Chapter 786: So Awesome

Chapter 786: Chapter 786: So Awesome

Li Xu had already recited a large section backwards.

By rough estimates, it was over a thousand words. Yet, showing no signs of stopping, he continued. To everyone else, listening to him pull off this incredibly difficult feat felt like it must be consuming an immense amount of mental energy and brainpower.

But in reality, for Li Xu, who had his system cheat enabled, it was as if an e-book were open in his mind. He was simply pressing the "left arrow" key on a keyboard, "reading" the words backwards one by one. Therefore, his speaking speed wasn’t fast. It even carried a strange, rhythmic cadence, with perfectly enunciated syllables where every pronunciation was clearly distinguishable.

Even so, this unhurried "backward reading" shocked everyone present, making him seem unfathomably profound.

Standing in a corner below the podium, Li Lin opened his mouth. His throat felt blocked by something, as if he had lost his voice entirely. He couldn’t utter a single word. Originally, after experiencing that crazy night in the emergency department, Li Lin already thought of Li Xu as an absolute monster, completely beyond the realm of ordinary mortals. But he never dreamed that Li Xu would reach such an outrageous level of freakish genius.

"Why did you blind, jeering idiots have to push him?" Li Lin couldn’t help but complain in his heart about the classmates who had provoked Li Xu just moments ago. He finally had some understanding of Li Xu’s personality. Normally, he was gentle, refined, and very low-key, never actively causing trouble. If this bunch of arrogant fools hadn’t been so aggressively pressing him about his academic qualifications and seniority, pushing him into a corner, there was absolutely no way Li Xu would have unleashed such an earth-shattering "ultimate move" in this setting.

Now look what happened.

After today’s class, Li Xu would be thoroughly deified. For a very long time, the immortal legend of Li Xu, the "undergraduate who suppressed the entire crowd by reciting the Inner Jing backwards," would circulate throughout the entire Feng City Medical College, and perhaps even the entire provincial circle of traditional Chinese medicine universities. This group of instigators had all become stepping stones to highlight his miracle.

"As everyone knows, traditional Chinese medicine wasn’t called traditional Chinese medicine in the past, but rather the ’Art of Qi Huang’..."

After reciting for a full five minutes and reading thousands of words backwards, Li Xu finally stopped. He picked up the mineral water bottle on the podium, unscrewed it, and took a sip. With a tone so calm it was as if nothing had happened, he began the main topic of his lecture.

"This is precisely because of the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor. The core content of this entire work explains profound medical philosophies through a dialogue of questions and answers between the Heavenly Master Qi Bo and Emperor Huang. Therefore, to commemorate these two ancient sages, later generations also called the medical path the ’Way of Qi Huang.’

"...decline they and hundred a half therefore, regularity without life daily..."

Suddenly, Li Xu changed his tone and recited another line backwards, following the previous topic. This sudden move caused everyone, who had just managed to catch their breath, to feel their hearts tighten fiercely once again.

"Qi Bo answered: The people of high antiquity, those who knew the Way, modeled themselves on Yin and Yang and harmonized with the arts of calculation. Their eating and drinking were moderate, their daily routines had regularity, and they did not labor recklessly. Thus, their bodies and spirits remained together... Their daily routines are without moderation, thus they decline at half a hundred."

Inside the classroom, it was dead silent. Everyone looked at Li Xu as if he were a monster, unable to utter a single word. Even their breathing became cautious, terrified of interrupting this Living Immortal’s "spellcasting."

This time, the inner shock felt by the professors and doctoral students who truly knew their stuff was even greater than before. They recognized that what Li Xu recited this time was not the final passage of the Ling Shu from earlier, but a different section entirely—the Su Wen: Treatise on Heavenly Truth of High Antiquity.

This was the very first article of the first volume that opened the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor. One second he was reciting the end of the Ling Shu backwards, and the next second he could instantly jump to the opening of the Su Wen. He could casually pull out any sentence and switch back and forth between forward and backward recitation without the slightest hesitation.

What did this prove? It proved that Li Xu hadn’t just relied on rote memorization of a specific passage beforehand to come here and grandstand. He had likely truly and completely mastered the entire 180,000-word Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, knowing it so well he could recite it backward fluently.

Even if he hadn’t memorized all of it, the absolute mastery over the classic that Li Xu displayed in public today was enough to instantly elevate him to godhood in the academic world.

"In fact, when this great work, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, opens, it doesn’t give us any mysterious and profound lectures on Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements, nor does it discuss unfathomable medical prescriptions. Its very first Chapter discusses the simplest of questions—how to live out one’s natural lifespan and depart only after passing a hundred years of age."

Li Xu put down his water bottle. His gentle gaze swept over the audience as he spoke slowly.

"Right from the beginning, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor talks about the most ordinary matters of daily diet, routine, and the ways of health preservation.

"There are no magical methods in this world, only ordinary ones. Only by maintaining the ordinary and complying with the laws of nature can one cure common ailments and prevent major diseases.

"Actually, from the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, we can see that in extremely ancient times, our traditional Chinese medicine pioneers already had profoundly deep and avant-garde research on preventive medicine, health preservation, and longevity."

Li Xu paused, his tone turning serious as he continued.

"Therefore, many people on the internet today—even some who have learned a smattering of Western medicine—simply and crudely attribute the short average lifespan of the ancients to the backwardness of traditional Chinese medicine and the ineffectiveness of Chinese herbs. This is complete nonsense. It is an arrogance born from a lack of basic historical materialism.

"The ancients had short lifespans because of continuous wars, famines, and natural disasters, and because they had no antibiotics to fight acute infectious diseases. That is a completely different matter from the traditional Chinese medicine theories on treating chronic diseases and health preservation.

"In truth, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor brought up a crucially important modern medical viewpoint long ago: ’A myriad of diseases arise uncontrollably, and premature deaths occur, all due to the perils of diet.’

"Ancient traditional Chinese medicine placed great importance on diet, understanding early on that ’illness enters through the mouth’ and that an unrestrained diet is the root of all diseases. This is actually the same principle as the balanced diet advocated by modern nutrition and the prevention of gastrointestinal diseases spoken of in modern medicine.

"So, those who attack traditional Chinese medicine for not paying attention to hygiene or not understanding scientific laws really should calm down and take a good look at the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor to see the wisdom of our ancestors."

Li Xu explained these profound concepts in simple terms on the stage. The students below, as well as Dean Ai and Director Liang in the back row, nodded repeatedly as they listened. This was true cultural confidence. This was the bearing an inheritor of traditional Chinese medicine should have!

"Let me give you the most common clinical example," Li Xu continued. "When I was holding consultations at the clinic before, I encountered quite a few young patients who had just started kindergarten. When their parents brought them in, they all wore miserable expressions.

"Their symptoms were very similar: the children always suffered from recurrent pharyngitis and tonsillitis. As soon as their throats turned red, it would quickly develop into a fever. After going to the hospital and using fever reducers or even getting antibiotic injections, their temperatures would temporarily drop. Looking slightly better, the parents would send them back to school again.

"As a result, a few days later, they would relapse. The cycle repeated itself in a vicious loop. Many parents were distressed, complaining everywhere, ’Ah, this kindergarten is toxic. As soon as my child goes there, they get cross-infected and fall sick. They have to get injections every few days and never seem to get fully better...’"