The Rich Spring of the Southern Dynasties, Storms in the Wind and Rain Tower (1)

During the Qingming Festival, the temperature in Beijing plummeted. The north wind roared like a wild, unbridled horse. The wind stung the face like needles, dust scattered like fog, and the world grew dim, making it difficult to distinguish anything. It was a scene fitting for the occasion.

On this day, Lu Huaizheng and Li Hongwen went to the Revolutionary Cemetery to pay their respects to the martyrs.

The Revolutionary Cemetery was originally the Lingfu Temple from the Yuan Dynasty, later changed to the Martyrs' Shrine, and in 1970, it was renamed the Revolutionary Cemetery. Li Hongwen came every year, sometimes alone, sometimes with Lu Huaizheng. Outside the cemetery, verdant mountains rose, surrounded by towering ancient trees that stood guard over the grounds day and night like old soldiers. The environment was quiet, solemn, and dignified.

The grounds were sparsely populated, with only a few people scattered about. Occasionally, the clear chirping of birds could be heard, circling coldly in the empty cemetery.

Lu Huaizheng followed Li Hongwen for a walk around. The two walked slowly, as if strolling. Li Hongwen, with his hands behind his back, stopped on a small bridge. He leaned on the bridge pillar and gazed into the distance, taking in the view of the jade-green mountains, his eyes filled with emotion.

"Although I often joke with your Professor Han, I truly admire academics like them. Take Old Qian from back in the day; if it weren't for him, we might still be a step behind in national defense and aviation." Li Hongwen glanced at Lu Huaizheng, his hand loosening and then tightening its grip on the bridge pillar. He sighed with a smile. "I always tell my son to study hard so he can become a useful person to society in the future. Your sister-in-law always says my thinking is rigid, that times have changed."

At this point, he turned to look at Lu Huaizheng, his eyes fixed firmly on him. He said, "I just smiled at the time. It's true that times have changed. But you and I, people who have been on the battlefield, we know this clearly in our hearts. Society is still this society. It's just that what we enjoy was paid for by the loyal bones buried beneath this ground. 'Honor the past and remember the ancestors.' How many people can still live by these four words today?"

"Actually, just being harmless to society and not causing trouble is already a rare thing," Lu Huaizheng said in a low voice.

Li Hongwen smiled and patted him on the shoulder, sighing with emotion, and said no more.

After returning from Babaoshan, Lu Huaizheng and Li Hongwen held a series of intense meetings for two consecutive days. It wasn't until Turkey officially announced that the coup had been thwarted and military trials had begun, and the embassy alert was completely lifted, that Lu Huaizheng prepared to pack his things and return to Yunnan with Chen Rui.

However, the day before he was scheduled to leave, Li Hongwen called him to his office again.

Li Hongwen called him to his office again. "Come with me to Hunan first, then you can go directly from there."

"What about Chen Rui?" Lu Huaizheng asked.

Li Hongwen was looking down, packing his things. He gathered everything on his desk and put it into a drawer, looking as if he were about to leave immediately. He said hurriedly, "It's fine, let him go back first."

At this, he suddenly seemed to realize something. Holding his things, he looked up and glanced at him. "Are you in a hurry to go back?"

Lu Huaizheng looked away and scratched his eyebrow.

"No."

Li Hongwen's eyes narrowed with a look of knowing everything. He straightened the stack of documents in his hand, held them vertically, and tapped them slowly on the desk. "Come on. It's not that I don't want to let you go back. There's a big military competition in Hunan recently. The leadership specifically asked me to go supervise, and while we're at it, have you compete as well."

"A competition?"

Li Hongwen said, "Yeah, a competition. They lost on your home turf last year, so of course they're not convinced, right? This year, they specifically requested you to go. Let me tell you, don't disgrace our brigade, or you can forget about getting married."

Just before leaving, as if remembering something, he turned back and added, "And don't be too arrogant. Hold back a little. We're all on the same side."

...

Yunnan Military Region.

After Zhao Dailin handed the Psychological Report to Yu Hao that day, she didn't open it immediately. Instead, she carefully placed it in a file folder. She remembered Sun Kai saying that everything about Lu Huaizheng was classified, that even he didn't dare say much. But now, holding a report from a past examination of his, Yu Hao was consumed by a clawing curiosity, an unbearable itch. She was desperate to read it but was afraid that if Lu Huaizheng found out, he would be angry.

Lunch that day.

Zhao Dailin finally remembered to ask her, "Did you read it?"

Yu Hao poked her chopsticks into her bowl and shook her head hesitantly.

Zhao Dailin wasn't surprised. Yu Hao's personality, though seemingly cold and detached, was actually very proper on the inside. She wasn't one to do anything out of line; she was timid and didn't overthink things.

"If you're not going to read it, then give it back. Don't just hog it."

"I'll read it!"

Yu Hao sullenly shoveled the rest of the rice from her bowl into her mouth, gulping it down in a couple of noisy mouthfuls. She finished her meal at the fastest speed in her life and left with her tray without waiting for Zhao Dailin.

The girl walked away.

Sun Kai moved his tray over to Zhao Dailin's side and gestured with his eyes towards Yu Hao's retreating back. "What's with that girl?"

Zhao Dailin didn't answer. Without looking up, she asked, "You mentioned last time that Lu Huaizheng received psychological treatment. Who treated him? Dr. Liu?"

Sun Kai thought for a moment. "Not Xiao Liu. She was also brought in from outside. The leadership specifically found her for him. I heard she was a top student from Peking University, tall, quite pretty, and very young."

