Chapter 28 Taking It Offline

A video leaves Max with some explaining to do.

Max Ma was losing his mind. He'd never expected this blogger to take things so far. All he'd done was question the man, and now the guy had killed himself!

Holy shit. Poison?

None of the Chinese medicine bloggers he'd come across before had a temper like this!

Max was stunned.

His roommates looked over curiously.

“Big Max, what's wrong? What are you swearing about?”

Max turned toward them, his teeth chattering. “I… I insulted this guy, and he took poison.”

“Holy shit!”

“Holy shit!”

“Holy. Shit.”

Alarmed, the others hurried over to crowd around him.

Then they watched the video of Evan drinking the fuzi decoction.

They were all stunned.

“This guy doesn't mess around!”

“What could make him want to do that?”

“Big Max, what did you say to drive him to this?”

Max was close to tears. “I don't know! I just… I just said… I said fuzi was poisonous and he shouldn't take it carelessly. Too much damages the liver and kidneys. And then… then he did this.”

A roommate patted his shoulder reassuringly. “It's all right, Big Max. Get your things together. Wash your ass while you're at it. You might need it clean when they send you to prison.”

“What?” Max went pale.

“Stop messing with him,” another said. “It won't come to that, Big Max. You won't go to prison. Detention at most. You'll still need to wash your ass, though.”

They all burst out laughing.

Max was almost crying. “Seriously? He's not going to die, is he?”

“Relax, he won't die. But he's one reckless guy. Hey, what's his Weibo account? Let's have a look.”

“DrXuChineseMedicine,” Max said.

Just like that, Evan gained three followers.

A few new comments appeared under the video too.

IfImNotHotWhoIs: “You okay, doc? Is the body cold yet?”

NoOnesHotterThanMe: “Oh no, it's been ten minutes. Probably still warm. Get in there while he's warm!”

EveryoneIsHotterThanMe: “Picked up the herbs in the morning. Boiled them at noon. Gone by nightfall. Rest in peace, doc!”

The little brats were having their fun in the comments.

One troublemaker even shared the post in their class group chat. They were all freshmen who had only just started medical school.

The group chat immediately came alive.

LinghuaMoon: “Holy shit! This blogger is hardcore!”

MoonLinghua: “Is this for real? Is he mad? Isn't fuzi poisonous?”

NoMoreLinghua: “Does this Chinese medicine doctor have a death wish?”

NoOnesHotterThanMe: “Big Max went after him. That's what drove him to it.”

“Big Max, you legend!”

“Big Max, you legend!”

…

Meanwhile, Evan calmly cleared the desk after drinking his fuzi. The system had already rewarded him with another three-month speed-up. Well, that bowl of medicine hadn't been for nothing.

Of course fuzi was poisonous. Chinese medicine practitioners knew that better than anyone. But processing had already reduced its toxicity to a very low level. After an hour of boiling in water, it was lower still.

When writing a prescription, practitioners added a quantity of gancao, licorice root, to restrain its toxicity. That made problems even less likely.^[1]

Professor Liu Lihong of the Fire Spirit school had once tried fuzi with a group of students in Guangxi. Nothing else added: just fuzi, to find out how much the human body could tolerate.

Constitutions differed, but generally it wasn't until 30 g that their lips and mouths began to go numb. And as they tried the fuzi, some of their minor ailments had cleared up without their even noticing.

Li Ke, the renowned Chinese medicine doctor from Shanxi, had also prescribed formulas containing large doses of fuzi over long periods for some cancer patients. At the time, the prevailing medical view was that prolonged use of large doses would cause irreversible liver and kidney damage.

So Li had those patients go to the hospital every month for liver and kidney function tests, urine protein tests, and a series of other checks. He had never seen any damage to their livers or kidneys.^[2]

Why? Chinese medicine wasn't as simple as people imagined! If you knew about a problem with medicinal herbs, did you really think the practitioners themselves wouldn't?

