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The current situation was that the situation was more stubborn than the people. He found it difficult to deal with, lacking tools and manpower, he had no other option but to lower his head to the primitive people here.
Yuan Zhan and Lie clearly only gave him two paths; either get the slave mark tattoo, or lose his man part. And regardless of what path, both were hopeful that he could obediently serve and not rebel.
If he insisted on not choosing one of the two options, he garenteed, that guy named Lie would definitely do the job himself and castrate him. Maybe he would even believe that leaving him alive was a form of repayment and benevolence.
Comparing the two options….Is there still a need to say? He could only choose to get the slave mark!
Tattooing is a very painful event, especially because the instrument used is a primitive bone spur. The person giving him the tattoo was an old man whose craftsmanship was very good. You couldn’t even say this person was old, but half the teeth already fell out. As soon as he opened his mouth, it was full of black gaps.
Yuan Zhan explained to him, the man’s teeth was knocked out by a hostile tribe warrior. By the time they recaptured it, he already could no longer eat meat anymore.
And so the old man was called Ya (teeth) to match with his appearance and experience. This name was full of sarcasm, so much that even the tribe members did not call him Ya, rather they called him Que Ya (deficient teeth).
After tattooing, Yan Mo wiped away the tears he cried from pain. The entire person became silent, didn’t wish to talk.
Yuan Zhan could not manage his own slave’s mood. Seeing that he had no spirit, simply treated it as his body was not feeling well and carried him back to the tent. Leaving him enough food and water, he rubbed his head and said, “Until we leave I won’t touch you. Rest well. Wait until after selecting the people, then we will leave.”
Yan Mo stuck out his hand.
“Eh?”
“Give me your wrist, I’ll take a look at your body condition.” Yan Mo pressed down on his heart’s unwillingness and tiredly spoke.
“Wrist? It’s my leg that hurts.”
“I know. I need to take your pulse first. Taking the pulse is…. I’ll feel your wrist for a moment, then I’ll know whether your body has an illness or not. I know you are incapable of understanding, you can regard it as a priest’s method of seeing a patient.”
“I thought you were going to say it was a skill gifted to you by God.”
Yan Mo chuckled, “If you want to think of it like that, then you can.”
Yuan Zhan extended his hand, expression complicated, perhaps this juvenile wasn’t as crafty and deceitful as he thought? He was obviously not feeling well, furthermore was also extremely angry he gave him a slave mark, but he still took the initiative to help him out.
Yan Mo came into contact with the youth’s pulse. After awhile he asked, “Your right leg, on cloudy and rainy days hurts alot or hurts during the cold days of the winter?”
“Both.”
“When you were nursing your wound, was it by soaking in the water, or perhaps it met with rain for a very long time?”
Yuan Zhan was amazed. “No, it wasn’t rain water, it was snow. At that time it just happened to have a heavy snowfall. My wound was difficult to bear, whole body was burning hot, only by putting my leg in snow would it be relieved a lot.”
Towards this Yan Mo gave no comment and continued to question. “Do you still remember when the old priest connected your bone, was the surface of the broken bone neat and tidy ?Was there a big defect? On the section that didn’t break, were there any cracks? Were the broken bone fragments taken out from the flesh?”
Yuan Zhan recalled his memories one by one to respond.
“Approximately how long did it take you for your bone to grow back? When did you start to get up and walk again? When you walked did you feel any pain? Approximately when did you start practicing your warrior skills and hunting again?”
Towards numbers, Yuan Zhan was truely sensitive. After two years, he unexpectedly could still remember the relevant dates clearly. This made Yan Mo eye him more closely.
The youth’s face once again had a puffed up “I’m very awesome” expression.
Yan Mo resisted the urge to poison and ruthlessly attack this man with difficulty. He had the youth sit on top of the bed and extend his right leg. Starting from the knees he began to feel downward, while touching he was also asking, “Does it hurt? If you feel pain, definitely tell me.”
Yuan Zhan grabbed his hand. “Why?” You don’t need to help me treat an illness, can just watch me suffer.
Yan Mo impatiently opened his hand, “What is the reason? Didn’t you say that your leg would hurt during the winter, walking a lot would also make it hurt. If I don’t give you treatment, then when we go on the road you’ll only be a burden. Could it be that you want to be a burden?”
The complexion of the youth who was arrogant about his own military might immediately dropped after hearing what was said. “Even if my leg snapped I wouldn’t be a burden to others.”
“Oh really? You’re planning on crawling there?”
The juvenile’s mouth was malicious but Yuan Zhan did not get upset. He felt that this juvenile who was looking for a reason to treat his wound as well as stubbornly refusing to admit defeat was more pleasing to the eye compared to the former one that pretended to be mature and clever.
Was this the juvenile’s true colors?
He felt that this type of juvenile was also not bad. He was also a bit… he couldn’t find the right words to describe this type of feeling in his heart. In the same way as seeing him made him want to pinch and rub, if he could press him to the floor and engage him then it would be better- that kind of feeling.
“Then do you want to treat your wound or not?” Yan Mo was looked at by the youth with fiendish and greedy eyes, not at all bothering to conceal the lust in the red/bare naked eye. He looked absolutely terrifying.
The fiendish looking youth suddenly snuggled close to the juvenile, stuck out his tongue and licked him from his chin to his forehead. Finished licking he effortlessly responded. “Want.”
Yan Mo …. ruthlessly wiped his face and wiped the saliva on the youth’s leather skirt.
