Xinhua Country, Autumn of 1975.
He Province, Linshui City, Gu's Village.
Just after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the crops in the fields are lush and promising. In about ten or fifteen days they can be harvested.
The men, women, old and young of Gu's village are rolling their sleeves up, ready to welcome this year's last autumn harvest.
The bell for work in the production team rings. Anyone capable of labor in every house must go out to work.
In Gu Qingcheng's home, Mother Gu, can't rest easy about her daughter, who has been lying in bed. She picks up her hoe, sighs, and returns to the house.
Looking at her daughter lying in bed, who is much thinner than before and not talkative, Mother Gu is full of heartache.
Worried that her daughter might fall ill by continuing to lie in bed.
She reassures, "Little Orange, can you really manage by yourself at home? Don't keep yourself cooped up, it might make you ill. Get some sunshine and fresh air, it could help you feel better."
Gu Qingcheng, who was pretending to be sick in bed, nods, "I understand, mom. You should go to work."
Mother Gu sighs and goes to work, cursing Fan Jian in her mind. That ungrateful wolf! After he became a worker, he broke off their engagement, seeming to think her daughter was not good enough for him.
When he first proposed to her daughter, he was the one keen to get engaged.
The Gu's family had helped him so much over the years, but now that he's a worker, he turned his back on them. Truly a despicable man!
She even heard that he was getting married to a young woman from the city. The news she dared not to share with her daughter, fearing it would break her heart even more.
After sending her mother off, Gu Qingcheng lied down again for a while. When she was sure there was no one at home, she got out of bed and walked towards the deep mountain, avoiding the villagers.
——
Seeing his granddaughter cooped up inside the house all day, the old man of the Gu household was worried she might fall ill from staying indoors all the time. So, he suggested that his eldest daughter-in-law heads off early to the Heisheng Military Area to join her eldest grandson and wait there to attend to the month-long postnatal recovery. Simultaneously, they could bring the granddaughter along for a change of pace.
Gu Qingcheng, carrying a snakeskin bag, followed her mother out of the train.
Jiang Yichen, who had arrived early to pick them up, was now glancing around the station. The moment he spotted the mother-daughter pair, his eyes lit up. These must be the people he was here to pick up, right?
Seeing them, he finally understood the sentence his good brother used to say: if you see a girl who resembles me, there's no question that she's my sister.
Throughout the journey, he couldn't visualize his good brother's face on a girl's body. But now that he saw the real person, he understood the essence of that statement. They indeed bear a striking resemblance.
Jiang Yichen made a beeline towards his target, edging his way to Gu Qingcheng, eager to confirm the suspicion he held in his heart:
"Madam, miss, you're from Gu family village, right?"
Seeing Jiang Yichen in a military uniform similar to her eldest son's, Gu's mother felt a rush of fondness for him and hurriedly replied, "We are, young man, who might you be?"
"I'm Haorxuan's comrade-in-arms, and his good brother. Sister-in-law met with an accident this morning and went into labor prematurely. She's currently taken to the hospital for emergency care, so Haorxuan sent me to pick you up." Saying so, Jiang Yichen offered to take Gu's mother's bag.
In the car, the mother-daughter pair learnt about how dangerous the situation was for their daughter-in-law this morning and how she was currently in intensive care.
Throughout the journey, the atmosphere inside the car was gloomy, no one was in the mood for small talk. Only Gu Qingcheng seemed to bear the brunt of it all.
If this woman doesn't let go soon, her hand's going to be squeezed off.
If it wasn't for the woman's evident worry for her daughter-in-law's safety and being her biological mother, Gu Qingcheng would have yanked her hand away a long time ago.
For now, she has run out of patience and finally decided to speak up.
"Mother, my hand hurts."
Only when her daughter complained did Madam Gu realize that she'd gripped her daughter's hand too firmly. Hastily, she let go.
Noticing the purplish bruise on her daughter's hand, Madam Gu's face crumpled with a mixture of embarassment and guilt. "Ah, the soft, fair skin of your hand; it hurts me to see it so."
"In my worry over your sister-in-law's safety, I didn't notice how tight I was holding. Shoud I massage it for you?"
"No need." Gu Qingchen quickly withdrew her hand, unaccustomed to any close contact, let alone a hand massage.
Arranging for her to accompany them to the military region for the childbirth recovery period was a decision made by her elder brother and the family. The main aim was to provide her with a chance to relax and clear her mind. And if she could find a good family for marriage along the way, that would be a bonus.
But little did the Gu family know that the previous Gu Qingchen, tormented by the dissolution of her engagement, had already departed this life, and now, in her place stood a Gu Qingchen from the ancient times.
This strange twist of fate filled her with speechless frustration. Why did she end up here?
In order to stabilize the military spirit of the Gu family after the men died on the battlefield, the inept Emperor had issued a decree calling her 14-year-old brother to the army. Unwilling to let him become cannon fodder, the 16-year-old Gu Qingchen decided to swap identities with her little brother and disguise herself as him on the battlefield.
For ten grueling years, she fought in the wars. Just as she was about to return from a palace banquet, she suddenly found herself here.
What the heck, they said her personality changed drastically due to the canceled engagement. Well, her core was replaced, wasn't it?
In the midst of her musings, Jiang Yichen suddenly spoke up, "Auntie, we have arrived. I will escort you two upstairs first."
Outside the delivery room, Jiang Yichen saw a fragile side of Commander Gu, a once iron-willed man, who now seemed helpless like a child.
Seeing his mother and sister about to arrive and searching for some psychological comfort, he asked his mother:
"Mother, my wife will be alright, won't she?"
