Judging from the plot, the aphrodisiac called Jiaoniang Wine was extremely potent. There was no way he could possibly remember a single detail!
He better worry about his own stomach instead.
Only four wen were left from Song Nianshan’s twenty wen. He couldn’t buy anything with that. What should he do?
Shi Mu was at his wit’s end.
Suddenly, a commotion broke out ahead, accompanied by the sound of someone crying and shouting.
Holding his cloth banner, Shi Mu walked over and saw a young woman anxiously crying out, “Xiao Qiu! Xiao Qiu!”
A square-faced man with a heavy beard was holding a little girl by her ankles, hanging her upside down and shaking her vigorously.
Shi Mu asked, “What is happening?”
Someone nearby replied, “The girl choked on a candied hawthorn, and this man is helping shake the hawthorn out.”
Shi Mu saw a bitten candied hawthorn lying on the ground. The little girl’s face was pale, her lips cyan, and she had almost completely lost consciousness.
Airway obstruction?
When a foreign object enters the airway, the patient cannot breathe normally. If the object is not expelled in time, they will die from a lack of oxygen to the brain and organs.
However, hanging the girl upside down was doing more harm than good. Not only would it fail to dislodge the object, but it could also cause injuries to other parts of her body.
Shi Mu dropped his banner and medical box, pushing his way through the outer circle of onlookers. “Excuse me, please make way!”
The bearded man lifted the girl, shook her a few times, tested her breath, and let out a deep, heavy sigh. “It is no use. She is not breathing anymore. The King of Hell has called this little girl away.”
Ten months of pregnancy, enduring the hardships of childbirth, watching her grow day by day from an infant who relied on him for everything, to a toddler taking her first steps, and finally into a sensible, obedient little girl. She would chat with him, help him with farm chores, and become his sole companion in this household.
To lose her so suddenly was a despair beyond what heartbreak could describe.
The woman collapsed onto the ground, wailing aloud, “Xiao Qiu! My daughter!”
The next moment, a slender youth squeezed through the crowd from the outside and shouted loudly, “I can save her!”
Only a little over a minute had passed since the girl choked; there was still time to turn things around.
Shi Mu stepped forward, took the girl from the man’s arms, squatted down halfway, and flipped her over so she rested face-down on his forearm.
Immediately after, using the heel of his other palm, he delivered forceful blows to the middle of the girl’s back between her shoulder blades.
Because his arrival was so abrupt, the onlookers did not react at first, but moments later they began to murmur among themselves.
“What is this young man trying to do?”
“He said he is going to save her.”
“Is this how you save someone? I have never seen it done before.”
“I have not either.”
“Besides, is that little girl not already gone? How can she be saved? Even an immortal from the heavens could not save her now.”
“This youth set up a stall nearby, claiming he specializes in treating women’s ailments,” someone remarked with a tongue-clicking sound, adding, “Too bad he does not have a single patient.”
After striking her back five times in succession, Shi Mu flipped the girl back over and used his fingers to press sharply against her chest.
This was the Heimlich maneuver. The principle was to compress the lungs to force out an airflow that would expel the airway obstruction, universally recognized in modern medicine as the most scientific method for treating foreign body airway obstructions.
After five chest compressions, he repeated the back blows, continuing the cycle in a loop.
He executed both movements with great force, the impacts against the girl’s back and chest producing audible thuds that looked painful.
Yet the girl still showed no response.
Hearing the surrounding discussions, the man who had just tried to shake the object loose by hanging the girl upside down grew increasingly unable to stand it. He walked over and coarsely drove Shi Mu away. “You are just a young man, what ability do you have to save a child? Stop impersonating a doctor here! No one will be fooled by you.”
Having participated in countless rescues, Shi Mu knew that saving a life often required persisting for just a few seconds longer.
Without stopping his movements, he simply replied, “There is still hope!”
Seeing that he refused to listen, the man grew somewhat annoyed. “Stop fussing and let her rest in peace!”
The child’s mother, who had been dazed for a moment, plunged back into despair and resumed her heart-wrenching wails. “Xiao Qiu! My Qiu! How could you just abandon your mother like this?”
Shi Mu’s hands did not stop for even a second.
With a child this young, should he not try for at least ten minutes before giving up?
The man could no longer hold back his anger. “You are just making a mess of things!” With that, he reached out, intending to snatch the girl away from the woman.
