Chapter 41: Honorary Physician

"If there is nothing else, I will head back to the campus first," Zhou Chen said.

However, Zhang Mingxu led Zhou Chen directly to his office.

Aside from the two of them, Zhang Bingnan was also present in the office.

"My young friend, to be honest, I am full of curiosity about your identity," Zhang Mingxu said, pouring a cup of tea for Zhou Chen.

Zhou Chen saw no reason to hide it; his background could easily be verified with a simple inquiry.

"My family has practiced medicine for generations. My grandfather is Zhou Guangxi. I wonder if you have heard of him?"

Zhang Mingxu frowned slightly in thought, but ultimately shook his head. "It seems my knowledge is limited."

Zhang Mingxu assumed his own standing was not high enough to cross paths with Zhou Chen's grandfather.

After all, if the grandson was already this formidable, his grandfather's medical skills must be nothing short of divine!

In truth, it was mostly because Zhou Guangxi disliked drawing public attention, and Xiangnan Province was quite a distance from the capital, so it was entirely normal not to know him.

"Alright, senior, please just tell me why you brought me here," Zhou Chen said, taking a sip of tea.

Without beating around the bush, Zhang Mingxu stated his purpose directly. "I represent Huaxin Hospital in inviting you to join us as an honorary physician in our Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine."

Zhou Chen smiled. This suited his intentions perfectly.

Now that he possessed the Disease-Devouring Worm, it was impossible for him to wander the streets randomly finding patients and telling them he could cure their terminal illnesses.

That was entirely unrealistic and a terrible waste of time.

Therefore, an environment teeming with patients, combined with a credible identity, made the best greenhouse for cultivating the Disease-Devouring Worm.

Zhou Chen's goal was to become the leading figure of the Yanhuang Traditional Chinese Medicine Association. For now, however, starting out as an honorary physician in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Department of Huaxin Hospital would serve as a stepping stone to accumulate a baseline quantity of the Disease-Devouring Worms.

Taking another sip of tea, Zhou Chen replied at a leisurely pace, "Saving lives is the same anywhere. However, let's make one thing clear: Huaxin Hospital cannot restrict my freedom. I will treat patients whenever I feel like it."

"Not only that, but you have no right to interfere with whom I choose to treat, how I treat them, or what I charge."

After a moment of reflection, Zhang Mingxu nodded. "Very well. Given my young friend's medical skills, you are fully qualified to make such demands."

Having finished his tea, Zhou Chen stood up.

"Since I have time right now, take me to see some patients—preferably those with all sorts of difficult and complicated ailments."

At present, Zhou Chen only possessed theoretical knowledge and still lacked practical experience.

Only by coming into contact with a wide variety of stubborn illnesses could he truly improve his medical expertise.

Along the way, Zhou Chen noticed that while Huaxin Hospital's Traditional Chinese Medicine department had a fair number of patients, the numbers were in an entirely different league compared to the overwhelmingly packed Western medicine side.

"Xiao Li, please step aside and let this young divine doctor take over the consultations," Zhang Mingxu said to a middle-aged man currently attending to patients.

The middle-aged man cast a glance at Zhou Chen, his face full of suspicion.

A divine doctor of this age?

Suspicious as he was, since Zhang Mingxu had given the order, he could only stand up and retreat to the side, wanting to see just how much real skill this so-called divine doctor possessed.

Or perhaps he was just some spoiled scion from a wealthy family out to gild his resume—he was even still wearing his military training uniform.

As for the patients, Zhou Chen was even less worthy of trust.

Regardless of the country, there was an ironclad rule when seeing a doctor: the older the practitioner, the better their medical skills.

This was especially true for traditional Chinese medicine, a field that required time to accumulate experience. If it were an elderly person with a wrinkled face and white hair like Zhang Mingxu, their trustworthiness would instantly soar by three hundred percent.

Zhang Bingnan fetched a white lab coat and draped it over Zhou Chen. Otherwise, dressed as he was in his military training uniform, Zhou Chen looked less like a doctor and more like someone playing a game.

Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes the four diagnostic methods: looking, listening, questioning, and pulse-taking.

Before checking the pulse, one first observes the patient's spirit and complexion—the process of "looking."

Many ailments can be detected simply through visual observation.

For instance, individuals suffering from kidney deficiency invariably give off a listless impression with a darkened complexion.

Next comes listening to the pitch, strength, clarity, and tempo of the patient's voice and breathing to distinguish between deficiency and excess, cold and heat.

