Climbing a mountain is easy, descending is hard.
This is a common saying among ordinary people, and it's considered a wise truth.
Especially in undeveloped deep mountains, even with Su Ziyu's agile skills, the straight distance wasn't too far. Yet, it took her a full ten minutes to rush down the mountain path into the valley.
She saw two people.
A woman around forty and a teenage girl.
The girl lay on the wild grass in the valley, motionless.
The woman knelt beside her child, her face filled with terror as she cried out for help, occasionally raising her hand to wipe away tears.
Undoubtedly, this was a mother and daughter visiting the Xiaoqing Mountain scenic area.
Su Ziyu didn't have time to ponder why this mother and daughter had ventured deep into the semi-developed Xiaoqing Mountain.
As soon as she jumped off a rock, she ran towards the pair, "What happened to the child?"
Worried about the child's safety, Su Ziyu completely forgot that she was currently disguised in men's clothing, her beautiful hair hidden beneath a baseball cap, posing as "Li Qianfan."
The voice that spoke was her own.
However, the woman who saw her running over, knowing her scheme had succeeded, didn't notice any abnormality in Su Ziyu's voice.
She just looked at Ziyu with a surprised expression, "Quick, quick! Young man, come take a look at what's wrong with my daughter. She just suddenly fainted here. Oh, I told her not to come this way, but she wouldn't listen."
Young man?
Oh, oh, she thought I was Little Husband.
Su Ziyu suddenly understood. When she spoke again, her voice was noticeably deeper, "Does the child have low blood sugar? Or congenital heart disease, or similar symptoms?"
A teenager is at the peak of their physical health.
If they suddenly collapse without any warning, it's highly likely to be symptoms like those Su Ziyu mentioned.
While Su Ziyu's medical skills were not even worthy of tying Li Qianfan's shoes, she was, after all, a medical student and the dean of Guangming Hospital.
"I don't know either."
As the woman wiped away tears again, the little girl lying on the ground coughed violently and opened her eyes.
The woman was overjoyed—
She quickly called out, "Xiao Yan, you're finally awake! You scared me to death, what happened to you?"
Su Ziyu, who had already reached the child's side, also let out a long sigh of relief upon seeing the child wake up on her own.
Regardless of why the child had fainted,
As long as she woke up on her own, it proved there wasn't a serious problem.
"Mom."
The little girl glanced at Su Ziyu before softly saying to the woman, "I don't know what happened. My vision just suddenly went black, and then I collapsed."
"Are you feeling unwell anywhere now?"
Su Ziyu knelt on one knee and said to the little girl, "Especially your chest. If your head feels uncomfortable, tell big sister, tell big brother. Big brother is a doctor, he can give you a preliminary diagnosis of why you lost consciousness."
The girl shook her head, indicating she felt no discomfort.
Ignoring Su Ziyu's advice, she slowly stood up and, under her mother's worried gaze, walked around. There seemed to be no problem.
"Xiao Yan, let's get out of the mountain quickly. You've really scared your mother."
The woman took her daughter's hand, turned, and bowed to Su Ziyu, "Thank you, little brother. I'm truly grateful. I'll take my child away from here now."
Since the child was fine, Su Ziyu had nothing more to say, other than to advise them to walk slowly.
"It really was a false alarm."
Watching the mother and daughter hurry away down the valley, Su Ziyu shook her head and turned to look uphill.
The child was fine, and it was time for her to go back.
She really wished her Little Husband would come down and carry her up.
It was so high, and climbing it herself was too tiring!
The key point was that Little Husband knew she had gone down to rescue someone, yet he hadn't followed immediately.
Did he really just wait upstairs because she told him to?
She really should break his legs—
Su Ziyu grumbled inwardly, and after working up a sweat, she finally climbed back onto the mountain path.
"Huh? Where's Little Husband?"
Su Ziyu looked at the blanket on the ground, the backpack and other items on it, but Li Qianfan was nowhere to be seen.
She didn't pay much attention.
She assumed Li Qianfan might have gone to the woods on the north side of the mountain path to relieve himself.
She sat on the blanket, took out a bottle of water, and drank it down in large gulps.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then looked towards the woods and called out in a rough voice, "Little beauty, what are you doing?"
No one answered.
Only the birds chirped on the treetops in the forest.
Su Ziyu's heart suddenly skipped a beat!
The birds chirping leisurely on the treetops indicated that there was no one in the woods.
But Su Ziyu could see the mountain path both up and down by looking up.
So where had Li Qianfan gone?
Su Ziyu, utterly bewildered, took out her phone and started calling Li Qianfan.
"I'm sorry, the user you are calling is currently switched off."
The mechanical female voice on the phone made Su Ziyu furrow her brows. Suddenly, she felt a panic!
Li Qianfan's phone had battery, but it would never be turned off for no reason.
"Did something happen to him?"
Su Ziyu shot up from her seat, jumped onto a rock, and shouted, "Qianfan, Qianfan!"
No one answered.
Only the birdsong in the woods abruptly stopped, and the valley echoed her call.
Fear.
An inexplicable fear surged from the depths of Su Ziyu's heart like a roaring tide.
Because she suddenly remembered that she was disguised as a man, and Li Qianfan was disguised as a woman, looking exactly like her delicate self.
What if!
If some thugs had already been targeting Su Ziyu, then after she and Li Qianfan had "swapped roles" and she went down to help that woman, wouldn't they have taken the opportunity to abduct the "beauty"?
Especially!
Su Ziyu thought about how, after she had rushed down into the valley in a hurry, the girl who had been unconscious suddenly woke up on her own.
"Lure the tiger away from its den!"
The idiom flashed through Su Ziyu's mind.
The fear intensified!
She turned and sprinted towards the mountain path, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting hoarsely, "Qianfan! Qianfan! Where are you? Where are you!?"
There was still only the echo of an empty valley, no other movement.
Her foot stumbled, and as Su Ziyu ran uphill, she fell to her knees in terror.
It hurt.
But without a moment's hesitation, she immediately sprang up, shouting Li Qianfan's name. Just as she was about to run further uphill, she thought of something.
She turned and rushed back to the blanket.
"Su Ziyu, you must be calm, you must be calm."
"Qianfan will be fine, he will definitely be fine!"
"He might have just gone off to play, I don't know where he went."
Su Ziyu kept comforting herself. She knelt on one knee, her eyes wide open, scanning the mountain path.
The mountain path was made of bluestone slabs.
There was moss and wild grass on the bluestone slabs.
Su Ziyu didn't know how to solve cases, but she found the spot where Li Qianfan, leaning against a tree and watching her, had been bound and taken away by two people.
She saw the trampled moss and crushed grass.
Boom!
After Su Ziyu confirmed her judgment was correct (there were at least two sets of unfamiliar footprints, as her and Li Qianfan's shoes were the same brand with the same sole pattern), she felt all the blood rush to her head.
Her vision went black—
But she could hear her own uncontrollable sobs, "Qianfan, he's been kidnapped!"
But she knew very well that now was not the time to cry.
Even though she could hardly suppress her fear and let out whimpers, she quickly called Ning Xiaolan.
As soon as the call was connected—
Su Ziyu cried, "Mom! Hurry to Xiaoqing Mountain! Qianfan, Qianfan is in trouble."