Dare to shirk responsibility? This adorable little one will tear down your military district!

This rain is making people irritable.

The dark clouds over the Greater Khingan Mountains looked as if someone had splashed ink layer upon layer, pressing down low, making even the air in the military compound feel sticky. Meng Yaya leaned against the window, poking hole after hole in her drawing paper with her pencil.

Black Wind stopped running around and stayed quietly under the edge of the kang (a heated brick bed), making a gurgling sound from his throat from time to time, which sounded like he was grinding his teeth.

This is the fifth day since Gu Changfeng left.

"Ya Ya, stop poking it, or the paper will become a sieve." Lin Wanrou was sewing shoe soles, but her stitches were crooked and uneven. She had no interest in working and would glance at the clock hanging on the wall every now and then.

My heart has been pounding these past few days, and my right eyelid has been twitching constantly.

"Mom, I heard a car." Meng Yaya suddenly threw down her pen, her two little ears twitching.

She was a wood-type ability user, with senses sharper than a dog's. Although the rain was pouring outside, she could smell the diesel fumes from two miles away at the muffled roar of an engine.

Lin Wanrou pricked her fingertip with the needle, drawing a bead of blood. Ignoring the pain, she threw her shoe onto the kang (heated brick bed), jumped down, and started looking for her umbrella: "They must be back! It hasn't even been seven days yet, how could they be back so quickly?"

Generally, if someone comes back early, it's either because they completed the mission exceptionally well, or because something bad has happened.

The mother and daughter, each holding an umbrella, trudged towards the gate of the compound, their steps uneven in the rain. When they arrived, a crowd had already gathered. The military wives were all peering into the street, rain streaming down their raincoats.

Several large Liberation trucks, covered in mud, rumbled in, their wheels churning up thick layers of yellow mud. The convoy came to a stop, but this time no one cheered.

The atmosphere is off.

The soldiers who got out hung their heads, looking like wilted eggplants. Then, the door of the middle jeep opened.

The first to get off was the bodyguard, Xiao Zhang, carrying Gu Changfeng's military bag, his eyes red like a rabbit's.

Then, Gu Changfeng emerged.

He didn't ask anyone to help him up.

But this time he didn't stand like a javelin as usual. His left arm was tightly fastened to his chest with several thick cloth straps, the sleeve was empty, and dark red bloodstains were seeping out.

His usually cold and hard face was deathly pale, and his head was covered in cold sweat, which dripped down his chin and mixed with the rain.

"Long Wind!"

Lin Wanrou's umbrella fell to the ground with a "thud." She rushed over frantically, wanting to help but hesitant to touch it, her hands trembling in mid-air, tears streaming down her face: "What happened? I was fine when I left, how did this happen?"

Gu Changfeng gritted his teeth and forced out an awkward smile: "It's nothing, I just bumped into something. Don't cry, it's embarrassing."

"How could a bump cause this much damage?" Meng Yaya ran over with her short legs, looking up at her father.

This was no mere bump. She could smell, beneath the scent of rocks and earth, the unique, metallic odor of bone marrow seeping out. This arm was badly broken.

Just then, a burly man who was 1.85 meters tall rolled off the back seat of the jeep.

Zhao Tiezhu was covered in mud and his face was bruised. He knelt down in the muddy water with a thud and started kowtowing to Gu Changfeng, his forehead hitting the cement ground with a loud thud.

"Captain! I'm so sorry! Just kill me! If it weren't for saving a useless piece of trash like me, your hand wouldn't be here..."

Zhao Tiezhu cried so loudly it was earth-shattering, tears and snot streaming down his face.

It turned out that the exercise was affected by days of torrential rain and landslides. Everyone had almost evacuated, but Zhao Tiezhu, that simpleton, was so nervous that he slipped and slid down the cliff.

Below that is a ravine of jagged rocks stretching for tens of meters.

Gu Changfeng was right next to him and reached out to pull him without thinking. The weight of the 180-plus-pound man, combined with the force of the fall, pressed down on Gu Changfeng's left arm.

They managed to grab him, but before they could pull him up, a loose rock the size of a washbasin came crashing down from above, hitting Gu Changfeng's forearm squarely.

At that moment, a crisp "crack" was heard, and the sound of bones breaking terrified the soldiers nearby.

Even so, Gu Changfeng did not let go, and used his broken arm to lift Zhao Tiezhu up with all his might.

