Volume 1: Rise
Injured
Um… I need to undo your bra…
After hearing that Wang Youshi’s surgery was successfully completed, Yu Gui couldn’t help but jump up on the spot and high-five Hao Renjie in celebration.
“Great, Teacher Lu is amazing! Teacher Lu…” She excitedly pushed open the door to the duty room, only to find it empty. The narrow little room’s single bunk bed was bare, with only the small TV still on.
“Now interrupting with a city news flash: according to the police, the home invasion robber and murderer Wu Moumou, who previously committed multiple crimes while fleeing across Gansu, Ningxia, Anhui, and other places, has recently escaped into our city. We remind the general public to lock doors and windows and be extra cautious. If you find any clues, please contact the police promptly.”
“Huh? No one here?” Yu Gui searched around the small room, which really had no place to hide anyone, so she silently closed the door again.
Although Wang Youshi’s surgery was successfully completed, postoperative complications and infection prevention still needed to be guarded against, so he was transferred to the ICU (intensive care unit).
Her wife heard that it was Lu Qingshi who completed the surgery with the dean and came specifically to thank her. Of course, there were also media personnel who heard the news and swarmed in for interviews, with the medical director maintaining order.
“This was a high-difficulty combined surgery of thoracoscopic aortic dissection aneurysm artificial vessel replacement and open hilar cholangiocarcinoma resection. Everyone, please stay calm, stay calm. A press conference and partial surgery video release will follow shortly.”
The person who should have been standing under the spotlight was currently in the archery hall, exercising her body. A young woman was standing on the track next to her.
“What a coincidence, Dr. Lu.”
Lu Qingshi finished her warm-up and straightened up. “It is quite a coincidence, Captain Gu.”
Outside the fire station, being publicly called by the title, Gu Yanzhi was momentarily taken aback and scratched her head. “Actually… I’m not the captain…”
Lu Qingshi raised her hand and shot an arrow right into the bullseye. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Eh?” Her puzzled eyes looked over.
Lu Qingshi’s gaze fell on her compound bow. “Wanna compete?”
“Sure,” Gu Yanzhi’s lips curled into a slight smile, and she, too, raised her hand and shot an arrow right into the bullseye.
“Fifty arrows, compare speed and score, how about it?” In terms of physical strength, Lu Qingshi was absolutely not her match, but for some reason, she didn’t want to see her lose. Just like that day at the emergency scene, although she saw her leaning against the ambulance and feeling so upset, she just wouldn’t cry out. Often, beneath a hard shell lies a softer heart.
Lu Qingshi’s gaze instantly cooled down as she raised her hand and fiercely shot an arrow deep into the target paper. “No need for you to go easy on me; I want to win fair and square.”
Gu Yanzhi smirked. “Even in speed and score, you might lose~”
Lu Qingshi said nothing more, swiftly drawing the bow and nocking the arrows, her speed almost dazzling.
With the last ten arrows, the target paper in front was almost full of holes. As Lu Qingshi focused intently on aiming, her opponent suddenly stopped. In a moment of distraction, her aim shifted an inch, hitting the nine-ring.
Gu Yanzhi used her teeth to pull off her glove and fished her phone out of her pocket. “Hello? Okay, I got it.”
“There’s a sudden task; let’s schedule it for next time,” Lu Qingshi also stopped, and Gu Yanzhi waved at her with the phone in hand.
“So, goodbye, Dr. Lu.”
Lu Qingshi nodded in acknowledgment. “Goodbye.”
Although the two are neighbors, both have irregular routines, leaving early and returning late. Who knows when they will meet again? She took this as a mere polite farewell, not knowing that their next encounter would come so soon.
Lu Qingshi raised her hand for another shot, hitting the bullseye.
Just as the convenience store at the community entrance was about to close, Lu Qingshi came out with a bag full of fruits, vegetables, and instant food products, serving as her food reserve for tomorrow. She had a jacket draped over one arm, while the other hand fished the access card out of her pocket.
The security guard, seeing that she was encumbered, quickly helped open the door. “Back so late again, Dr. Lu?”
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“Yeah,” Lu Qingshi casually replied, “Thanks; you guys must be finishing up soon, too.”
As she spoke, someone quickly squeezed past her—a man wearing a black hoodie with the hood up.
Lu Qingshi was afraid the door would close again, so she quickly stepped forward to catch up.
Reaching the familiar hallway, she found it was pitch black. She stomped her foot, but the sound-activated light didn’t turn on. Shaking her head, she figured it was broken again and decided to call the property management to fix it tomorrow.
Using the faint light from her phone, she groped her way upstairs. As she searched her pocket for the keys and just inserted the key into the lock, a cold, sharp object pressed against her waist.
She swallowed, wanting to turn around, but the other person, in a lowered voice, grabbed her neck. “Don’t move; open the door.”
