19. Joining Forces Against the Enemy (Part Two)

"It's not that I'm afraid of them, I'm upset that I keep bringing you trouble, and the trouble just keeps getting worse." Wen Mingjuan said between sobs.

"I'm fine." Learning that Wen Mingjuan was crying for this reason, a warm feeling spread through Gao Weizhao's chest; even as the temperature dropped steadily around them, the warmth in his own heart seemed to drift closer to spring instead.

She was worried about him.

"Still saying you're fine?" Wen Mingjuan suddenly rose up out of Gao Weizhao's arms, grabbing his left arm in return and saying, "You've lost this much blood and you call that fine? Aren't you going to the hospital to get this treated? Aren't you afraid of bleeding out and dying?"

"Hey." Gao Weizhao shook his head, looking utterly helpless. "Could you phrase that a little more gently?" He gripped his own left arm; Wen Mingjuan's grabbing at it just now had jostled the wound, and now it hurt worse than ever, cold sweat streaming freely down his forehead.

"I can't go to the hospital." Gao Weizhao said flatly.

"Why not?" Wen Mingjuan thought Gao Weizhao must be out of his mind—a wound this deep, and he still intended to just let it heal on its own? As if bleeding could simply be stopped whenever one pleased?

"The moment I show up at a hospital, I'll either get caught by the police or dragged back by Tulong. Which do you think is better?"

"Really?" Wen Mingjuan was startled to hear this.

"The police are already racking their brains trying to pin some charge on me. If they catch sight of this knife wound now, I'm done for. No one goes around chopping their own arm like a watermelon, after all." Gao Weizhao clamped his five fingers tightly around his left arm, his face straining to hold back the agony—a sight that tugged painfully at Wen Mingjuan's heart.

Gao Weizhao's handsome face had gone rather pale now, the color draining from it more and more, and the sight stirred a deep ripple of feeling in her heart.

"So you're saying Tulong knows you're hurt, which means he'll have his men keeping close watch over every major hospital's ER?" She asked.

"Exactly!" Gao Weizhao nodded. "I have to assume that's the case."

"But you can't just let it keep bleeding like this, can you?"

"It's fine! I can still hold on."

"Don't you dare act tough with me." As she spoke, Wen Mingjuan took off the light jacket she was wearing and folded it into a long strip across her knees. "Stopping the bleeding comes first." She said, tying the folded jacket tightly above the wound on Gao Weizhao's left arm.

"I learned a bit of this in nursing class before, might as well see if it helps." Wen Mingjuan's tears glistened, crystal clear under the starlight; Gao Weizhao just stared, not protesting, not refusing, letting Wen Mingjuan finish the whole binding process. He never could have dreamed that someone this rough around the edges and yet this warm-hearted would come crashing, unbidden, into his life. What exactly was it about her that drew him in? Even he couldn't quite work it out. That utterly inelegant yet endearing temperament of hers, set against that lovely face, had somehow combined into a Wen Mingjuan like no other.

That's right! She was, in his heart, one of a kind—she had scattered seeds of every color across the springtime of his heart. And now, one by one, they were beginning to bud, unfurling in a riot of color.

"How romantic. A little couple, whispering sweet nothings out here. Well now, this hardly seems like our Brother Wei at all." An intrusive voice suddenly cut through the air.

Both of them, each absorbed in their own thoughts, had let their guard down, and now they'd been found out.

"Tulong?" The moment he laid eyes on Tulong, Gao Weizhao immediately shoved Wen Mingjuan behind him, silently cursing his luck.

"I was just wondering myself! What business does this little girl have with you, Brother Wei, that you'd go pressing your hot face against our cold backside for her sake? Our Brother Wei never used to do anything so foolish. Now I finally get it—you're risking everything for the one you love, is that it?" Tulong let out a mocking, dry laugh.

"Your mouth's gotten pretty filthy, might be time to wash it out." Gao Weizhao shot back coldly. "Nothing but garbage coming out of it."

"If you'd just said from the start you were here on behalf of your sister-in-law, we could've talked this over nicely, couldn't we?" Tulong's tone dripped with ill intent, every word designed to provoke Gao Weizhao.

