"My God, this is unbelievably effective!" Zhao Yuan exclaimed as he looked at himself in the mirror.
Before soaking in the Blood Circulation Soup, Zhao Yuan's body had been covered in bruisesāa terrifying sight of black and blue patches. But now, most of the bruises had vanished. The few that remained were so faint you'd have to look closely to even notice them. On top of that, the sharp pain from the injuries was gone, leaving him feeling much more at ease.
'Just as expected of a formula from Wu Peng. It really is incredible!'
After marveling for another moment, Zhao Yuan got dressed and prepared to head back to school. He was already at the door when he turned back, grabbing a bag and filling it with some of the Blood Circulation Soup powder.
'My injuries are almost healed, but the guys are all still hurt. I'll bring some of this medicine back so they can recover quickly.'
On his way downstairs, Zhao Yuan once again saw people searching intently through the hallways and corridors. He had no idea they were looking for the source of the Soul-Stabilizing Incense's fragrance; he just assumed more things had been stolen. He frowned and muttered to himself, 'What is up with this complex? Has it been targeted by a thief? A bunch of people lost their stuff yesterday, and it's happening again today?'
He casually asked a man in front of him, "Sir, are you looking for something?"
"Yeah, been looking for two days now, but still can't find it," the man said without looking up.
Zhao Yuan froze. 'Is this guy an idiot?' he thought. 'His stuff gets stolen, and instead of calling the police, he just wanders around looking for it himself? He'll never find it that way. The thief isn't stupid enough to just toss it somewhere nearby.'
Shaking his head, he suggested, "Sir, you should call the police."
"Call the police?" Now it was the man's turn to be stunned. He shook his head and muttered to himself, 'As if the police would care about something like this. Sigh, such a nice young man, how can he be so naive? He must've studied himself stupid!' He stopped paying attention to Zhao Yuan and went back to searching for the source of the Soul-Stabilizing Incense.
After leaving the complex, Zhao Yuan bought a large bag of steamed buns for breakfast on his way back to school. He ate as he walked, and by the time he entered dorm room 301, he had exactly three left.
In the dorm room, Liu Zhu and the other two were already awake. Just like Zhao Yuan, they had been woken by the pain. They were currently howling as they helped each other apply ointment to their injuries.
Students from several neighboring rooms heard their cries and rushed over, thinking something exciting was happeningāno, that's not right, they rushed over to show their concern. When they saw the guys were just applying medicine, they left, their faces etched with disappointment.
"Zhao Yuan, where'd you go? Need help putting on your ointment?" Liu Zhu asked, turning his head.
"No need. I found an old Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor who's already healed most of my bruises," Zhao Yuan said, tossing the steamed buns to Wang Rongfeng, who had just finished washing his hands. "I brought them for you guys for breakfast. Go on, eat."
"My whole body is killing me right now. I don't have the appetite for breakfast," Wang Rongfeng said, shaking his head. He put the bun aside with a bitter smile.
Liu Zhu, however, was intrigued by the first part of what Zhao Yuan said. "Your bruises are mostly healed? For real?"
Zhao Yuan didn't waste any words. He simply lifted his shirt. "See for yourselves."
The three of them immediately crowded around him. After circling him once, they all wore expressions of utter disbelief.
"The bruises really have faded a lot!"
"This is unbelievable!"
"How is this possible? What kind of treatment did you get?"
As medical students, they all knew perfectly well that with injuries like Zhao Yuan's, it should have taken at least ten days to two weeks to heal. But now, his bruises were suddenly almost completely gone! The few marks that remained were very faint and would likely disappear in a day or two at most.
A recovery like this just defied all logic.
Once the shock wore off, Liu Zhu and the other two asked in unison, "Where is that old Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor? We need to see him and get some of that medicine."
Zhao Yuan was prepared for this. He took out the powder from the Blood Circulation Soup. "No need to go through the trouble. I already brought the medicine back for you."
"How do we use it?" Liu Zhu asked as he took the powder.
"Mix it with boiling water, then wipe it over the bruised areas," Zhao Yuan answered.
There was no wooden bathtub in the dorm for a proper soak, so they had to settle for the next best thing. This would surely reduce the medicine's effectiveness, but they had no other choice.
The three of them were long past tired of the pain. They immediately took out an immersion heater, boiled a large basin of water, mixed in the Blood Circulation Soup, and started dabbing the concoction onto each other's injuries with cloths.
"TSSSTā¦ It's so itchy! And it hurts!"
The three of them cried out the moment the medicinal soup touched their bruises.
Zhao Yuan explained, "The itching and pain mean the swelling and bruises are dissipating. Keep going, hang in there!"
Hearing this, the three could only grit their teeth and endure the intense itching and pain as they continued to apply the Blood Circulation Soup.
About ten minutes later, Liu Zhu suddenly let out a gasp of surprise. "Hey, this stuff really works! Wu Yan, the bruises on your back are starting to fade!"
"Wang Rongfeng, your bruises are fading too!" Wu Yan shouted back.
Wang Rongfeng added, "I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it's real! Liu Zhu, your bruises are down to a third of what they were!"
Seeing the treatment was working, the three of them grew ecstatic. The itching and pain were still intense, but it couldn't dampen their fiery determination.
Another ten-plus minutes passed. The itching and pain vanished, and the bruises on all three of them were just about gone.
"Incredible! This medicine is absolutely incredible!" Liu Zhu asked, overjoyed and curious. "Zhao Yuan, what old Traditional Chinese Medicine master did you run into? It couldn't have been one of the professors from our university, could it?"
"I don't know who the old doctor was. I just saw his contact info on a utility pole, figured I'd give it a shot, and found him. I didn't expect it to actually work," Zhao Yuan lied with a perfectly straight face.
"Contact info you saw on a utility pole? Why does that sound so familiar?" Wang Rongfeng frowned.
"How could it not sound familiar?" said Wu Yan. "All those little flyers for 'secret ancestral remedies' and doctors 'specializing in curing psoriasis'āaren't they all plastered on utility poles?"
"Holy shit, you're right! Zhao Yuan, you really found that old doctor from an ad on a utility pole?" Wang Rongfeng was shocked. Even Liu Zhu looked dumbfounded.
"That's right," Zhao Yuan confirmed with a nod, not batting an eye.
And so, from that day forward, a legend about the miraculous utility pole doctor began to spread throughout West Hua Medical University. As time went on, the legend grew more and more outlandish. Not only would people with embarrassing ailments hug utility poles and shout, "I can be cured!" but even students who failed their exams would flock to poles covered in flyers to burn incense and pray, roaring, "Great doctor, protect me from failing my classes!"
In the end, while the story never quite made it into the top ten legends of West Hua Medical University, it nonetheless influenced generations of its studentsā¦
Of course, the Zhao Yuan of the present had no idea that the casual lie he had just spun would one day become such a massive phenomenon.
City folk are really something else!