“Looking to die?”
The man’s voice sounded as though it had been scraped across sandpaper, still carrying the lingering scent of gunpowder.
A large hand suddenly clamped around Jiang Ning’s ankle.
The grip was frighteningly strong, his fingers hard as iron. It seemed that in the next second, he might crush the bones in her ankle.
The air inside the train compartment froze.
Xiao Zhang was so terrified he nearly dropped to his knees. Whenever the regimental commander had an episode, he became completely unrecognizable, showing no mercy to anyone. It didn’t matter if the person was his newlywed wife—even a division commander would get punched if he crossed him.
Xiao Zhang was just about to rush forward and save her when he saw Jiang Ning move.
She didn’t scream or struggle. She didn’t even lose her balance.
Looking down at Gu Ci from above, Jiang Ning lightly pressed the tip of her other shoe against a point three inches above the inside of his wrist.
It was right along the path of the median nerve.
“Let go.”
Her tone was calm, as though she were speaking to an unruly patient.
“If you squeeze any harder, I’ll cripple this hand of yours. Believe me?”
Gu Ci’s eyelid twitched.
His mind was filled with the deafening roar of battlefield artillery, while the ringing in his ears sounded like a piercing whistle. The woman standing before him was as thin as a little chick, yet there was something about her gaze…
It was too cold.
So cold that even his feverishly agitated mind cleared for a brief moment.
She really knew how to cripple him.
And more importantly, she really dared to do it.
The two stared at each other for three seconds.
To the people watching, those three seconds felt as long as three years.
The bloodshot veins in Gu Ci’s eyes remained frighteningly prominent, but, for some inexplicable reason, the strength of his grip eased slightly.
Jiang Ning seized the opportunity to pull her foot free. As though nothing had happened, she tossed her luggage onto the middle bunk and climbed up with practiced ease.
“Xiao Zhang, open the window and let some air in.”
She lay down on the middle bunk, turning her back on the beast below who could explode into violence at any moment. Her voice was lazy and casual.
“It smells like a corpse in here. Disgusting.”
Xiao Zhang: “…”
He glanced nervously at his commander.
Gu Ci was still sitting in the shadows of the lower bunk, maintaining the posture of someone ready to spring into action. But he didn’t attack. He simply stared fixedly at the faded trouser leg hanging over the edge of the upper bunk, his chest heaving violently.
After a long while, he forced a single word through his clenched teeth.
“Water.”
Xiao Zhang felt as though he had just been granted a new lease on life. He hurriedly poured a glass of water and handed it over.
The train began clattering along the tracks, the rhythmic pounding of the wheels against the rails sounding like a monotonous lullaby.
This was a sleeper carriage, but even sleeper compartments weren’t particularly spacious in those days. People who couldn’t get seated tickets crowded the aisle, sitting on little folding stools. The smell of cigarette smoke, sweaty feet, and the foul stench from chicken cages all mingled together.
Gu Ci drank his water but still didn’t sleep.
He leaned against the headboard, flipping a military dagger between his fingers. Its blade flashed with cold glints beneath the dim lights.
No one dared approach this area. The roar he had let out earlier and the enamel mug he had sent flying had already established a clear no-go zone around him.
Except for one person.
On the lower bunk opposite them sat a woman in her fifties. She was dripping with gold and silver jewelry and looked like a formidable character.
She had been cracking sunflower seeds since boarding the train, spitting the shells all over the floor.
Now that Gu Ci had finally quieted down, her eyes shifted cunningly. She began piling her bags and bundles onto the table beside him.
“Oh, these soldiers certainly have tempers!”
The woman spat out another sunflower seed shell and shot a sidelong glance toward Jiang Ning’s bunk, speaking in a sarcastic, mocking tone.
“A woman is supposed to marry a man and help him run a household, not come home acting like some spoiled princess. That little brat was only so bold because she knew you wouldn’t hit a woman. If my daughter-in-law dared speak to my son like that, I’d have slapped her across the face long ago!”
She had her eyes on the empty space beside Gu Ci.
In those days, who didn’t want to take advantage of every opportunity when traveling? This soldier looked fierce, but as long as she accused him of bullying an ordinary citizen, wouldn’t he have to swallow his anger and put up with her?
Gu Ci ignored her.
His auditory hypersensitivity was severe at the moment. The incessant crack, crack, crack of the sunflower seeds sounded like machine-gun fire to his ears.
But he couldn’t lay a hand on her.
This was a train returning to the city, and he was a soldier.
Seeing that he wasn’t responding, the woman grew even bolder. She stretched one bare foot beneath the table, then reached for the military canteen Gu Ci had placed on it.
“This canteen looks nice. Let me borrow it for a drink, will you?”
Her hand had barely reached it when—
Whoosh!
A flash of silver dropped from the upper bunk.
The woman jerked her hand back and let out a terrified shriek.
A razor-thin blade, barely two inches long, hung less than a centimeter from her fingertips.
