The jeep bounced violently along the uneven dirt road, its headlights tearing through the pitch-black night.
Gu Ci had the accelerator pressed to the floor. The harsh lines of his profile were illuminated by the faint glow of the dashboard, his face as rigid as iron.
“The Construction Company is responsible for laying military defense communication cables. It’s all heavy physical labor. The mess hall served braised pork with glass noodles tonight as an extra meal.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, Gu Ci spoke rapidly. “Less than half an hour after eating, the men started collapsing one after another. They’re vomiting, feeling dizzy, and their lips are turning purple. More than a hundred men are down already.”
Sitting in the passenger seat, Jiang Ning gripped the handrail with one hand to steady herself. With the other, she rhythmically tapped her fingers against her knee.
“Purple lips, oxygen deprivation. Symptoms appeared within half an hour.”
She analyzed the situation calmly. “It’s a mass poisoning incident with rapid onset. Bacterial food poisoning is unlikely; it usually doesn’t act that quickly. It’s either poisonous mushrooms or nitrites.”
“Nitrites?” Gu Ci glanced at her.
“Industrial salt,” Jiang Ning explained. “It looks almost identical to ordinary table salt. They’re easily confused in construction site kitchens. If that’s what this is, the fatality rate is high.”
The jeep screeched to a sudden halt in a brightly lit open area.
Before they had even stepped out, a strong, sour stench assaulted their noses.
The courtyard of the Construction Company, which should have been bustling with activity, had turned into something resembling hell on earth.
Soldiers in training uniforms lay scattered across the open space outside the mess hall. Their agonized cries mingled with the sounds of vomiting, filling the night with chaos.
Several military doctors and medical orderlies in white coats were rushing around the crowd like headless chickens.
“Get the stretchers! Quickly! Move them somewhere with better ventilation!”
“You there! Stop vomiting! Drink water! Drink plenty of water!”
Chaos.
Complete and utter chaos.
Gu Ci jumped out of the jeep and strode into the crowd.
“How bad is the situation?” he demanded, grabbing an elderly military doctor who was drenched in sweat.
It was Captain Liu, the head of the medical team. His cap was practically falling off from all the frantic activity. When he saw Gu Ci, he looked as though he had just spotted his savior.
“Commander Gu! We’re in trouble! There are too many patients! We don’t have enough medication! And… and we still haven’t identified the poison! The antiemetic injections aren’t working!”
“You’re treating them blindly without even identifying the poison?”
Gu Ci shoved him away, his face turning livid.
“What the hell are you people doing?”
“We suspect the pork was spoiled, causing acute gastroenteritis…” Captain Liu stammered. “Or perhaps someone deliberately poisoned the food…”
“It’s not gastroenteritis.”
A cool, clear voice interrupted him.
Jiang Ning walked over and crouched beside a soldier whose condition was particularly severe. He was already barely conscious, his entire face an unnatural bluish-purple. Even his fingernails had turned a dark purple-black.
She lifted his eyelids to examine his pupils, then pressed her fingers against his carotid artery.
“Rapid breathing, accelerated heart rate, and bluish-purple discoloration of the skin and mucous membranes.”
Jiang Ning stood up and glanced at a bucket of food waste that had not yet been emptied.
“This is a classic case of nitrite poisoning. They used industrial salt instead of table salt.”
“Who are you?”
Only then did Captain Liu notice the young woman standing behind Gu Ci. She wasn’t wearing a military uniform, and her youthful face made her look barely out of her teens.
“This is an emergency treatment site! Unauthorized personnel are not allowed to interfere!”
“She’s Jiang Ning,” Gu Ci said, his voice frighteningly deep. “If she says that’s what it is, then that’s what it is.”
“Jiang Ning?”
Captain Liu froze for a moment before remembering the young bride who had become the talk of the military compound—the one people called a “witch doctor.”
“Commander Gu! This is a matter of life and death!” Captain Liu protested anxiously. “How can you let some country girl give orders? Nitrite poisoning? That requires methylene blue injections! Our entire medical team has only two boxes. How are we supposed to treat hundreds of people with that? And if the diagnosis is wrong, who will take responsibility?”