Lu Qingshi obediently opened the door and was then tossed onto the sofa. The man wore a black mask and hat, a dusty black hoodie, and jeans. She suddenly widened her eyes, feeling inexplicably that he looked familiar.
“What are you looking at? Look again, and I’ll gouge out your eyes!” The man held the knife up to her face, then taped her mouth shut and followed with her limbs.
His technique was clean, swift, and skillful—truly the work of a hardened criminal.
Lu Qingshi looked at the boning knife in his hand, knowing that just a three-inch stab into her body would cause unstoppable bleeding. Breathing slightly heavily, she pondered ways to escape.
Fortunately, the man only used the knife to intimidate her. Seeing that she lacked the strength to resist, he began to rummage through the house.
From the coffee table to the bedside cabinet and then to the wardrobe, he turned everything upside down. While searching, he glared at her viciously. “This little lady has quite the assets, huh? Fifty thousand in cash, an Apple computer, two iPads, and a Samsung phone. Not bad; today’s haul isn’t a loss.”
He kept talking as he quickly packed the stolen items into his backpack.
“Ugh!” Lu Qingshi became agitated, as the iPad stored many valuable medical cases and imaging data.
“You better not f*cking move!” Seeing her struggle, the man came over and slapped her hard.
Lu Qingshi’s head was knocked to the side, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth and a large bruise forming on her face. She was instantly a bit disheveled, yet her eyes remained clear, bright, and calm.
She mumbled to indicate she had something to say. The man, shaken by her gaze, tore the tape from her mouth. “Speak quickly if you have something to say; I’ll make sure you die swiftly today!”
“In the bank card, there’s still money; you can take as much as you want, just leave the iPad for me…” she gasped, her chest rising and falling.
“There are many cases and data in there; it’s of no use to you and won’t fetch much money!”
The man slapped her face with the knife, his eyes dull and bloodshot, showing an eerie pale pink up close. He grabbed her collar and roared, “Doctor, I hate you doctors the most! It’s you doctors who made me end up like this!”
Due to his violent movements, the hoodie fell from his head, revealing a head full of white hair. Paired with his relatively young face, extremely pale skin, and the faintly visible capillaries beneath, he appeared particularly ghastly in the dark, like a demon from hell come to claim a life.
Lu Qingshi shivered, yet her damned professional instinct immediately diagnosed the condition: albinism.
She attempted to persuade him: “This illness isn’t hard to treat; our hospital can…” (LP: This isn’t true, by the way…)
“Shut up!” the man yelled hysterically, grabbing her hair and shaking her back and forth, pressing the knife against her neck. “I’ll kill you!”
“Wait! I have five hundred thousand in my bank card! It’s all yours! Don’t kill me… don’t kill me…” The instinct to survive made her tightly close her eyes, breathing heavily, her hands behind her back slick with cold sweat, almost unable to hold onto her phone.
“Woof! Woof!” echoed dog barks in the hallway as Gu Yanzhi crouched down and clamped her dog’s mouth shut.
“I told you not to bark, not to bark! In a moment, the doctor next door will come out and scold us again!” she muttered softly, taking keys out of her pocket to open the door.
The large-bodied shepherd dog was behaving obediently like a big cat in front of her, licking the back of her hand before starting to bark wildly again.
“Oh my ancestor! I’m begging you! Stop barking!” Meanwhile, it seemed something was stuck in the lock again, making it impossible to open for a long time and causing Gu Yanzhi to jump around anxiously.
The tip of the knife stopped just one centimeter away from her carotid artery. Lu Qingshi dared not move as the man gripped her neck, signaling her to remain silent.
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The barking continued, and Gu Yanzhi finally managed to open the door, quickly pushing her pet inside. She immediately locked the door behind her, but Hamburger kept barking at the door.
Gu Yanzhi threw the keys on the table and rubbed her dog’s face. “Hey, what’s up with you today? What’s the deal? Have you taken a liking to the doctor lady next door?”
Hamburger barked twice.
Gu Yanzhi laughed. “You’re dreaming; no way.”
As she was about to change her shoes and head to the bedroom, Hamburger suddenly bit her pant leg. It was then that she felt something was amiss and pointed outside the door.
“Doctor sister?”
Hamburger barked twice.
Gu Yanzhi pondered, hesitated for a moment, then opened the door and walked to Lu Qingshi’s doorstep, pressing her ear against the door to listen. Hearing no movement, she thought for a moment, cleared her throat, and gently knocked twice.
“Dr. Lu, are you there? I want to borrow a stethoscope; my dog seems to be sick.”
The man pressed the knife tip against her neck. “Answer her; tell her to come tomorrow.”
Lu Qingshi swallowed. “I don’t have one here; I’ll bring it from the hospital for you tomorrow.”
Gu Yanzhi withdrew her hand. “Okay, I understand; thank you.”
The moment she lowered her hand, her expression turned stern. She felt the thickness of the security door but chose to return to her own home.
