r18novel Chapter 22 The Doctor's Kindness
Chapter 22 The Doctor's Kindness
Cheng Song was awakened by the biting cold.
Consciousness struggled to break free from the murky river filled with countless shouts and fragments of light and shadow, and the first thing to return was the sense of touch. A rough, hard, earthy sensation came from beneath him, making his bones ache. Next came the sense of smell, a mixture of soil, decaying plants, animal dung, and a faint, indescribable sweet and pungent stench of decay filling his nostrils.
He suddenly opened his eyes.
The sky was a hazy gray, devoid of stars, only thick, low-hanging clouds. He lay on the edge of an earthen embankment, the ground beneath him frozen solid, a few clumps of withered, frost-covered wild grass shivering in the cold wind. He wore rough, patched linen clothes, their stiff texture offering no protection against the chill of this early spring night.
"Huff..." He propped himself up and sat up, his joints making a slight clicking sound from the cold and stiffness. His gaze quickly swept around.
This was a bumpy dirt road, winding its way into the distance, disappearing behind the hazy night and rolling hills. Beside the road were fields littered with crop stubble after the harvest, a desolate scene. In the distance, the silhouettes of some low-lying mud-brick houses could be vaguely discerned, but there were no lights, a chilling stillness.
The wind howled through the withered branches and wild grass, and carried a distant, indistinct sound, like many people weeping or groaning, which was broken and intermittent.
He looked down to examine himself. He was dressed in shabby hemp clothes and wore worn-out straw sandals.
He tried to sense the virus within his body, but that power that had once flowed effortlessly through his veins was now as if in the deepest hibernation, offering no response. Well, the abilities of transformation, devouring, and super-fast regeneration were completely out of the question.
With a thought, a faint, dark silver-gray hue quietly appeared on the back of his right hand, flowing like mercury and instantly covering his entire palm, forming a thin yet exceptionally tough, metallic-looking "glove." The tips of his five fingers protruded slightly, forming extremely sharp, horny claws, but it quickly returned to its original state. Comrade Thousand Forms is still quite reliable.
His gaze fell to the side where a worn-out box, woven from rattan and wood, sat, stained and badly worn at the edges. He reached out and opened it. Inside were several bundles of dried herbs tied with straw, a few smooth stone and bone needles, a chipped earthenware bowl, and a handwritten manuscript bound with coarse hemp rope, its pages yellowed.
He picked up the handwritten book. The cover was blank. Opening it, he found densely written text in small, regular script, interspersed with simple diagrams of the human body's meridians and acupoints. The language was archaic, but miraculously, he could understand the gist—it was a medical book recording symptoms of various common ailments, herbal remedies, acupuncture points, and so on. The title read: *Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases*.
At the same time, a stream of information suddenly flooded into his mind, not sound, but more like a pre-existing memory being awakened:
[Identity recorded: Cheng Song, itinerant physician. Age 24, a native of Qinghe, Jizhou, with some medical knowledge. In the first year of the Zhongping era, a great plague struck Jizhou, afflicting his hometown. He traveled north to Julu County to search for his lost maternal uncle. Passing through this area, he ran out of money, suffering from hunger and cold, and temporarily rested by the roadside…]
The first year of Zhongping? Cheng Song quickly recalled his pitiful historical knowledge. Zhongping was the reign title of Emperor Ling of Han, and the first year of Zhongping... that was 184 AD! The year the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out!
Sure enough. He put down his medical book and turned his gaze to the desolate dirt road and barren fields. 184 AD, Julu County. Zhang Jiao's hometown, the core area of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. The faint, sweet, fishy smell in the air seemed to have grown stronger. The distant, indistinct cries and groans also seemed a little clearer.
He stood up and slung the worn-out medicine box over his shoulder. The box wasn't heavy, but it felt like a ton of bricks on his shoulders. It wasn't just an identity prop; it was more like a silent reminder from the Spirit Realm System.