Instead, he was met with a voice as cold as freezing frost: “Back off! Do not interfere with me!”
The man had only been trying to help out of kindness and did not expect such a furious roar. His temper flared instantly. “You—what kind of doctor are you for a young man? Hurry up and go home to get married!”
As his words fell, accompanied by the murmurs of the surrounding townsfolk, the girl suddenly let out a violent cough.
The noisy street instantly grew quiet, all eyes fixing onto the girl in a mixture of shock and disbelief.
Shi Mu continued the rescue efforts as the girl’s cough grew louder. She began to retch, and along with the vomit, half a hawthorn berry that had blocked her airway was expelled.
Then, in the densely packed yet dead-silent street, the girl burst into loud wails, her pale face and cyan lips rapidly regaining color.
Knowing the girl was out of danger, Shi Mu carefully turned her back over and cradled her in his arms.
The mother rushed forward, taking her recovered daughter into her arms as tears of joy streamed down her face. “Xiao Qiu!”
The bearded man could not believe his eyes, especially since he had personally tested the girl’s pulse and breath; she had clearly stopped breathing moments ago.
After a brief hush, the astonished murmurs erupted like boiling water.
“She is alive? She is really alive? He actually saved her?”
“The little girl had stopped breathing, so how did he bring her back?”
“Goodness, just by patting her like that, he saved the little girl!”
Having her daughter saved, the woman wept tears of gratitude, showering him with thanks. As Shi Mu tried to help her up, she repeatedly knelt and knocked her head against the ground.
In truth, Shi Mu desperately wanted to ask her if she could pay a small consultation fee.
However, looking at the patches covering the clothes of both the mother and daughter—which were even older than his own—he could not bring himself to say it.
Shi Mu could not help internally mocking himself: You are just a toad eating sea salt thinking you are a seafood delicacy; you cannot even afford a meal, yet you are still sympathizing with others?
Then again, maybe they could not afford a meal either.
While Shi Mu hesitated, the woman had already led the girl away.
The onlookers in Liuli Lane did not disperse, instead curiously pointing and discussing the young man.
“Could it be that this young fellow really knows how to practice medicine?”
“He must know a thing or two. Did he not just bring a breathless little girl back to life right in front of everyone?”
“It is truly rather miraculous.”
Amidst the chatter, someone tentatively offered a foot for examination. “Um… should I go have him check my lower back?”
Shi Mu’s eyes lit up for a moment.
The next second, another person loudly warned, “Does everyone not know? This young master is the son of the Junior Minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices!”
Someone asked, “So what if he is?”
The person replied righteously, “This young master was driven out of his home precisely because of his poor moral character!”
As soon as the words poor moral character were uttered, the person who wanted a checkup spun around on the spot, clicking their tongue repeatedly. “Then we had better stay far away.”
A true healer possesses a benevolent heart; how could someone of questionable character treat patients?
At that moment, Shi Mu really wanted to hurl a few choice curses.
His rotten excuse of a father truly lived up to his malice.
When driving the original owner and Jiang Xiaolan out of the estate, in order to clear his own name, he had turned around and flung dirt on them, claiming they both had poor moral character.
As for how exactly their character was poor, he never specified—anyway, it was poor.
Damn it, was today going to be another fruitless day?
No, if he did not bring home some money soon, they would not even have gruel to drink.
As Shi Mu pondered a solution, his gaze caught sight of a young woman standing alone to the side with a bamboo basket slung over her arm. She kept staring fixedly at the crooked characters written on his cloth banner, looking hesitant.
She was around twenty years old, with a pale complexion and a slightly hunched posture as if enduring severe discomfort, to the point where fine beads of sweat dotted her forehead, looking deeply in pain.
Shi Mu directly asked, “Miss, are you experiencing menstrual cramps?”
The young woman was instantly startled. “Y-You… how did you know?”
After speaking, a blush of embarrassment spread across her face.
Hearing a young man instantly diagnose the girl’s condition, the onlookers who had been about to disperse curiously stopped in their tracks.
Shi Mu replied, “I am a gynecological doctor, of course I can tell.”
Dysmenorrhea was one of the most common gynecological symptoms. Arguably, every woman experienced menstrual cramps at least a few times in her life.
