"Don't move!" Limeng's voice was low, carrying an undeniable calm and a trace of barely perceptible tension. He quickly scanned Jingyi's injured foot, an engineer's logical mind operating at high speed: severe ligament tear, joint dislocation, accompanied by rapid internal bleeding and swelling. Fortunately, judging by experience, the bone shouldn't be broken. But if this terrifying internal pressure wasn't dealt with in time, leading to tissue necrosis, this foot might truly be ruined!
"Snap two arrows! Fast! Clean cloth strips!" Limeng didn't turn his head, shouting toward the nearest Millelith soldier who had just fired the fatal arrow. His tone was the unquestionable command of the battlefield.
The soldier reacted extremely quickly, without a moment's hesitation. With two crisp cracks—*snap, snap*—he cleanly broke the sharp arrowhead of the spare arrow in his hand, and swiftly handed over the two bare, sturdy arrow shafts and a bundle of relatively clean gauze he carried with him.
Limeng took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. His movements had to be fast, precise, and steady. He carefully avoided the area with the worst swelling, his hands acting like the most precise clamps as he steadily supported Jingyi's injured right ankle, avoiding any possible secondary damage to the maximum extent. Using soft cloth strips as padding, he quickly placed the two straight and sturdy arrow shafts firmly against the twisted contours of both sides of the ankle, inside and out. Then, using the remaining cloth strips in a crisscross pattern, he rapidly wrapped, tightened, and tied a dead knot—the most solid makeshift splint possible under crude conditions, barely immobilizing the dislocated joint.
The immobilization was complete, but the alarming purplish-black swelling at the ankle showed no signs of subsiding at all! Instead, because the internal bleeding was forcibly confined to a limited space, the pressure surged. The skin was pulled taut like a balloon blown to its limit, revealing an ominous purplish-black sheen, as if turbulent undercurrents were rushing beneath the surface.
Just at that moment—
A wave of intense dizziness struck Limeng's brain! It was as if high-voltage current had instantly surged through his nerves! Fragments of knowledge, eerie in their clarity, cold, and precise, welled up instantly as if forcibly instilled:
*Emergency debridement... Compartment syndrome... Must immediately perform a fasciotomy for decompression! Drainage! Reduce internal pressure! Prevent muscle and nerve necrosis! Delay is not an option!*
No scalpel. No sterile environment. Not even a decent drainage tube!
His bloodshot eyes swept the surroundings with the sharpness of a hawk, searching for any available substitutes! His gaze instantly locked onto a discarded, flexible rubber tube nearby that had been used to transport a small amount of clean water. The tube's wall was stained with mud, but the inner wall was relatively clean, and the material was tough enough!
That's it!
He snatched that section of dirty soft tube without a moment's hesitation. Drawing the small knife from his waist, normally used for carving farm tools and corn stalks, the blade flashed a cold light in the dimness. With practiced speed, almost by muscle memory, he sliced one end of the soft tube into a sharp bevel!
"Bear with it! We have to drain it!" he growled in a hoarse voice, his gaze sharp and terrifyingly focused. All distractions were cast aside, leaving only the technical problem urgently waiting to be solved before him. With one hand, he pressed firmly on Jingyi's lower leg to prevent her from struggling due to agonizing pain, while the other hand pinched the sharpened rubber tube, aiming straight at the area where the swelling was most severe and the skin was stretched thinnest, almost translucent—
Fast! Steady! Accurate!
The sharp tip of the tube, carrying an unstoppable resolve, plunged straight down!
"Ugh—ah—!!" Jingyi's body arched violently upward as if struck by a high-voltage current, then slammed heavily back onto the ground! Her teeth bit deep into her lower lip, and a trace of metallic, bloody tang instantly spread through her mouth. Agony like a towering wave instantly overwhelmed all her consciousness, leaving a pitch-black void before her eyes, save for the bone-deep pain screaming madly.
Yet, amidst this agonizing, mind-shattering pain, Jingyi's trembling voice, punctuated by heavy gasps and a crying lilt, began to recite intermittently yet with astonishing clarity, like a drowning person clutching at a final straw:
"《Liyue Orthopedic Pharmacopoeia》... Volume Two... records... draining stasis and relieving stagnation... priority is given to dredging... available... available hollow reed tubes... or bamboo... fine bamboo twigs... pierce... pierce the affected area... guide... guide out the evil blood... to... to ease internal pressure..."
