Chapter 108

“All right, all right, it’s getting late. You still have to work tomorrow, so go back and get some rest.”

“There’s no rush with the school stuff. How about I stay here tonight and keep watch? You should go home, take a good shower, and get some sleep. Look at you—you’ve gotten so worn out these past few days.”

“That wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Jiayi, trust me. I can do it.”

“What I mean is, my parents are already uncomfortable enough that they can barely sleep at night. If we add your snoring on top of that, they’ll feel even worse.”

“Oh, so that’s why.” Fatty Wu nodded awkwardly. “That’s true. You’re right.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to your snoring—if I don’t hear it for a while, it actually feels strange. But my parents are patients right now. Go on home. They both understand your good intentions.”

“All right, then I’ll head back first. Oh, right—tomorrow I’ll try again to invite that old Daoist priest. My coworkers say he’s pretty effective. We might be able to get him to come take a look, but he’s pretty busy, so it depends on his schedule.”

“Didn’t you say you also asked an old Chinese doctor?”

“We should ask them all. Since the hospital hasn’t been able to cure them after all this time, we might as well try a few more methods.”

“Mm, I’ll leave it to you.”

Watching her boyfriend go downstairs, Zheng Jiayi turned around silently and went back into the hospital room.

Inside, her parents were still groaning. They had been admitted for several days now, but the two elderly people were still only intermittently conscious, drifting between clarity and confusion.

She picked up the thermos and went to the far east end of the floor to fill it with hot water. On her way back, Zheng Jiayi saw a young woman with a hiking backpack standing outside her parents’ room, checking the room number.

“Excuse me, who are you?”

Yin Meng turned and looked at Zheng Jiayi. “I’m the one Counselor Wu asked to come treat the patient.”

Zheng Jiayi stared at her in disbelief. “You’re this young?”

“My master had something to do, so he sent me to take a look first.”

“But my boyfriend just left. Shouldn’t you have...”

“My master only gave me the room number. If you don’t trust me, I can leave right now.”

She said she would leave, but her body had already shifted sideways, her right leg bending slightly as she prepared to subdue the woman and force her into the room at top speed so she could treat the patient.

“Please, come in.”

Zheng Jiayi opened the door and invited Yin Meng into the room.

Besides the smell of disinfectant, a fishy, rotten odor hung in the air.

Yin Meng walked straight to the bedside and observed the two elderly patients.

She actually did not know how to diagnose illness.

What she knew was how to make poison. That was her talent.

The brief special training had awakened her sensitivity to toxins, but expecting someone to become a “famous doctor” in such a short time was obviously unrealistic.

Still, she could smell it: the two old people had indeed been poisoned. The hospital calling it food poisoning was not far off.

However, she could not tell exactly what kind of poison it was.

That was not a big problem. She could just test them one by one.

Yin Meng flipped her left hand, revealing a toad crouched in her palm.

She had just caught it from the hospital pond. Its belly was pulsing, full of life.

Just as Zheng Jiayi was about to pour Yin Meng some water, she covered her mouth and let out a startled cry.

Yin Meng muttered something to the toad, then stretched out her hand and flicked its belly. Next, she pulled out an incense stick and rubbed the tip between her fingers. The outer layer flaked off, and white smoke rose up.

After inserting the incense into the toad’s mouth, Yin Meng placed the incense-holding toad on the bedside cabinet.

Then she pulled out a stack of colored paper slips from her pocket. She first took out a black one. With a flick of her right hand, a blade appeared, and without hesitation she slashed Zheng Jiayi’s father across the arm.

A cut opened, and blood flowed out.

Yin Meng dabbed the black paper with the blood, then placed the paper over the incense and let the heat burn a hole through the bloodstained part.

The toad did not react at all.

Not corpse poison.

Yin Meng took out a purple sheet next. To get fresh blood, she used the blade again to cut a new wound on Zheng Jiayi’s father’s arm.

After taking the blood, she repeated the same procedure and let the incense burn a hole through the paper.