Following that is the inquiry, used to understand the patient's condition, the onset time, causes, progression, and past medical history.

Finally, Zhou Chen began taking the patient's pulse, diagnosing him simply with a severe kidney deficiency.

"The yin and yang energies in your body are in complete disarray, and yin is prevailing while yang is in decline. Furthermore, your yang energy manifests in multiple strands, indicating that recently you have not only been intimate with more than one person, but also with more than just women."

The patient looked as though he wished he could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.

While he had previously doubted Zhou Chen's medical skills, he now realized there was no need; being able to deduce such matters purely from a pulse made it feel less like medicine and more like fortune-telling!

Upon hearing Zhou Chen's words, both Zhang Mingxu and Zhang Bingnan wore strange expressions.

This made the patient feel even more ashamed, especially since Zhang Bingnan was a striking beauty.

His face turned beet red, yet he stubbornly refused to leave.

Since this young divine doctor's medical skills were so terrifyingly brilliant, he must surely have a way to treat kidney deficiency.

"Divine doctor, money is no object! I beg you for a secret kidney-tonifying remedy!"

Zhou Chen pondered for a moment. "If money is no object, that makes things easy. Here is what we'll do: I can use acupuncture to boost the yang energy in your body. As long as your yang energy is sufficient, your kidney deficiency will be alleviated."

"By the way, based on your pulse just now, I gather your premature ejaculation has become quite severe."

The man looked ready to drop to his knees right then and there. "Little divine doctor, you hit the nail on the head! I used to easily last half an hour, but now I surrender within a minute or two. This is my only remaining hobby in life—please, you must help me, and I will handsomely reward you."

Zhou Chen nodded. "I can use acupuncture to reduce your sensitivity in that area while increasing firmness. However, the cost of the acupuncture is not cheap."

"Therefore, before we begin the acupuncture, I want to ask: what is your net worth?"

The man answered with supreme confidence. "I am the president of the Capital's Longteng Group, with a net worth exceeding one billion!"

Zhou Chen acknowledged with a nod. "Very well. In exchange, I want you to collect rare wild Chinese medicinal herbs for me."

With that, Zhou Chen wrote down a list on a slip of paper and handed it to the man. The items listed were all precious herbs.

"I will give you one acupuncture session first so you can test its efficacy, and the effects will last for about a week."

"After a week, I expect at least three types of medicinal herbs from this list before I perform the second acupuncture session and prescribe you a miraculous herbal remedy that will instantly tonify your kidneys and strengthen your yang."

The middle-aged man patted his chest and swore there would be no problem.

Soon, the second patient entered the consulting room.

In stark contrast to the previous man, this was a rustic-looking couple.

After inquiring, Zhou Chen learned that the husband had fallen from a scaffold at a construction site and broken his leg. With the family losing their source of income, surgery in the Western medicine department was far too expensive, leaving them with no choice but to seek help from traditional Chinese medicine.

Even if he ended up with a permanent limp in the future, as long as he could still walk, it would suffice.

Ordinarily, a fracture should be seen in the orthopedics department, but considering the optimal window for treating the fracture had passed, they needed a TCM internal medicine physician to prescribe herbal medicine to reduce inflammation around the fracture site.

Zhou Chen stood up, borrowed a large acupuncture needle from Zhang Mingxu, and precisely inserted it into the fracture site to drain the accumulated pus and blood.

"Get a piece of cloth for him to bite down on."

Directly following that, Zhou Chen forcefully snapped the patient's knee back into alignment.

"The bone is not broken; the joint was simply severely dislocated. It has now been reset. However, he must absolutely avoid strenuous exercise, and ideally shouldn't even walk—go buy a pair of crutches. He needs to rest for at least a month and a half, and during this period, he must strictly avoid sour, spicy, greasy, and irritating foods."

Looking at her husband's severely deformed leg, which now looked no different from a normal person's, the woman revealed a look of pleasant surprise.

She had originally feared a surgical operation was necessary, never expecting the bone to be reset with such ease.

Only beads of cold sweat lined her husband's face; that single snapping movement had made him feel as though he had seen his late grandmother waving at him.

Hesitantly, the woman asked, "How much do we owe?"

Zhou Chen shook his head. "It was merely a matter of convenience. You may go home now."

"No charge?"

"None."

In the end, the woman kowtowed once to Zhou Chen before carrying her husband away on her back.

Watching the somewhat frail woman carry a husband weighing over one hundred and fifty pounds on her back while still managing a radiant smile on her face, everyone present felt a deep stirring within their hearts.