Chapter 2302 - 1485: Xiao Shu Seedling

Chapter 2302: Chapter 1485: Xiao Shu Seedling

A few days after the news of the total suspension of the experiment was released, countless cameras were set up at the entrance of Sanbo Hospital.

Yang Ping did not witness the scene. He had already left early the next morning after the news was released. He only took a carry-on suitcase, which contained two sets of clothes, a few books, and a packet of tea leaves. When he walked out of the house at five thirty in the morning, Xiao Su stood at the entrance watching him. He held her hand for a moment and then turned to walk into the not fully lit sky.

He flew to Chengdu, then transferred to Changdu, and took an off-road vehicle along a winding mountain road for four hours before arriving at the small city hidden in the valley. The Bangda Grassland unfolded outside the car window like a carpet of dry yellow, with red ridges covered with residual snow in the distance. The air was thin and piercingly cold, and every breath felt like the first one.

Accompanying him was Zhaxi, who had completed his advanced studies at Sanbo Hospital.

On the afternoon Yang Ping arrived, Zhaxi showed him around the hospital. It was a three-story white building, with some paint peeling off the outer walls, and the words "Changdu District People’s Hospital" stood on the roof with one character missing half. Inside was a long corridor, with consulting rooms and wards on both sides, and at the end of the corridor was the operating room, a small room with an old-fashioned operating table in the center. The shadowless lamp was installed eight years ago, with the light source somewhat yellowed, but the angle adjustment device was still flexible. The anesthesia machine was domestically produced, even older than the model Sanbo Hospital had eliminated two generations ago.

Zhaxi said, "We perform about four hundred surgeries a year here, mostly trauma and acute abdomen. In the future, I can perform more complex surgeries here."

Yang Ping stood in the operating room, looked around, and then said, "Very good."

Right now, he didn’t want to do anything but surgery. He needed surgery to relax himself.

The next day, Yang Ping was on the operating table. An acute appendicitis, the patient was a twelve-year-old boy who had been in pain all night before his family brought him to the hospital. When Yang Ping opened the abdominal cavity, he found that the appendix had already perforated, forming a small abscess locally. He cleaned the abdominal cavity, removed the appendix, and thoroughly flushed the abdominal cavity to ensure there were no residual infectious materials. He hadn’t performed such surgeries in a long time, and Zhaxi assisted on the opposite side. Their movements in passing instruments were harmonious and accurate, almost requiring no verbal communication.

After the surgery, Zhaxi asked, "Mr. Yang, how long will you stay here?"

"Not decided yet," Yang Ping said, "Let’s wait until the end of this month and see."

Zhaxi didn’t ask further. He knew that some questions didn’t need answers, especially when someone who stepped down from a controversial peak said "not decided yet," it meant he was waiting for the situation to calm down. And in Changdu, where Zhaxi was, at an altitude of 3,200 meters, the wind was blowing all year round, but those winds had nothing to do with the media. They only blew over the grasslands and mountain ridges.

In the first week, Yang Ping performed six surgeries. Three appendectomies, one gallstone removal, one inguinal hernia, and one herdsman with a ruptured spleen from a fall. The spleen rupture surgery was especially tense because when the patient arrived, his blood pressure had dropped below eighty, and there were only two bags of blood for transfusion. Every drop had to be used wisely. Yang Ping completed the spleen resection within thirty minutes, achieving thorough hemostasis, and the patient awoke smoothly postoperatively. The anesthesiologist commented, "Doctor Yang, your hands are so fast," to which Yang Ping gave a slight smile and said, "Not fast, just right."

In the second week, a local laparoscopic cholecystectomy was forced to convert to open surgery due to equipment failure. Yang Ping wrote in the handwritten surgical record: "Converted to open, intraoperative findings showed severe adhesion of the gallbladder triangle, complete resection after blunt separation." His handwriting was clear and neat, with each word looking as if it were printed. Zhaxi, standing beside, couldn’t help but comment, "Mr. Yang, your handwriting is neater than our hospital’s printer."

Yang Ping raised his head, glancing at him, and his lips moved slightly. "In the previous place, every word in the experimental record had to be understandable by peers. Just used to it."

In the third week, news finally reached Changdu. It wasn’t the media that found him — he hadn’t told anyone his destination when he left, and Xiao Su publicly simply said "he’s gone traveling" — but rather in a slower, more roundabout way. A patient transferred from Chengdu brought an old issue of "Sanlian Life Weekly", which had a lengthy article on the "sealed controversy." A nurse left the magazine on the resting room table. When Yang Ping walked into the resting room to pour water, he saw the magazine cover, with his photo printed at the center, accompanied by a large caption: "Why Did Professor Yang Ping Suddenly Fall Silent?" He looked at the line for about five seconds, then flipped the magazine over, so it lay face down on the table.

He didn’t open it. He knew what was written inside — speculation, analysis, quotes from "sources close to Yang Ping’s team" speaking of "internal conflicts," and the California company’s statement saying, "We respect Professor Yang Ping’s personal choices, but the progress of science will not stop for any individual." He no longer needed to see this content. It had existed in his mind, playing on repeat like a looping tape before he left. He came here to let that tape stop.

But the tape did not entirely stop. In the gaps between those surgeries, while he sat alone drinking tea in the duty room, when he walked through the hospital corridors hearing the Tibetan language broadcast, the tape would quietly turn. He recalled the metabolic reprogramming of the 12.5% group of cells, remembered the horizontal band that lightened in color on the heat map, remembered the man whose face showed ecstasy after being injected with an unknown liquid. He didn’t know what was in that syringe, but he knew that the moment it pierced the skin, something irreversible had started in this world. He had shut down the laboratory, but he couldn’t shut down the hearts already boiling.