Precisely because it was so common, many people did not view dysmenorrhea as a real illness, causing this affliction—which plagued women for the better part of their lives—to be frequently ignored.
In reality, menstrual cramps could be mild or severe; severe cramps felt like the lower abdomen was being torn apart, with a pain level comparable to childbirth, often accompanied by diarrhea, vomiting, and severely impacting daily life and work.
The young woman hesitatingly asked, “Can you… cure it?”
Her mother had passed away early. Today happened to be the first day of her period, and the lower abdominal pain made her calves tremble as she walked, yet her father had still sent her out to sell eggs.
When she mentioned her menstrual cramps, she was simply told, “Every family’s daughters are the same, why are you so delicate? Get to work.”
The girl had sat by the roadside the entire day, waves of pain crashing over her. It felt as though her lower abdomen was being torn open repeatedly, and more than once she felt she might faint.
Having finally managed to sell all her eggs and exhausted to the bone as she prepared to head home, she had witnessed the young man step in and save the choking girl. Then, seeing the words on his cloth banner, she had felt a glimmer of hesitation.
After all, she could not afford a proper medical clinic, and wandering physicians charged lower fees. Trying it out did not seem like such a bad idea.
Shi Mu retrieved a small porcelain bottle from his medical box, poured out a pill, and handed it over. “Take this, and I guarantee the pain will stop immediately.”
With those words spoken, the onlookers who had turned back out of curiosity resumed their chatter.
“Stop immediately? This young man’s character really is questionable! He dares to make such wild claims.”
“Tsk tsk, talking big without a second thought. What proper doctor would say something so irresponsible? Has he never heard of treating different diseases with the same medicine, treating the same disease differently, or that medicine only cures those with a predestined affinity?”
“Does he really think he is an immortal? How could it work that fast? It is not a magical pill.”
“A single pill can cure menstrual cramps? This is starting to sound like a fraud.”
Sure enough, hearing the crowd’s discussion, the small flame of hope in the young woman’s heart was instantly extinguished.
The young man’s eyes were as clear as a spring, his dark pupils like lacquered paint, and the smile curving the corners of his lips was bright and unrestrained, making him approachable like a neighborhood youth.
Yet talking big like this did not make him look like an honest person.
As she pinched the pill, unsure whether she should take it, she heard the confident young doctor say, “You can sit nearby and rest for a moment after taking it. If it does not cure you, I will not charge a single coin for the consultation.”
Since the doctor had put it that way, the young woman decided to take a chance and nod. “Alright.”
Walking over to a nearby water well, she used the windlass to draw a bucket of water, swallowed the medicine with a wooden ladle, and sat down nearby to rest.
Ever since her periods had first started, she had suffered endlessly from lower abdominal dragging pain.
Out of her seven-day cycle, at least three days were intensely painful, accompanied by soreness in her waist, back, thighs, and calves, along with diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, and weakness.
She had tried various herbal decoctions before, but the cramps lingered like a shadow, making her dread the arrival of each month well in advance.
Come to think of it, this young master was rather handsome.
The young woman could not help observing him curiously from a distance.
Moreover, despite being a young unmarried man, he spoke in a poised, natural manner without the slightest bit of timidity or coyness, which she found quite magical.
Although they could also bear children, young unmarried men were different from women.
Because young unmarried men possessed a unique natural fragrance and experienced hot flash seasons, most chose to stay safely at home, waiting to find a good match upon reaching the appropriate age to marry and have children.
How could a young man ever be linked to a dignified, awe-inspiring role like a physician?
Seeing the young fellow spouting such grandiose nonsense, the townspeople decided not to leave after all.
Some even dragged over wooden stools, cracked melon seeds, gossiped on the side, and complained to their companions, “Actually, my lower back has been aching for a long time.”
The youth smiled and chimed in, “You might as well let me cure it for you.”
Neither of them had any intention of entertaining the young man.
Her companion sighed as well. “I have had diarrhea recently, ugh, I have no strength at all.”
The youth’s eyes curved even more. “Then you should definitely come to me.”
Annoyed by his persistence, the two snapped, “Look at you, you have not even cured the young girl yet, and you still dare claim you are a doctor?”
They prepared to pick up their benches and leave.
Suddenly, the girl sitting beside the well exclaimed in surprise, “I… I think the pain has stopped!”