Chapter 789: Read a Book 100 Times, and Its Meaning Becomes Clear

Chapter 789: Chapter 789: Read a Book 100 Times, and Its Meaning Becomes Clear

The surrounding students turned their heads in unison to look at the coughing male student.

Awkwardly rubbing his nose, the student stood up.

"You’ve had this cough for quite a while now, haven’t you?" Li Xu looked at the older student and stated with absolute certainty, "Furthermore, it’s a recurring issue. It’s primarily a dry cough with almost no phlegm, correct?"

"Um... yes." The student nodded, a trace of surprise flashing in his eyes.

Another uproar swept through the classroom. When the sophomore boy from earlier had his anxiety and indigestion seen through at a glance by Li Xu, everyone was surprised, but they could still laugh it off as a coincidence or attribute it to his rich social experience. But now, here was a graduate student he had never met before. Once again, without asking any medical questions or checking his pulse, merely relying on observation and listening from a distance, Li Xu was able to accurately describe the characteristics of his symptoms.

"Is he really this amazing?" a girl in the front row couldn’t help but exclaim. "He just showed off his memory by reciting the *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor* backward, and now he’s doing a live blind diagnosis? And without asking questions or checking the pulse, relying purely on observation and auscultation?"

Everyone here studied traditional Chinese medicine, so they naturally knew how difficult this was. To know an illness merely by looking is considered divine. This wasn’t some scripted TV show; it was genuine, solid skill. Under the watchful eyes of hundreds of experts, there was no room for any fakery.

"Looking at your complexion, although it’s generally pale, your cheekbones are slightly flushed. This is known as a ’malar flush.’ Furthermore, when you coughed just now, your brows were tightly furrowed, and your eyes revealed an uncontrollable irritability..." Li Xu continued to analyze for the class as he observed the student. "If I’m not mistaken, the tip of your tongue should be red, and your tongue coating should be thin and slightly yellow. Could the student next to him help take a look to verify?"

A boy sitting next to the coughing student immediately stood up. The older student cooperatively opened his mouth and let him look at his tongue.

"Holy crap! It’s like magic!" The boy took one look and loudly reported to the entire room, "The tip of the tongue is really red, and the coating is thin and yellow! Li Xu is absolutely right."

After speaking, he sat back down, his face full of adoration.

As Li Xu spoke again, many students in the audience couldn’t help but gape in awe. They had a sneaking suspicion that Li Xu was about to continue using the ancient and profound theories from the *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor* to diagnose and treat this seemingly ordinary cough.

Li Xu’s voice was steady, as if he were breaking down a precise surgical procedure. "Irritability, malar flush, dry cough with little phlegm, red tongue tip, and a thin, yellow coating. Combining these symptoms gathered through visual and auditory diagnosis, we can clearly diagnose this as: insufficient lung yin, accompanied by stagnant liver qi transforming into fire. It is the phenomenon of ’wood and fire torturing metal.’

"The *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor* speaks of the generation and restriction of the Five Elements. The heart governs fire, and the lungs govern metal. Fire restricts metal. A red tongue tip and irritability indicate excessive heart fire. When heart fire is too strong, it flares upward to scorch the lung metal, or lung yin. At the same time, the liver corresponds to wood. When wood energy is too vigorous—meaning stagnant liver qi transforms into fire—it will turn around and bully the lung metal. This is called ’reverse restriction,’ which is exactly wood and fire torturing metal.

"Deprived of the nourishment of yin fluids and doubly roasted by heart and liver fire, the lungs become like parched earth baking under a scorching sun. Naturally, this leads to an endless dry cough without phlegm."

Li Xu then stated his treatment plan. "For this type of illness, simply using cough medicine is useless. We must regulate it through the generation and restriction of the Five Elements. You can use the ’Glehnia and Ophiopogon Decoction’ combined with the ’Indigo and Clam Shell Powder’, with minor modifications.

