Chapter Thirteen: Crimson

The baby-faced mark on Xian Hongye’s lower abdomen was glaringly obvious. Against the backdrop of her red dress, that child’s face looked flushed with blood, its features twisted into a grotesque grimace.

“It” was grinning, and that smile filled me with nothing but revulsion.

In an instant, I suddenly realized that the “greedy worm” the old squad leader had talked about all those years ago must have been this very thing! It didn’t just make people gluttonous, it drove them mad, made them slaves to their own desires…

But this wasn’t a worm at all. It was a little demon that made people succumb to their appetites!

Looking at that face, an uncontrollable disgust welled up from the depths of my heart.

“Die, you!” Overwhelmed by loathing, I shouted instinctively, releasing Xian Hongye’s arm with one hand and, without a second thought, clamped the other around her throat.

I was too agitated at that moment—too furious!

I ignored Xian Hongye’s feeble resistance and threw a punch straight at that demonic face on her belly.

A piercing shriek erupted from within her body—so sharp, so inhuman, I was certain it didn’t come from Xian Hongye herself, but from the thing inside her abdomen.

The sound tore through her flesh and echoed directly in my mind, making me shudder violently.

Xian Hongye went limp. I caught her unconscious body in my arms, heart pounding with waves of fear.

It dawned on me abruptly—I’d been too reckless.

My actions had been pure instinct. But in retrospect, I was terrified by what I’d done. What if that lucky punch hadn’t worked? What if I’d hurt Xian Hongye? How would I ever explain myself to Wang Hou, that love-struck fool possessed by a ghost?

Anxious and uncertain, I cradled Xian Hongye in my arms, my mind suddenly blank.

I was utterly at a loss.

But just then, a voice filled with jealousy and indignation sounded from behind me.

“Beast! Let her go! I’ll take it from here!”

There was only one person who could say something like that—Wang Hou.

I turned to see Wang Hou stepping out, a bowl of ginger and mustard water in his hands. Blood was still trickling down his cheek, staining his neck and chest a deep, sticky red.

How could I describe it? It was quite a sight, honestly.

I can only imagine how awkward I must have looked, but there was no point explaining things in detail now.

Later, Wang Hou and I both apologized, and then, as if fleeing the plague, I set Xian Hongye gently on the table, tactfully ceding the “privilege” of administering the remedy to the anxious Wang Hou.

Watching Wang Hou carefully feed Xian Hongye the water, I couldn’t help but marvel—women truly are fearsome creatures, able to turn a tiger of a soldier into a docile housecat. Wang Hou no longer looked like a military man at all, but a model future husband.

Ah, truly, women are like tigers!

While Wang Hou tended to Xian Hongye, I quickly locked up the shop. Then, the two of us sat across from each other, waiting for Xian Hongye to regain consciousness, as I set about cleaning and bandaging Wang Hou’s wounded cheek.

Dabbing his wound with an alcohol pad, I said with a tinge of guilt, “This is my fault—I thought I could treat your girlfriend’s illness by following the old method, but I didn’t expect… Clearly, there are still many things I haven’t considered.”

Wang Hou didn’t take it out on me; he just looked on with worry at the blood-soaked Xian Hongye.

As I thought back over everything that had happened, something felt increasingly off. I kept wondering where I’d gone wrong. Why had the same remedy that worked for Batu, under the squad leader’s guidance, failed so disastrously for Xian Hongye? Was I mistaken from the start, or was there something wrong with the medicine Xian Hongye took?

Suddenly, a flash of insight struck me.

“There’s definitely something wrong with her medicine!” I exclaimed.

At once, I turned my attention to the Tianma and Sanqi medicinal powder Wang Hou had brought back. The powder was a dull gray—if not for its strong medicinal scent, it could be mistaken for common earth.

I dipped my pinky into the powder and tasted it carefully.

A strange sensation spread in my mouth. The color and taste didn’t match what I remembered Batu’s medicine to be. Wang Hou’s powder was darker and had a slightly sweet aftertaste. Could it be…?

A cold chill ran through me.

It suddenly made sense—if we as cooks could adulterate ingredients for profit, why wouldn’t those dealing in far more lucrative medicinal herbs do the same? In today’s world, where everything revolves around money, there would surely be those who mix inferior or even entirely different substances into medicine!

Furious, I cursed, “People these days! Have they no conscience left?!”

Wang Hou, puzzled by my outburst, asked, “What’s wrong?”

Pointing at the herbs on the table, I quickly explained my suspicions.

When Wang Hou realized he might have bought counterfeit medicine—and that it was this fake product that nearly drove the woman he adored to madness—his tiger’s temper flared instantly.