"Enough with the wailing!" Gu Changfeng's brows furrowed, and he hissed in pain. "I'm not dead yet! You're my soldier, saving you is my duty. Get up, stop making a fool of yourself!"

Zhao Tiezhu dared not disobey, and stood up sobbing, like a big bear who had done something wrong.

Standing in the rain, Meng Yaya looked at Zhao Tiezhu's pathetic state and really wanted to kick him. In the apocalypse, she hated people like him who dragged her teammates down; they were incompetent themselves and also dragged their teammates down.

But this is not the time to lose your temper.

An ambulance from the military hospital arrived just then. Several doctors in white coats carried a stretcher over and tried to get Gu Changfeng into the ambulance.

"I'm not going to the hospital." Gu Changfeng's stubbornness flared up, and he twisted his body. "I can just rest at home. It's just a minor injury. Why would I need to take up a hospital bed?"

"Nonsense!"

A furious roar came from behind. Lei Zhentian, wearing a raincoat, strode over, his face as black as the bottom of a pot.

"It's supposedly a comminuted fracture, both the ulna and radius are broken. You call that a minor injury? Do you want to ruin this hand? You'll have trouble even holding chopsticks, let alone a gun?"

Lei Zhentian pointed at Gu Changfeng's nose and yelled, "Get your ass to the hospital for an X-ray! If you can't be cured, I'll fire you!"

Gu Changfeng moved his lips, but in the end he didn't dare to talk back.

At the hospital, they took X-rays. The results were worse than expected.

The old military doctor shook his head, holding the X-ray: "Commander Gu, your luck is truly unbelievable. Several bones are broken, and one is pressing on a nerve. Although the surgery can set it, your arm... I'm afraid you won't be able to exert much force in the future. It will still hurt on cloudy or rainy days."

The room fell into a deathly silence after those words were spoken.

For the commander of a special forces regiment, losing an arm means the end of his military career.

Zhao Tiezhu squatted in the corridor, burying his head in his crotch, crying like a two-hundred-pound child.

Gu Changfeng lay on the hospital bed, the anesthesia wearing off, and he was trembling with pain, but he didn't utter a sound. He just gripped the sheets tightly, the veins on the back of his hands bulging.

"It's alright," he said in a hoarse voice, turning to look at Lin Wanrou, who had remained silent. "At worst, I can transfer back to civilian life. With my physique, I won't starve no matter what I do."

He spoke casually, but the gloom in his eyes was obvious to everyone.

Lin Wanrou sat on the edge of the bed, holding a hot towel in her hand, gently wiping the sweat from his forehead. Her movements were very light and gentle, as if she were afraid of breaking some porcelain.

Meng Yaya stood in the corner, holding the small wooden gun in her hand. She could sense that her mother's aura had changed.

The Lin Wanrou of the past was weak and submissive; she was calm in the face of trouble but also lacked decisiveness. But now, Lin Wanrou stood up straight, and her eyes, which had always carried a hint of timidity, were now burning with a fire.

"Who said you were going to change careers?" Lin Wanrou threw the towel into the basin, her voice carrying an undeniable firmness.

She stood up and looked at the old military doctor who was shaking his head and sighing: "Doctor, if Western medicine can't restore him to his original state, could I take him home?"

The old military doctor was stunned for a moment: "Take him home? You're being ridiculous! This injury requires hospitalization for observation; if it gets infected and inflamed, amputation will be necessary!"

"I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine." Lin Wanrou turned her head and looked at Gu Changfeng's arm, which was in a thick cast. "My master is Sun Shouzhen. I'm confident that I can make him recover without any lasting effects."

Gu Changfeng was stunned.

He had never seen Lin Wanrou like this before. In that instant, the timid and submissive young wife by the stove disappeared, replaced by a doctor who dared to challenge the military region's experts.

Meng Yaya twitched the corners of her mouth, took out a White Rabbit milk candy from her pocket, peeled off the skin, and stuffed it into Gu Changfeng's mouth.

"Dad, listen to Mom," Meng Yaya said in her childish voice. "If Mom says it can work, then it definitely can. If you don't believe me, and this arm doesn't get better, I'll make Black Wind bite Zhao Tiezhu's butt."

Gu Changfeng had a candy in his mouth, the sweetness washing away the bitterness. He looked into his wife's eyes, which were frighteningly bright, a radiance he had never seen before.

As if guided by some unseen force, he nodded.

"Okay, let's go home. This arm is yours."