Seeing her eldest son so dispirited, Mrs. Gu could only nod her head in agreement, not knowing how else to comfort him.
"Don't worry, good people have their own bob of fate. She will definitely be alright."
Everyone outside the delivery room was anxiously waiting, all except for Gu Qingcheng, who seemed somewhat indifferent.
She, who had been accustomed to life and death situations, could face death calmly.
The door was pushed open accompanied by the cries of a baby, the child was handed into Mrs. Gu's arms, and the nurse ran back in.
Gu Qingcheng was just a silent observer. From the moment she left Gu's village, she began comparing this world with her original one. Different, they were completely different.
When in Gu's village, she didn't feel it, apart from simple clothing styles, she was still familiar with the houses.
Staggered brick houses and the village lanes paved with bluestone.
When she left, she found out how much this world had changed, something beyond her wildest dreams.
Such as the train, which surprised her greatly.
Now, she saw young women leading a bunch of men in white robes bustling into the ward and heard about the massive hemorrhage of the woman in labor.
Mrs. Gu and the young man in front of her were comforting Gu Haoxuan, Gu Qingcheng opened her mouth and closed it again; she really didn't know how to cheer up the original master's elder brother, she was not good at comforting people.
The door opened again.
Everyone walked out with a mournful expression. An old man patted Gu Haoxuan's shoulder, his voice filled with helplessness:
"You should go see Xiaoyue."
Xiaoyue was Lin Xiyue, Gu Haoxuan's wife, who was also a military doctor.
Upon seeing the old woman going inside, Gu Qingcheng couldn't help but follow in.
Gu Haoxuan rushed to the bedside, grabbing the hand of the person on the bed. He was already sobbing uncontrollably.
Gu Qingcheng looked at the person on the bed. She was a young woman, soaked as if pulled out of water, but it couldn't hide her pretty face.
Gu Qingcheng observed the diminishing life of the person on the bed and the broken heart of the man beside it.
She was all too familiar with his expression. It was the same one worn by her aunts when they received news of a relative’s death. It would probably take the man quite a while to get over this.
Moreover, she suspected that this man might never remarry in his life.
Gu Qingcheng could clearly feel the sorrow of every person in the room.
Looking up at the bag hanging beside the bed, she could tell it was filled with blood.
She moved closer, wanting to examine it.
"Don't touch it; that's a bag of blood. Only that blood can keep Xiaoyue alive," said someone.
Blood bag? Large blood loss...
The few phrases repeatedly flashed in Gu Qingcheng's mind. She thought, it must be a major hemorrhage! She looked at the old man who had just entered.
"I came back to fetch my silver needles. I was in a hurry earlier and forgot to take them."
"Silver needles?"
"Um, I initially intended to try and use silver needles to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, it did not work."
"So stopping the bleeding can save the person's life?" Gu Qingcheng voiced her inner question.
"Definitely. However, at the moment, the blood loss far exceeds the blood transfusion, we're helpless."
"That's enough."
"What's enough?"
"I will stop the bleeding."
With that one sentence from Gu Qingcheng, everyone in the room turned to look at her, even Lin Xiyue who was previously on the brink of closing her eyes.
"If you don't want your child to lose his mother, then brace yourself!"
Lin Xiyue's gaze moved towards her son in her mother-in-law's arms. No, she wanted to watch her child grow up with her own eyes.
This burst of agitation made the bleeding increase.
There was no time to waste. Gu Qingcheng started by pressing on the acupuncture points. What followed next left several people in the room dumbstruck.
Her movements were too fast, from retrieving the needle to inserting it, within a few breaths' time, she had poked in over ten needles.
When her last needle fell, Mother Gu, who had her mouth agape, remembered to close it.
Pointing at the needle on Lin Xiyue’s body, her voice trembling, she asked, “Girl, how did you learn these skills?”
Upon Mother Gu’s question, the other two individuals also turned to Gu Qingcheng, waiting for her to provide an answer.
Facing the gazes of all three individuals, Gu Qingcheng awkwardly scratched her nose.
After some brief thinking, she said, “Once when I went into the mountains to gather wild vegetables, I ran into a mountain doctor who had lost too much blood to perform acupuncture. I learned it then and there.”
As Gu Qingcheng found an excuse, Lin Xiyue’s complexion also seemed to regain some color.
Gu Qingcheng then turned her attention once again to the blood bag and pointed at it, asking the old man.
“Is this almost gone?”
Prompted by her reminder, the old man also reacted and hurried out to arrange for more blood plasma.
When the old man left, Gu Haoxuan was not as easy to fool. He turned his gaze towards his little sister.
“Who did you learn your acupuncture from?” He didn’t even need to say more - his posture said it all; he wanted to hear the truth.
The truth? Gu Qingcheng, of course, couldn’t say it. What was she to say? That she had learned from Hua Tuo, a famous physician in history?
Gu Qingcheng had secrets. In fact, the entire Gu Village had secrets, so Gu Qingcheng was not afraid of Gu Haoxuan.
“I read about it in some books at school. Ahem, you should know about my eidetic memory.”
She knew as long as she mentioned the school in Gu Village, it would silence Gu Haoxuan.
As expected, Gu Haoxuan didn’t ask any more questions and even seemed to believe her. The reason was simple, he too had once attended that school.
Gu Village’s school did not accept outsiders. What was taught only the villagers themselves knew.
In fact, once his first son was weaned, he wanted to send him back home so he could be educated there. Unfortunately, his wife and mother-in-law disagreed, fearing that the village's education would not be up to par. Only he knew what could be learned in the village school. As it turned out today, the medical skills that Xiao Cheng had learned came in handy.
