Chapter 468: Vaccine Experimenters, the Turn of the Road

“Should we cut open?”

Garrett chuckled as he began to rummage through his items, presenting them to Priest Mark and the patient’s family:

“No, we have another way. A method that is more comfortable for the patient and causes less damage.”

In the void, a Silent Phantom outlined the images of the lungs, trachea, and bronchi. A green vine wriggled inside, moving left and right under the guidance of the Arcane Eye, the light screen displaying the inside of the lungs. The vine excised the damaged parts, released a healing spell, and then coiled around the removed section to carry it away…

“Can it really be done this way?”

The elderly man in the bed, a gout-ridden merchant, and Priest Mark all widened their eyes in astonishment at Garrett and then at the phantom above… Could this really work?

“Yes, it can.” Garrett smiled. “I’ve done this hundreds of times by hand in the Dwarf Kingdom, filling the lungs with water and then drawing it out, never failing. If I had failed there, I would have been driven out long ago.”

It wasn’t that Priest Mark lacked imagination. In fact, the earliest thoracic surgeries were indeed performed this way—cutting through the skin, pulling back muscles, sawing through ribs, and prying the breastbone open with steel wires...

This gave surgeons space to operate, commonly known as, ’the big reveal’.

However, such methods obviously caused significant trauma to the patient. So later on, surgeons had more tools at their disposal: lung surgeries were done using tracheal and bronchial scopes; thoracic surgeries were done using thoracoscopes. Before Garrett came to this world, he heard that even organ transplants could be performed with thoracoscopes...

The pus continued to drain into the bottle. Garrett was in no rush, settling the patient in for the day—

The first day of closed thoracic drainage, the fluid should not exceed 600ml to avoid re-expansion pulmonary edema, which can cause frothy sputum, difficulty breathing, and in severe cases, threaten the patient’s life.

From what he could see, the amount of pleural effusion definitely exceeded 1000 milliliters.

He personally carried the chest bottle, calling two barbarians to lift the bed, and took the patient to the inpatient department. The unfortunate otherworldly industry, still without wheeled carts, had no choice but to carry the patient.

Well, a cause for celebration, the hospital had finally welcomed its first inpatient...

Garrett patiently waited two days, draining about 1000 milliliters of yellowish-white pus, then allowed Priest Mark to cast a couple of healing spells. They reduced inflammation, treated surrounding infections, and then—

The bronchoscope, begin!

It hadn’t been long since Garrett had arrived in this world when he had removed a bronchial foreign object from Master Lorenz’s grandson, that bear-like child. Back then, he still used X-rays to guide the blind operation. Now, with the Arcane Eye, equivalent to having a bronchoscope, the procedure was much easier.

But, from another perspective, this operation was more difficult. The bear-like child’s bronchial foreign object was choked in a few hours and then removed, causing minimal damage to the trachea, at most a little edema. But this time…

Garrett’s expression was serious as he stared at the image on the light screen, not blinking an eye. The Arcane Eye went down to the base of the right lung’s lower lobe bronchus and immediately stopped: mucosal edema, and moreover, new granulation tissue at the duct!

“Troublesome…”

He muttered softly. Priest Mark stood behind him watching the light screen, not daring to speak, while the Silver Dragon girl immediately asked:

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you see these granulations?” Garrett controlled the tip of the vine, pointing it out within the view of the Arcane Eye:

“These indicate that there is something undesirable below, prompting the body to encapsulate it with granulation tissue. Soon, we might have to remove them altogether… troublesome indeed!”

He pinched his nose and poured in 15ml of sterile saline, then sucked it out, and repeated. After several rounds, the situation below was clearly revealed on the light screen.

The Arcane Eye now had a clear view: further down the bronchus, there was a strange foreign object encapsulated by granulation tissue. Garrett manipulated the tip of the vine to slightly touch it, immediately causing bleeding, and pus began to overflow.

“Ugh… that’s gross!”

The Silver Dragon girl covered her nose in disgust. Garrett slightly curled his lips under his mask:

“It’s fine, thankfully it’s just a vine.”

“What? You call this fine?”

If it were a bronchoscope… the bronchoscope’s force couldn’t

be controlled as delicately as the tip of a vine touching lightly like a dragonfly skimming water. If that were the case, bleeding would definitely be quite pronounced, perhaps turning the entire surgical field a reddish hue. As for the purulent secretions, they would be far more copious…

“See that?” he pointed on the light screen to the Silver Dragon girl and Priest Mark as well:

“That thing there, wrapped by the granulations, is the chief culprit. If we don’t remove it, the old man’s lungs won’t heal.”

Ah, this bronchial foreign object, still uncertain what it was. Its head looked like an umbrella, somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t recall at the moment…

Thanks to the world’s effectiveness, one casting of the healing spell, another of remove disease, and yet another healing spell. Although it didn’t cure the lesion completely, at least it controlled the infection and prevented the patient from dying on the way to the hospital.

But to remove the bronchial foreign object, remove disease was helpless!

“So, Garrett, take it out!”

