Chapter 60 — Why Aren't You Dead Yet? (Please Vote, Please Bookmark — Today's First Update)
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
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"Injured? How were you injured?" Wei Zhao asked.
"That time, after we came back from North Africa, I was handed a new assignment — to track down a major international drug lord. But I never expected they'd have a real expert among them. I was wounded..." Here Yang Huaijun gave a bitter smile. "I suppose my life was charmed. When they saw me go down, they took me for dead and didn't bother finishing me off. But Pangolin and the others..."
"Pangolin? What happened to him?" Wei Zhao's heart lurched, and he asked at once.
"Pangolin died in the line of duty..." Yang Huaijun said, his voice somewhat bleak.
"What?" Wei Zhao's face turned terrifying in an instant. Pangolin — that short little fellow, always with a brilliant smile on his face... He had never imagined that a comrade who had fought shoulder to shoulder with him two years ago would go like that...
Seeing Wei Zhao's expression, Yang Huaijun could feel the same thing keenly in his own chest. Pangolin had been Wei Zhao's comrade, and his comrade too. Back when he first learned of Pangolin's death, Yang Huaijun, grown man that he was, had been unable to keep from weeping.
"Maybe he isn't dead after all..." Fearing Wei Zhao would grieve, Yang Huaijun hurried to console him.
"They never found the body?" A flicker of hope crossed Wei Zhao's eyes. Pangolin was a shrewd young man; perhaps he really had escaped that disaster.
"The bodies were all thrown into the drug refining furnaces by those traffickers... I only learned that later." Yang Huaijun sighed. "When I came to, the pain all over my body was so bad I couldn't think of much else. I found a hiding place first and crawled into it. Then I lost consciousness again, until someone rescued me..."
"Motherfuckers!" Wei Zhao slammed his fist down on the tea table in front of him. The fine solid-wood table was instantly smashed into a heap of splinters.
Yang Huaijun clicked his tongue inwardly. Worthy of Eagle — still that ferocious. Yang Huaijun privately admitted he could never have done such a thing himself.
"I'm sorry. I was hurt too badly at the time to go and check on my comrades..." Every time Yang Huaijun thought of it, his heart filled with guilt.
"That's not your fault." Wei Zhao shook his head. Under those circumstances, he could well understand: going forward would only have been suicide. In such a situation, preserving one's strength was the only right course. "Were you badly hurt?"
"Wounds all over my body... I spent over half a year recovering, and once I was well, I retired." Yang Huaijun sighed. "Western medicine calls them aftereffects; Chinese medicine calls it a complete severing of the meridians. I can't get emotional, I can't do high-intensity work for long stretches, and I have to keep myself going with medication."
Wei Zhao put the matter of Pangolin to the back of his mind for the moment and began to study Yang Huaijun carefully. "Give me your hand."
"What are you going to do?" Yang Huaijun found it odd, but held out his hand as asked.
"I'm taking your pulse." As he spoke, Wei Zhao laid his hand on Yang Huaijun's wrist, and his expression grew grave.
"You know how to take a pulse? No way. Eagle, I thought you were good at killing people — you can save them too?" Yang Huaijun looked at Wei Zhao in some astonishment — this comrade who had shared life and death with him through hails of bullets.
"There's a great deal you don't know." Wei Zhao smiled. "What, you don't believe me?"
"Don't believe you?" Yang Huaijun's eyes went wide. "Whoever else I might not believe, would I not believe you? On the battlefield back then, I could hand you my back without a second thought."