As a battlefield surgeon, you never have the luxury of surgical assistants. No matter how major the operation, on the front lines, you can only rely on yourself.
Forget a minor surgery like this—even extracting a bullet from the heart, a major operation, rarely comes with assistants when medical resources are desperately scarce on the battlefield.
On the battlefield, there’s never a shortage of wounded—but there’s always a shortage of doctors and nurses.
For Serena Feng, squatting on the ground to operate is no pressure at all.
Sometimes, when a soldier is shot, you have to treat them immediately—and if no assistants can be found, you just have to squat and operate. Seven or eight hours like that? For Serena Feng, it’s routine.
Serena Feng wipes the sweat from her forehead with one hand, grateful for her battlefield experience—otherwise, today would be a real problem.
After cutting open the wound and setting down the scalpel, Serena Feng picks up the hemostat and buries herself in work...
When Lance Quinn managed to resist the effects of the anesthetic and hazily opened his eyes, he saw Serena Feng poking around his chest with a tiny pair of forceps...
...Lance Quinn wanted to scold Serena Feng, but found he couldn’t speak at all. His entire body felt locked down, unable to move.
Mafeisan?
Rumor had it that Serena Feng's mother came from some hidden reclusive clan—could that actually be true?
Without realizing it, Lance Quinn found himself drawn in by Serena Feng. The fierceness in his eyes faded to calm as he started to seriously watch her skilled hands and focused expression.
But the more he watched, the more tangled up he felt inside.
What was this woman even doing? Was she sewing clothes or something?
After digging the arrow out and cleaning the wound, she actually took a needle and started stitching him up.
Stitch, stitch.
Lance could hear the needle piercing his flesh, and his scalp tingled uncontrollably.
If the situation allowed, he would've jumped up and smacked Serena Feng away, demanding, 'Do you even know medicine? At a time like this, shouldn’t you just heat the knife and cauterize the wound? Why all the needles and thread—does she think my flesh is cloth?'
Too bad, with the anesthetic holding him down, Lance could only grit his teeth and endure.
Serena finished stitching up his wound and, with a flick of her wrist, tied off the thread in a neat, elegant knot.
Uh...
Lance Quinn was speechless, a black line hanging over his head.
Could this woman be any more weirdly playful?
Cold...
If Serena Feng knew what Lance Quinn was thinking right now, she’d probably be banging her head against the wall in frustration.
Come on, that was a professional surgical knot!
Back in the day, I practiced tying proper surgical knots on trash bags every single day, until I could do it with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back.
Too bad Serena Feng didn’t hear Lance Quinn’s inner complaints—she was so focused, she didn’t even notice he’d woken up.
Or maybe she just had total faith in her own anesthetic. Serena never believed Lance could wake up this fast.
Once she finished stitching him up, Serena started applying medicine to Lance’s wound and wrapped it with bandages.
Because the wound was right over his heart, Serena had to wrap the bandage all the way around Lance’s back to keep it from slipping.
That meant there was no way to avoid a little physical contact between them.
To Serena Feng, Lance Quinn was just a patient. She didn’t bother with any awkwardness between men and women, so she naturally half-leaned over him, skillfully lifting his upper body without disturbing the wound, making it easy to wrap the bandage around his back.
But Lance Quinn was a different story.
He was a man—a perfectly normal man, at that.
The moment Serena leaned in, Lance’s mind went blank. He tried to tense his body, but nothing responded.
He instinctively widened his eyes, but when he caught the faint, medicinal scent on Serena’s body, he closed them again.
Like a devout believer, he let Serena lift him up—body and soul, he didn’t resist at all.
Lance realized he’d actually handed his safety over to Serena Feng—a woman he’d only known for a few days.
How was that even possible?
Lance’s head started to swim again, so he just closed his eyes and replayed everything he’d seen.
Evan Wen was right—this Serena Feng was odd, but she really did have skills.
A woman facing his gruesome wound, not only didn’t scream, but calmly cut it open, avoided the vital spots, and pulled the arrow out.
Her bandaging skills were honestly on par with the imperial court doctors.
All this just proved Serena Feng was no ordinary woman. She was like a mystery, veiled in countless layers—every time you peeled one back, there was another surprise.
After tying off the bandage, Serena double-checked everything, using her experience to make sure Lance was as comfortable as possible and could still move if he needed to.
With all that done, Serena stood up, ignoring her numb legs, and pulled a saline bottle out of her Smart Med-Pack to set up an IV for Lance.
Serena moved fast, and since Lance didn’t want her to know he was awake, he kept his eyes closed. So only Serena herself saw her take the medicine from the Med-Pack.
She injected the medicine into the saline bottle. With no IV stand around, she had no choice but to rest it against herself.
Then she quickly stuck a needle into Lance’s hand, tied it off, stood up, and held the IV bottle aloft herself to give him the infusion.
She had to hold the saline bottle and keep an eye on the transfusion at the same time. Serena was seriously busy—her cheeks, once bright and rosy, now looked dull and exhausted, but her eyes were still burning with energy.
That’s what it meant to be a battlefield doctor. After days of nonstop, high-intensity work, her body was on the edge of collapse, but her mind stayed razor-sharp—always in perfect working mode.
Only by staying like this could she make sure her own mistakes wouldn’t cost lives.
A doctor who messes up while saving people is no different from a killer.
People like that have no right to be called doctors—they’re nothing but butchers in white coats.
Serena Feng hated doctors who killed patients because of so-called 'mistakes' more than anything.
Doctors aren’t like other jobs. They deal with human lives. Anyone else—even a country—can make mistakes in decisions or execution, but not doctors.
So no matter how exhausted she got, Serena kept her mind locked in work mode.
As the cold medicine flowed into his veins, Lance Quinn grew more and more alert. When he finally cracked his eyes open, he saw the contradiction that was Serena Feng—her body exhausted, her gaze blazing—and in that instant, he realized he couldn’t look away...