"A Peking University graduate? What's her name?" Zhao Dailin asked casually.

"Let me think...Di..."

"Di Yanni?"

Sun Kai was taken aback, scratching his head. "What, you know her?"

Zhao Dailin gave a helpless smile. The surname was rare to begin with, and she was also in the psychology field. The circle was small, so naturally, only a few were well-known. The moment she heard the words "Peking University," her mind tensed up. She hadn't expected it to really be her.

"I guess you could say I know her, but Dr. Yu knows her better." After speaking, Zhao Dailin put down her chopsticks and leaned back. She subconsciously reached for the cigarettes in her pocket, about to smoke one to satisfy her craving, but her hand was slapped away by the quick-eyed Sun Kai. "Are you asking for a beating?! You dare to smoke in the canteen?"

Zhao Dailin came to her senses and gave an embarrassed smile. She obediently put the cigarettes back in her pocket, shook her head, and sighed, "What's that saying? Enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road."

This left Sun Kai completely baffled. He didn't have time to ponder her cryptic remarks and warned sternly, "If I catch you smoking in the canteen again, I'll show you what 'enemies are bound to meet on a narrow road' really means."

"Yes, yes, Captain Sun."

Zhao Dailin admitted her mistake very quickly, bowing and scraping as she apologized to him.

Sun Kai was quite pleased, and he left smugly with his tray.

Meanwhile, Yu Hao had already returned to her office and spread the report out on her desk.

Before she even read further, Yu Hao saw a familiar name signed in the 'person in charge' section of the evaluation: Di Yanni.

She was a classmate from her cram school year. Their relationship could be described as being like fire and water. Or rather, Di Yanni was like fire and water with everyone, and especially loved to compete with her.

Seeing this name, Yu Hao's heart grew uneasy. Her gaze quickly swept downwards—

Below was a set of comparative experiment charts.

One set was Lu Huaizheng's, and the other was Sun Kai's.

Sun Kai's set was the control group, presumably the healthy psychological control, while Lu Huaizheng's set was labeled: PTSD group.

Lu Huaizheng's target latency index was over four hundred in March of that year.

After four months of treatment, it recovered to over three hundred. It was still higher than Sun Kai's but was already within the normal range.

At the end of the report, Di Yanni recorded Lu Huaizheng's treatment reactions:

March 2014, unable to fire a weapon normally during training.

April 2014, habitual vomiting, unable to eat.

May 2014, sensation of vomiting disappeared, mental disorder, experienced hallucinations.

June 2014, hallucinations disappeared, insomnia.

July 2014, partial memory loss.

...

Every month there was an endless stream of symptoms and conditions. With each line she read, Yu Hao could hardly bear to continue. Her heart felt as if it were being squeezed tightly by an invisible hand, and even her breathing became shallow.

The report documented various things up until the end of December. The recording style was typical of Di Yanni—cold and emotionless. When it came to patients, she always preferred difficult and complicated cases. She had once said during a speech: "Any patient exhibiting a psychological symptom is a guinea pig in the history of medicine. In the process of psychotherapy, one must dare to experiment. If you are timid and restrained, you will never get new answers."

At the time, a student in the audience disagreed, raising a hand to refute her point. "Medicine is not an ordinary field. When you speak of being bold, do you mean being bold with prescriptions or with research? If you mean with prescriptions, have you considered the patient's physical condition?"

How did Di Yanni respond at the time?

Yu Hao remembered it very clearly.

She had replied, full of vigor and confidence, "Please be clear, fellow student. Being bold with prescriptions doesn't mean abusing medication. I hope even more that in this new era of China, everyone can have a spirit of daring to dedicate themselves to science. The first person to eat a crab didn't know if it was poisonous, did they?"

At the time, this impassioned speech caused the students below the stage to erupt in applause like a flash flood. The sound echoed throughout the entire auditorium, unceasing, as if they were witnessing a rising star in the future of psychology.

Back then, Zhao Dailin had told Yu Hao that with Di Yanni's kind of fanatical scientific spirit, something was bound to go wrong.

And sure enough, not long after, Di Yanni resigned from the psychological research institute where she worked.

Zhao Dailin asked around through various contacts and found out that a patient's family had filed a complaint against her for prescribing excessive amounts of sleeping pills and morphine. It was Di Yanni's older brother who had found a familiar media outlet to suppress the matter. Some rumors only circulated privately within their circle. Everyone knew Di Yanni was a madwoman, and no one dared to provoke her.

When Zhao Dailin came in, Yu Hao had just put the file folder away.

She walked over. "Finished reading?"

Yu Hao nodded.

"What was the problem?"

"Post-traumatic stress disorder."

Zhao Dailin asked again, "Attending physician?"

Yu Hao crossed her arms, looked up at her, and from her resentful gaze, Zhao Dailin understood instantly. They both blurted out the name at almost the exact same time.

"Di Yanni?"

"Di Yanni."

Zhao Dailin grabbed a handful of her hair and cursed under her breath.

But Yu Hao kept her head down and said in a muffled voice, "I just read her report analysis. Do you know how I feel? Lu Huaizheng has mild, non-dissociative PTSD, but on the March diagnosis report, she wrote dissociative PTSD. Any fool knows the dissociative type is much more serious. His VEP Index was only slightly higher than a normal person's." At this, Yu Hao slammed the report folder on the table in anger. "And look what she did! The entire dosage for March was based on the dissociative type. As a result, he started vomiting in April, and she still didn't realize! In the May report, she continued to prescribe large doses. And look at June, she even used morphine! Can't she, Di Yanni, live without morphine?!"