"Yes, I bled when Sister Ling stabbed me just now," Su Haiting quickly interrupted the medic, rubbing her newly bandaged wound with self-reproach. "I shouldn't have bothered Sister Ling and made her angry. Brother Zhou, you should go back and be with Sister Ling. I'm fine!"

Su Haiting pounded on her wound, causing the newly bandaged wound to burst open again, staining the bandage with blood. Several soldiers who rushed over at the scene exclaimed in alarm.

The military doctor, who had just been about to say that Ling Huanwu was showing signs of miscarriage, immediately shut his mouth, hurriedly unwrapping the gauze and then began to unwrap it again, preparing to sew it up again.

The tent was filled with soldiers, all of whom were Su Haidi's comrades-in-arms from back then.

While the wound was being stitched up, the group left the tent.

Several men surrounded Zhou Jiuzhen, filled with righteous indignation, and stood up for Su Haiting. "Battalion Commander, how could your wife hurt Haiting like this? We watched Haiting grow up. Hai Di used to cherish her like the apple of his eye. You can't just ignore this. You must punish your wife!"

"Yes, it's just visiting a patient. Why is your wife so intolerant? When I came to see Haiting, my wife didn't say anything. As a woman, after experiencing something like this, shouldn't she treat Haiting like a younger sister and be good to her?"

"Hai Di saved your life back then, Jiu Zhen, you must give Hai Ting justice, otherwise how can you face Hai Di..."

Everyone chimed in, expressing their sympathy for Su Haiting.

Zhou Jiuzhen was surrounded, looking conflicted. He was about to explain himself, but ultimately swallowed his words.

Inside the tent, Su Haiting took in the conversation of the people outside, the struggle on Zhou Jiuzhen's face, and his eventual acquiescence. A triumphant smile curled at the corner of her lips.

*

Outside the small wooden shed.

Guard Wang carried Ling Huanwu, who was covered in blood, and hid in the shadows.

Ling Huanwu was in a daze when she was awakened by a sharp pain in her lower abdomen.

She vaguely heard Zhou Jiuzhen's cold voice coming from not far away.

"Find Ling Huanwu and immediately hand her over to Captain Sun!"

Ling Huanwu opened her eyes and vaguely saw that in front of the small wooden shed where she and Zhou Jiuzhen lived, there were many soldiers standing, and Zhou Jiuzhen was giving orders to arrest her with a serious expression!

She gazed at Zhou Jiuzhen's cold and stern face under the moonlight, her heart clenching and her whole body trembling with pain.

Instead of carrying Ling Huanwu out of the shadows, Guard Wang carried her towards the dock.

Upon arriving at the dock, a small fishing boat was waiting at the bottom of the stone steps.

He was carrying Ling Huanwu on his back, about to disembark, when Ling Huanwu seemed to belatedly realize what was happening and struggled to get off his back.

"What are you doing? Where do you want to take me?"

Ling Huanwu pounded on Wang's back, terrified.

Helpless, Guard Wang had no choice but to put Ling Huanwu on the ground, grab her wrist as she pounded it, his face full of pain and helplessness. "Huanwu, you see, you have no home to go back to. Zhou Jiuzhen wants to arrest you; he doesn't believe you at all!"

"If it were me, I wouldn't doubt you at all. You've suffered so much, how could you point a knife at someone else?"

"Huanwu, come, I'll take you away!"

As he spoke, he grabbed Ling Huanwu's hand and tried to lead her onto the boat.

Ling Huanwu shook off his hand, instinctively taking a few steps back, her face filled with belated panic. "You...who are you? No, you're not Xiao Wang. Xiao Wang wouldn't call me that, and he wouldn't hold my hand!"

The man on the dock froze, motionless, his shadow stretched long and crooked on the stone steps under the moonlight, exuding infinite loneliness and vicissitudes.

As Ling Huanwu watched the man's retreating figure, tears streamed down her face without her realizing it.

She lunged forward and pounded on Qin Jinshen's back, her shrill and desperate cries echoing throughout the silent dock.

"You bastard, where did you take Panmei? Did you kill him? He's my brother! Why did you kill him?"

Ling Huanwu clutched his back and cried until she almost fainted.

How wonderful it is to dream!

He, his brothers, and their parents treated her like their own sister and daughter.

Their whole family's wish was to have a younger sister.

So they all recognized her as their goddaughter.

But it was this goddaughter who ultimately caused his death.

The man turned around and let the woman in front of him hit him, venting all the resentment in his heart, until she was completely exhausted and slid off him. Only then did he reach out and steadily support her, pulling her into his arms.

"Huanwu, you're wrong. Your brother isn't a good person. In fact, he's always had ulterior motives towards you. Do you know why Song Panmei disappeared in the previous life? It was because I killed him!"

The man became more and more agitated as he spoke, and his eyes grew increasingly sinister. "Back then, when he went to Hong Kong to find you, the two of you went to see a movie together. I saw him actually kiss you while you were asleep. He's just a rat in the gutter, daring to kiss you under the guise of being your brother!"

"In this life, I never expected him to actually want to come to Wantan Island to find you. Heaven knows how much I hated him when I saw his seductive appearance, even more than that Zhou Jiuzhen, so I could only..."

At this moment, Ling Huanwu felt ice-cold all over. She could no longer hear what he was saying beside her; all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears.

Before my blurred vision, the past events seemed vividly clear.

That year, when she went to the port city with her grandfather, the fair-skinned boy stood on the dock with his eyes red from crying, and asked her why she wanted to go to the port city.

Why did they leave their older brothers to study so far away when they could have studied in China?

Looking at her grandfather's hunched back on the dock, Ling Huanwu didn't want to say anything sentimental or to express her desire to share his burdens.

She jokingly said that the pilots in the port city were very impressive and handsome, and she wanted to go and see them.

I never imagined that after that parting, we would meet again in Hong Kong ten years later.

That year, she was already a mother of three, while he was in his prime, having returned from studying abroad and becoming one of the first pilots in the country to be envied by everyone.

At the time, she even jokingly asked him when he would find her a sister-in-law.

Little did they know that that meeting would be their final farewell.

She thought he had gone missing on his way to complete a mission, but she never imagined that he had died on his way to see her.

Whether in the previous life or this life, he died tragically at the hands of Qin Jinshen because of her.

Ling Huanwu's legs went weak and she could barely stand. Her whole body was trembling. If Qin Jinshen hadn't been holding her, she would have collapsed to the ground long ago.

Endless sorrow choked in her throat, like a spinning blade slowly cutting down her throat, twisting and causing pain in her internal organs.

She opened her mouth wide and tried to take a deep breath, but she couldn't stop the tears from eroding her reason. The taste of blood in her throat grew stronger, and blood slid down the corner of her lips.

She wished she could vomit up all the blood in her throat, to express even the slightest bit of guilt.

She, Ling Huanwu, is a sinner!