“Want then shut your mouth! You dare to lick and taste me! Damn it, saliva is unbearably smelly!” If it wasn’t that he was afraid that if he didn’t help soon, the guide would punish him, and that in the winter he truly couldn’t leave this person, he wouldn’t care how bad his leg hurt!
Yuan Zhan didn’t believe him, spitting out his own saliva into his palm he took a whiff. “Not stinky, don’t trust your smell.”
“I’ve had enough of you!” Since arriving here, the once hygiene obsessed doctor was already no longer obsessed with cleanliness. But the primitive people here kept surpassing his limit every day. Just now when he was being carried past the plaza, he saw a suspicious slave kid turn over a lump of animal feces searching for food, the adults next to him surprisingly did not stop him.
“Ss!” The middle section of the thigh was pressed and hurt, Yuan Zhan’s leg that hurt shrunk back.
“Right here?” Yan Mo immediately determined the area. “Is it right here that you feel it specially hurts?”
“Neighboring area also hurts, in addition the pain increases each year.”
“Not being able to take pictures is inconvenient.” (2) Yan Mo muttered, “All depends on my skill, depends on my experience. If I don’t die, if I can still go back, wait till I go back and my medical expertise and experience will definitely be first under the heavens.”
“What did you say?” Yuan Zhan grabbed the juvenile’s chin.
Yan Mo was just about to reply, but then suddenly gave a strange smile, “Dumb master, watched others to use a bone spur to tattoo me, pleased? Did you know there’s a medical skill called Zhen Ci Tan Gu Shu (3)? It’s said that at the time, the physician trained in herbal medicine who researched this method originally wanted to use acupuncture needles on the body of a wounded person to pry out a barbed tip leftover from an arrow. In order to dig it out, they ended up using the leftover bone fragments from the body they were doing this from; the broken bits. So much that it could also be used to clear out the blockage from the TCM channels.”(4)
Yuan Zhan did not understand it, but his intuition told him it was dangerous. Right now he felt that this juvenile was not a soft-hearted good child again.
Yan Mo was practically insane with happiness!
He found a loophole again!
For his “heartfelt” desire to heal Yuan Zhan’s old injury, he needed to make a diagnosis. Understand the cause then you can correctly treat the injury.
In this primitive society that lacked medical equipment, he wanted to determine the cause of the illness. Unless the symptom was very obvious, he would have to adapt the “four methods of diagnosis” (5) to determine what it is. Otherwise, he would need to use a tool and some medicine to examine and eliminate.
And in the middle of this process of examine and of elimination, pain expression was also an absolutely necessary element of observation. He was not deliberately wanting the patient to hurt, rather for the purpose of determining the cause of the disease’s focus point, it required him to know all of the patient’s exact feeling. So sometimes he could not relieve them of the pain, even if he was able to he couldn’t, otherwise it would obstruct the examination and diagnosis.
For example in Yuan Zhan’s medical case, he had some speculations but still could not make a definite diagnosis. So in the future he would have to take on the “try out and examine” method. It really wasn’t him “deliberately” wanting his youngster master to be in pain and suffer. He was also being good to his stupid master, its true!
“Beloved Master, remember to come back earlier. If the sky is dark and I won’t be able to see clearly.” He definitely must try it out tonight, see if his thoughts could really succeed.
Yuan Zhan was silent for a long time, then in a hoarse voice simply replied with the word “Ok.”
“The faster you go the faster you’ll come back! When you come back don’t forget to bring me back the herbs and insects you brought back for me.” Yan Mo waved his hand at his stupid master to pacify him.
Yuan Zhan getting up felt that something wasn’t right, thinking, he turned around and used one foot to step on the little slave’s face until the person had troubles breathing. During the time when he was hugging the foot to struggle for their life, he finally retrieved his foot satisfied and left.
Pei pei pei! (6) You actually dare to use your stinky foot to step on my face? ! Yan Mo, insane with anger, crawled to his original bedside and grabbed his straw belt that was thrown into a corner. Holding it he refused to let go and curled up his body and continued to pant heavily.
Calm, calm….
Don’t let your temper ruin things.
Think about the important of faking, think about the necessity of restraint. If you didn’t make both of these Taoist practices work from the beginning, how would you have taken a bullet and delivered here!
Thinking about those few truly cunning people, which one of them cannot endure other people? Which one of them did not pretend to be an expert?
So what if your medical expertise is great? People that cannot conduct themselves, can only be thrown out as the scapegoat. Even you are not a fucking thing. The fault of that 100 million scum points is on you.
But are you willing? To be thrown into this world to receive suffering again?
Yan Mo, do not forget your ultimate goal. For your baby, what is there that you cannot endure?
“Du Du.. father was wrong, father will definitely strive to survive, will definitely live longer than the people in this world. You wait, wait for father to bring you back. Du Du, father misses you…. If my suffering could be exchanged for your health and happiness, no matter how bitter, how difficult, how painful, father will be able to endure it all… Du Du, darling….”
Yan Mo used the straw belt he was grabbing to block up his mouth, then began to cry bitterly.
T/N: So interesting story from my friend in China. The word for scapegoat (顶缸), the second word 缸 means a jar or pot. In my friend’s hometown, they actually have a 缸 pot that is half the height of a regular person. And they would have to wear this pot as punishment, kind of like a dunce cap. It’s why 缸 is part of the word scapegoat.
I’m also slowly building up that Chinese Idiom/Slang/Proverb Dictionary. It only has a few phrases in it at the moment so once I get more I’ll post it.
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