With a loud crack, the corner of the table nearest him splintered under his grip!

He sprang to his feet, ready to storm off and confront the pharmacy owner.

Seeing trouble brewing, I managed to talk him down. “Small setbacks can ruin great plans,” I told him. “Now isn’t the time to worry about this. Besides, we have no evidence, and we don’t know much about medicine. If they deny everything, there’s nothing we can do.”

“And with Xian Hongye so ill, she can’t be left alone. Her life comes first. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it when she wakes up.”

In the end, Wang Hou reluctantly gave up on the idea of violence. He sat fuming at Xian Hongye’s side, clenching his broad hands so tightly his knuckles cracked like firecrackers.

I knew this “washing machine” was itching to “give someone a good scrubbing”…

About half an hour later, Xian Hongye let out a faint gasp and slowly opened her eyes.

“My dear girl!” Wang Hou, watching her revive, was so excited he could barely contain himself. He even grabbed her small hand in both of his.

Then, stuttering with emotion, he found himself unable to say a word.

I’d had enough of this ghost-besotted fool.

“Out of the way!” I pushed Wang Hou aside and, filled with remorse, said to Xian Hongye, “Miss, I’m sorry. I failed to cure your illness… I don’t know if you can still trust me. In any case, whether you want to continue treatment or go to the hospital, we’ll cover all the costs and see it through to the end!”

But Xian Hongye’s response took us both by surprise.

“I trust you. I believe you can cure me!” she said between gasps.

Her answer left both of us genuinely astonished.

To be honest, we’d only just met this young woman. In today’s world, trusting someone is hard enough—trusting a stranger is even harder.

“But… why do you trust us?” I asked, barely able to contain my feelings.

Her reply transformed both our attitudes in an instant—from surprise and confusion to genuine gratitude.

With a faint, pale smile, she said, “Because you two were once soldiers of the people. I believe soldiers don’t lie. My mother was a soldier too… The name of your restaurant, ‘August First Restaurant,’ feels so familiar to me.”

I swear, I didn’t cry at that moment. And if I did, it was only because of dust in my eyes.

I admit, though, that what she said was the warmest thing I’d heard since leaving the army. As for Wang Hou, that lovesick fool, I didn’t even need to look at him to know he’d protect and follow this girl for the rest of his days—because she’d given him the trust that only a comrade-in-arms could.

Our gratitude toward Xian Hongye would drive us to madness in the days to come.

I would never forget that she was a soldier’s daughter, that she trusted us enough to place her life in our hands.

Later, after gathering myself, I suggested we take her to the city’s main hospital for a full medical examination and to buy some genuine medicinal powder. Hospital medicine is expensive, but at least it’s reliable.

Besides, even though she’d already had a routine checkup, perhaps if we were more thorough, we could glean some clues from her results—enough to plan our next step.

Of course, I also had another reason: I was worried that my punch to her abdomen might have caused some harm.

So, with Wang Hou driving, we took Xian Hongye from the county to the city’s largest top-tier hospital, where she underwent the most comprehensive examination I could think of.

But the results from all those modern machines left me bitterly disappointed.

That night, the three of us pored over the thick stack of reports. All our faces showed the same expression—disappointment.

Xian Hongye’s exam results were almost too normal, so normal that it felt abnormal.

Frankly, even though we knew little about medicine, it was clear she had no health problems at all. Not a single “positive” marker on her charts! Even the abdominal ultrasound, in which I had placed the most hope, showed nothing unusual lurking in her belly.

The ghostly face I’d seen earlier on her abdomen had vanished as if it had never existed.

“Damn it!” Wang Hou, frustrated, threw the thick report to the floor. “Doctors these days are useless. They just brag about how advanced Western medicine is, but when it counts, it’s all for nothing!”

Xian Hongye, too, looked crestfallen. She crouched down, dejectedly picking up the reports, page by page. Her movements radiated a kind of bleak loneliness that pained me to see.

I tried to comfort her. “Don’t worry. This time we bought real Tianma and Sanqi. Take them for five or six days and you’ll recover just the same!”

She shook her head slightly and muttered sadly to herself, “I’m so ill, and no one in my family cares… My mother died young, my father’s busy with business, and I don’t have a single friend in this county…”

But halfway through her lament, her eyes suddenly widened in shock.

I saw her staring at one of the test slips in her hand, speechless, her hands trembling.

Moments later, she stood up and handed me that sheet, terror written all over her face.

“What is it?!” I asked at once, squatting down to look at the report in her hand.

Clearly, she had found something unusual in that test result.