Tang Youyou stood there stiffly, staring at the old beggar.
“You said your name is Gu Jinzhi?”
The old beggar—no, Gu Jinzhi—nodded.
“You said you’re the eighteenth-generation heir of the Gu Medical Hall?”
Gu Jinzhi continued nodding.
“You said you’re Gu Yuan’s senior apprentice brother, and that if you were still around, Gu Yuan wouldn’t even have a chance?”
Gu Jinzhi nodded again and again.
After firing off several questions in a row, Tang Youyou covered her forehead.
*Wait!*
She had transmigrated for no apparent reason and hadn’t even figured out what was going on yet, only to discover that Tang Yue had been reborn.
Then there was the fact that Tang Yue had gotten the jump on her from the very beginning and forced the marriage swap. Add in this bizarre family, and it was practically the textbook setup for a cannon-fodder character.
But now, there was actually a hidden master lurking beside her?
*Could it be that I’m actually the female lead?*
*Oh, whatever.*
Tang Youyou smoothed her hair back.
*Why am I thinking so much about it?*
Whether she was the female lead or cannon fodder didn’t matter. As long as she could live comfortably and happily, that was all that mattered.
“And then?”
“And then… huh?”
Gu Jinzhi froze.
He had thought the little girl would eagerly curry favor with him after learning about his impressive identity.
But now…
*That’s it?*
He pointed at himself and repeated,
“I said my medical skills are better than Gu Yuan’s.”
Tang Youyou gave no reaction for two whole seconds.
He had no choice but to boast again.
“I also said I’ve treated many wealthy and influential people.”
Tang Youyou’s gaze remained cool.
“And then?”
“And then… once my reputation spreads, who knows how many people will come begging me to treat them.”
Tang Youyou snorted.
“And yet you still ended up a beggar.”
Gu Jinzhi: “…”
His face flushed red with embarrassment and fury.
“I had no choice! If I hadn’t deliberately left back then, do you think Gu Yuan would have had any chance?”
It turned out that more than thirty years ago, the Gu family wasn’t merely a hundred-year-old medical family. They were also landlords who owned a thousand mu of medicinal herb fields.
Because of their enormous estate, the Gu family became one of the first landlord families targeted during the struggles of 1930.
Gu Jinzhi no longer wanted to remember how brutal those days had been.
When he arrived at the scene of the destruction, the thousand mu of medicinal fields had already been completely swallowed by raging flames.
Some of the tenant farmers betrayed the family. Others were beaten bloody by the mobs that had gathered there.
Corpses were scattered everywhere.
Gu Jinzhi was the eldest son of the Gu family and their only biological son.
However, his father had adopted more than a dozen children and raised them all as sons.
In order to preserve the Gu family—and ensure that their medical knowledge would survive—Gu Jinzhi had no choice but to publicly drag several of the family’s most skilled physicians out in front of the mob.
He cursed and berated them, accusing them of betraying the family.
Then he expelled them from the Gu family, declaring that they would have nothing to do with the Gu family ever again.
Gu Yuan was one of them.
Whether Gu Yuan had been willing or not, Gu Jinzhi’s actions had instead turned him into the foremost hero in the campaign against the landlords.
He became a “great hero” praised by everyone.
But Gu Jinzhi’s entire life was destroyed.
When he had stubbornly chosen to do this, he had already regarded life and death as meaningless.
His wife and children had been swallowed by the flames before he even made it home.
After watching his wife and children die in the sea of fire with his own eyes, Gu Jinzhi had long since lost the courage to go on living.
When the villagers beat, smashed, robbed, and burned everything around him, he simply collapsed into the mud like a lifeless heap.
But perhaps fate had not yet decided that he should die.
A torrential rain poured down for three days and three nights.
It extinguished the fire engulfing the Gu family’s ancestral home.
It also extinguished the last flame of Gu Jinzhi’s will to live.
Yet it did not take away the death wish in his heart.
After that, he wandered about in a daze, not even knowing how he had managed to survive.
Year after year passed.
Then, because of the war, he eventually made his way to the capital, where he saw Gu Yuan, who had already become the director of First People’s Hospital.
After listening to his story, Tang Youyou sat on another reclining chair with her arms crossed, carefully considering how much of it could be true.