He walked along the dirt road, heading in the direction from which the faint sound of crying he remembered came. His straw sandals were quickly soaked with dust and frost, chilling him to the bone. After walking for about fifteen minutes, a sparse grove of trees appeared ahead by the roadside, and at the edge of the grove, he could vaguely make out several figures huddled together.
As he got closer, the sight made him pause slightly.
They were refugees fleeing war. Men, women, and children, about twenty or thirty of them, huddled under a sheltered earthen slope, their clothes tattered, their faces sallow and emaciated, shivering in the cold wind. Even more shocking were the large patches of sores oozing yellow fluid on the exposed skin of many of them, some on their faces, others on their arms and necks. The stench of decay in the air was so strong it was nauseating.
Cheng Song pushed up his glasses, activated his analysis mode, and scanned the festering sores.
Faint data streams and energy outlines appeared in the field of vision. A thin, dark, almost blackish energy glow lingered around the wounds, somewhat similar to the corrupting energy of the benevolent father, both carrying a sense of eroding life and distorting order. However, this energy was more primal and murky, lacking the intense, eerie sense of depravity. Instead, it resembled a kind of "pathogenic energy" or "plague" originating from this world itself, a mixture of disease, toxins, despair, and death. Like maggots clinging to the bone, it slowly consumed the host's already waning life force.
Plague is one of the most common killers of this era. But under the lens, this plague is clearly not simply bacteria or viruses, but rather a mixture of some kind of low-level contamination unique to this copy world.
A woman carrying a child among the refugees seemed to notice him. She raised her cloudy eyes and looked over, initially bewildered, but when she saw the medicine box on his back, a faint light suddenly flashed in her lifeless eyes, and she cried out hoarsely, "Doctor...is it a doctor? Please, save my child...he's dying..."
The shout, like a pebble thrown into stagnant water, immediately caused a small commotion. Several people who were still barely able to move struggled to look over, their gazes shifting back and forth between Cheng Song and the medicine box on his shoulder.
Before Cheng Song could respond, suddenly, a boy among the refugees, his face filthy but his eyes still relatively clear, pointed sharply to the distance at the other end of the dirt road, his voice filled with fear and a hint of awkward anticipation: "Look! Over there! It's...it's the Yellow Turbans! They're here!"
The crowd looked in the direction the child was pointing. They saw a group of about a dozen people walking along a dirt ridge in the distant fields, men, women, and children, all with faded, yellowed strips of cloth wrapped around their heads. Leading them was a burly, dark-skinned man with a wood-chopping knife at his waist and a rough wooden bucket in his hand. They didn't seem to be in a hurry; instead, they walked and stopped frequently, stopping whenever they encountered starving people or those infected lying by the roadside.
Cheng Song squinted, and the lens zoomed in and focused the field of vision.
The Yellow Turban man scooped a ladle of murky, strangely yellowish water from a wooden bucket and gave it to an old man lying by the roadside, his body covered in festering sores and on the verge of death. The water seemed to have a strange effect; soon after the old man drank it, the festering, pus-filled sores on his body visibly healed and scabbed over! Although he wasn't completely cured, the deterioration was clearly halted, and the old man even regained some of his strength. He struggled to his feet, kowtowed to the Yellow Turban man, and muttered incantations, seemingly thanking his "Great and Wise Teacher."
But Cheng Song saw a completely different scene through his lens.
That ladle of "talismanic water" contained an extremely complex and contradictory mixture of energies. The main body was a pure energy that leaned towards neutrality and peace, carrying the power of herbs and certain prayers and beliefs, and indeed possessed a weak effect of exorcising evil, upholding righteousness, and stimulating human potential. However, mixed within this pure energy was a trace of extremely obscure, viscous, dark yellow energy, which exuded a fanatical, fanatical aura, carrying the connotations of forced assimilation and "sacrifice."
As the old man drank the talisman water, his wounds were temporarily suppressed and healed by the pure energy. At the same time, the wisps of dark yellow energy flowed along with the water and merged into the old man's body, even seeping deeper. In the instant captured by the lens, the moment the old man raised his head, a strange, fanatical, and devout dark yellow light flashed and disappeared deep in the originally cloudy and painful eyes.
