Chapter 6: Utterly Absurd, I Advise You Not to Play Hard to Get With Me…
Only then did Shen Jiang remember that she had applied medicine to her hands before sleeping. The pain in her palms had long since vanished, completely devoid of the previous stinging sensation.
Her spirits immediately lifted. She sat up at once. The poultice on her palms had already dried completely and could be peeled off cleanly with a gentle lift. But Shen Jiang froze.
The redness and swelling on her palms had subsided, the blisters were gone, and even the small, fine cuts had mostly healed, leaving only faint red marks that were barely visible.
Shen Jiang incredulously turned her hands over and over. If not for the vivid memory of the pain that shot through her fingers, she would have almost thought her hands had never been injured at all.
She stared blankly at the shriveled medicinal dregs on her bedside table and thought: Perhaps grandmother’s medical bills are covered.
*
“Miss Shen, to be honest, I’ve seen plenty of your kind of tactics. Backing out at the last minute is just a way to ask for a higher price, isn’t it?”
Shen Jiang’s brow furrowed slightly. This buyer, Mr. Wang, was frankly and cruelly blunt. The few previous interactions with him had all made her uncomfortable, but since he was the buyer and the price he offered was high, she had tolerated it and pretended not to hear.
Before a contract is signed, it’s quite common for either the buyer or seller to back out. Although it’s not exactly ethical, it’s not forbidden.
Shen Jiang remembered the agent’s well-intentioned advice just now, urging her to think it over carefully. If the buyer went to look at other storefronts, she wouldn’t even have a place to cry if she regretted it.
He thought the same way I did.
“Thank you for your interest in this property. Actually, there are many other vacant businesses around here. If you’re genuinely interested, you can have the agent ask the other owners. Maybe we can even be neighbors in the future.”
The other end of the line fell silent, as if he hadn’t expected her to say that at all.
Shen Jiang felt that things were more or less settled. After all, she had said everything she needed to say.
A cold snort sounded from the other end of the phone, and an arrogant male voice abruptly interrupted her.
“Miss Shen, don’t waste your energy making excuses. I know all about your clinic’s situation. A while ago, the doctor at your clinic was hospitalized because of a medical dispute, right? I imagine Miss Shen must be short on cash these days, which is why I offered such a high price. I’m not a charity, but what’s the difference between this price and charity?
You say you don’t want to sell. Don’t tell me you want to keep holding onto that clinic and continue treating patients? With your clinic’s current reputation, do you think any patient would dare to come to you for treatment? How about this, we each take a step back, and I’ll add a little more money.
My time is precious. I advise you not to play these games of hard to get with me.”
Shen Jiang took a deep breath, a cold glint in her eyes. She really didn’t want to get entangled with such a self-righteous person any longer.
It was almost common knowledge now that her grandmother’s incident was due to a medical dispute.
When the news of the old traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Nanze City being beaten and hospitalized due to a medical dispute came out, it seemed to strike a nerve with netizens, sparking a nationwide discussion overnight.
Unlike when Western doctors were injured in medical disputes, where the public would spontaneously sympathize with the doctor and condemn the troublemaker, this time, after understanding the situation, most netizens sided with the patient. They felt that the patient’s family was unlucky and pitiful; the elderly person had been harmed by the doctor’s treatment, and the family’s breadwinner was now facing jail time for seeking justice. It was a true human tragedy.
Trolls who hated traditional Chinese medicine stirred up the rhythm, and various marketing accounts, smelling the heat, flocked to the scene. In short, public opinion fermented and grew uncontrollably in the worst possible direction, as if everyone was talking about this matter now.
When those netizens first started making harassing calls to Shen Jiang, she simply turned off her phone, not wanting to deal with them at all. It wasn’t until later, when some radical netizens directly confronted her at the hospital, that she realized the matter had gotten completely out of hand.
What hurt Shen Jiang the most was that some old patients who had been treated at the clinic actually came forward to criticize Mingxin Hall, saying that they had long lost their original intentions. Not only were the medicinal effects not as good as before, but the prices were also higher. This clinic only knew how to make dirty money…
It turned out that a person’s years of dedication and hard work could be erased in an instant, allowing others to freely misinterpret, slander, and let it fester.
A chill filled Shen Jiang’s eyes, and she wanted to hang up the phone right then and there. But Mr. Wang’s words, “I advise you not to play these games of hard to get with me,” echoed in her mind like a demonic sound, a brainwashing mantra. In a flash, Shen Jiang thought of the nightmare she had in the morning.
Shen Jiang probed, “You’re not the real buyer. Is your boss’s surname Su? Is his name Su Xingran?”
The other end was silent at first, then responded as if regaining consciousness.
“…So you knew who my boss was, and that’s why you were so eager to jack up the price. Heh, let me tell you…”
Having received an answer that was both expected and unexpected, Shen Jiang didn’t give the other party a chance to continue being rude. Her eyes were icy cold.
“Little Wang, from your irritable and harsh tone, I’d say your liver isn’t in good shape. If you let it go untreated, it could very well develop into a serious illness. That’s all I have to say. Don’t call me again in the future.”
After hanging up the phone and adding a one-stop blacklisting service, Shen Jiang didn’t feel any satisfaction, only a heavy feeling in her heart, as if a large stone was blocking it.
Shen Jiang had always had a good memory. She was certain that this Mr. Wang had never mentioned having a boss, and she didn’t know any Su Xingran before today. This was just the name of the male lead that had appeared in her ridiculous and tragic dream this morning.
Could it be that everything in the dream was real?
Shen Jiang looked at the familiar furnishings before her, feeling that everything was both real and surreal.
