Sirens wailed in the cold morning mist outside the Yanjing Veterans Hospital.
Inside the emergency ward, monitors screamed high-pitched warning tones. Thirty retired soldiers and firefighters thrashed against their leather restraints.
Captain Chen Hu’s face had turned dark indigo. His chest rattled with a wet, choking sound, and blood trickled from his nostrils.
“His heart stopped!” an ER doctor shouted, tearing open the defibrillator pads. “Clear the bed! Charge to two hundred!”
“Hold your hands,” Lin Mo’s calm voice cut through the panic.
Lin Mo stepped through the curtain, his grey coat parting. He placed two fingers against Captain Chen’s sternum.
A thin pulse of pure, golden Rank 4 High Golden Benevolence Qi surged into the dying soldier’s heart.
The jagged line on the monitor immediately snapped back into a steady, rhythmic beep. The black frost receding from the captain’s throat allowed a deep, ragged breath of oxygen to fill his lungs.
