted accomplices...
What they owed Panpan and Wang Li, they would repay in full, with interest, one debt at a time.