Hamburger ran restlessly around the living room. Gu Yanzhi calmed him down, took a baton from the bedroom, and then opened the balcony door.
The biting night wind howled in. She took a deep breath and stood on the narrow windowsill. Below was a solid concrete road—one misstep would mean becoming a mass of flesh. The window of Lu Qingshi’s bathroom was about two meters away from her balcony.
God bless the good habit of Dr. Lu ventilating after a bath.
Gu Yanzhi estimated the distance, spat into her palms, then pushed off with her heels, leapt forcefully, stretched her long arms to grab onto the metal clothes hanger on the balcony, and, using the momentum from swinging, rolled into Lu Qingshi’s bathroom in a standard window-breaking posture she had learned during special forces training.
Her movements were as light as possible, yet still made a moderate muffled sound.
The man heard the noise from the bathroom, and his pupils contracted sharply. He put down the backpack he was stuffing with money, grabbed the boning knife, and charged toward Lu Qingshi.
“Ugh!” As the knife tip was just half an inch from her chest, she fell into a warm embrace. In the critical moment, Gu Yanzhi only had time to hold her and roll, using the momentum to overturn the sofa, blocking the fatal blow.
Her soft hair brushed against her face. Lu Qingshi, still in shock, looked at her, with her reflection mirrored in her pupils.
“Are you alright, Dr. Lu?”
Only when the deep, magnetic voice reached her ears did she come back to her senses and shake her head.
Gu Yanzhi removed the tape covering her mouth and helped her up. “You rest for a bit.”
“Be careful!” She had sent out that vague signal for help with a try-it-and-see mentality, not expecting her to really understand it, and even less so expecting her to come alone to rescue her.
Gu Yanzhi stretched her muscles and showed the baton. “Don’t worry; if this trash comes one by one, I’ll handle them one by one; if they come in pairs, I’ll take care of both!”
Two against one, and the opponent was a woman, yet for some reason, the albino man hesitated. Perhaps it was her eyes in the dark, like those of a hawk, eager and filled with bloodthirsty excitement. Those who often live on the tip of the knife felt their skin crawl almost instantly, as their brain neurons transmitted signals of danger.
Gu Yanzhi actively lunged forward, moving swiftly like a leopard. The man’s flashy moves might work against an average woman without strength, but they were nothing in front of her. She punched him in the face, causing blood to spray from his nose. Her actions were ruthless; she immediately followed with a baton strike to his head, and the man fell to the ground like a heap of mud, twitching. Gu Yanzhi leaped down and delivered a sharp elbow strike to his soft waist, making him howl in pain.
Gu Yanzhi’s expression was cold; with the warm smile usually on her face gone, she resembled a drawn sword.
Fighting, subduing the enemy, taking lives—this was something ingrained in her. She slowly placed her hand on the back of his neck; with just a slight exertion, this fugitive’s life would end in her hands.
“No!” Lu Qingshi sensed something was off in her expression and shouted. As expected, Gu Yanzhi immediately released her grip and quietly breathed a sigh of relief, then found some tape to bind the man securely.
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“Are you alright?” She set down the baton and came over to help her, carefully cutting the tape that bound her limbs with the boning knife.
Lu Qingshi shook her head and stood up from the sofa but suddenly caught a familiar metallic scent of blood at the tip of her nose. She quickly turned on the floor lamp and discovered a deep wound visible to the bone on Gu Yanzhi’s right shoulder, extending to her back, with blood continuously flowing and nearly soaking through the entire white T-shirt.
Lu Qingshi was shocked and hurriedly grabbed a towel to press against the wound. “Hold it, don’t move!”
Gu Yanzhi casually glanced at the wound on her shoulder and even dabbed her finger in the blood to taste it. “It’s nothing; I probably got scratched when I lunged just now.”
Lu Qingshi ran into the bedroom to fetch the first aid kit and squatted down to clean the wound. “With such a big cut, you didn’t feel anything at all?”
There was an unexpected hint of reproachful concern in her words, but the one being scolded didn’t seem to mind, curving her lips slightly. “It’s alright; just venous blood, not life-threatening. Before…”
Lu Qingshi used tweezers to gently apply iodine-soaked gauze to disinfect her. “I don’t care how you used to be; now you have to go to the hospital with me.”
Gu Yanzhi turned her head to glance back, catching only half of her pretty brows and eyes. Her eyebrows were neatly groomed, and her pupils reflected a glass-like color under the dim light. There were some fine lines at the corners of her eyes, but they undoubtedly added to her mature woman’s charm.
Her hands wore transparent gloves, with distinct joints, no nails, and no nail polish, appearing clean and fresh. She lightly placed them on Gu Yanzhi’s shoulder with a comforting touch.
For some reason, Gu Yanzhi quietly held her breath, not daring to breathe heavily, fearing she might disturb the tranquility.
Until Lu Qingshi lifted her head from the wound on her back. “Um… I need to undo your bra…”