That wasn't healing; it was suppression and transformation! A treatment tainted with pollution brought the old man temporary relief and a deep-seated, fanatical devotion to something.
Main quest triggered: Investigate the truth behind the "talisman water"
[Mission Description: The "talismanic water" distributed by the Yellow Turban Army seems to alleviate the plague, but a hidden secret lies behind it. Investigate the source, composition, and true effects of the talismanic water.]
[Optional quest triggered: Saving the People (Part 1)]
[Mission Description: As a healer, saving lives is your sacred duty. Use your medical skills to successfully treat at least 10 infected people. Current Progress: 0/10]
[Note: Based on your identity as a "Wandering Physician," you have acquired basic medical skills (temporary supplement), which can be used for diagnosis, herbal identification, and simple treatments.]
The system notification appeared before my eyes, cold and clear.
Cheng Song took a deep breath of the icy air, which smelled of decay, sweetness, and earthiness, and pulled the straps of his medicine box up a little higher. He strode forward, not towards the group of Yellow Turbans distributing talisman water, but straight towards the group of desperate refugees at the foot of the earthen slope.
"I have some medical knowledge, let me take a look." His voice was steady in the cold wind, with a deliberately slowed, reassuring rhythm. This was thanks to the tone control he had honed from handling countless neighborhood disputes.
He first walked up to the woman holding the child. The child in the woman's arms was about four or five years old, skin and bones, with red cheeks, a burning forehead, and rapid breathing. There were also several festering sores on his body, but he was less severe than the adults around him.
Cheng Song squatted down and placed his fingers on the child's thin wrist. The pulse was fast and weak, and burning hot to the touch. He pretended to examine the child's tongue coating, which was thick and greasy yellow, and then gently pressed several points on the child's abdomen. This basic diagnostic knowledge came partly from fragments of memory temporarily filled in by "itinerant doctors," and partly from common sense he had accumulated in the real world.
Plague, high fever, sores—it is very likely some kind of highly contagious disease of this era, perhaps accompanied by septicemia.
"It's the pathogenic qi entering the body, manifesting as sores externally, and burning the internal organs internally," he said softly, as if talking to himself, yet also explaining to the woman. He opened his medicine box and quickly rummaged through the herbs inside. Several common herbs for clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling the blood and relieving sores were selected—Scutellaria baicalensis, Coptis chinensis, and Lonicera japonica. Thanks to the handwritten medical book and his hastily corrected medical skills, he could barely recognize and understand the general effects of these herbs.
"Do you have water? Clean water, preferably water that can be boiled," he asked.
A slightly older refugee nearby quickly handed him a chipped earthenware pot containing some murky stream water. Cheng Song used a flint and some gathered dry branches to start a small fire, placed the pot on it, and put the herbs inside to boil. Throughout the process, he moved swiftly and focused intently, and against the backdrop of deathly silence and despair, he exuded a subtle, reassuring sense of stability.
While waiting for the medicine to be decocted, he went to see several other patients. He gently pricked specific acupoints with a stone needle to draw blood, and used a clean cloth dipped in the little bit of cheap wine to wipe and clean the relatively clean sores. He didn't have the immediate effect of the talisman water, and his movements were even somewhat clumsy due to his lack of skill, but every step was solid, with a sense of order based on observation, analysis, and the use of limited resources.
The medicine was ready, a bowl of it dark and bitter-smelling. He carefully blew on it to cool it, feeding it to the child little by little, and then distributing it to the other patients with the most severe fevers. The medicine wouldn't work so quickly, but perhaps it was a placebo effect, or perhaps the simple cleaning and bloodletting had some effect, the patients' painful groans seemed to lessen somewhat, and the child's breathing also became slightly more stable.
"Doctor... thank you, thank you so much." The woman held her child, who seemed to be sleeping more comfortably, tears streaming down her face, and kept kowtowing.
Other refugees who received simple treatment also cast grateful and hopeful glances their way.