“No rush…”

Garrett controlled the vine to continue downward. First, he sucked out a large amount of pus from the lungs before starting the surgery. Violent cutting was not an option, especially since the patient had already coughed up blood, indicating the foreign object had adhered to surrounding tissues and invaded blood vessels. Electrocautery? Cryotherapy? Direct cutting?

Electrocautery was not an option—no electricity.

Cryotherapy was also impossible—the specialized cryoprobe, 1.8 millimeters in diameter, could create temperatures as low as -80°C locally, precisely freezing the surrounding few millimeters of tissue to prevent bleeding while the bronchoscope withdrew with the foreign object.

Garrett mused that his vine could not guide such precise ice spells…

Luckily, there was the healing spell!

Garrett focused his mind, first summoning the Spirit of the Pact to look around. Once he confirmed there were no major blood vessels nearby, he then guided three vines to work simultaneously:

One to cut, another to closely adhere to the side, guiding the healing spell. Another vine coiled around the cut foreign object, preventing it from falling deeper.

The granulations were sliced open a millimeter, and the healing spell smoothed over a millimeter of the wound surface. The area it passed was smooth and even, the minimal bleeding a sight to behold. While cutting, advancing, it wasn’t long before it had circled around the granulation tissue.

“All done!”

The vine responsible for cutting quietly dissipated. The vine guiding the healing spell remained still, the third vine, coiling around a slender, heavily wrapped foreign object smaller than a little finger, quietly withdrew, placing the object beside the bed on a pathology dish.

Two heads leaned in closer. Garrett, without turning his head, loudly interjected:

“Don’t touch!”

Priest Mark reflexively recoiled. The Silver Dragon girl, not so intimidated by him, flicked a gentle breeze with her fingertip to nudge it slightly:

“Oh my!”

She covered her nose and fled. Priest Mark had already stepped back two paces but was not so fortunate to escape, caught by the terrible smell, his nose and eyes streaming with tears, nearly fainting:

“What on earth is this…”

Garrett shrugged. As the saying goes, listen to the wisdom of an elder, or suffer the consequences—anything removed from the lungs, chest cavity, abdominal cavity, or inside the body, none smell good.

Luckily, the bubble spell was powerful… If this were his previous life, there truly would be no place to escape… Wearing double masks, a cotton pad sandwiched between them, sprayed with perfume, still couldn’t block that smell…

He continued to draw pus, clean the bronchi, and guide another round of healing spells. After all was done, he withdrew the vine, then cast two more healing spells from outside the body to reinforce the work. The Silver Dragon girl, at some point, had sneaked back into the operating room, peeking in:

“Is it done? Is he cured? Can we wake him up now?”

“…Give the room some air first!” Heaven’s mercy, such a choking odor, wouldn’t it knock the old man out!

The operating room’s ventilation was indeed a problem…

Fortunately, the Silver Dragon brand blower was truly effective. The air quality quickly returned to a level tolerable by ordinary people, allowing Garrett to lift the hypnotic and restraining spells, awaken the old man, and carry the pathology dish out of the operating room to show the patient and his family the foreign object in the lung:

“Look, this is the granulation tissue your body grew to protect itself around this thing. Inside the granulations is what fell into the lung…”

He used Mage Hand to separate the granulations, revealing the inside:

“…a chili pepper!”

Moreover, a chili pepper that had been buried in the lung for at least

seven to eight years, if not a dozen years. After years of decay, it had completely softened and turned black, a stench of rot mixed with spiciness assaulting the brain.

Priest Mark’s face instantly turned pale. Chili peppers, usually just passing by and smelling the smoke from burning peppers could make one cough for a while, let alone an entire pepper buried in the lung. No wonder the healing spells were ineffective, no wonder remove disease couldn’t fully cure…

The gout-ridden merchant’s legs went weak. Without any acting, he was already in tears:

“This… such a terrifying thing! In the lung! No wonder, no wonder…”

“Yes, it’s the lung.” Garrett nodded silently. That thing, with its strong corrosiveness!

A whole chili pepper choked in, not coughed out, capsaicin through the mucosa entering the lung, over time, if it hadn’t corroded such a large area, that would be strange!

“It’s the pepper… the pepper in the lung…” The gout-ridden merchant looked half-crying, half-laughing, staring at the object in the pathology dish, mumbling back and forth. After mumbling for a while, he came to his senses and started to pull out his wallet:

“How much should I pay? The price for one remove disease is definitely not enough, double? Triple?”

Garrett didn’t care about taking his money. The merchant, after all, had money. He signaled an apprentice from the astrology department—temporarily assigned to accounting duties—to go and collect the money, then advised the old man on some precautions. With a thought, he went over to discuss with the merchant:

“That… do you have any ships? Any sailors?”

“Look at what you’re saying, of course. Mr., do you need them? Got any cargo to transport? Just say the word, and they’ll go wherever you tell them!”

“…It’s not about transporting goods. It’s like this, I have a method that might prevent people from getting smallpox for life. Could you let them try it out?”

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