How had Chinese medicine begun? With Shennong tasting the hundred herbs. The effects and toxicity of all those medicinal substances had been tested directly on people, over thousands of years, accumulating thousands of years of pharmacological experience.^[3]

That was why practitioners needed Shennong's spirit of tasting the herbs for themselves. How could you thoroughly understand a medicinal substance's properties without trying it? Were you supposed to rely on pharmaceutical research institutes to tell you which constituents of this herb were active and which constituents of that one were inactive?

In fact, many genuine practitioners had a small habit: they kept a little decoction pot on their desks. If they weren't sure about a medicinal material, they would boil some and drink it themselves. Only once they knew what to expect could they avoid mistakes in treating patients.

This book was originally published on NovelPhoenix. Check it out there for the real experience.

But ordinary people weren't advised to do this. Why? Because every medicinal substance had a particular tendency. Rising, descending, floating, sinking; the four natures and five flavors—these were the foundations of Chinese materia medica. “Even ginseng and astragalus have their own tendencies.” Even renshen, ginseng, and huangqi, astragalus root, were no exception.^[4]

A healthy person was, by definition, someone without illness. If someone fell ill, something in the body had gone out of balance. Chinese medicine used the particular tendencies of its medicines to correct the body's imbalance, restoring a state in which yin was at peace and yang held secure.^[5]

People often said Chinese medicines had no side effects. That wasn't true. Use the right medicine and the side effects would naturally be slight; they might even be absent. Use the wrong one and you wouldn't just fail to cure the illness. You might make it worse!

So don't take medicine when you're well, and don't take it carelessly when you're ill! You could ruin your health that way.

…

“Evan, look! There are loads of new comments under that post,” Clara said, pleasantly surprised.

Evan was reading a medical book. He didn't have that much time to keep checking Weibo. At her words, he picked up his phone and glanced at the comments.

He laughed. What a bunch of comedians.

His follower count had also risen by more than thirty, and there were dozens of comments under the post.

The system sent another reward: a two-month speed-up.

He posted again.

Don't worry. I'm fine!

Replies appeared at once.

BoyMom: “How's the air conditioning in the ambulance? Nice and cool?”

PriceyAuntie: “You okay, doc?”

VictorZhu: “Can I buy some of your fuzi to set free?”

…

Evan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Who were these people?

Clara was laughing too. She was even replying to them.

ClaraZ replied to VictorZhu: “Make sure you separate the males from the females. Set the males free. Keep the females for yourself!”^[6]

Evan rolled his eyes. Didn't she have anything better to do?

At last, a comment with some intelligence behind it.

PingshanShrimp:

Hello. We're relieved to see that you're all right.

However, there are certain views in your earlier posts that I personally can't agree with or understand.

Admittedly, neither anatomy nor modern science has identified your channels and acupuncture points. Of course, you can say that science hasn't reached that stage yet. But there's also a very real possibility that these things simply don't exist.^[7]

I very much agree with your insistence that results are what count, and I admire your courage in trying Chinese medicines. So, if it wouldn't be an imposition, we'd like to visit you and discuss this. We'd like to see what you mean by genuine Chinese medicine!

Evan paused. They wanted to take this fight offline!

Ding. Let those who question Chinese medicine experience what genuine Chinese medicine can do, and receive a special reward!

Of course. This time, the system hadn't missed its cue or arrived late.

Evan looked up at Clara. She owned the clinic.

She had seen the comment too. “Can you handle it?”

He nodded. “I can't promise a cure, but I can at least pick up signs of what's wrong.”

“Then let's do it!” Clara said loudly.

“All right.”

Evan picked up his phone to reply, only to find that she had already answered.

ClaraZ replied to PingshanShrimp: “Wen County. Mingxin Clinic. Ask for Dr. Xu!”

Evan looked up, at a loss. “You replied before you asked whether I could handle it, didn't you?”

