The Mount Jing military hospital was under total lockdown. Triple-layered security cordons of elite soldiers stood at every entrance, their faces grim. Inside the VIP suite on the top floor, the atmosphere was even more suffocating.
Mu Feichi sat upright in the hospital bed, his chest bare and wrapped in stark white bandages. His grey eyes—sharp and cold as a winter morning—were fixed on the stack of reports in his hand. Despite the life-saving treatment he had just undergone, he looked less like a patient and more like a king on his throne.
"The girl," Mu Feichi's voice was a low, magnetic rumble. It carried the natural authority of a man who ruled the nation's security with an iron fist. "Where is she?"
Qi Yuan, the more composed of the two adjutants, stood at the foot of the bed with his hands behind his back. "Sir, after we brought you in, she refused to stay in the guest quarters. She said... she had a 'debt to collect' in the city and vanished before we could stop her. We tracked her to the outskirts of the Shen family's estate."
Feng Rui, standing by the window, scoffed while checking his sidearm. "That little girl has a lot of nerve. She treats the Young Marshal like a common patient and then just walks away? Should I bring her back in handcuffs, Sir?"
Mu Feichi's eyes narrowed, a flash of something unreadable crossing his face. He remembered the feeling of her small, cold hands on his skin—the only thing that had cut through the fire of the neurotoxin. More than that, he remembered the strange, inexplicable peace he felt when she was near.
For years, the Young Marshal had lived in a waking nightmare. A past injury on the border had left him with severe nerve damage and chronic, agonizing insomnia. No medicine could touch it; he hadn't slept for more than two hours at a time in three years.
But in that forest, for those thirty minutes after she treated him... his mind had been silent.
"Find her," Mu Feichi commanded, tossing the reports onto the nightstand. "I don't care if you have to flip the Shen family's house upside down. If she isn't back here by sunset, Feng Rui, you can go to the border and count snowballs."
"Sir! Yes, sir!" Feng Rui straightened up instantly, his face pale.
"And Qi Yuan?" Mu Feichi added.
"Yes, Marshal?"
"Check the Shen family's records. I want to know why a girl with the skills of a top-tier surgeon was living in a mountain village eating wild vegetables. I want every detail of her life since the day she was born."