Chapter 842 — Young Master Bing Is Brilliant: "He Fell Ill from Offending Wei Zhao? What Does That Mean? Could His Sickness Have Been Inflicted by Wei Zhao?" Yao Wang Brooded Over Wei Zhao, Ever Convinced That in Medical Skill, If He Claimed Second Place in the Secular World, None Would Dare Claim First!

Before this, he had believed Wei Zhao enjoyed Guan Xuemin's aid, and thus had swiftly returned to normal, and he had assumed the school poisoning had been undone by Guan Xuemin as well, so he was keen to match himself against Guan Xuemin! But after the affair of Li Dilei, Yao Wang realized things were not as he had imagined. Wei Zhao was the hidden master of medicine behind the scenes. All of this had been Wei Zhao's doing!

"That much is uncertain, but the circumstances then were downright eerie..." Li Cihua said, recounting what had happened at the time, frightening even himself as he spoke: "They say in a single instant, the ailments of that old trash-picking woman were shifted onto Zhen Yingjun... Strange enough to hear, and who knows whether it is true or false, rumor or fact..."

"The old woman's ailments were shifted onto Zhen Yingjun in an instant?" Yao Wang listened to Li Cihua with some disbelief: "You mean to say that old woman originally suffered the aftereffects of hemiplegia, and her crooked mouth and lame leg were suddenly transferred onto Zhen Yingjun? Is that it?"

"So the story goes!" Li Cihua nodded.

"By all reason, that is impossible." Yao Wang pondered a moment and said: "Yet with consummate medical skill, it can indeed be done, only it is not a transfer, but first curing the old woman of her afflictions, then creating those same afflictions in Zhen Yingjun! One is curing illness, the other is making illness. It looks like a transfer, but that is only a layman's understanding..."

"Hiss..." Li Cihua drew in a sharp breath of cold air: "In so short a time, Wei Zhao could cure one person and afflict another?"

"That, I too can do!" Yao Wang snorted, saying with some arrogance: "I, Yao Wang, am best not at curing men, but at harming them. Such trifling tricks are to me nothing more than lifting a hand!"

"I see. I thought there was something truly sinister about it, but hearing Yao Wang explain, the real cause turns out to be just that!" Li Cihua nodded and said: "Forget it, then, let us speak of him no more! Young Master Bing, about the orphanage demolition..."

"Wait, set the orphanage matter aside for now. I have thought of a far better way to make money!" Zhao Qibing waved his hand. When he had heard that Zhen Dazhou put up a million yuan to treat Zhen Yingjun, he had begun brewing this plan: "Treating illness looks quite profitable these days? I see that Doctor Guan treats a man, and people thank him profusely and reward him richly. Why do we not open a healing business ourselves? Those rich men are every one of them wealthy, and nothing matters more than life itself. We can treat them for money!"

"Hmm... Young Master Bing is brilliant!" Hearing Young Master Bing's words, Li Cihua thought it indeed a money-making scheme, only wondering whether Yao Wang would cooperate? So he turned to look at Yao Wang.

"The Patriarch sent me to assist Young Master Bing. Whatever Young Master Bing says, I, Yao Wang, shall do." Yao Wang did not mind. Whatever he did served the Zhao Family, so to him it made no difference. Only he felt the price a trifle low. With his skill, was curing an illness worth only a million yuan? So he suggested tactfully: "Young Master Bing, this fee for treatment might suitably be raised a little..."

"Of course! If I earn a million at a time, when will I ever earn enough?" Zhao Qibing cackled, saying with some malice: "Is Yao Wang not best at harming men? Then this is easily managed. We treat him and charge him a million yuan, but we do not cure him fully. We shift his trouble elsewhere and make him keep coming back to us for treatment. In this way, will wealth not roll in unceasingly? Of course, our tampering must be done invisibly, so they cannot see through it!"

"Brilliant, truly brilliant!" Li Cihua said admiringly: "Young Master Bing, you are the one with brains. Such a wicked trick, thought up in a moment. It never even crossed my mind!"

"Naturally. Hmph, is there not a Doctor Guan and a Divine Doctor Kang and such? We shall launch a Zhao Yao Wang. Once our name spreads, we shall ask whatever price we please and have it!" Zhao Qibing said smugly.

"By Young Master Bing's account, the plan is quite workable!" Yao Wang raised no objection. He was by nature sinister and venomous. Curing only to harm again was his forte, and by this method the profit from a single patient would be far more than a mere million yuan!

Medical skill can save men, but it can also harm them. Those who study medicine master the structure of the human body, and practitioners of Chinese medicine especially can through certain means manufacture symptoms of disease!

Nowadays, the vast majority of doctors study medicine to save lives. Even where some are mercenary and work only for money, once paid they still go and save the patient.

But some are not so. They delve into medicine not to save men, but to harm them! Such men began as close retainers in the palace and in the households of princes and nobles. They manufactured illnesses for no other purpose than to let certain princes and ministers feign sickness before the emperor and slip away from the eye of the storm.

For example, when two factions contended at court and a prince or chief minister wished to take no part, he would plead illness and retire to avoid the affair, and the emperor naturally would not believe him but send imperial physicians to examine him. At such times these men served their purpose, fabricating ills convincing enough to deceive even the imperial physicians.

Yet with the changing of dynasties, some of these men scattered among the fallen nobility into the common world, setting up on their own and traveling among rich squires and landlords, treating these moneyed men exclusively. Only having grown used to great sums in princely households, these consultation fees no longer satisfied their appetites, so when they treated some tycoon they would never cure him outright, always holding something back, then collecting steep fees again and again until the tycoon's money was squeezed dry. Then, according to their whim, they would either cure him wholly or simply ignore him and let him live or die on his own.

So these men could not be called anything but venomous. Of course, in present society few of their kind remain. After so long, many of their arts have been lost and many have changed trades. Only a handful, having no choice, abandoned their old ways to serve great families as private physicians.

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