"This has nothing to do with her, leave a weak, defenseless woman out of it."

"I want to bring her into it, and what exactly are you going to do about it?"

The moment Tulong finished speaking, he snapped his neck to one side, and five or six of his men behind him grabbed their weapons and charged forward. In an instant, machetes and Japanese blades of every size flashed under the moonlight, radiating a thick, murderous intent as they closed in from every side. Gao Weizhao quickly created a few steps of distance between himself and Wen Mingjuan—blades have no eyes, and he couldn't risk her getting hurt by accident in the chaos.

"Brother Wei is Brother Wei all right—hurt as you are, and still so heroic. Your little brother is truly impressed." Seeing that Gao Weizhao had no intention of surrendering meekly, Tulong mocked him again.

The wound on his arm ached, ached until it went numb, temporarily losing all feeling. But all Gao Weizhao could think about now was how to get Wen Mingjuan out of danger—he had no room left to think about anything else.

With a few light, swift shifts of his body, figures blurring past too fast for Wen Mingjuan to even make out the details of each exchange, Tulong's men had already suffered defeat after defeat, groaning in pain in twos and threes. But with Tulong watching over the fight from the side, they couldn't very well give up just yet—wiping the blood from the corners of their mouths, they each hefted their weapons and charged at Gao Weizhao once more. Gao Weizhao spun through the air a few times, and wherever his right foot landed upon touching down, more cries of pain followed.

Seeing that his men couldn't even get close to Gao Weizhao—it seemed almost like some fantastical impossibility—Tulong's expression suddenly changed. His sharp, hawk-like eyes swept over toward Wen Mingjuan, and a plan began forming in his mind.

"Well played." Taking advantage of the moment Gao Weizhao was too occupied to react, Tulong darted around with lightning speed to Wen Mingjuan's side and seized hold of her.

"Keep resisting and I'll shoot." Tulong shouted.

Quick as lightning, a gun had appeared in Tulong's hand, its muzzle pressed dead center against Wen Mingjuan's temple.

"I already told you, there's no way I'm letting you off today, no matter what. You'd better cooperate." Tulong's face twisted with displeasure, his features contorted together.

Even badly wounded as he was, for Wen Mingjuan's safety, Gao Weizhao would have gritted his teeth and fought on without so much as a flinch. But with Tulong now holding Wen Mingjuan's life hostage, he had no choice but to stop fighting immediately.

In that very instant, several of the underlings darted forward, each landing a flurry of punches and kicks, paying Gao Weizhao back double for everything he'd dealt out earlier. Tulong watched this scene unfold with secret delight. His improvised gambit had struck gold by accident—though he still didn't know exactly what this girl meant to Gao Weizhao, it was clear enough that Gao Weizhao cared about her a great deal, enough to repeatedly abandon his usual composure and put on this uncharacteristic, clumsy performance.

"Gao Weizhao!" Seeing Gao Weizhao being pummeled mercilessly by that gang of thugs, Wen Mingjuan cried out anxiously, "Don't worry about me."

Her heart was flooded with guilt; she gave no thought at all to her own safety, because even the dullest observer could see that Gao Weizhao had given up resisting, letting himself be beaten, entirely for her sake.

"This was never any business of yours to begin with. Go, I won't blame you."

Just as she spoke, the group had already hauled Gao Weizhao up and dragged him before Tulong. Those men hadn't held back at all; Gao Weizhao's insides must have been thoroughly scrambled by their vengeful blows, coughs tearing out of him again and again. Watching this, Wen Mingjuan felt a grief she could barely contain.

"These scum." She cursed them silently in her heart, not daring to say it aloud. Facing devils like these, she feared that cursing them out loud would only invite more suffering.

Only now did she finally understand why Gao Weizhao hadn't let her get involved, and why he'd told her to leave the moment time ran out without seeing him. It was just a shame—everything was already too late. She hated herself bitterly for not listening to him.

All at once, Tulong swung a fist with thunderous force, landing it square on Gao Weizhao's cheek.

"Don't!" A tearing, ripping pain surged through Wen Mingjuan's heart—how could she bear to watch Gao Weizhao suffer this senseless double humiliation, both physical and psychological, all because of her?

