Fang Yuqing, Wang Min, Sun Zhichao and the others fled back like beaten dogs. Once inside and the door shut, they collapsed onto the sofa, drenched in cold sweat and gasping for air—especially the injured, who clenched their teeth against the pain.
Zhang Yi's bolts had struck Sun Zhichao, Zhou Peng, and Ge Jialiang—the three who'd been closest to his door. Fang Yuqing and Lin Caining, having seen Zhang Yi's methods before, had hung back and escaped without a scratch. Of the seven who'd gone, four men were either dead or impaled by tetanus-tainted bolts.
At first the cold had numbed the pain, but once home they stripped off their outer layers and finally saw the wounds. A normal bolt wound would be survivable—pull it out, disinfect, take antibiotics—but these bolts were rusted through. In this environment, with no antibiotics, infection would mean a slow, terrible death.
"No, no… this can't be happening!" Sun Zhichao's eyes rounded in horror as the realization of their fate sank in.
"Slap!" Wang Min's hand smashed into Fang Yuqing's face in fury. They were all injured because of Fang Yuqing's plan—she'd pushed them to raid Zhang Yi. "You did this to us!" Wang Min snarled. "You said his house only had a sturdy door—why were there bolts? You ran off on purpose and left us to die! Why weren't you hit?"
Fang Yuqing trembled, tears streaming. "I didn't know! He didn't use bolts the other times!"
Zhou Peng, clutching his arm, stumbled forward to shield her. "Cousin, stop. I swear—she didn't know!"
Wang Min, furious, shot back, "You were hiding too—don't act like a victim!" Lin Caining muttered defensively, while Sun Zhichao intervened with a hard look. "We're all hurt. We need help." He swallowed his pride—better to be alive with a chance than righteous and dead.
They examined the bolts. These were professional-grade hunting bolts, driven deep—built to pierce boar or wolf. Cold had slowed the bleeding, but in these conditions bleeding control and surgery were next to impossible. Without sterile tools and antibiotics, pulling them out could be fatal.
"We need Doctor Zhou," Wang Min said finally, thinking of Zhou Ke'er—the woman who once saved Lin Xiaohu after a liver injury.
Soon Zhou Ke'er arrived, wrapped in a black down coat, an iron medical box in her hands. She frowned as she inspected the wounds. "Bolt wounds, huh?"
"Another one?" Wang Min asked anxiously. Zhou Ke'er's face tightened. "No—just one former hospital patient," she answered, then checked more closely. The men looked ghastly pale.
"There's no way to safely operate here," she said. "The bolts are embedded deep. We can't pull them out in these temperatures—there's no way to stop the bleeding properly. And they're rusted. Even if we remove them, there are no antibiotics to treat infection. In this environment, infection is a death sentence."
Wang Min began to weep. Sun Zhichao and Zhou Peng, once brash and healthy, now stared at the ceiling as the truth settled in: without drugs, they were waiting to rot.
"Zhang Yi did this on purpose!" Wang Min sobbed. "He's cruel—if we'd taken his house, we wouldn't have killed him!"
Zhou Ke'er's expression flicked at the name—she remembered Zhang Yi as a handsome, aloof man who rarely spoke. She stayed practical. "The situation is what it is. Make them comfortable, keep them warm, and hope for a miracle. But don't have false expectations—this is how things go when modern medicine disappears."
Suddenly Fang Yuqing's eyes lit up. "Medicine… I remember Zhang Yi has medicine at home!"