Clara chuckled. “What can I say? I have faith in you.”

Reader Notes

1. ↩︎ Processing and toxicity. Fuzi here is processed aconite lateral root; the drink is a fuzi decoction, not necessarily the classical multi-herb formula Fuzi Tang. Processing, prolonged decoction, and combinations including licorice are recognized ways of reducing aconitum toxicity. They do not establish that any particular preparation is harmless. Hong Kong's Department of Health also lists numbness of the mouth among poisoning symptoms. The narrative's one-hour claim and the later 30 g account are story assertions, not a generally safe preparation time or threshold. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Safe use of aconitum medicines (in Chinese).
2. ↩︎ The two physicians. Liu Lihong and Li Ke are real Chinese medicine practitioners whose names remain in pinyin. Liu's university identifies him with a research tradition emphasizing support of yang; a university memorial records Li's influence on the affiliated hospital's classical medicine work. Those accounts establish context, not the experiments or outcomes described here. The tasting, 30 g response, minor ailments clearing, prevailing medical view, and cancer patients' monthly tests remain unverified for this edition. Liver and kidney tests do not measure every form of toxicity, including the heart-rhythm disturbances listed by the Department of Health in the preceding note. Sources: Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine — Liu Lihong lecture (in Chinese); Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine — Memorial for Li Ke (in Chinese).
3. ↩︎ Shennong tasting the herbs. Shennong, the Divine Farmer, is a legendary culture figure associated with agriculture and medicine. His tasting of the “hundred herbs” represents the discovery of medicinal properties and poisons through personal experience; “hundred” conveys a multitude. The story invokes this tradition as an ideal of firsthand knowledge. It is an origin legend, rather than a documented clinical trial or evidence that every medicinal substance was tested in the same way. Source: Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Museum — Shennong and the poisonous herb (in Chinese).
4. ↩︎ Medicinal tendencies. The four natures are cold, cool, warm, and hot: traditional descriptions of an attributed effect on the body, rather than a drink's temperature. The five flavors—pungent, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty—also classify medicinal actions, not taste alone. Rising and floating describe upward or outward tendencies; descending and sinking describe downward or inward ones. The narrator's point is that even familiar tonics have particular properties, so suitability depends on the condition being treated. Ginseng and astragalus are the two root medicines named here. Source: Wu Qingguang, ed. — Notes on Chinese Materia Medica, Science Press, 2007, pp. 15–17 (in Chinese).
5. ↩︎ Yin at peace, yang held secure. This rendering preserves the traditional phrase yin ping yang mi: an image of complementary functions maintaining a stable relationship. Yin and yang are relational categories in Chinese medicine, not two anatomical substances. Here the phrase supplies the goal of the narrator's account of “correcting an imbalance with a medicine's tendency.” It does not identify a laboratory result or verify that a prescription achieves that goal. The following claim that correct use may eliminate side effects is the narrator's claim, not a finding established by this terminology source. Source: Shanghai Yueyang Hospital — Yin ping yang mi and prescribing principles (in Chinese).
6. ↩︎ Setting life free. Fangsheng, often translated as “life release,” refers to releasing living creatures from captivity or threatened death, a practice associated with Buddhist compassion. The commenter absurdly proposes doing this with fuzi, a root medicine. Clara extends the absurdity by treating it as male and female animals and making a suggestive joke about keeping the females. The exchange is teasing between accounts; it supplies no botanical distinction or medicinal use. Source: Dharma Drum Mountain — What are modern ways of practicing life release? (in Chinese).
7. ↩︎ Channels and points. These terms belong to Chinese medicine's traditional functional network. Acupuncture points are sites located within that framework; “channels” does not mean blood vessels. The visitor's claim about what anatomy and science have or have not found remains his argument. The institutional introduction linked here explains the traditional model and its terminology; it does not settle the empirical dispute raised in his comment. Source: Hong Kong Health Bureau — Meridian theory.