"Take him back." Tulong clicked his tongue with contempt again, continuing to heap verbal abuse on Gao Weizhao. "So this is what they mean by dying beneath the peony blossoms, a romantic even as a ghost. Who would have thought our illustrious Brother Wei would fall this hard for a woman?"

Gao Weizhao said nothing more. Beaten down like this, reduced to something like a stray dog with nowhere to turn, what more was there left to say?

Pressed forward under Tulong's grip, Wen Mingjuan felt no fear now—all she could think of was some way to turn the tables. She was calculating in her mind: Gao Weizhao had given up trying to fight his way out purely out of concern for her safety. If she could remove that concern, could Gao Weizhao then fight back with everything he had?

It was then that she remembered the pepper spray canister in her bag.

"I... it's so hard... I can't... catch my breath..." Suddenly, Wen Mingjuan put on a show of struggling to breathe. "I... I have... asthma..."

"Asthma?" Not only was Tulong startled, even Gao Weizhao was taken aback.

"Since when does she have asthma?" Gao Weizhao wondered to himself.

"I... there's an inhaler... in my bag..." She said, straining her words out. "Let me get it... it hurts so much..."

The moment Wen Mingjuan mentioned "inhaler," Gao Weizhao understood at once—this girl was clearly up to something. He'd already tasted the bitter fruit of that anti-pervert spray canister himself, and he was more than happy to see Tulong get a taste of it too.

"Tulong, hurry up and let her get her inhaler. She's your trump card against me—if she drops dead, this whole game's over for you." Gao Weizhao immediately played along with Wen Mingjuan.

"Get it, quick."

Tulong, having been strong and healthy his whole life, had no idea what an asthma attack was even supposed to look like, so Wen Mingjuan's amateur little performance managed to slip right past him. On top of that, wary of Gao Weizhao's real strength—even with a gun in hand, facing just five or six of his own men here, he wasn't at all certain he'd come out on top without Wen Mingjuan as leverage.

Just as Tulong was still processing what was happening, a pungent, stinging sensation exploded across his face and eyes without warning. He knew at once something was wrong, but before he could figure out what, Gao Weizhao had already knocked down the dumbstruck, stunned underlings one after another, and with a few crisp spinning throws and grappling holds, subdued Tulong completely, the gun in his hand now in Gao Weizhao's grip, its muzzle pressed against the back of Tulong's skull.

"You... you wouldn't shoot, everyone knows that." Tulong, wiping frantically at the snot and tears streaming down his face, finally managed, after a struggle, to squeeze out a couple of sentences.

"I might not have before. That doesn't mean I won't now." Gao Weizhao answered coldly.

"Go ahead and try me. You should feel honored, being the one I finally break my own rule for." Gao Weizhao continued, his tone icy.

"You don't need to threaten me."

"Now get your men and get lost." Gao Weizhao slammed his elbow hard into Tulong's shoulder, then followed up with a kick, sending Tulong sprawling to the ground.

Those underlings, stunned into stillness for a good while, now rushed forward to help Tulong up; seeing the situation was hopeless, all they could do was retreat in a sorry, scrambling rush.

Watching Tulong and his group finally disappear into the distance, Wen Mingjuan rushed forward at once. She knew Gao Weizhao had been forcing himself through sheer will this whole time—between his original wound and the countless blows he'd just taken, she couldn't even imagine how much pain he must be enduring.

The moment she got close to Gao Weizhao, she was startled to see that Tulong's punch had indeed left a significant mark on his handsome face. "This is all my fault." Wen Mingjuan couldn't express just how sorry she felt; tears streaming down her face, she gently helped support Gao Weizhao.

"It's fine." Gao Weizhao's heart gave a jolt—this girl was practically crying against his shoulder now. He said quickly, "You're the one I brought out here, and I'll get you back home safe."

Those were the same words. Back when she'd been kidnapped by A-Cai, Gao Weizhao had said the very same thing to her.

And now, he was saying it again.

But hearing those words now stirred something deep within Wen Mingjuan, a quiet, spreading wave of emotion she hadn't expected.