Chapter 1016: Tangerine Caramel — Shanghai Love (7)

Of course, there was no way she could say, “I’ll just suck all of it out for you. But it’s not seed-extraction demonic arts.”

Qing had already spent seven years in the Central Plains. Seven whole years. By now, she at least had the minimum common sense to know you absolutely could not say something like that here.

“The way you described it, his body is full of evil qi, right? Then instead of forcing it all to one place and squeezing it out, couldn’t you just burn it away as it is?”

“What!?”

But that, too, turned out to be just as shocking.

The Divine Physician practically jumped.

“You’re saying you’ll perform Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing right now!?”

Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing!

A technique where one blows qi into another person’s body and burns away the impurities clogging the meridians.

Naturally, it was an extremely, extremely—absurdly extremely—difficult high-order treatment. It also consumed True Essence, because the purest qi within True Essence does not harm another person, and this followed the principle that life is born within life, that vital force nourishes life, and... et cetera, et cetera.

Put simply, it was the act of shortening the practitioner’s own lifespan to open the patient’s meridians!

“Are you in your right mind? Or do you have some kind of relationship with this brat? Did fate tie you together or something?”

“No. I’m meeting him for the first time in my life.”

“Then stop. Chivalry is fine, saving people is fine, but you mustn’t do it by damaging your own body. Everything has its price. Trading that much just to buy the gratitude of some County Magistrate? The price doesn’t balance. Not at all. Young people never know how precious their own lifeline is. Don’t do it.”

The Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician was adamant.

It did make Qing wonder what kind of doctor told someone not to treat the patient right in front of them.

Still, he was saying it out of concern for Qing. Well... was it concern? He kept talking about the price not matching.

“No, I’m not trying to do Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing. It’s more that the martial art I learned specializes in this sort of thing. Or maybe this sort of thing just ended up becoming my specialty.”

“What kind of specialty even is that—well, I suppose you know martial arts better than I do.”

“I’ve already done something similar before too.”

“Hm.”

The Divine Physician narrowed his eyes and looked Qing over.

“I’m telling you again—if you’re going to do Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing, don’t gloss over it. Say it plainly. ‘Benefactor’? What benefactor? If it’s to that degree, he ought to honor you the way one honors a parent—no, no, that’s not it. For the mistress of some County Magistrate who’s about to lose his rope just because he involved martial artists? The price still doesn’t balance. Definitely not.”

For reference, foster father and foster mother were the highest and closest stages in Central Plains human relationships.

It meant someone to be revered the way a child reveres a parent.

Not a legal adoption, but effectively the ultimate evolved form of Central Plains social ties.

Anyway.

The Divine Physician put peculiar emphasis on the word price.

And even after saying all that, he folded his arms and glared at Qing as if promising he would stop her immediately if anything looked suspicious.

But Qing really wasn’t going to do Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing.

In fact, she couldn’t even do it.

If she wanted to learn it, she’d have to ask her master to teach her, and if she did that, instead of learning anything she’d just get bombarded with Nuclear Forehead Flicks.

How dare some girl who still can’t even manage her own affairs put Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing in her mouth, and all that.

Thinking of it that way, the Divine Physician’s attitude didn’t feel hateful at all.

She had heard the nickname Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician and imagined some vile doctor obsessed only with money, but—

Qing planted a hand firmly on the young man’s back.

Because of the bizarre way he was tied up, she had to slip her hand beneath the rope that ran down his spine, but really—why was he tied like this?

What do you even call this? Was this binding method actually some ancient, time-honored restraint technique passed down since antiquity?

If it had been a woman bound like this, it would have been quite a sight.

But since it was the opposite, it was just profoundly unpleasant to look at.

Trying hard not to care, Qing operated the absorption formula of seed-extraction demonic arts—no, Northern Sea Divine Art.

A peerless divine art so difficult to learn that even the cosmic mystery of the martial interface had struggled with it was finally about to display its divine power.

Soon, through Qing’s palm, a thick and acrid true qi began to be sucked in little by little.

Qing’s face twisted immediately.

The qi flowing up her arm was thick and sticky, highly viscous, carrying the unmistakable feel of something completely rotten as it was slowly drawn in. It felt like rotten porridge was being poured into her body. Goosebumps erupted all over her without her even realizing it.

Jesus, fuck, that is disgusting.

An ordinary martial artist would have convulsed and recoiled instantly, then sat down at once to cleanse their meridians with breathing circulation.

No—Qing would have done the same.

If she hadn’t already handled filthy energy with a similar nature before.

Qing had dealt with something like this once already.

In fact, she still had some of it jammed somewhere deep inside her lower dantian.

This is kind of like Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy...

The difference was that Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy wasn’t dirty so much as evil—thick with malice, packed with grudge.

Compared to that, the energy inside this young man felt filthy, foul, thoroughly rotten.

“What even is this? What kind of energy is this?”

“I told you—it’s evil qi. Nasty, isn’t it?”

“Ugh. It’s amazing he’s even still alive.”