Just then, a shrill female voice rang out nearby.
“Exactly! What does she know about medicine? She just got lucky when she treated a dog!”
Shen Xue had appeared from who knew where. Although she had been suspended from her duties, she had heard about the emergency and thought it was a perfect opportunity to redeem herself. So she had shamelessly followed everyone here.
At that moment, she was holding a stethoscope and staring at Jiang Ning with disdain.
“Captain, I think this is a bacterial infection! They need antibiotics! Just because she says it’s industrial salt doesn’t make it so! Where’s her evidence?”
Jiang Ning didn’t even spare Shen Xue a glance.
She headed straight for the kitchen’s food preparation area.
“Hey! What are you doing? That area is restricted!” Shen Xue tried to stop her.
“Get out of my way.”
Jiang Ning didn’t slow down. She rammed her shoulder into Shen Xue, knocking her off balance.
She entered the kitchen and swept her gaze across the condiment station before settling on an open sack in the corner.
Inside were white crystals, their grains slightly larger than those of ordinary table salt.
Jiang Ning dipped a little onto her fingertip and tasted it.
Slightly salty, with a bitter aftertaste and a faint numbing sensation on the tip of her tongue.
“Ptooey!”
She spat it out, picked up the sack, turned around, and walked straight back outside. Then she threw it at Captain Liu and Shen Xue’s feet.
“Open your eyes and take a good look.”
Jiang Ning dusted off her hands.
“This is sodium nitrite. It’s used in antifreeze formulations. Just three grams can kill someone. I suspect the cook in your mess hall mistook this stuff for table salt and dumped half a sack into the food!”
Captain Liu’s face changed dramatically.
He crouched down, touched a little of the substance, and tasted it.
In an instant, his entire body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground.
“It… it really is…”
It was over.
This was a major accident caused by gross negligence. And because they had misdiagnosed the poisoning and delayed the critical treatment window, if even a few soldiers died, he could end up in prison.
“We don’t have enough methylene blue! What are we going to do? What do we do now?” Captain Liu muttered in panic, drenched in cold sweat.
Shen Xue was dumbfounded as well. She shrank back, not daring to say another word.
The entire scene fell silent, save for the soldiers’ increasingly agonized groans.
“Gu Ci.”
Jiang Ning turned to look at the man who had been standing silently nearby.
Gu Ci was staring at her.
Amid all the chaos and despair, the woman’s gaze remained frighteningly calm, like an immovable pillar holding back the storm.
“Speak,” Gu Ci said.
“If we don’t have enough methylene blue, we’ll have to use a traditional method.”
Jiang Ning rolled up her sleeves, revealing two slender, pale forearms.
“Gastric lavage. If we don’t have enough antidote, we need to get the poison out of their stomachs. As long as it hasn’t been absorbed into their bloodstream, they still have a chance of surviving.”
“Hundreds of people… How are we supposed to perform gastric lavage on all of them?” Captain Liu stammered. “We don’t even have enough stomach tubes…”
“Who said we needed tubes?”
Jiang Ning let out a cold laugh and swept her gaze across the crowd.
“Do we have soap? Wood ash? Raw eggs?”
“Yes! We have all of those!” the quartermaster immediately volunteered.
“Good.”
Jiang Ning walked to the center of the grounds and climbed onto the raised platform where meals were usually served.
She was not tall, but as she stood there, she exuded an inexplicable authority, as though she were a commander leading thousands of troops.
“Everyone, listen up!”
Her clear voice cut through the noisy night.
“I’m a doctor. If you want to live, follow my instructions! Commander Gu, I’m borrowing your men.”
The corners of Gu Ci’s mouth lifted into the faintest smile.
He drew the pistol from his waist and racked the slide with a sharp click.
“Security Platoon!”
Gu Ci roared.
“Fall in! From this moment on, Dr. Jiang is in charge here. Anyone who dares to disobey her orders, I’ll shoot him dead!”