After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

The large characters written with a brush on the bulletin board, so powerful they seemed to penetrate the paper, were like a red-hot branding iron, burning fiercely onto Ye Zhen's retina.

Seriously wounded officer... highly skilled doctor... surgical instruments...

Every word pointed precisely to her.

She instinctively clutched the sixty-five yuan she was carrying in her arms; the warm banknotes now felt like a death warrant.

A generous reward?

Ye Zhen sneered inwardly. She didn't believe in "generous rewards" in this era. She was more likely to be tricked first, then framed for "speculation" or even "theft of military officers' property," before being "generously rewarded" with a bullet.

No, we have to leave quickly.

She turned around almost immediately, pulled down the brim of her straw hat, and quickly merged into the crowd, her pace more than twice as fast as when she came. She didn't even glance at the tempting aroma of meat and flour wafting from the supply and marketing cooperative.

No, we still have to buy it.

My brother's health can't wait, and neither can the rice in the family's jar. The more dangerous the situation, the more important it is to ensure basic calorie intake.

Ye Zhen's mind raced. She turned and, instead of heading to the crowded state-run supply and marketing cooperative, slipped into a side alley. There she found a black market vendor secretly selling goods.

The price is 30% higher, and they don't even require a ticket.

"Two pounds of pork belly, five pounds of flour, and take me through the back door, quick." Ye Zhen said succinctly, slapping the money down the hook.

The vendor's eyes lit up when he saw the money. He quickly stuffed the goods into a tattered sack and pointed in a direction: "Go out this way, there's no one there."

Ye Zhen carried a heavy bamboo basket on her back and an inconspicuous burlap sack in her hand, almost running as she left the county town. She only stopped for a sip of water halfway through the more than twenty miles of mountain road, not daring to stop for a moment.

Only when she saw the familiar outline of Heishan Village did her tense nerves relax slightly.

As she pushed open her creaking wooden door, the setting sun cast a golden hue over the western hills, bathing the dilapidated courtyard in a soft, yellowish glow.

Li Cuifang and Ye Guoliang were sitting in the courtyard, one shredding corn and the other weaving straw rope. The worry on their faces was heavier than the sunset.

"Zhenzhen, you're back!" Li Cuifang looked up and saw her, quickly standing up with a worried expression. "How did you go? Did anything happen in the mountains?"

Ye Zhen shook her head and didn't say anything. She put down the bamboo basket on her back and placed the burlap sack in her hand on the ground with a dull thud.

"This is..." Ye Guoliang stopped what he was doing.

Ye Zhen didn't respond, but simply bent down and untied the sack.

A bag of snow-white, dazzlingly fine flour appeared before them without warning. Then, she took out a piece of pork belly wrapped in oiled paper, weighing about two pounds, with alternating layers of fat and lean meat.

With a "bang," the corncob in Li Cuifang's hand fell to the ground.

She stared intently at the piece of pork, her eyes unblinking, her lips trembling, unable to utter a single word for a long time. The family hadn't seen any meat for almost a year! Even during the Lunar New Year, they could only afford to buy a small piece of fat to render into lard.

Ye Guoliang's pipe slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. He jumped to his feet, rushed over in a few steps, his voice trembling: "Zhenzhen! Where...where did you get this money? You didn't do anything illegal, did you?!"

In those days, only the "ten-thousand-yuan households" or "speculators" could produce so much wealth. The latter would be sent to labor camps.

"I didn't steal or rob," Ye Zhen replied calmly, as if she were talking about something trivial. She straightened up and took out the medicine wrapped in cloth from the bamboo basket. "I picked a valuable medicinal herb and sold it to the state-run pharmacy in the county. This is the remaining money and ration coupons."

She handed over the large wad of money and the tickets.

Li Cuifang was so frightened by the thick stack of ten-yuan notes that she backed away repeatedly, not daring to reach out her hand: "This... so much money... I can't accept it, I can't accept it!"

Sixty-five yuan! She and her husband work themselves to the bone for a year and can only save a dozen yuan!

Ignoring their shock, Ye Zhen walked straight into the dimly lit east room.

Ye Cheng was lying weakly in bed. When he saw her return, he forced a smile and said, "Sister, you're back."

"Hmm." Ye Zhen responded, taking the items out of the bamboo basket one by one and placing them on the old table.

A row of glass bottles, printed with foreign words that her parents and older brother could not understand.

"This is penicillin, it's to reduce your inflammation."

"This is saline solution and glucose to replenish body fluids and energy."

As she spoke, she skillfully unpacked the injection, drew up the sterilized saline solution with a syringe, injected it into the penicillin powder, and shook it well.

Her movements were fluid and graceful, carrying a calm and unquestionable sense of professionalism.

Li Cuifang and Ye Guoliang followed them in, and seeing their daughter fiddling with those strange bottles and jars, they felt both panicked and afraid.

"Zhenzhen, what's this? A glass bottle... can it cure diseases?" Li Cuifang asked softly.

"An IV drip," Ye Zhen uttered, already taking out the IV tubing and needle, and beginning to purge the air from the tubing.

"What kind of water?" The couple looked at each other in bewilderment.

Ye Zhen didn't have time to explain. She walked to the bedside, picked up Ye Cheng's arm, skillfully tied it tightly with a strip of cloth, found the prominent veins, and calmly instructed, "Brother, don't move, it hurts a little."

"Huh?" Ye Cheng hadn't reacted yet.

Ye Zhen had already pinched the needle and, at a precise angle, steadily inserted it into his vein.

A drop of blood flows back into the transparent IV tube.

She loosened the cloth strip, adjusted the drip rate, then found a wooden stick and hung the bottle of 5% glucose solution high on the beam above the bed.

The clear liquid dripped steadily, drop by drop, through the slender tube, and then slowly flowed into Ye Cheng's body through the needle.

The entire room was deathly silent.

The three members of the Ye family, like three wooden or clay sculptures of fools, all looked up, staring blankly at the unprecedented "miracle water" hanging up.

In their minds, curing illness means drinking bitter herbal medicine or getting a few acupuncture needles stuck in your throat.

This is like pouring water directly into blood vessels—it's unheard of and unseen! Won't this kill someone?

"Gulp." Ye Guoliang swallowed nervously, his voice dry. "Zhenzhen... this... will this really work?"

"Okay." Ye Zhen's answer was just one word.

She glanced at the IV drip bottle, calculated the time, then turned and walked out of the house, saying to Li Cuifang, who was still in a daze, "Mom, cut half the meat, mix it with flour, and make dumplings. The rest of the meat, stew it tomorrow to help my brother recover."

After saying that, she picked up a bucket, went to the yard to fetch water to wash her hands, and prepared to give her older brother the next stage of physiotherapy.

The people left in the room were still in shock and unable to recover for a long time.

The impact of the white pork was far less intense than that of this bottle of crystal-clear glucose. Like a thunderbolt, it cleaved open the closed-off world of this impoverished farming family and completely overturned their understanding of their daughter (the younger sister).

Half an hour later, the long-awaited aroma of meat finally wafted from the kitchen.

Just as the family sat around the table, watching the plump white dumplings bubbling in the pot, with long-lost smiles on their faces, the courtyard gate was suddenly banged on.

A villager's hurried, panicked voice came from outside the door, tinged with tears:

"Brother Guoliang! Sister-in-law! Something terrible has happened! The village chief and his men are heading towards your house!"

"And...and there was also someone in a green military uniform with him!"