It wasn’t particularly rare for doctors to experiment on themselves. When Qi Yue was still in school, she had witnessed classmates practicing injections on themselves. But this was completely incomparable to what Liu Pucheng was doing.
Those were harmless practice sessions—at most they’d hurt a bit—but Liu Pucheng was risking his life!
“Are you mad?!” Qi Yue shouted in a trembling voice. “Setting aside the pain, what if the wound gets infected? If you die before finding the medicine, is it worth it? Doctor Liu, I’ve told you before that this medicine will eventually be created. Why must you put yourself through this…”
Liu Pucheng smiled and straightened his clothes.
“It’s worth it. Even if we can’t find it, we’ll have proven which combinations don’t work, giving future generations fewer choices to consider.” He said gently, “As physicians, what we fear isn’t pain and injury, but being unable to see the path forward. You’ve already pointed us in the right direction—that’s enough. No matter how many detours we take, there will come a day when we find the correct path.”
Qi Yue looked at him, unable to say a word, filled with shock, excitement, and overwhelming admiration.
This was what a physician was, this was the way of medicine. For doctors like him, medicine wasn’t just a profession—it was their life’s purpose.
She looked down at the porcelain bottle of medicine Liu Pucheng had handed her.
She recalled reading that Li Shizhen had tasted countless herbs to create anesthetics, nearly dying from poisoning several times. In the eyes of these medical predecessors, this was nothing extraordinary—it was simply what they should and must do. As long as there was even a glimmer of hope, they would try without hesitation, even if it yielded nothing.
Perhaps the way of medicine wasn’t about the results, but about the process—whether you dared to try, whether you would try, and how you would try.
The crying and shouting from the other side once again struck Qi Yue’s heart.
When physicians encountered patients, their first consideration wasn’t whether they could save them, but how to save them…
“A’Ru,” she turned around and called out loudly.
A’Ru had been nervously watching from the side. Hearing Qi Yue’s call, she hurried over.
“Hu San, prepare water and alcohol,” Qi Yue said while putting on the surgical gown A’Ru had brought out.
Hu San was still in shock over Qi Yue’s identity. His senior brother had to push him before he snapped back to reality.
“Yes, Master,” he shouted loudly, raising his hand to the surrounding people. “Please make way—who can show me where to boil water?”
His voice was loud, drowning out the crying and shouting in the room as well as the conversations of the other doctors.
Everyone looked over and saw Qi Yue dressed in strange clothing.
“Please everyone step back. I need to conduct a detailed examination of the patient. Please step back,” Qi Yue announced loudly.
The people in the room froze.
“What more nonsense are you planning? Stop making a fool of yourself here. Look at yourself,” Madam Xie frowned at Qi Yue and scolded in a low voice.
Since they’d been treating patients, the courtyard was well-equipped. Hu San quickly returned with water and alcohol.
Qi Yue ignored Madam Xie’s words, washed her hands with water, rubbed them with alcohol, and had A’Ru hand her gloves. After putting everything on, Qi Yue strode toward the patient.
“Young Madam, you…” the magistrate, his face covered in dust and grime, stared at her in bewilderment.
“I want to try,” Qi Yue said, stopping in front of the patient who was writhing all over the bed. “Be good, lie still and let Auntie—no, let me take a look…”
The patient was a child of about ten years old, already delirious from pain and unable to understand her words.
“Help me hold him down,” Qi Yue said.
The magistrate and his wife were standing nearby. Hearing this, they hesitated for a moment, then the magistrate’s wife struggled to hold the child’s head.
“Young Madam, please…” she looked at Qi Yue with tears in her eyes.
When the magistrate’s wife moved, the magistrate also sat down and held the child’s legs.
“I’ll do my best,” Qi Yue’s voice came out muffled from behind the mask as she took the stethoscope A’Ru handed her. “Does it hurt here? Here?”
As she moved, the child cried out in pain.
“Doctor, please give him more pain medicine,” the magistrate’s wife cried.
“No, I need to find where the critical injury is—I can’t give him painkillers,” Qi Yue said, pressing continuously on the patient’s chest and abdomen. With each press, the child’s cries grew louder.
Without instruments, she only had her hands and ears.
It was too cruel. The other people in the room, including the doctors, couldn’t bear to watch and turned away.
“Too rough. Even if he wasn’t injured, she’d create injuries,” one doctor said quietly.
At that moment, the most agonizing scream rang out.
“Is it here?” Qi Yue asked as if she’d discovered a new continent, excitedly stopping her hands and pressing again.
The child let out a piercing scream, and despite being held down by his parents, he curled up.
The magistrate’s wife nearly fainted and wanted to kneel before Qi Yue.
“How does it hurt?” Qi Yue asked.
The child had no way to explain how it hurt—besides crying and screaming, he could only cry and scream.
“You bitch, bitch…” he cursed between his screams.
Qi Yue paid no attention. Based on the painful area, physical symptoms, blood pressure, and stethoscope examination, she could basically confirm it was a ruptured spleen. However, what puzzled her was that the symptoms suggested the internal bleeding seemed to be under control.
“I gave him hemostatic herbal medicine,” Liu Pucheng said from the side.
“Excellent,” Qi Yue clenched her fists and looked at Liu Pucheng. “I have some sutures. I can operate on him immediately, but I need assistants.”
Liu Pucheng nodded.
“It would be my honor,” he said.