Chapter 799: I Don’t Like This Trend (3)

His exposed skin was nothing but deep wrinkles, crisscrossed everywhere—an old man who, in Qing’s homeland’s terms, or in the professional jargon, had a “face-value age” of about one hundred and fifty.

Yet instead of being bent over, this old man stood straight on his own feet with lively vigor. That alone could be called the bearing of an immortal.

Of course, “the bearing of an immortal” wasn’t necessarily a compliment. Even among the Central Plains’ famous immortals, how many weren’t strange people—like Zhongli Quan or Iron-Crutch Li?

For the record, Zhongli Quan and Iron-Crutch Li were members of the Eight Immortals, the eight greatest immortals of Taoism, famous for their shabby, unimpressive appearances.

Lord Physician was the same—his heavily wrinkled cheek flesh hung long.

To anyone else’s eyes, not “a physician” at all, but a vicious old man with a nasty temper and pure spite all over his face.

“Greetings my ass. Why are you greeting a wandering physician? And am I even the kind of person who should receive greetings? Enough.”

He waved the group back as they awkwardly started to rise, dismissing their salute—then immediately stuck his hand out at Qing.

“Perfect. Give me some money.”

You’d think she’d deposited it with him.

But as bold as the old man was for holding his hand out like that, Qing wasn’t exactly an easy mark either.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world, she untied her entire coin pouch and plopped it right onto his palm.

Lord Physician snatched the pouch, peeked inside, and made a vile little smile.

“Heh-heh... that’s got some weight to it. Hah... I’ll use this for a good cause. With this, I can spend freely for a while. Or I could even try a few things.”

Qing’s friends exchanged looks.

Because no matter how you looked at him, the old man’s face did not inspire trust.

An old man drooling over gold, saying he’d use it “for a good cause”—

But Qing already knew.

Shockingly, he really was someone who would use it for a good cause.

He’d just said it himself: for a while, he’d spend without holding back and try new medicinal ingredients and treatment methods.

After admiring the gold in the pouch for a good long while, Lord Physician snapped his head up.

“Hm? Why are you just standing there watching? Great. You look like precious rich kids. You lot look like you’ve got money too. This is a good time—make a little donation.”

He wasn’t stopping at Qing—now he was eyeing the party’s money pouches too.

Qing grabbed Lord Physician familiarly.

“Hey, sir. You’ve already collected your money, so sit down first. Your face looks really worn out—are you even eating properly?”

“Hmph. You think I’m doing this to feed myself? If I had that kind of money, I’d brew one more dose of medicine.”

“Come on, you’ll collapse at this rate. If you collapse, then patients and everything are pointless. Since we finally ran into you, at least load up your energy and go. They say food is medicine, right?”

“Hah. Since when is there a saying like that? That’s the first time I’ve heard such nonsense.”

He snorted, then squinted his eyes into a warped shape for a moment.

“No... no, wait. It’s not like that’s completely wrong. The ones who collapse from not eating—if you just feed them well, they pop right back up. Yeah. Food is medicine.”

Lord Physician promptly sat down.

In Central Plains culture, even if someone urged you, etiquette demanded you refuse once.

If someone said, “Come eat with us,” and you immediately dropped into a seat, it wasn’t the kind of thing you got cursed out for—but it was rude enough to make people frown.

“This is Heema—my adoptive sister. And this is Jayeo—my daughter. And...”

Qing introduced the group.

Lord Physician barely listened. He was too busy moving his chopsticks, piling dishes onto his own plate.

Then he started shoveling food into his mouth like he didn’t know whether it was going down his nose or his ears—CHOMP CHOMP, literally just stuffing himself.

It was wildly rude behavior, but not to Qing’s group—because they’d been watching her eat like that for a long time already.

Still, when Qing stuffed her face, she did it greedily while constantly showing how happy she was—so good, so good, that delighted expression.

But Lord Physician’s eating wasn’t about taste at all. It was pure swallowing-greed.

It looked nothing like the rumors of Lord Physician wandering the rivers and lakes, giving medical care to the poor without compensation.

Wasn’t he just a shameless old bastard?

Just as the group started seriously wondering if he was an impersonating scam artist—

“BUUURP... ahh. That was good.”

“You’re already done?”

“Of course. Food is just to fill your stomach. You look like you’ve eaten plenty too. Wrap it up, and let’s go.”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’? You don’t want to go? You’re not going to see patients?”

Qing blinked. Then blinked again.

“Uh... sir. I’m on my way to the Diancang Sect right now.”

“Yeah? Did someone collapse at the Diancang Sect?”

“No.”

“Then if you don’t go, who dies?”

“No, it’s not like that—”

“Then what do you mean it’s ‘not like that’? Nobody dies if you don’t go to the Diancang Sect right this second. But if you help me, you’ll save at least one or two people who would die otherwise. What’s more important than saving lives?”

“Uh... mm. Do we have to go right now?”

Qing was the kind of person who grabbed others and swung them around—she was never the type to be grabbed and swung around by someone else.

But the opponent was bad.

Because above the old man’s head, those brilliant blue letters were shining—and in all of Qing’s travels through the rivers and lakes, she hadn’t seen a single person with virtuous merit this high.

And on top of that, there was the deep-rooted cultural reflex of respecting elders.

An opponent she couldn’t possibly resist.

Lord Physician was practically Qing’s natural enemy.

“Then go now. Are you going to go after you die? Or are you going to go after the sick are all dead?”

“Hehe, that’s not what I mean. Mm—first, let’s book enough lodging. Help you out a bit, and then—”

“What lodging? Men with swords can do the work of ten strong men easily. Why are you letting them sit around? We can all go together.”

