Chinese Medicine: Starting with Daily Intelligence-Chapter 73: Let Me Go Catch the Cheaters
It was already one in the afternoon when Lü Ying returned home with Xia Zhihao.
Sunlight streamed in from the balcony, falling across the living room. As soon as Xia Zhihao got home, he collapsed onto the sofa. His cough was deep, and his face was frighteningly pale.
Lü Ying felt his forehead—he still had a low-grade fever.
"Mom, will I really be better by tomorrow?"
Xia Zhihao’s voice was hoarse, his eyes filled with anxiety.
The interview tomorrow was extremely important to him. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
If he succeeded, he would have secured a stable government job.
But if he failed, he’d be back to endlessly sending out résumés.
"I’ll go brew the medicine for you."
Lü Ying didn’t answer him directly.
Although the herbs Li Xu had provided were excellent, especially the ephedra, which was purely wild-harvested.
The processing method was also superb, preserving the medicinal properties to a great extent.
But curing his illness in just one day... she had her doubts.
Lü Ying was a gynecologist, so she was no stranger to decocting traditional Chinese medicine.
She took out a special clay pot and first soaked the medicinal herbs in cold water for twenty minutes.
"Mom, is the medicine bitter?" Xia Zhihao asked, curled up on the sofa.
"What Chinese medicine isn’t bitter?" Lü Ying replied without looking up. "You feel cold now, but after you drink this, your whole body will warm up."
She poured the soaked herbs, along with the water, into the clay pot and added a bit more fresh water.
"When decocting Ephedra, Aconite and Asarum Decoction, heat control is the most crucial part," she muttered to herself, as if lecturing students. "First, bring it to a rolling boil over high heat, then let it simmer slowly over low heat."
The flames on the stove licked the bottom of the pot, and soon, the water’s surface began to bubble.
Lü Ying lifted the lid, and a plume of white steam carrying a numbing scent rose up. She immediately turned down the heat.
The smell made Xia Zhihao choke and cough. "COUGH, COUGH... This smell..."
"If you can’t stand it, plug your nose with cotton balls," Lü Ying suggested. "You won’t smell it then."
As time passed, a complex aroma filled the kitchen—the acrid pungency of ephedra, the heavy depth of Aconite, and the sharp intensity of asarum, all finally softened slightly by the sweet fragrance of Cinnamon Bark.
Forty minutes later, the medicinal liquid had been reduced to a bowl of dark brown fluid.
Lü Ying strained it twice through cheesecloth to ensure there were no dregs.
"Sweetheart, come drink your medicine."
Xia Zhihao reluctantly sat up. Staring at the murky, black liquid in the bowl, he scrunched up his face. "Ugh... I hate drinking Chinese medicine more than anything!"
His mother was a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine.
He had to drink it often when he was sick as a child, so much that he was almost traumatized by it.
"Drink it all in one go." Just as she did when he was little, Lü Ying handed him a piece of rock sugar. "Drink it while sucking on this."
The young man pinched his nose, tilted his head back, and gulped it down.
The moment the concoction entered his mouth, his eyes shot wide open—
"So spicy!" He choked until his eyes watered. It felt like a line of fire was burning its way from his throat down to his stomach.
But immediately after, a warm current spread from his abdomen to his limbs and bones.
Xia Zhihao was surprised to find that his once-icy toes were starting to warm up, and the stiffness in his shoulders had eased considerably.
"Lie down and rest." Lü Ying touched his forehead again. "You’ll sweat as the medicine takes effect. Don’t catch a chill."
"COUGH, COUGH..."
Xia Zhihao lay on the sofa reading his interview preparation books, coughing from time to time.
He was so exhausted that,
before he knew it, he had fallen asleep.
Lü Ying had taken the afternoon off to stay home with him.
Seeing her son asleep, she covered him with a thin blanket.
In less than twenty minutes, fine beads of sweat had formed on Xia Zhihao’s forehead.
Lü Ying gently wiped it away with a towel and noticed the sweat was cold—a sign that the ’cold pathogen’ in his body was being expelled.