A fine string was tied to the blade, with the other end held in Jiang Ning’s hand.
Jiang Ning leaned over the upper bunk, revealing half her head. Her hair was slightly messy, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of a smile on her face.
“That’s my canteen.”
She moved her fingers slightly, and the blade swung through the air as though it were alive. It circled past the woman’s cheek before flying back into Jiang Ning’s hand.
The woman was so frightened that even the folds of fat on her face trembled.
“You… You’re carrying a weapon! I’m reporting you to the train conductor! You’re trying to kill someone!”
“Kill someone?”
Jiang Ning looked as though she had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
She retrieved the blade. It was an old-fashioned razor blade she had found earlier in the pile of miscellaneous junk at the Jiang family home. Although it was rusty, in her hands it was more obedient than a surgical scalpel.
She pulled the half-eaten red-shelled egg from her pocket.
“Watch carefully.”
Holding the blade between two fingers, Jiang Ning gently drew it across the eggshell.
There wasn’t a sound.
The red shell came away in one perfectly neat piece, without even tearing the thin membrane underneath.
Her technique was so precise that it made people’s scalps tingle.
“This is called peeling.”
Jiang Ning stuffed the smooth, peeled egg into her mouth and chewed. Then she casually toyed with the blade, letting her gaze settle on the woman’s wrist.
“There are three tendons here in the wrist. If they’re severed, you won’t even be able to hold chopsticks with this hand anymore. It’ll just curl up like a chicken’s claw. Auntie, would you like to give it a try?”
Her tone was perfectly sincere, almost as though she were discussing an academic subject.
The woman suddenly felt a sharp pain in her wrist, as if the tendons had already been severed.
“Madwoman… You’re all a bunch of lunatics!”
The woman no longer tried to claim the seat or borrow water. She hurriedly gathered her bags and bundles, scrambling away to the other end of the carriage.
Peace was restored.
Jiang Ning lay back down and pulled the blanket over her head.
“Xiao Zhang, if anyone else makes trouble, just throw them out. I’ll take responsibility if anything happens.”
Xiao Zhang: “…”
He glanced at the commander on the lower bunk.
The dagger that Gu Ci had been skillfully twirling between his fingers came to a stop. He raised his head and looked at the mound of blankets on the upper bunk.
Surprisingly, the agitation in his eyes had eased considerably.
This woman…
She was even more like a bandit than he was.
But he didn’t dislike her.
At least she had managed to shut that annoying old woman up.
Night deepened.
The lights in the carriage dimmed, leaving only the rhythmic clatter of the train wheels.
Most passengers had fallen asleep, their snores rising and falling throughout the compartment.
Jiang Ning wasn’t asleep.
She had spent too long in a psychiatric hospital, so her sleep was exceptionally light. Besides, she could sense that the man on the lower bunk hadn’t fallen asleep either.
Gu Ci kept tossing and turning.
The narrow military-style bunk was far too small for him, and every muscle in his body resisted relaxing. He was enduring it, suppressing the urge to destroy everything around him.
An atmosphere of restlessness hung in the air.
Suddenly, the sound of extremely light footsteps came from the aisle.
Jiang Ning’s ears twitched.
It wasn’t the train conductor.
The conductor’s footsteps were heavy and dragging. These footsteps were light, as though the person were deliberately walking on tiptoe.
And there was more than one person.
Three.
No, four.
They were getting closer.
Jiang Ning opened her eyes and peered through a gap in the blanket.
Several dark figures were moving around near the connection between the carriages, their shifty eyes scanning the bunks on either side. They weren’t interested in the luggage. Their attention was focused on the passengers themselves.
Especially women traveling alone with children, as well as young women traveling by themselves.
Human traffickers.
In those days, train robbers and highway bandits were common, and long-distance trains were particularly chaotic.
Jiang Ning hadn’t originally intended to meddle in other people’s business. Her current body wasn’t in the best physical condition, and taking on four people at once would be a little difficult.
Unfortunately, those men had chosen to stop right outside their compartment.
One of them, a burly man with a face full of flesh, glanced at Gu Ci on the lower bunk. He dismissed him with a look of disdain before turning his attention to Jiang Ning on the upper bunk.
Although she had covered her head, the hand exposed outside the blanket was slender and fair. At a glance, she clearly didn’t look like someone accustomed to farm work.
“This one looks good,” the burly man whispered, signaling to his companions. “She looks like a student traveling alone. We can get a good price for her.”
Another man, thin and monkey-faced, hesitated.
“What about the soldier on the lower bunk…?”
“What are you afraid of? Look at him. He’s sleeping like a dead pig. Besides, I saw him having a fit earlier. He’s probably got something wrong with his head. We’ll just move quickly. Put a chloroform-soaked cloth over her face, then carry her out.”
The men pulled handkerchiefs from their pockets. A pungent smell of ether wafted from the fabric.