She had thought that door was the most world-shattering thing she had ever seen. Then she met a talking black dragon behind the door, and her worldview shattered beyond repair. Now, what little was left of her worldview had shattered yet again.
According to the dream, the entire universe was composed of countless novel worlds. All the novel worlds had their own protagonists, coexisting without interfering with each other. The world she was in was one of these small worlds, and the entire story revolved around a domineering CEO chasing his wife in a crematorium-style romance novel, a story full of thunderous drama between a male and female lead.
And she and her grandmother were just insignificant cannon fodder side characters in this novel world.
The center of this world—the male lead Su Xingran and the female lead Pei Jia—Shen Jiang of course didn’t know them.
But she knew the male lead’s younger sister, Su Qing, a rich Nth-generation heiress, who was also Shen Jiang’s junior at university. She had come to Mingxin Hall for treatment last year. After learning that Shen Jiang was her senior, she often came over to discuss professional matters related to traditional Chinese medicine with her.
And Shen Jiang knew she was rich because her alma mater was in the capital, thousands of miles away, but Su Qing would appear at Mingxin Hall whenever she pleased, often coming over right after class. Later, Shen Jiang found out that she had her own private jet and could travel back and forth between the two places at any time.
At that time, Shen Jiang realized for the first time that being rich meant you could be so willful. But her grandmother had said, “Of course. Money can not only buy time, it can also buy life.”
Shen Jiang wasn’t the type to get familiar with people easily, but Su Qing was very enthusiastic towards her, sweet-tongued, and didn’t have any of the airs of a rich young lady. Every time her grandmother saw Su Qing, she would say with a pleasant expression, “You’re here to see our little Gu again.”
After a while, the two of them slowly became familiar with each other.
And Su Qing was a crucial supporting character in this novel world. As a catalyst for the relationship between the male and female protagonists, it could be said that without her, the couple’s tumultuous and dramatic love story would be less than half as eventful.
The male lead, Su Xingran, doted on his younger sister. This time, upon hearing that something had happened to the family of the senior idol his sister often talked about, he directly bought Mingxin Hall with a grand gesture. Later, he even invited Shen Jiang to continue practicing at Mingxin Hall, all to make his sister happy.
Having suffered a family tragedy and not knowing the whole story, Shen Jiang was grateful to the buyer for a long time after returning to Mingxin Hall. Later, after learning that Su Qing was the buyer’s sister, she took extra good care of Su Qing, this junior of hers, sharing her learning experiences almost without reservation.
In the dream, after Su Qing graduated from university, she also came to practice at Mingxin Hall. Perhaps because of the medical dispute, or perhaps because Su Qing had become the owner behind Mingxin Hall, Su Qing’s attitude towards her changed a lot. She was no longer as enthusiastic and friendly as before, and would occasionally show her rich young lady temper.
Because Su Qing had just graduated and hadn’t obtained her physician’s qualification certificate yet, she could only work as Shen Jiang’s medical assistant and learn clinical experience by her side. Shen Jiang let her follow along in taking patients’ pulses. This was how she had learned from her grandmother since she was a child. Patients’ problems were often complex and varied, not as straightforward as described in textbooks. Basically, each person required a unique prescription.
In order to repay Su Qing, Shen Jiang of course taught her the tricks of diagnosis seriously and without reservation.
Unexpectedly, their relationship completely broke down later, and it was precisely because of this. Although Su Qing had a doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine, she only had a superficial understanding. When faced with Shen Jiang’s questions, such as the differentiation of the six meridians and the eight principles, she was completely clueless, not to mention the most basic theories like the five movements and six qi. She was often rendered speechless by Shen Jiang’s questions.
Su Qing couldn’t accept Shen Jiang’s arrogant questioning of her at all, feeling that Shen Jiang was deliberately trying to embarrass her in front of the patients.
Their relationship deteriorated extremely quickly.
The result was that Mingxin Hall closed down, and Shen Jiang was fired on the spot.
Later, Shen Jiang went to the traditional Chinese medicine department of a town hospital and sat on the cold bench for several years. By then, Su Qing had already become a somewhat famous celebrity doctor, branded as a genius young female doctor. She was sought after by many patients at the large hospital her family owned, Heyue Family, and was often active on both the big and small screens.
Because the salary at the county hospital was low, and there happened to be a traditional Chinese medicine hall that was willing to hire Shen Jiang at a high salary, in order to better take care of her grandmother, Shen Jiang went without much hesitation. But she never expected that this traditional Chinese medicine hall, which used unscrupulous means to make money behind the scenes, would choose her as a scapegoat when things went wrong.
During the time Shen Jiang was imprisoned, her grandmother, who had become a vegetable, actually starved to death at home because there was no one to take care of her. She was only discovered because the smell of her decomposing body led the neighbors to call the police.
And after Shen Jiang learned of her grandmother’s death, she committed suicide in prison that very day.
Thinking of the ending for herself and her grandmother in the dream, a chill ran down Shen Jiang’s back.
If this ending really came true, she would have to drag the author out and whip their corpse. Why did the male and female leads get a happy ending, while Su Qing, who had repeatedly courted death and stirred up trouble between the protagonists, only lost her job and was sent off into a family alliance marriage after being disliked by her brother? And an ordinary person like her, who worked diligently and conscientiously, ended up with her family destroyed and herself dead? Who had she provoked? Just because her setting was that of a cannon fodder tool?
It was one thing to mess with her, but to start with her grandmother… she really wanted to smash this rotten, cliché novel world to pieces.
The more Shen Jiang thought about it, the angrier she got.
The phone rang again at that moment. Shen Jiang was about to hang up, but then she saw it was Officer Zhang calling.