Chapter Ninety-Seven: A Crane Among Chickens

The young man’s wretched fate was pitiable enough, but his actions had broken the contest rules, and two security guards escorted him from the venue. The organizer’s partner hospital, the First Hospital of Green City, sent a doctor to examine his injuries.

After that lesson, the patients that followed behaved far more properly. Hong Chen called out “Next” every little over half a minute or so, and in less than five minutes the tenth patient was seated before him.

By then, in the other rooms, the fastest contestant had only just begun diagnosing his third patient.

The contestants could not see one another’s progress, but the audience could tell at a glance. Hong Chen’s overwhelming lead drew the most attention of all.

“What kind of person is that? He has absolutely no medical ethics. He has no right to call himself a doctor.”

“Exactly. He’s being terribly irresponsible toward the patients. Someone like that should be disqualified on the spot.”

“He’s only twenty-five, at least nine years younger than every other contestant. He isn’t even here to compete, just to go through the motions and polish his résumé with one more line about a medical contest.”

“So he’s got connections. No wonder he’s wearing a mask and won’t show his face. For all the prestige of the Medical Sage Contest, it turns out the backroom dealings are everywhere.”

“No, people like that are a disgrace to the medical world. We have to expose him completely. He’s representing Health Hall in this competition. When this is over, we should jointly petition the organizers and demand that Health Hall make all of his information public, and drive him out of medicine!”

The students from Green City Medical University were all young, barely in their twenties. To them, Hong Chen’s casual treatment of the patients was nothing short of a perfunctory, unethical charade, and it easily stirred their indignation. Voices rose everywhere, all of them condemning Hong Chen.

Members of the major families, along with some seasoned figures from the profession, did not join in the verbal assault, but they were silently shaking their heads as well, deeply displeased with Hong Chen’s behavior. Even if he were merely here for experience, he should at least have shown the proper attitude of a physician.

“Please observe the rules of the contest and keep quiet.”

Two staff members from the organizers came over, making calming gestures with their hands, but the effect was slight. Some of the medical university students even seemed ready to speak up again on the spot.

Then the indicator light above Hong Chen’s booth suddenly lit up.

A moment later, the screen announced that Contestant No. 17 had completed the diagnosis of ten patients, with an accuracy rate of eighty percent.

The venue fell silent at first, then a low stir of disbelief rippled through the crowd.

Eighty percent was only just enough to pass. The result was not especially impressive; it was barely a pass at all. But the real problem was that, all told, he had spent only a little over five and a half minutes on the whole thing. That speed was outrageously fast. One had to remember that entering the results into the computer alone would take nearly half that time.

How was that even possible?

A moment ago, many of Green City Medical University’s students had still been full of resentment and contempt. In an instant, their expressions changed completely, becoming dumbstruck with disbelief. The members of the major families and the professionals were likewise shocked.

The three judges on the evaluation panel exchanged glances, surprise in their eyes. Even if it were them, they would need at least twice as much time.

In the entire venue, perhaps only Qi Gang and Old Qi would not be too astonished by this result. In fact, they might even suspect that Hong Chen had deliberately held his diagnosis accuracy down to eighty percent.

“He must have known the answers in advance. That’s cheating!” someone suddenly shouted.

A great many in the audience immediately looked enlightened.

More than half the students from Green City Medical University recovered their earlier looks of disgust and anger, and the condemnation began all over again.

“I can hear now! I can hear now! Divine doctor, thank you, thank you!”

Qi Gang’s face was dark with emotion. Veins stood out on the back of his tightly clenched hand. Just as he could no longer bear the crowd’s baseless slander of Hong Chen and was about to spring up and appeal to the organizers, a cry of joy and disbelief suddenly rang out from the stage, or more precisely, from Hong Chen’s booth.

Everyone turned toward the sound. There, among Hong Chen’s patients, a woman in her thirties was weeping with joy. Five years earlier, both her eardrums had been severely damaged. Her disability had been graded at level four, and since then she had relied on hearing aids just to maintain a semblance of hearing, which had caused her immense difficulty in daily life. Her boyfriend had left her because of it.

Yet barely half a minute earlier, Hong Chen’s seemingly simple three needles had completely restored the hearing in both her ears. She had at last been freed from her disability and become a normal person once more.