She also noticed that her son was coughing less and less frequently.
This continued until evening.
Xia Zhihao woke up in a daze. "Mom, what time is it?"
"A little after six."
Lü Ying hurried over. "Son, how are you feeling?"
"I..."
As Xia Zhihao began to speak, he realized his voice was much clearer. "My throat isn’t itchy anymore!"
Lü Ying immediately grabbed her stethoscope.
The rales in his lungs were significantly reduced, and his breathing sounds were becoming clear.
What shocked her even more was his pulse—an hour ago it had been deep, fine, tight, and choppy, but now it had become steady and strong!
"It’s really working..." she murmured to herself.
That young doctor from the community clinic, using the most classic of ancient formulas, had achieved a rapid effect that even a proper Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine would find difficult to match.
...
[Today’s Intel: Gu Xiaoya, the associate chief physician of ophthalmology, has a husband, Xiao Fei, who is cheating on her with a resident doctor, Dong Yingying. At 10:00 AM, they will go to Villa L2-103 in the suburban Dragon City Imperial Garden for a rendezvous. The second-floor window of the villa faces the bedroom. Behind it is a large, flourishing osmanthus tree, which can be used for cover... Record a video and audio, give it to Gu Xiaoya, and you will gain her favor.]
"???"
After getting up, Li Xu stared at the day’s intel, completely dumbfounded.
’What is this situation?’
’I’m a respectable doctor.’
’The system wants me to go catch a cheater?’
’And this intel has nothing to do with me... No, wait...’
Li Xu saw a familiar name: Gu Xiaoya.
’Isn’t that the associate chief physician of ophthalmology Professor Gao told me to find yesterday?’
’Her husband is cheating on her?’
’Does she know?’
’Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t.’
But in any case, the system said that filming the evidence and giving it to her would earn him her favor.
At 8:30 AM.
Taking advantage of a moment when there were no patients in the clinic, Li Xu found the phone number for Gu Xiaoya that he had saved yesterday and dialed it.
"Hello, is this Dr. Gu?"
"This is she. Who is this?"
"Professor Gao Guanghui asked me to contact you. I was hoping to borrow the lab and also find some patients to test my eye drops."
"Oh, Teacher Gao told me about it yesterday... But I’m quite busy these next few days. How about next week? I’ll call you next week when I have time."
"Alright, thank you."
Li Xu hung up the phone.
He could sense that her attitude was quite cold.
Although Professor Gao had acted as an intermediary, there was still a sense of distance.
It was unlikely she would be very enthusiastic.
"Next week?"
Li Xu muttered.
He had a hunch that when next week came, she would just put him off again—doctors, especially one at the level of an associate chief physician, were never not busy.
"Heh... Looks like I’ll have to go through with this cheater-catching business after all."
Li Xu decided to make a trip to Dragon City Imperial Garden.
...
In the ophthalmology department of the City People’s Hospital,
a beautiful female doctor was seeing patients. She had a neat, black bob, with the strands falling in a slightly staggered way that added a touch of casualness to her look.
A pair of black-framed glasses lent her face an intellectual air.
Her nose was small and delicate, with a perfectly upturned bridge.
Her lips were beautifully shaped and painted with bright lipstick, which made her complexion look excellent.
Her overall appearance gave off an impression of being both gentle and competent.
Dressed in a white coat, she looked even more simple, elegant, professional, and approachable.
Only her eyes,
were currently filled with pain.
After finishing with a patient,
she took a bottle of pills from her drawer, shook out two, and swallowed them in one gulp—they were antidepressants.
She was Gu Xiaoya.
A few years ago, she was a beautiful and intellectual doctor, but her husband’s affair had turned her into a psychiatric patient.
After taking her medicine,
her gaze fell upon a photo frame on her desk. In the picture, her husband, Xiao Fei, had his arm around her shoulder, while their daughter beamed brightly between them.
It was taken two years ago, a time when she had still believed her marriage was a happy one.
Until she discovered the ambiguous text messages between Xiao Fei and the hospital’s head nurse.