It was so thick it didn’t even suck well.

Even while constantly shivering, while suppressing the instinctive revulsion and dragging it out bit by bit, it still took quite a while for the evil qi to reach Qing’s lower dantian.

Then something astonishing happened.

The filthy evil qi, the moment it reached her lower dantian, suddenly unraveled into a colorless, scentless, transparent form of natural qi.

And then the little ones lounging around inside her lower dantian—all those various streams of true qi—sprang up in a chattering swarm and happily gobbled it down.

That, after all, was the biggest difference between the absorption formula of Northern Sea Divine Art and seed-extraction demonic arts.

Energy absorbed by Northern Sea Divine Art naturally dissolved into and enlarged the internal energy one already possessed.

How could it even be compared to seed-extraction demonic arts, which stored the sucked-in qi as-is inside the lower dantian until it turned into a trash heap full of mixed garbage energy?

The peculiar thing, though, was that the Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy stuck in one corner of her lower dantian like a black wad of trampled gum reacted.

It crept toward the entrance of the lower dantian, then secretly started nibbling at the evil qi before it transformed into natural qi.

At once the other streams of true qi started going wild and beating up the Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy.

The Heaven-Crushing Demonic Energy was laughing...

Because of that, Qing felt a faint stomachache.

Though “stomachache” made it sound worse than it was. It was more like that vague pain of sort of needing to go, but not enough for one clean decisive trip. A subtle ache, like not enough pressure had built up yet.

“You’re not—no, are you? Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing?”

“I said no, didn’t I? I need to concentrate, so are you going to keep interrupting me?”

“Hm.”

Because of the nature of Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing, which handled True Essence, it was impossible to speak during it. If you opened your mouth while handling True Essence, the energy would leak out uselessly through the mouth.

So the fact that Qing answered meant it was not Marrow-and-Meridian Cleansing. The Divine Physician nodded.

Even after that, though, he still seemed unconvinced, because every so often he would toss out another question.

Anyway—

At long last, she’d sucked it all out!

The moment the treatment—if you could call it that—ended, the Divine Physician rushed over, took the young man’s pulse, and made a huge fuss about how cleanly it had all been burned away.

Then he pulled out an acupuncture case and went PA-PA-PA-PAK, jabbing in an absurd number of needles so quickly his hands blurred. As if that still weren’t enough, he placed lumps of medicine on top and applied medicinal moxibustion.

“There. That replenishes his energy. Now we feed him a Gongjin Pill and observe the prognosis.”

Maybe the needles had helped him sleep too, because the young man was now fast asleep, even snoring softly.

Leaving him there, the Divine Physician asked Qing in a quieter voice.

“By the way—have you ever thought about studying medicine properly? Someone like you could certainly become the next Divine Physician. Not while I’m alive, of course.”

Ah.

So this is the fate of the talented.

As a martial artist alone, she had already achieved unprecedented genius—Transformation, Transcendent Transformation, Super-Transformation, Ultra-Transformation.

And was that all?

She’d been granted righteous theft as the next Divine Thief, and she was also the supreme authority of civil engineering and formations—Dayeoreum—no, wait, that wasn’t it, what was it again, anyway—

And now she had to become a Divine Physician too?

At this rate she was going to end up taking everything.

Am I too amazing? Am I selfish?

Still, at her core, she was a martial artist.

Even if what she learned over others’ shoulders shocked the world, her path was still only the path of martial arts.

So regrettably, she couldn’t sell any more medicine here.

“No, I mean—I’d be embarrassed to say I really studied it, but I can at least fill the role of one medical attendant.”

“That’s only half a medicine. A human being is made of flesh and qi. Flesh is the body, and qi is exactly that—qi. But these doctors? They’re skilled with flesh and utterly useless with meridians. If you’re going to call yourself a doctor, you should know how to handle qi arts too.”

“Like the Tang Clan?”

“They’re half-medicine too. They don’t handle qi arts—they handle poison. They can use poison as medicine, sure, but that’s pharmacotoxicology, not qi-based medicine.”

“Come on. Could you say that straight to the Tang Clan’s faces?”

“Hah! I already did. In the end, even the great Tangs had no choice but to admit my medicine is the greatest under heaven. They begged and pleaded for me to stay at that shabby charity clinic of theirs.”

“No, what do you mean shabby? What’s wrong with a charity clinic? They’re doing good work.”

“Hmph. Good work, my ass. You think that’s a real charity clinic? They’re taking pathological cases as payment instead of money. The only man who runs a real charity clinic is that one bastard—that wandering quack.”

That wandering quack bastard.

Somehow, Qing had a very strong feeling she knew exactly who he meant.

“You mean the Chief Physician?”

“Exactly. That damned bastard. He’s turning medicine into a bargain-bin trade. Ruined bastard—just because it suits him, he wants to drag every doctor in the world down into the trash. ‘Quack’ is too kind a word for someone like him.”

The Divine Physician fumed angrily.

Qing’s expression soured with him.

“That’s a little hard to listen to. The one who taught me was the Chief Physician.”