Jiang Ning tightened her grip on the razor blade.
Just as the burly man’s hand was about to reach for her blanket—
Crack!
The sharp sound of a joint being forced out of place exploded through the silent night.
The man who had supposedly been “sleeping like a dead pig” suddenly sat up.
At some point, he had grabbed the burly man’s outstretched wrist with one hand and twisted it casually.
The man’s arm bent at a grotesque angle, like a twisted strand of dough.
“Ahhh—!”
Before the scream could fully escape his mouth, a hand like an iron clamp closed tightly around his throat.
Gu Ci stood up.
In the darkness, he looked like a black mountain.
His bloodshot eyes showed not the slightest trace of sleepiness. They were filled with a murderous intent so intense it seemed to thicken the air around him.
Those were the eyes of a man who had truly seen blood and taken lives.
“What the hell are you shouting about?”
Gu Ci’s voice was quiet, yet it carried a terrifying, vicious edge.
“I was just about to get some sleep, and you idiots show up looking to die?”
The remaining three accomplices were stunned.
They were no strangers to the criminal underworld. Every one of them had blood on their hands. But compared with the man before them, they were like children armed with wooden sticks facing a butcher carrying a machine gun.
“This guy’s tough! Pull out your weapons!”
The thin man reacted the fastest. He pulled a switchblade from his waistband and lunged at Gu Ci, aiming for his lower back.
Gu Ci didn’t even bother to dodge properly.
He shifted his body slightly, allowing the blade to scrape past his military undershirt. In the next second, he raised his leg and delivered a vicious side kick.
Bang!
The thin man flew backward like a discarded rag doll and crashed heavily into the opposite bunk. He didn’t even manage to scream before passing out.
The entire carriage erupted into chaos.
Screams and cries filled the air.
Gu Ci, however, seemed unable to hear any of it.
Something was wrong with his state of mind.
Jiang Ning watched from the upper bunk and saw everything clearly. Gu Ci’s pupils were contracting violently, and his breathing had become as ragged as a broken bellows.
These were the warning signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) being triggered by violence.
He could no longer distinguish reality from the battlefield.
He was going to kill someone.
He wasn’t simply trying to subdue the traffickers. He genuinely wanted to snap their necks and tear out their internal organs.
The burly man whose throat he was gripping had already turned the color of a purple eggplant. His eyes bulged, and he was on the verge of suffocating to death.
“Commander! Don’t kill him! We’re on a train!”
Xiao Zhang woke with a start and rushed forward in terror, wrapping both arms around Gu Ci’s leg.
“You can’t kill him! You’ll be court-martialed!”
“Get lost!”
Gu Ci flung Xiao Zhang aside with his elbow, but the force of his grip continued to increase.
“They all have to die… So noisy… They all have to die…”
He muttered incoherently, the last fragments of reason crumbling away in his eyes.
The surrounding passengers shrank back in terror. Not a single person dared to intervene.
Just as the burly man’s neck was about to snap—
A hand gently settled on Gu Ci’s shoulder.
“Gu Ci.”
The woman’s voice was neither loud nor forceful. It was cool and clear, like a basin of icy water poured over someone in the dead of winter.
“Let go. He’s filthy. Don’t dirty your hands.”
Jiang Ning had somehow jumped down from the upper bunk.
Unlike Xiao Zhang, she didn’t try to drag Gu Ci away by force. She knew that in his current state, he was a killing machine. Trying to overpower him would only provoke a more violent reaction.
She stood behind Gu Ci and accurately pressed two fingers against the Fengchi acupoint at the back of his neck, massaging it with just the right amount of pressure.
It was an unusual massage technique intended to target the vagus nerve in patients suffering from severe agitation.
Gu Ci’s body suddenly stiffened.
The pain that had felt as though it would make his head explode eased, almost miraculously, under her touch.
The force of his grip weakened.
The burly man slid to the floor like a heap of rotten mud, gasping desperately for air. A dark, wet patch had spread across the front of his trousers.
Gu Ci paid no attention to the man on the floor.
He abruptly turned around and stared at Jiang Ning.
His gaze was still vicious, like a starving wolf ready to leap at her and tear out her throat at any moment.
“Who are you?”
His voice was so hoarse it was almost unrecognizable.
Jiang Ning met his eyes without the slightest hesitation. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket—the one she had casually swiped from one of the traffickers earlier—and disgustedly wiped the hand he had used to choke the man.
“I’m your wife. Who else would I be?”
She tossed the handkerchief onto the burly man’s face and forced a perfunctory smile.
“Also, these traffickers are carrying quite a bit of cash and ration coupons. Since we’re heading to the Northwest and could use some traveling money, what do you think? Should we hand them over to the Public Security Bureau and collect a reward, or should we take advantage of the situation and rob the robbers ourselves?”
Gu Ci: “…”
Xiao Zhang: “…”
Everyone in the carriage: “…”
Was there something wrong with this woman’s head, too?