Cheng Song waved his hand without saying anything, and silently packed his medicine box. However, he kept an eye on the Yellow Turban group out of the corner of his eye; they had already approached.
The burly man at the head of the group glanced at Cheng Song, then at the refugees behind him who had received initial treatment. A hint of surprise appeared on his dark face, and he asked in a deep voice, "Young man, are you a doctor?"
Cheng Song raised his head, patted the ash off his hands, and tried to appear as an ordinary doctor with some skills but limited resources, looking weary from his travels: "I know a little bit of basic medical skills. I was passing by and saw the villagers suffering, so I couldn't bear to stand idly by."
"Sir, you truly possess the heart of a healer." The yellow-turbaned man nodded, even changing his form of address. His gaze swept over Cheng Song's face, which was relatively clean compared to the refugees, a subtle scrutiny flashing in his eyes. His tone remained polite, "In this world, plagues rage, the court is tyrannical, and powerful families oppress. Only the Great Virtuous Teacher, with his compassionate heart, widely distributes talismanic water to heal the world. Since you, sir, possess medical skills, why not join us? The Heavenly Master's benevolence requires talents like you, who understand the art of medicine, to join us in this great undertaking and save the people from suffering."
He pointed to the remaining talisman water in the wooden bucket: "Sir, would you like to try this talisman water? It was bestowed by the Celestial Master and is incredibly effective; it can ward off plagues and protect the body."
Looking at the murky talisman water, its energy swirling under the lens, Cheng Song changed the subject with a perfectly balanced expression—a mixture of a doctor's inquiry and an ordinary person's curiosity: "Oh? This talisman water is so effective? I just saw that old man drink it, and his wound immediately healed. It's truly astonishing. I wonder how this water is made? What medicinal ingredients are used? My medical knowledge is limited; if I could learn a thing or two, it would broaden my horizons and help me treat more patients."
The Yellow Turban man laughed heartily, seemingly quite pleased with Cheng Song's "eagerness to learn," yet with a hint of condescending mystery: "This is holy water blessed by the Celestial Master through communication with the Yellow Heaven, imbued with supreme magical power. How can it be compared to ordinary medicinal herbs? The mysteries within cannot be known by those who are not sincere. If you are interested, sir, why not come back with me? If your abilities are truly remarkable, the Celestial Master, respecting the virtuous, will surely appreciate you. At that time, you will naturally understand the secrets within and learn even more profound methods of saving the world."
Cheng Song understood. This was both an invitation and a test. He, a wandering doctor of unknown origin, possessed medical skills, and his act of providing medical assistance here would inevitably attract the attention of these Yellow Turban rebels who were spreading their doctrines and recruiting followers.
His face showed a suitable hesitation and struggle, which ultimately transformed into a yearning for higher medical skills and a moving sense of righteousness in saving the world. He solemnly cupped his hands towards the Yellow Turban man, and also towards the distant city wall, which was faintly visible and cast a huge shadow in the dim light of the day:
"If I can truly learn the way to save the world, I, Cheng, am willing to go."
The Yellow Turban man smiled and said, "Good! Sir, you are very generous! My surname is Chen, and my brothers call me Corporal Chen. Please follow me, sir. Our camp is not far ahead, and the envoy under the command of the Great Master Xian is there."
Cheng Song shouldered his medicine chest and silently followed the Yellow Turban group, merging into their ranks. The refugees cast gazes of envy, bewilderment, or numbness. The wind swept across the empty fields, stirring up dry dust and withered grass, bringing with it a stronger, more pungent stench of earth, herbs, burn marks, and a faint smell of blood.
In the distance, the outline of Guangzong City resembled a lurking beast in the twilight. Meanwhile, on the edge of Cheng Song's retina, the progress of the quest "Saving the People (Part 1)" quietly reached 1/10. The first person he saved was that feverish child.
The path beneath my feet leads to that city. The secret of the talismanic water, the source of the plague, and the messenger of the "Great Teacher of Wisdom" are all ahead.