The toad remained perfectly calm.

Not gu poison.

The next sheet Yin Meng took out was blue. Before cutting a fresh wound again, she glanced at Zheng Jiayi, who was standing nearby.

Zheng Jiayi had both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide open. She was frightened and thought the whole thing was unbelievable, but she did not scream, did not try to stop her, and when she noticed Yin Meng looking at her, she even gave her a look of encouragement and gratitude.

This was a woman who understood what mattered. She did not understand what was happening, but she knew this was treatment.

A fresh cut was opened, blood was taken, and when the paper was placed over the incense tip and burned through, the toad began croaking rapidly.

It was demon poison.

Now that she knew what kind of poison it was, the corresponding method could be used. The only method Yin Meng knew was simple: fight poison with poison.

Yin Meng asked, “Do you know how to catch toads?”

“Huh? I... I’ve never caught one, but I can go try,” Zheng Jiayi said firmly.

“Forget it, I’ll go. You hold this one. If I get too far away, it might lose control.”

“Oh, okay.”

Zheng Jiayi stepped forward. Suppressing the intense revulsion in her heart as best she could, she took hold of the toad with both hands.

Yin Meng went to the window, opened it, and jumped out.

There was a pond right below. It was faster this way than taking the stairs.

Looking at the now-empty window, Zheng Jiayi felt as though tonight were a dream.

Not long after, Yin Meng climbed back in through the window with another toad in her hand.

Then she began feeding poison into the toads’ mouths. It was a poison with a numbing effect, something like Hua Tuo’s anesthetic powder, but the side effects were severe and could easily damage a person’s mind.

So she deliberately reduced the dose.

After both toads had been fed the poison, Yin Meng used the blade to cut out a square of flesh the size of a fingernail from the upper arms of both Zheng Jiayi’s father and mother. This was not just a cut—she had gouged out a piece of flesh directly.

“This...” Zheng Jiayi still held back and said nothing.

A person who could jump down from the fourth floor and climb back up again did not seem like a lunatic to her.

“Come on, give me a hand.”

Yin Meng pressed one toad’s mouth to the wound on Zheng Jiayi’s father.

Zheng Jiayi stepped forward and supported the toad, keeping it pressed to the wound so it could continue sucking.

Yin Meng, meanwhile, pressed the other toad to the wound on Zheng Jiayi’s mother.

“Glug... glug... glug...”

At first, blackness spread from the wounds outward, but very soon it was rapidly compressed back in.

The bellies of the two toads swelled higher and higher, larger and larger, like two angry pufferfish.

When the toads reached the limit of what they could bear, Yin Meng threw aside the one in her hand. Around the original wound, a ring of fish scales appeared.

Yin Meng grabbed hold of it and yanked outward. At the same time, she shoved Zheng Jiayi away, causing the toad in her hands to fall off as well. A ring of fish scales appeared around her father’s wound too, and Yin Meng seized that one with her other hand.

Then Yin Meng shot forward in a single step, like someone in the gym violently pulling a rowing machine.

“Rattle... rattle...”

From the wounds of Zheng Jiayi’s father and mother, Yin Meng dragged out two fish-scale cords, each a full two meters long.

When she reached the end, Yin Meng hardened her resolve. Since the hospital room was too cramped, she simply leaned forward, tensed both arms, and flipped forward in place.

“Snap! Snap!”

The two fish-scale cords were torn apart.

Almost at the same moment, Zheng Jiayi’s father and mother sat upright on their beds, their mouths open, blue mist spraying from their eyes, ears, mouths, and noses.

Then both of them toppled backward and fell onto the beds again.

Their breathing became smooth, and though they remained asleep, the pain had vanished from their faces. In its place was a kind of relief, as if they had finally been freed.

Yin Meng took a snakeskin sack from her bag, coiled up the fish cords, and threw them inside.

The two bloated toads had now deflated. Not only were they not dead, they seemed quite excited.