Limeng was gritting his teeth, pressing hard above the swollen area to help the stagnant, dark, viscous blood rush out rapidly through the inserted soft tube. Hearing Jingyi's trembling yet accurate recitation, he suddenly raised his head!
Through the cracked, crookedly hanging round-rimmed glasses on the girl's nose, he saw a pair of eyes brimming with tears, tormented almost to the point of haziness by the agonizing pain, yet still flashing with astonishing, stubborn resolve in their very depths! In those eyes was pain and fear, but deeper still was an unyielding refusal to give up, guarding some belief to the death. Was it a firm faith in knowledge? Or persistence in the mission to bring back the ancient texts?
That gaze pierced Limeng like a red-hot needle. Something in his heart was touched. The movements of his hands pressing down became faster, steadier, and more forceful. Dark red, nearly black, viscous stagnant blood gushed out in a steady stream along the makeshift "drainage tube," dripping onto the cold gravel and blooming into small, jarring patches of dark red.
The ancient texts passed down through millennia of wisdom merged in this very moment with the bizarrely surging, modern medical procedures from an unknown source within his mind, creating a cold, precise resonance across time and space upon this apocalyptic gravel beach woven with blood, dust, and agony. The terrifying swelling, taut as a drum and ready to burst at any moment, finally receded a fraction to the naked eye, and the purplish-black skin seemed to recover a glimmer of a living person's elasticity.
Hasty and chaotic footsteps drew closer, filled with immense anxiety.
"Jingyi!" Ganyu finally rushed to the spot. Disregarding her composure, she sank heavily to her knees on the cold, jagged gravel, her ice-blue long hair sticking messily to her sweat-dampened, pale cheeks. Trembling, she reached out her hand, her fingertips carrying the icy chill of a narrow escape and uncontrollable micro-tremors, and gently, with peerless tenderness, stroked Jingyi's forehead completely soaked in cold sweat. In those eyes, usually calm and gentle, there was now an overflowing tide of lingering fear, heartache, and the immense shock of recovering what was lost.
Jingyi's remaining consciousness was already blurred, the chilling cold brought by agonizing pain and blood loss making her feel as though she had fallen into a frozen abyss. Yet she seemed to sense that familiar, reassuring presence—it was Sister Ganyu. Using the very last trace of weak strength in her body, she pushed the three volumes of gold-stamped ancient books upward, bit by bit—books she had protected with her own body and which were now also stained with her own cold sweat and mud.
Her lips parted, her voice as weak as a candle in the wind, yet carrying the crystalline clarity of fulfilling a mission:
"Sister... Ganyu... the materials... have been brought back..."
Before the words finished, her head tilted to one side, her taut nerves completely snapping as she plunged into a deep coma. The ancient book scrolls she had instinctively and desperately protected slipped at last from her powerless arms, falling into Ganyu's violently trembling hands, which could scarcely hold them steady.
Ganyu tightly embraced the unconscious girl in her arms, light as a feather, feeling her weak breathing. Her eye rims instantly turned red, and hot tears finally burst forth uncontrollably, dripping onto Jingyi's dust-covered hair.
Limeng let out a long, deep breath from the depths of his lungs, his taut nerves relaxing slightly as he finally felt the sharp soreness in his arms and shoulder muscles from overexertion. Carefully, he withdrew the clean-water soft tube that had temporarily served as a lifeline, the dark red stagnant blood dripping from the tube's opening to leave a few final, jarring marks on the gravel.
Subconsciously, he lowered his head, intending to clean away the stained blood and debris from the tube's tip. Yet his movement suddenly froze.
Stunned.
Those debridement and drainage steps that had just flashed through his mind... every single detail, the principle, the technique, the precautions... were terrifyingly clear, precise as programs etched onto a silicon chip. This abnormally clear "surge of knowledge" carrying a cold technical feel... how similar it was to the sensation when he had previously improved soil and blended fertilizers in the experimental fields by accessing that mysterious "modern agricultural knowledge base"!
Were they of the same origin?
Where on earth did this inexplicably crammed knowledge base in his head come from? Was it an accessory of his transmigration? Or some unknown entity's gift, or curse?
A huge, heavy question mark, carrying a chilling frost, pressed down hard upon his heart once more—even more unsettling than the chaotic landing zone before his eyes.