“Hold on! What kind of bullshit is this?!”

Instead of Qing, who had been subtly swept along with Lord Physician, Tang Nanna’s sharp voice rang through the room.

Tang Nanna was exactly the infamous villainess of Sichuan—other people’s ages were just numbers.

She was the kind of person who said anything and everything to her own clan elders too.

And what if he was some famous physician?

The Tang Clan were physicians too, and the Tang Clan did plenty of relief work for the poor. What made this old man so special?

Tang Nanna was the kind of clear, cool woman who always said what needed to be said, to anyone, at any time.

The problem was she said things she shouldn’t say even more often than the things she should.

“You said it’s a strange plague, didn’t you? A plague, of all [N O V E L I G H T] things, is going around—where are you trying to take her? If it spreads, are you going to take responsibility?”

“Ah. Mm, then I’ll just help you alone—”

“Qing, it’s not that simple, okay? I know you’re too kind for your own good. But do you know why it’s called a ‘strange plague’? Because we don’t know what it is—that’s why it’s ‘strange.’ Out of all illnesses, the scariest one is the illness even a physician doesn’t recognize. Who in their right mind walks into a place where some unknown syndrome is going around?”

Lord Physician had, in an instant, become “out of his mind,” apparently.

But Tang Nanna was right.

The most dangerous disease was the disease whose identity even physicians couldn’t determine.

They didn’t even know whether it was contagious or not—so they couldn’t tell if they could face patients directly, or touch the affected area.

And they didn’t know the details of how symptoms manifested, so unless you got sick right away and showed obvious signs, you might not even realize you’d been infected.

To Tang Nanna, no matter how praised Lord Physician was, and even if it was “to save patients”—

this wasn’t something you could force on someone lightly and drag them along “casually.”

But would Lord Physician not know those risks?

“No, you—if someone heard you, they’d think I was coaxing some naive kid. I’m telling her to help because it’s not a contagious illness. If I thought it was dangerous, I wouldn’t even ask.”

“Hah! Not contagious? Then what disease is it, exactly? There has to be a name!”

“Ahem, well...”

Lord Physician trailed off.

Because if they knew the name, there’d be no reason the rumor would be “a strange plague is going around.”

The news would just spread as “such-and-such disease is going around.”

Tang Nanna put a hand on her hip.

“See. I knew it. You don’t even know the name, and you’re going to guarantee it’s not contagious? If it turns out to spread, are you going to say, ‘Oh, I guess it was contagious,’ and call it a day?”

“No—this little mouse-dropping thing is shouting at an adult. I’m the physician, are you the physician? If a physician says so, you accept it. Do you even know medicine?”

“Hah! I’m a physician too. Talking about medicine with a Sichuan Tang Clan physician—heaven’s number one medical clan—right in front of you.”

“Ha! These days, any dog or pig is a physician? What kind of physician is a tiny girl like you?”

“What did you say?! Hah, old man—if you’re about to spew that ‘a woman can’t be a physician’ kind of garbage—”

“What are you talking about? I studied medical texts my whole life and I’m still just a wandering physician. And you, barely out of diapers, dare put the word ‘physician’ in your mouth?”

This time, Tang Nanna got stuck.

“Wandering physician” originally referred to a shaman—specifically, a shaman who had learned medicine.

Because in the past, medicine wasn’t an academic discipline or a technical skill, but the realm of spells and ritual.

It wasn’t until the Tang Dynasty that the court gathered wandering physicians, organized medical texts, and founded medical institutes to teach medicine. From then on, people who healed were called physicians or doctors.

And from then on, “wandering physician” had two meanings.

One was an old-fashioned, respectful way to refer to a physician.

The other was an insult meaning a quack—someone you couldn’t tell whether he was using medicine or using sorcery.

Most often, it was the second meaning.

Because drug-peddlers selling “miracle panaceas” with grandiose names loved to write things like “Heaven’s Wandering Physician” or “Wandering Physician Divine” on big flags.

So Lord Physician’s words weren’t some Central Plains medical taboo about “you can’t admit women physicians.”

It was: I spent my whole life learning medicine and I’m still only “wandering physician” level, and you’re still young—how dare you call yourself a physician?

And if Tang Nanna answered, “If you learn medicine, you’re a physician,” she’d be cutting down her own professional pride as a woman physician.

“Anyway, it doesn’t spread. You think only the sick are herded in over there? Families came along to tend them, and among the locals there are people with mobility issues, or people who said they’d die before leaving their homes. But it’s been two months since the quarantine started, and nobody’s caught it. It doesn’t spread.”

If no one had caught it in two months...

Even without knowing what the disease was, that was more than enough time to judge that it wasn’t contagious.

Mm. If he was saying it this strongly, it probably wasn’t something that spread.

In the first place, not only the sick were in the sealed-off northern district, but also families staying to tend them—and he said they were all fine.

And cosmic-mystery internal energy was an amazing power that could grant resistance to illness too, so if ordinary people were like that, what about martial artists who trained internal arts?

So if she stayed briefly and helped him—

Then, suddenly, Qing tilted her head.

“Sir? You said a lot of the patients’ families stayed inside, right? Then why are you short on hands? Ah—I’m not saying this because I don’t want to go.”

Lord Physician went, Ah.

“Ahem. Didn’t I tell you? Sure, men with swords are useful in all kinds of ways, but what we need right now is specifically men with swords.”

“You mean you need martial artists?”

Lord Physician snorted.

“There are a lot of trash bastards in this world. And among them, there are always bastards who try to fleece the sick. Those sons of bitches ought to die drowning in a cesspit.”