Yin Meng lifted them to her nose and sniffed them, confirming that the poison she had fed them earlier had already neutralized the demon poison. They were harmless now.

She walked to the window and tossed them down. With two splashes, they returned to the pond below.

“Thank you. You’ve worked hard.” Zheng Jiayi bowed to Yin Meng.

Yin Meng waved her hand, picked up her cup, unscrewed the lid, and took a sip of brown sugar water.

Zheng Jiayi asked, “Does this mean my parents are cured now?”

Yin Meng shook her head. “It treats the symptoms, not the root cause. They’ll be fine for two months, but after two months the poison will build up again, and they’ll relapse. It’ll also be much harder to remove then.”

If she had not come, then judging by their current condition, the two elderly people would have remained like this for another half month before their health rapidly deteriorated.

“Then what should we do?”

“I know they got sick after going back to their hometown to visit the graves. How long were they there?”

“They stayed in our hometown for two nights in total.”

“Did they stay in your old house?”

“The old house hasn’t been lived in for a long time. If anyone stayed there, it would need cleaning first, so it wasn’t convenient. My parents stayed at my eldest uncle’s house.”

“Did they eat and sleep there?”

“Yes.”

“If you want to cure your parents completely, then take me back to your hometown and let me have a look at your eldest uncle’s house. Is that okay?”

“Yes. Whenever it’s convenient for you.”

After witnessing such miraculous treatment, Zheng Jiayi trusted Yin Meng deeply.

“The sooner the better. I have a lot to do.”

“Then first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll call my boyfriend. He’ll have to take leave and come relieve me here while he takes care of my parents, and the earliest he can probably get here is sometime in the morning. Then the two of us can go to the train station together at noon.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you.” Zheng Jiayi bowed to Yin Meng again.

Zheng Jiayi started efficiently cleaning up the hospital room.

Yin Meng stood nearby, then suddenly seemed to think of something and asked, “Do you like small animals?”

“Yes. Sometimes when I run into pitiful stray animals on the road, I bring them home, bathe them, give them medicine, and clean them up. Then I let neighbors or friends adopt them. Mostly it’s because I already have three at home and can’t keep any more.”

“Do you visit orphanages often?”

“I like doing volunteer work. How did you know?”

“Just asking.”

“Oh, right. How should I address you?”

“My name is Yin Meng.”

“Daoist Master Yin Meng.”

Yin Meng froze for a moment. Why Daoist Master? That did not match the identity card she had been given before leaving.

“My master is an old Chinese doctor.”

“Huh?” Zheng Jiayi looked astonished. “Aren’t you the Daoist priest’s disciple?”

“No.”

“I thought those methods just now were... So Chinese medicine can be this amazing too.”

“What’s this about a Daoist priest?”

“My boyfriend discussed it with me before. He wanted to invite a Daoist priest to perform a ritual, so I mistakenly thought the master you mentioned was that highly effective old Daoist priest. Sorry, I misunderstood.”

“It’s fine.”

Yin Meng lowered her head and took another sip of brown sugar water.

That meant if she had not come tonight, then after a while Fatty Wu would have brought over an old Daoist priest. If that old Daoist priest really had some ability, he should also have been able to notice signs of demon poison, and naturally would have wanted to trace the source and solve it completely.

Then he and Zheng Jiayi would have gone back to her hometown together.

After that, something might have happened. That would have implicated Fatty Wu, and through Fatty Wu it would have implicated the others, including her.

Before the operation, Little Yuanhou had specifically asked all of them to reason through their own lines of inquiry in this way, and Yin Meng was now doing exactly that.

By normal logic, inviting the old Daoist priest, having him go to Min’an Town, investigate, run into trouble, and then involve Fatty Wu—every step of that would take time. To get through the whole sequence would take at least more than a month.

That way, it barely lined up with the date of Xue Liangliang’s father’s birthday.

Yin Meng took out a notebook and pen from her bag and wrote down her thoughts.

This was the homework Little Yuanhou had assigned. It had to be handed in.

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