It was almost dark by the time Song Wenxin arrived at her grandmother’s house in the country, and there was no sign of life in the sleepy little village.

Just as she was about to enter the house, she heard a rustling sound from amongst the tall grass in the yard…

 2Since there had been no one around to look after the house and yard, the garden had been overgrown with tall grass and unkempt bushes.

 1She stopped in her tracks, thinking that it was a snake…

 A hacking cough drifted from amongst the tall grass.

 Curious, she ventured, “Who is it?”

 To which there was no response, except for the faint sounds of someone gasping for breath.

 Working up her courage, Song Wenxin cautiously approached the spot from where the sound had emanated and saw a person lying on the ground.

 Shocked out of her wits, she pulled out her phone and shone the flashlight into the grassy patch for a better view of the person.

 She saw a man sporting a crew cut, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, lying on the ground.

 However, the white shirt was now spattered with blood…

 And the air was filled with a faint stench of blood.

 Gingerly, she reached out to touch the man’s body and was reassured to find that it was still warm.

 2The man was sweating profusely, his short hair drenched in perspiration.

 His face was covered with bloodstains, making his features indiscernible to Song Wenxin, who did not dare take a closer look anyway.

 All she could work out from his physique was that he appeared t be a young man in his twenties.

 Song Wenxin could tell that the man had been severely wounded and that it would take an ambulance a long time to reach them, so she decided to drag the man into the house for the time being.

 1Having decided, she reached out to grab the man’s elbows and proceeded to drag him into the house…

 Song Wenxin’s family business was in traditional Chinese medicine, and her grandmother had been a medical practitioner in the village.

 Her grandmother’s modest, tiled house was filled with treasures in the likes of traditional herbs used in Chinese medicine, and a vast assortment of western medicine as well.

 The man looked to be at least 1.8 meters tall and proved to be an exceptionally heavy load for Song Wenxin, who used all her strength and then some to drag him into the house. Settling him in a corner of the house, she began to inspect his wounds.

 It appeared that he had been shot in the chest, which explained the large amount of blood.

 However, since she was not a doctor, she could not remove the bullet for him.

 All she could do for him was to stop the bleeding for now!

 She rummaged through her grandmother’s treasures before locating some medicine, which she recognized as suitable to stop bleeding. She decided to apply the medicine to his wound, hoping to stop the extensive bleeding.

 6The man flinched–probably from the pain caused by the medicine being applied to his wound–and made a feeble attempt to open his eyes–a pair of intense, dark eyes.

 “Don’t touch me,” he ordered, suddenly awake and reaching out to push Song Wenxin away.

 Song Wenxin was petrified…

 “I’ve just applied some medicine to your wound, so that should help stem the bleeding. I’m going to call emergency services to get you to the hospital,” she uttered as she reached for her phone, not daring to look him in the eye.

 In that instant, the man grabbed her phone and stopped her from making the call.

 “Are you one of Jiang Hai’s people?” he demanded to know, as though he suspected her to be one of the bad guys.

 “What?” Song Wenxin assumed that he was hallucinating due to his wounds. She did not know any Jiang Hai or Jiang He.

 “This medicine will help stop the bleeding. You just keep applying it while I look for something that you could swallow,” Song Wenxin instructed, leaving the medicine on the ground beside him. She then searched through her grandmother’s cabinets for other medicine.