Her grandfather had been born in 1950, so he hadn’t experienced that dark period himself.
But Tang Youyou had heard from her great-grandfather that if the Tang family hadn’t possessed the Shennong Space, they probably wouldn’t have survived either.
The reason the Tang family’s medical skills had remained so advanced was also because they had hidden all their medical texts inside the space, allowing their knowledge to survive without being lost from one generation to the next.
So Gu Jinzhi was probably telling the truth.
But not lying didn’t necessarily mean he could help her.
Tang Youyou raised an eyebrow.
“Tell me your plan.”
“This…”
Gu Jinzhi rubbed his hungry stomach.
Tang Youyou glared at him.
“Wait.”
She walked into the room, picked up the large apple on the bed, and casually threw on a coat.
“Eat.”
The moment Gu Jinzhi received the apple, he bit into it without hesitation.
His eyes instantly lit up.
The fragrance was intoxicating, and the apple was bursting with juice. It was the best apple he had ever eaten.
Although he could no longer remember when he had last eaten an apple.
*So good!*
*It’s so damn good!*
He took a huge bite and swallowed it after barely chewing.
Before long, even the core was gone.
Gu Jinzhi licked his lips, still craving more.
“Go on,” Tang Youyou said.
Gu Jinzhi grinned sheepishly.
“I’m still hungry.”
Tang Youyou: “…”
She gritted her teeth.
*With that shameless face of his, is he really the young master of a prestigious family?*
Gu Jinzhi held up two fingers awkwardly.
“I haven’t eaten anything for two whole days and two nights.”
Tang Youyou rolled her eyes.
“Wait.”
There was nothing else in the room, and she couldn’t exactly pull food out of her dimensional space right in front of him.
So she pretended to go downstairs, then returned from the kitchen carrying a roast chicken.
She placed it in front of Gu Jinzhi.
But just as he was about to reach for it, she raised a hand to stop him.
Her gaze turned icy.
“Talk first. Then eat.”
Gu Jinzhi’s eyes lit up.
He silently swallowed his saliva, struggling to tear his gaze away from the roast chicken, and finally revealed the plan he had been thinking about for a long time.
“I can take you as my apprentice!”
Tang Youyou: “…”
Under Gu Jinzhi’s expectant gaze, she immediately picked up the roast chicken and walked away.
*Huh?*
Gu Jinzhi was completely bewildered.
*What’s wrong?*
*Being able to become my apprentice should be something worth burning incense and thanking the heavens for!*
*Why is she reacting like this?*
He complained inwardly, but his movements were quick. He immediately stopped Tang Youyou.
“Listen to me!”
Tang Youyou quietly waited.
Gu Jinzhi didn’t dare put on airs anymore.
“Once you become my apprentice, I’ll write a letter to Gu Yuan and tell him that you’ve been studying under me all this time and have now completed your training.
“You don’t have much clinical experience yet, so I’ll ask him to arrange for you to work at First People’s Hospital.
“As long as you establish a reputation, patients will come specifically looking for you. Among them will undoubtedly be people with powerful backgrounds.
“When that happens, if you ask them for help, wouldn’t everything be settled?”
Tang Youyou frowned thoughtfully.
“No. That will take too long.”
Gu Jinzhi put on a mysterious expression.
“Don’t worry about that. I have a way. In any case, I’ll definitely be able to get you connected with those leaders.”
Tang Youyou asked,
“What way?”
Gu Jinzhi cautiously glanced at the roast chicken.
Tang Youyou paused, then placed it back in front of him.
Gu Jinzhi immediately snatched a chicken leg, took a huge bite, and practically inhaled it, as though he were afraid she’d change her mind if he was even a second too slow.
As he ate, he asked,
“Why doesn’t this taste like the chicken I used to eat? Did you change cooks?”
Tang Youyou glared at him.
“Eating doesn’t stop you from talking, does it?”
Gu Jinzhi immediately shut up.
He didn’t say another word until he had polished off the entire chicken.
Only then did he reveal a satisfied expression.
He rather uncouthly used his pinky fingernail to pick at his teeth, only to look up and meet Tang Youyou’s murderous gaze.
He instinctively shrank his neck.
“As for the plan… at worst, I’ll write a letter of denunciation half a month from now and drag another family down with us first. Wouldn’t that solve the problem?”