Chapter 77 — The One with Killing Intent (Please Recommend, Please Bookmark, Please Give All Kinds of Support)

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"Uncle Chu, if there's nothing else, I'll be off to school now?" Wei Zhao had said everything that needed saying; how to deal with the rest was Gu Pengzhan's business.

"Good," Gu Pengzhan nodded. "Don't tell Yao Yao about what happened today. I don't want her troubled over it."

"Don't worry, Uncle Chu. I won't go around talking." Wei Zhao rose to his feet, ready to leave.

"Li Fu, see Xiao Yi to school," Gu Pengzhan instructed Uncle Qing, who stood at his side.

"Yes, Mr. Gu." Uncle Qing answered with a nod.

"No need for that. I can just flag down a taxi downstairs." Wei Zhao said hastily. He meant to stop by a pharmacy, and he had no wish for Uncle Qing to tag along; there were some matters he would rather others did not know too much about.

"As you like, then." Seeing Wei Zhao speak so, Gu Pengzhan did not press the point. "Until I have settled the company's troubles, I am leaving Yao Yao's safety in your hands."

"Heh—" Wei Zhao waved a hand. "Uncle Chu, since my assignment has to do with Miss Gu, I naturally won't let anything happen to her before I formally take it up."

Gu Pengzhan nodded, then gave a faint sigh. He had thought this arrangement a bargain for Wei Zhao, but from the look of things now, Wei Zhao did not seem especially taken with Gu Mengyao. He had no idea how his father had arranged it, but never mind; he would do as he was told.

"Li Fu, in a little while go and notify the administrative department to ready a meeting room. I am convening the board of directors this afternoon." The reason Gu Pengzhan had not insisted after Wei Zhao refused Uncle Qing's escort was that he had matters for Uncle Qing to arrange.

"Yes, Mr. Gu." Uncle Qing nodded and hurried out of Gu Pengzhan's office. Gu Pengzhan kept a full-time secretary, yet much could not be entrusted to a secretary's ears; only Uncle Qing, his trusted confidant, would do. In many cases, therefore, Uncle Qing served in the secretary's role as well.

Walking out of Pengzhan Tower, Wei Zhao flagged down a taxi.

"Where to, young man?" the driver asked once he was in the car, flipping down the meter.

"Driver, do you know where Chinese medicinal herbs are sold wholesale?" Wei Zhao was unfamiliar with the lie of Songshan City, but veteran cab drivers were living maps, knowing every trade in the city inside out.

"Oh, you mean Chinese medicine — the loose kind, twigs and stalks, or the prepared patent medicines?" The driver did not know which Wei Zhao wanted.

"Heh—" At the driver's description Wei Zhao could not help but laugh to himself. In the eyes of most ordinary people, Chinese medicine was indeed much the same as twigs and sticks. "The loose kind. The twigs and sticks."

Wei Zhao did not bother correcting him. The man was no professional, and so long as he could be understood, with no barrier to communication, that was enough.

"For wholesale you would have to go to the Chinese herb wholesale market in Qiaonan Village," the driver said. "But it isn't in the city, and it's a good half day's drive. If you're buying only a little, a bigger pharmacy would serve — they keep a fairly full stock."

Hearing this, Wei Zhao abandoned the notion of the wholesale market; at least for now there was no need to go. Buying a little at a pharmacy for immediate use would do. "Then help me find a rather large pharmacy."

"Easy enough." The driver started the car as he spoke.

After a few turns the car drew up in front of a large pharmacy. Plainly the driver had not taken him the long way round; the meter still showed the starting fare.

Wei Zhao paid the fare, thanked him, and got out, walking into the pharmacy.

Once inside, Wei Zhao sighed in admiration. It seemed that no matter the age, medicine was a very profitable trade. In broad daylight the shop was full of people buying medicine, and the counters for many common drugs were already crowded.

But what Wei Zhao wanted was Chinese herbal medicine, and few people bought that. He handed the list he had long since drawn up to the clerk, who wrote him out a slip and sent him to the cashier; his order ran to many items, so the weighing would take a while. Fortunately there were no other customers, and while the clerk weighed, Wei Zhao wandered idly about the shop.

"Gold-wound medicine." A voice caught Wei Zhao's attention.

Gold-wound medicine? Wei Zhao was startled. There was such a medicine?

Gold-wound medicine: "gold" meant metal objects such as blades, and in ancient times the weapon that wounded the most was the blade, so gold stood in for weaponry; "wound" meant injury. Gold-wound medicine, then, was the remedy for cuts and other hurts dealt by metal weapons, its properties being to stop bleeding, ease pain, and quell inflammation.

Only, gold-wound medicine was an ancient name and nothing more; surely no medicine went by it nowadays?

"There's none left. Sold out," the clerk answered the earlier speaker, face blank.

Wei Zhao glanced over. The one asking was a girl in black, a sailor's cap on her head pulled low over her brow, so that her face could not be made out. Given the clerk's reply that it was sold out, the girl said nothing and turned to leave, though her gait was a little faltering...

Suddenly Wei Zhao's gaze fixed on the ground beneath the girl. Along the floor where she had passed, a bright trail of blood was smeared, clearly having run down from the cuff of her trouser leg; yet amid the press of people in the pharmacy, it had drawn no one's notice, and the blood trail was quickly trodden out by passing feet.

Wei Zhao had marked the girl for two reasons. One, the gold-wound medicine on her lips had stirred his curiosity. Two, he had sensed in her a trace of something kindred: killing intent.

Killing intent is a very subtle thing. It is in essence a signal given off by animals when they attack one another, a signal that must be detected by a "sixth sense."

Someone once conducted this experiment. He put a wildcat from the forest and a mouse into a box, separated by two thin, soundproof boards set not far apart, then removed the smells and ensured that neither could see the other. The result was that the cat seemed to sense something and, as though it wanted to pass through the board, kept clawing at it with its paws, while the mouse huddled on the far side. One could see that the cat sensed the mouse was just next door, and the mouse sensed the cat; but how did cat and mouse sense each other?

The scientists' explanation: this is perhaps a sixth sense beyond the animals' five. That is to say, they do not detect one another through ears, nose, or eyes; by a sixth sense an animal can feel the signal given off by a natural enemy or by any other animal that means to attack it—a signal that may be explained as "killing intent."

In fact people have a sixth sense too; it is only that, long sundered from nature, we have let the faculty slowly waste away. Yet some whose senses are keener than others have kept it still—veteran soldiers on the battlefield, for instance, who can often feel whether an ambush lies ahead, or hunters who have spent their whole lives in the forest. Those who have long walked the line between life and death can gradually rouse this sense to life.

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