Chapter 38: Instant Familiarity
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“Ah, all right, all right.” Uncle Zhang obediently sat down on the little folding stool, settling himself with practiced familiarity.
Zhou Yichen brought over the silver needles. After disinfecting them, he inserted them steadily into the acupoints on Uncle Zhang’s body.
Twisting, rotating, lifting, and thrusting—the movements flowed as smoothly as water.
Uncle Zhang felt a familiar soreness and heaviness spread through him, followed by waves of warmth radiating around his chest. It was wonderfully soothing.
Just as Zhou Yichen was concentrating on the acupuncture, another visitor arrived at the gate.
The newcomer was a man in his forties. His complexion was somewhat sallow, and his expression held a mixture of awkwardness and hope.
“Is… is Doctor Zhou home?” the man asked softly.
Hearing him, Zhou Yichen did not pause in his work. He looked up and said, “Are you here to see a doctor? Come in and we’ll talk.”
Only then did the man walk in hesitantly, rubbing his hands together. “Doctor Zhou, I… I heard this morning that your medical skills are excellent, so I thought I’d come and ask you to take a look at me.”
After inserting the final needle into Uncle Zhang, Zhou Yichen nodded at the man. “Please wait a moment. I’ll see you as soon as I finish removing Uncle Zhang’s needles.”
“No rush, no rush. Please finish what you’re doing,” the man said, waving his hands repeatedly.
After roughly fifteen minutes, Zhou Yichen estimated that the acupuncture session had lasted long enough and began removing the needles one by one.
“Uncle, how are you feeling today?” he asked as he gathered the needles.
Uncle Zhang moved his body around, his face breaking into a broad smile. “Much better! Yichen, you really are amazing! I feel so much looser now, and it hardly hurts when I sleep at night!”
Zhou Yichen smiled, then went inside and brought out a small packet of herbs wrapped in oiled paper.
“I prepared these medicines for you. Boil and take them on schedule when you get home to consolidate the effects.”
Uncle Zhang accepted the packet and thanked him repeatedly. “Ah, thank you so much, Yichen! I’ll be going now. I won’t keep you from seeing your patients.”
“Take care.”
Zhou Yichen escorted Uncle Zhang to the courtyard gate.
After seeing him off, Zhou Yichen turned to the man who had been waiting patiently.
“Brother, where are you feeling unwell?” He gestured for the man to sit down.
The man spoke somewhat bashfully. “Doctor Zhou, my stomach has been bothering me lately. Sometimes it feels bloated and painful, and sometimes it burns terribly. I can’t eat much, and I feel weak all over.”
Zhou Yichen asked him to extend his hand, carefully took his pulse, and questioned him in detail about his diet and daily routine. Finally, he examined his tongue coating.
After a moment, he had reached a diagnosis.
“It’s nothing serious,” Zhou Yichen said calmly. “Your spleen and stomach are somewhat weak. On top of that, you have a little food stagnation and constrained liver qi.”
“A course of acupuncture to unblock your qi, followed by a few doses of medicine to regulate your system, should take care of it.”
The man’s face brightened. “Really? Truly? That’s wonderful! I saw Doctor Sun before and took some medicine, but the problem kept coming and going.”
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Zhou Yichen nodded, took out a fresh set of silver needles, disinfected them, and began treating the man.
His movements were swift and precise. In barely any time at all, several silver needles had been inserted into acupoints on the man’s abdomen and legs.
As Zhou Yichen manipulated the needles, the man felt a warm current rise from his lower abdomen. The bloating, pain, and burning sensation he had been suffering suddenly eased to an astonishing degree.
“Oh! That feels wonderful—so much better!” Surprise and delight spread across the man’s face, and he could not help praising him. “Doctor Zhou, your skill is truly miraculous!”
Zhou Yichen remained composed. When the retention time was up, he removed the silver needles one by one.
He then stood and selected several herbs from those laid out to dry. After estimating the appropriate quantities, he wrapped them into three packets and handed them to the man.
At that moment, he also realized that he was still missing a scale for weighing medicine.
Still, with his level of medical expertise, he could estimate the amounts fairly accurately even without one. It was not a serious problem.
“This is a three-day supply. Take one dose each day, boiled after dinner,” Zhou Yichen instructed. “Keep your diet light over the next few days, and avoid spicy or cold foods.”
The man tucked the packets into his shirt as carefully as if they were treasures, his face full of gratitude.
“Thank you, Doctor Zhou! Thank you so much!” He pulled out a few crumpled coins and tried to pay the consultation fee.
Zhou Yichen waved him off. “We’re all neighbors here. A few needles and a little medicine are hardly worth anything. Take the medicine first. We’ll talk after you recover.”
Times were hard for everyone, and he had never expected to make a fortune from this.
He was the production team’s health worker, and he did not charge people for treatment. After all, the production team awarded him work points for treating villagers—and full work points at that.
In truth, not charging fees also had its advantages.
At the very least, it avoided unnecessary trouble.
After all, he was only a health worker appointed by the production team itself. He did not even possess a proper medical license.
If he charged for treatment and happened to encounter someone jealous or overly particular who reported him for practicing medicine illegally, the consequences could be disastrous.
But if he charged nothing and merely accepted work points from the production team, that was an entirely different matter.
Those work points represented the villagers’ recognition of him and the organization’s trust.
The nature of it was completely different.
After seeing off the man with the weak spleen and stomach, Zhou Yichen finally had some free time.
He carefully processed the remaining herbs in the courtyard, sorting them by type and laying them out to dry.
When he finished, he knew several more people would be coming to see him that afternoon, so he decided not to leave the house.
Back inside, he removed his shoes, sat cross-legged on the earthen bed, and picked up his copy of Fundamentals of Traditional Chinese Medicine to continue studying.
Sunlight streamed through the window lattice, casting mottled shadows across his body. The afternoon was peaceful and serene.
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As expected, several more villagers came by throughout the afternoon.
Most suffered from common ailments such as headaches, fevers, bruises, sprains, and strains.
Zhou Yichen handled them with ease and found none of them particularly difficult.
Diagnosis, acupuncture, prescriptions—the entire process flowed smoothly.
The villagers came to trust him more and more, addressing him warmly as Doctor Zhou.
The afternoon slipped quietly away amid treating patients and burying himself in his studies.
Zhou Yichen felt immensely fulfilled.
With every needle he inserted, every diagnosis he made, and every medical text he read, he could feel his understanding of medicine deepening.
That tangible sense of progress brought him immense enjoyment.
As the time approached for the production team to finish work, Zhou Yichen habitually opened his talent panel for a glance.
[Medical Skills—Level 1 (805/1000)]
A satisfied smile curved the corners of Zhou Yichen’s lips.
His proficiency had already climbed past eight hundred!
In a single day—from morning until now—his medical proficiency had increased by several dozen points.
This was far faster than he had anticipated.
Of course, he understood that the main reason for the rapid increase was the several villagers he had treated that afternoon.
Every successful diagnosis and treatment brought in a considerable amount of proficiency.
If he relied solely on studying books in solitude, gaining twenty or thirty points in a day would have been the absolute limit.
“Practice is the sole test of truth. The ancients certainly weren’t wrong about that,” Zhou Yichen murmured with a sigh.
As the sky gradually darkened, the noise outside grew louder as well. Clearly, the commune members were finishing work and returning home.
Just as Zhou Yichen put down his book and prepared to get up to make dinner, another set of footsteps sounded outside the courtyard gate.
Then a woman’s voice, warm and familiar, rang out:
“Yichen, are you home?”
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