At Hong Chen’s reminder, the woman quickly went down from the stage and came to the judges’ station, where one of the judges examined her again. A minute later, astonishment flashed across the judge’s eyes. For level-four deafness, the contest rules stated that if treatment restored hearing temporarily to the level of a level-six disability, it counted as a success. But the result of the reexamination showed that the woman’s hearing had been restored to normal.

When the screen announced that Contestant No. 17 had achieved one successful treatment, every trace of condemnation in the audience vanished without a trace.

Qi Gang’s gaze swept over the crowd. All he saw were faces filled with shock. Pride stirred in him, and he felt excited, but more than anything he felt admiration.

He was the public head of Health Hall, the true number two beneath the surface. Since Hong Chen was representing Health Hall in the competition, the more outstanding his performance, the more Qi Gang benefited as well. Besides, although Hong Chen had not formally accepted him as a disciple, he had been guiding Qi Gang’s medical studies once a week. In truth, the two of them had already formed the bond of master and disciple. When the master shone brilliantly, the disciple shared in the honor.

Hong Chen chose the second patient next, an old man with cataracts. With only six or seven needles’ work, the old man’s blurred vision cleared completely. After the judges’ reexamination, his eyesight was found to be 1.0, without even presbyopia, indistinguishable from that of a perfectly healthy person.

At last, Hong Chen selected the first patient he had seen, an elderly woman suffering from a chronic headache disorder. With a single needle inserted into the crown of her head, he held it there for more than ten seconds before withdrawing it. The old woman immediately felt her mind clear. Once the judges reexamined her, she was without suspense declared cured.

With three successful cases in total, Hong Chen’s first contest appearance could be said to have ended perfectly. He stretched, then rose and walked out of the booth, only to suddenly realize that something about the atmosphere in the venue was off. He glanced up and saw that nearly every eye in the audience was fixed on him. Those looks, as though they were staring at a giant panda, made his scalp prickle.

Hong Chen froze, rubbed his nose, and turned to look at the giant screen. His eyes wandered over it for only a moment before they widened. He cursed inwardly: Damn it!

Fifty-seven people had entered the competition, yet aside from him, not one of the other fifty-six had even finished the first stage of diagnosis.

This was going too far.

Since he had already decided to take part in the Medical Sage Contest, Hong Chen had been prepared for attention. But he had never dreamed that the very first round of the preliminaries would produce such a striking, solitary display.

Could he really be blamed for it?

He could not see the progress of the other contestants, so he had no way of knowing how much he should hold back in order to ensure a place in the top ten without standing out too much.

If anything, the fault lay with the other contestants for being too weak.

“The speed at which you make a diagnosis can only be used as a reference. It doesn’t fully represent a doctor’s true level,” Hong Chen comforted himself inwardly, then stepped forward again and headed down from the stage.

“Divine doctor, my pharyngitis has lasted more than ten years. Every morning when I get up, I cough up phlegm. Please help me cure it.”

“Me too. I’ve had a constant feeling of tightness in my chest and shortness of breath for four or five years now. Divine doctor, you can definitely treat it, can’t you? Please, I’m begging you.”

“My enteritis gets better, then flares up again, then gets better again. It’s been going on like this for years. Divine doctor, as long as you can cure me, I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life.”

The patients Hong Chen had not yet treated had witnessed his successful cures of three people. Now, seeing him about to leave, they rushed forward in a panic, crowding around him and pleading over and over.

The sudden turn of events left Hong Chen somewhat at a loss. He could certainly treat these conditions, but the problem was that once he made any extra move, he could not just help one person. If he cured them all, he would no longer merely stand out like a crane among chickens; he would be a lone tree rising above a forest. That was absolutely not the result he wanted.

These people were pushing him straight into a pit of fire.

Just as he was struggling with what to do, the second patient he had seen earlier, the middle-aged woman who had spoken harshly of him and called him a quack, suddenly dropped to her knees before him. Tears shimmering in her eyes, she said, “Divine doctor, I have depression. At times I fly into a rage for no reason at all. My husband, my child, they won’t even speak to me anymore. If this goes on, I’m going to go mad. I might as well be dead. Please, please, save me.”