"In this prescription, Glehnia and Ophiopogon nourish the lung yin, much like watering parched earth. Polygonatum odoratum and Trichosanthes root moisten dryness and generate fluids. Meanwhile, natural indigo and sea clam shells are sharp weapons for clearing the liver, resolving phlegm, and extinguishing liver fire. Once there is enough water and the fire is put out, the cough will naturally stop."

Li Xu not only provided a prescription but also offered lifestyle guidance.

"Besides taking the medicine, you must adjust your daily routine to match. Although the weather remains hot, the solar term for the Beginning of Autumn has already arrived.

"According to the health preservation philosophy in the ’Great Treatise on Regulating the Spirit with the Four Seasons’ from the *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor*: ’The three months of autumn are called the period of tranquil conduct. Go to bed early and rise early, waking with the rooster.’ You must break the habit of staying up late. Try to sleep early and wake up early to comply with the converging and descending qi between heaven and earth during autumn, drawing the floating external fire back into your body.

"In terms of diet, absolutely avoid spicy and barbecued foods, as they are dry and hot. Eat more foods that moisten the lungs and nourish yin, such as lilies, snow fungus, and snow pears. Medicine and food share the same origin; only then can you get twice the result with half the effort."

"Thank you. I have learned a lot." The older doctoral student sincerely expressed his gratitude after listening.

His cough had indeed been going on for quite a while, constantly recurring. He had taken plenty of anti-inflammatory drugs and cough syrups to no avail. Today, seeing Li Xu dare to publicly point out his pathogenesis and provide such a detailed, logically rigorous treatment plan in a classroom of hundreds of people, this doctoral student absolutely trusted Li Xu’s skill level.

Reciting the *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor* backward, deconstructing profound medical theories using common sense, and accurately diagnosing illnesses relying solely on visual and auditory observation... Such an expert. Such a prodigy.

The students present knew very well that even among the highly respected senior professors in their university, few possessed such comprehensive, overwhelmingly superior practical skills and the ability to command a room.

In fact, for these young and arrogant medical students, they were the hardest to convince, but also the easiest to win over. If you talked to them about seniority and titles, they might appear respectful on the surface but would secretly dismiss it.

However, as long as you were a truly capable teacher—if you could, like Li Xu, show off genuine, solid skills right in front of them and crush their prior understanding with absolute strength—you could quickly win their sincere admiration, even earning their utter devotion.

At this moment in the lecture hall, the initial doubt and disdain were entirely gone. In their place were countless pairs of eyes filled with adoration, fanaticism, and a thirst for knowledge, all fixed intently on the radiant young man at the podium.

"Read a book a hundred times, and its meaning will naturally reveal itself." In the back row of the lecture hall, Dean Ai Rong remarked from the bottom of his heart as he watched Li Xu commanding the room with ease in front of the large screen.

Turning his head, he whispered to Director Liang beside him. "This kid, Li Xu, being able to recite the 180,000-character *Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor* backward is proof enough that he has completely etched this heavenly medical text into his brain and thoroughly digested its meaning.

"You must know that traditional Chinese medicine is a discipline that highly values being ’broad and profound.’ The so-called ’broadness’ refers to being widely knowledgeable, requiring the mastery of a massive amount of prescriptions, pharmacology, and meridian knowledge. Only then can one quickly find a breakthrough when facing a wide variety of bizarre cases and patients."

Dean Ai’s eyes sparkled as he continued. "But the ’profundity’ of traditional Chinese medicine is equally important, perhaps even more so than broadness. ’Profundity’ doesn’t mean you have to compartmentalize everything as meticulously as Western medicine, looking only at a single organ. Rather, it means your understanding of a certain classic text has reached its absolute peak. Even if you can’t cure every single rare disease in the world, as long as you encounter a patient who fits within your theoretical framework—someone in your wheelhouse—you can quickly cut straight to the core and resolve the illness in one fell swoop."