"Why did she send me a video?" Lu Cheng quickly asked Mu Nanshu.

Mu Nanshu was never someone who hesitated to express themselves or liked to be jealous, but that didn't mean Mu Nanshu wouldn't get jealous.

Lu Cheng's personality wasn't that of a playboy, so there were rarely any situations that made Mu Nanshu jealous.

However, Lu Cheng was still handsome. Even though his grades were average and he couldn't secure a spot for graduate school during his undergraduate years, he was considered above average. He wasn't a recluse and certainly not introverted, so there were one or two classmates who had a crush on him.

This crush was nothing more than that—a mere crush.

Mu Nanshu said, "She wants to ask you about tendon suturing techniques. She wants to learn it to participate in the 'Tendon Suturing' track of the E Province Microscopic Surgery Skills Competition."

"She also said your interaction is all above board..."

The two sentences Mu Nanshu returned ended with punctuation.

Lu Cheng was left speechless.

Lu Cheng then understood what Mu Nanshu was feeling: "Why did she say that? Is being 'above board' something you explain?"

"Competition system? There's a track for tendon suturing? How come I didn't know about this?"

Lu Cheng had registered to participate before, but the organizers of the Xiang Province Skills Competition hadn't announced the schedule and the competition system...

"The organizer for this year's E Province Microscopic Surgery Skills Competition is Union Hospital, so I guess the Xiang Province organizers are running a similar setup."

"They probably divided it into four tracks: tendon suturing, vascular suturing, nerve suturing, and substantial organ suturing."

"Xie Yuan'an said, currently only the tendon suturing and substantial organ suturing tracks haven't been finalized, while nerve and vascular suturing have always been a mainstay in microscopic surgery."

"Why not help her out... otherwise, people might think she's not as capable as she seems..." After a long explanation, Mu Nanshu finally said this.

Only the last part of the comment contained an ellipsis.

Tong Yuan'an never explained the competition system to Lu Cheng, not because Professor Tong Yuan'an wanted to show off to Lu Cheng, but because this time, the organizer in Xiang Province wasn't Xiangya, so how to decide and how to liaise with the national microscopy competition organizer was a matter for the Second Hospital to decide.

But the provincial competition was meant to select for the national competition, so the competition system was probably similar.

"Not as capable as she seems? What do you mean by that?" Lu Cheng asked curiously.

This pair who loved gossiping about everything had dug so much gossip on each other, Lu Cheng felt it wouldn't hurt to dig some on them.

"How should I put it? Xie Yuan'an, her clinical talent is average."

"Her research talent is also average."

"But according to Union Hospital's new employee recruitment standards, she's pretty strong overall!~"

"She isn't really convincing..." Mu Nanshu explained.

The relationship between Xie Yuan'an and Professor Xie Xiao was just there. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The recruitment at Union Hospital emphasized both clinical and research skills. If one side is particularly strong but the other is a weakness, then some unbalanced developments might get vetoed by Xie Yuan'an.

"When is the E Province competition? I've already started over here." Lu Cheng asked.

"E Province is a bit later, scheduled for November 10th, so there's still a long time to go."

"After I finish the short-term project with her here, she will go back to Long County with me to learn suturing techniques from you in preparation for the provincial competition," said Mu Nanshu.

"She'll stay at my house."

This move by Xie Yuan'an reminded Lu Cheng of the "competition for advanced placement" track in provincial capital cities.

Kids from ordinary families, without any channels, could only obediently take the high school entrance exam.

How many kids from ordinary families could begin preparing the competition track starting in elementary school?

They couldn't even access some of the better learning methods.

But Xie Yuan'an was different. She could rely on Professor Xie Xiao or Mu Nanshu to directly bypass many people and come to learn tendon suturing techniques from him.

The current mainstream tendon suturing techniques are the Tang Method, the modified Kessler, and at most, Tajima.

If indeed there is a tendon suturing track established for the competition, Xie Yuan'an really might surpass others and rise through the tendon suturing channel.

This would be unfair to the other participants from E Province.

But Lu Cheng didn't care about that, because he would also use such techniques to compete; in the adult world, there's never such a thing as fairness.

"I certainly have no problem here."

"Xie Yuan'an also won't participate in our tendon suturing project later, so her getting better at learning doesn't affect the project progress."

"But there's one thing, you need to make it clear to her that this thing is not yet ready for clinical application..." Lu Cheng advised.

Before Lu Cheng could even finish his sentence, Mu Nanshu said, "As a research unit, Union Hospital allows someone like Xie Yuan'an, even if she isn't an associate chief physician, to carry out new surgical techniques as long as they've passed an ethics review."

"If she didn't mention 'new surgical techniques,' who could possibly notice?"

After the explanation, Mu Nanshu added, "I didn't mean anything else. I just wanted to tell you that in better institutions, the range of possibilities to do stuff is wider, and there aren't as many rules to bind you."

"On the contrary, at a County Hospital, all the rules are just shackles that are impossible to break."

"This is also why I hope you'll be able to leave sooner."

Lu Cheng deleted the rest of the message and replied with a single word: "Okay."

Outside the window, the drizzle continued to fall on the world, the light repeatedly interrupted by tunnels, yet always returning to brightness.