Village Doctor's Women-Chapter 154 - 149 Bloodletting

"The problem is quite serious." Wang Jian had mentioned before that this medicine was poisonous.

Li Liping fell silent, filled with immense regret. If she had known it would turn out this way, she would have been more assertive and insisted that Zhang Li find Wang Jian first. That would have been much better than their current predicament. She weakly asked, "Is there still any chance of saving him?"

"Which aspect are you asking about?" Wang Jian asked, observing her expression before continuing, "It’s not life-threatening, but *that*... part might not be salvageable. Let’s go take a look first."

The two of them moved swiftly. Li Liping’s anxiety was one reason, but the damnable weather was another. For some reason, it was even hotter than usual today; every extra second spent outdoors felt like torture. The outdoor temperature might have even exceeded forty degrees Celsius, which was simply absurd. In this heat, many people were likely suffering from heatstroke.

As Wang Jian was musing about this, they arrived at the Zhang family’s home.

"Uncle Zhang isn’t here, is he?"

Hearing his question, Li Liping nodded and led him toward the bedroom.

Just as Wang Jian had guessed, he saw no sign of Uncle Zhang. Uncle Zhang had gone to great lengths for the sake of the Zhang family having an heir, deliberately creating some private time for his son and daughter-in-law.

The things parents will do for their children.

Wang Jian had just stepped into the house when he heard Zhang Li’s agonizing screams. This was even with Zhang Li consciously trying to suppress them; otherwise, people outside would have surely heard.

Upon entering, the scene inside the room met Wang Jian’s eyes. Zhang Li’s limbs were bound, securing him flat on his back to the bed.

A quick glance was all Wang Jian needed to roughly diagnose the illness. Given his current sensitivity to vital energy, making such a diagnosis wasn’t surprising, especially when the signs were so obvious. The poison had restricted his blood circulation, causing the flow of vital energy throughout his body to become sluggish. In Wang Jian’s perception, Zhang Li’s vital energy was guiding the blood flow, causing it to surge toward that one area.

If this wasn’t stopped, once the blood pressure reached a certain point, it might just rupture...

Just imagining it made Wang Jian wince.

Watching Zhang Li struggle in agony, Wang Jian lifted his hand. A silver needle flew out and struck him in the neck, rendering him unconscious.

"What are you doing?"

"He’s in too much pain. I had to relieve it."

Li Liping was stunned. Relieving pain didn’t have to mean knocking someone out. She had certainly never seen a pain-relief method like this before. She opened her mouth, but ultimately said nothing. Wang Jian was the doctor, and a capable one at that. She chose to trust him, so she said no more.

"How is he...?" Li Liping asked anxiously, a sense of dread growing as she watched Wang Jian’s expression.

Wang Jian frowned. "If you had found me any later, he would have been in serious trouble. This thing could have ruptured... and he could have died from the blood loss."

"What?" Li Liping was so startled she thought she had misheard. "Isn’t it just congestion? How could it possibly rupture... and even become life-threatening?"

Her words trailed off. She was truly panicked, and her eyes immediately reddened. She would rather Zhang Li had never brought that medicine back from his trip. Without it, he would just be impotent, not in this grave situation.

As long as a person is alive, that’s all that matters.

"You must save him!" Li Liping grabbed Wang Jian’s hand, her face a mask of desperation. "He just wanted a child; he didn’t do anything wrong! It’s all my fault, my fault for not stopping him. I never imagined this medicine could do something like this. It’s all because I didn’t listen to you..."

"Don’t panic," Wang Jian said with a bitter smile. Li Liping was on the verge of a breakdown, so he had to calm her down. "With me here, his life won’t be in danger."

"Under normal circumstances, that’s correct," Wang Jian explained. "The human body’s blood pressure is stable and stays within a certain range. Once it exceeds that level, however, blood vessels can burst because they can’t withstand the pressure. That’s why high blood pressure is a very serious illness and is always treated as such.

"I seem to have gotten sidetracked..." He coughed lightly to bring the topic back. "What I mean is, Zhang Li’s current condition is equivalent to constantly applying pressure to that... thing. So, if I’m not mistaken, it has actually gotten bigger. Am I right?"

Li Liping silently nodded. "Can you fix it now?"

"We can’t rush this... we might need to perform a bloodletting later," Wang Jian said thoughtfully. "However, that medicine... let me see it."

The mention of bloodletting made Li Liping’s expression falter, but Wang Jian’s next words brought her back to her senses, and she immediately sprang into action.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, hurrying over to a cabinet to rummage through it. "Zhang Li treated that medicine like a treasure. He even put it away specially in here."

The medicine was in a porcelain bottle, which Li Liping handed over still wrapped in several layers of silk scarves. "This is how he stored it," she explained. "I’ve never seen him protect his secret stash of money this carefully."

"It’s certainly well-protected," Wang Jian noted.

After unwrapping the many layers, Wang Jian frowned as a pungent odor hit him.

Li Liping was watching him closely and immediately asked, "Is there a problem?"

Wang Jian asked, "You can’t smell that?"

Li Liping shook her head.

Seeing that she wasn’t lying, Wang Jian quickly realized that his own sense of smell had probably become overly sensitive. The medicine that poured from the bottle was a collection of black Medicine Pills, which resembled a snack from their childhood called ’Mouse Droppings Immortal Pill’ or something of the sort.

However, the pungent odor from these Medicine Pills confirmed Wang Jian’s earlier suspicions.

"Do you remember what I said before?" Wang Jian looked at Li Liping, taking one of the Medicine Pills in his hand. "These are Medicine Pills made by Alchemists—or more accurately, they’re poison pills. They can provide an initial stimulating effect, but taking them is actually consuming poison. The longevity elixirs that emperors of old consumed were this very same thing, typically just concoctions of random herbs mixed with heavy metals.

"Let’s just say it’s a good thing Zhang Li didn’t take too many. For him to only be in this state, he’s already lucky."

Actually, something similar had happened before. Wang Jian remembered the Gu Poison incident; Feng Yan had reported that a hooligan named Gao Yang had taken something similar. Both men had fallen into this trap for the sake of their prowess with women. However, the medicine Zhang Li took was a much more potent concoction, which led to these severe consequences.

Understanding the true cause of the affliction, a plan formed in Wang Jian’s mind.

"Bloodletting is the only option now."

"What?"