The Divine Physician snorted.

“Taught you, my ass. He probably saw you as easy prey, grabbed you by the hair, and put you to work. I can tell just from how you ran right over here the instant someone asked for a master—must’ve looked real easy in his eyes. You, when that man ordered you around and worked you to the bone, you followed along obediently without complaint, didn’t you? That’s why you got worked until you could fill a medical attendant’s role, isn’t it? Judging by the way you’re dressed, you’ve got a decent amount of money too—he bled money out of you, didn’t he?”

“Mm.”

It was such an accurate diagnosis it sounded like he’d been standing there at the time.

“And I’m allowed to curse him. That bastard probably ran around happily cursing me too, didn’t he? Didn’t he badmouth me?”

“A little?”

“Exactly! That bastard is not allowed to badmouth me! Absolutely not! I’m allowed to badmouth him, but he is not allowed to badmouth me!”

“Uh, why?”

“Why? Because of how much gold that bastard drained from me! Added together, it’s well over ten strings of gold! If he squeezed that much out of me, then as a matter of basic decency he ought to be grateful! How is cursing me supposed to make sense? And yet I’m the only one who gets cursed! I’m the only one who gets called the bastard obsessed with money!”

Mm. So the Chief Physician had bled money out of the Divine Physician too...

Still, hearing that, it did make a certain amount of sense.

If he’d extorted more than ten strings of gold, then on a basic human level, maybe he really shouldn’t have been cursing the man afterward.

As Qing nodded without thinking, the Divine Physician suddenly grinned.

It was a worldly, deeply petty smile that didn’t match his immortal bearing at all.

“Actually, that part doesn’t matter much. They call me the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician, right? The truth is, I rather like it.”

“Huh?”

“You martial artists kill people and make money doing it, and because the sums are enormous, you strut around in luxury.”

What was this, sudden martial-artist slander?

Not wrong, but still.

“In that case, shouldn’t a doctor who saves people earn even more than a martial artist? The price of saving a life is too cheap. Doesn’t the price fail to balance?”

Again with the talk about price.

“The people of the world all say a doctor ought to act like that damned wandering bastard. ‘Shouldn’t you save the patient first?’ Why? Doctors are doing this to survive too, aren’t they? So a doctor is supposed to empty out his own fortune, starve himself half to death, and still treat patients—and if he doesn’t, he’s some villain blinded by gold? If this keeps up, every doctor in the future will starve and disappear. Who would even want to study medicine?”

I came from the future, and no, that’s not how it goes. People are desperate to study medicine. If they even earn the qualification to do it, they put up huge signs all over town and throw feasts—

But obviously, Qing couldn’t say that.

“So what can I do? At the very least, I’ll raise the value of doctors myself. There’s not a soul in this world who stands on the doctors’ side. Even among doctors, aren’t there plenty of bastards like that wandering quack who side with patients instead? So if I, the greatest doctor under heaven, don’t raise the value of doctors, how will the medicine of the Central Plains survive at all?”

Mm. Traditional medicine.

In the future of a world that was similar but not identical, things were probably going to end in a way that felt a little regrettable to someone from that background.

Still, the line of tradition did continue, at least.

Did it make good money, though? Maybe? She had absolutely no idea, but anyway.

“Hm. Now that I think about it, no—that won’t do. If you learned from that quack, you mustn’t inherit my medicine. Imagine a Divine Physician wandering around giving treatment for free without charging proper value. Then what would the people of the world say? ‘Even that Divine Physician doesn’t charge, so what makes trash like you think you can charge anything?’”

He really was impressively consistent.

What he was saying wasn’t entirely without reason, but it still felt just a little hard to swallow. When you heard “doctor,” shouldn’t that come with some built-in baseline respect for human life...?

“By the way, are you planning to keep that thing over your face forever?”

“Well... the truth is, it’s a secret that I’ve reached Transformation. Sorry.”

“Hm. Looking at how you behave, it won’t stay secret for long. I won’t say anything elsewhere, so tell me. Sometimes a patient appears who absolutely must not die. The sort whose death would throw the world into chaos. Someone from the Imperial Palace, for instance. Shouldn’t I at least be able to ask for help in a time like that?”

Maybe because he was a doctor, but the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician really did know how to pick out only the most logical things to say.

And Qing was the type to quietly accept things when they were true.

So, deciding that now was as good a time as any to reveal herself and offer proper greetings, she carefully lifted her face veil—

THUD!

With a sudden impact, the Divine Physician dropped straight out of Qing’s field of vision.

Qing lowered her head.

And there he was—the Gold-Worshiping Divine Physician, suddenly imitating the floor itself.

The tops of both feet, both thighs, and his forehead were pressed flat against the floor. At the ends of his arms, stretched long before him, the backs of his hands were planted against the ground as well.

A completely unexpected prostration.

He was lying there utterly flat.

This was the ultimate formal bow that threw a person’s whole body—both arms, both legs, and head—onto the ground.

A full five-body prostration.