A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

The city defense battalion was commended for protecting the grain.

Yang's reputation grew even stronger, both in official circles and among the common people.

More people are coming to see the doctor than before. Every day, people start queuing up at the door before dawn.

For common headaches and minor ailments, Aji can prescribe medicine that will surely cure them; for more troublesome cases, one should consult Yang Hu.

That afternoon, a woman barged in, looking like she was about to die.

She rushed over, her eyes reddening before she even opened her mouth.

"Dr. Yang..."

Her voice trembled slightly:

"Let your man see..."

"If that Taoist priest keeps going like this, he's going to die!"

Yang Hu helped her up.

The woman in the Gao family was surnamed Gao, and the man was named Gao San. He carried a shoulder pole in the city, selling needles, thread, and other small items. The entire family of three depended on this job.

Four years ago, during my senior year of high school, I developed several painful lumps on my lower back. My family was poor and couldn't afford a resident doctor, so we asked an old neighbor in the same courtyard to introduce me to a wandering Taoist priest.

The Taoist priest said it was "snake-like sores." It was a punishment inflicted by the Old Dragon King, and ordinary medicine could not cure it; a ritual was needed to draw the snakes out of the body.

He drew a few talismans and burned some incense. He swindled a lot of money, which was half a year's worth of rice money for the Gao family.

"It's not just bad," the woman sobbed, gasping for breath, "that lump is getting longer and longer, running from my waist to my chest. The Taoist priest said that if the snake's head and tail connect and coil tightly around me, my husband will be dead. Now that they're about to connect, he's writhing in pain on the bed. I can't do anything about it..."

Yang Hu's eyebrows twitched slightly.

"Take Aji with you, let's go."

The Gao family lived in a narrow alley in the east of the city, in three small, low-lying mud-brick houses.

Before anyone even entered the room, they could hear groans coming from inside.

In the center of the room stood a tall, thin man dressed in a mottled Taoist robe, holding a small copper gong and running around a bed, muttering something under his breath.

Several yellowed sheets of paper lay on the bedside table, smoky and smelling of burnt meat.

A man was lying on the bed; he was a senior in high school.

His shirt was lifted up around his waist, revealing a large red bump.

Starting from the waist, there was a large patch of blisters, swollen and oozing oil, creeping down the ribs towards the chest. There were also one or two charred marks, clearly left by burns.

This has been scorched.

In his senior year of high school, he gripped the curtain by his bed until his fingers turned white and he trembled all over in pain.

"It felt like there were many iron needles stabbing me inside my body..." His voice trembled uncontrollably. "It came in waves, the pain went right to my bones, and I couldn't sleep at night."

The Taoist priest turned around, saw that it was a young man who was not even twenty years old, and snorted.

"You brat, trying to get your hands on my snakebite?!" He threw a peach wood sword on the ground. "This is a punishment from the Old Dragon King; mortal medicine can't touch it. I was performing a ritual to lure the snake out of its hole, and you came to make things worse. As a result, the snake's head and tail got stuck together, and it died instantly!"

Yang Hu ignored him.

He crouched down and, taking advantage of the light coming through the crack in the window, examined the redness and swelling.

It's not a snake.

It is a type of fire pill that wraps around the waist.

"He recognizes this one. The rash follows a vein, only on half the body, from the waist to the ribs, never crossing that midline. It's incredibly painful, excruciatingly so, but you can't kill it!"

"That's enough." Yang Hu grabbed the Taoist priest's hand as he was about to apply the moxibustion. "Keep burning it, you'll burn all the good meat to a pulp."

The Taoist priest shook him off and was about to turn hostile.

Yang Hu turned his head and looked at the Gao family members.

The voice was soft, but each word was clear.

"You mean, you're afraid it'll go in circles?" He shook his head. "It won't go in a circle!"

Everyone in the room was stunned.

"This sore only spreads along half of the body," he said, pointing to the rash. "It starts from the lower back, crawls along the ribs, and then stops at the center line of the chest!"

He looked up at the Taoist priest.

"Aren't you telling them that the snake's head and tail are both dangerous? They need to connect them properly to make it a good match! Show them the 'snake's head,' can it cross the center line? Is it connected properly?"

The Taoist priest's expression changed.

The woman came closer to take a look.

Sure enough. The rash spread out cleanly in the middle of his chest. The other side was completely clean and smooth, without a single rash.

"From ancient times to the present, no snakebite has ever truly coiled into a complete circle. It can't cross the central line! This Taoist priest is using a 'snake' that can't cross the line to scare you out of your five days' worth of money!"

There was no sound from inside the room.

The woman's eyes changed from fear to hatred.

The Taoist priest still tried to argue, but as soon as he opened his mouth, he was glared at by several neighbors who had rushed over after hearing the commotion. Feeling guilty, he rolled up the talisman and copper bell and slunk away through the back door.

Yang Hu sat down and began writing the prescription.

"This illness is truly painful, excruciatingly so. But it won't kill you." As he wrote, he gave instructions: "Three things to avoid: don't use moxibustion, don't burn it. The more you burn it, the more it will fester and attract dirt. Don't pop the blisters; let them scab over on their own. If you can't sleep at night because of the pain, take some sleeping pills to get through it!"

Write down all the medicines: those that clear heat and detoxify, those that relieve pain and promote sleep, those that protect wounds... one by one.

Aji listened from the side, not understanding.

"It follows the meridians in the body, but those meridians only govern half the body and can't cross the middle line!" Yang Hu seemed to see his question and explained while writing the prescription, "It's not that the Dragon Lord is stopping it, it's just its nature. The inside is originally clean. If you use moxibustion or prick the skin, dirty stuff will get in, and it will rot even if it wasn't already. So you have to protect it and keep it still!"

Aji understood and silently wrote it down.

Medication was used.

On the first night, I slept soundly for most of the night. This was the first day in four or five days! After three days, the pain subsided, and the rash scabbed over and stopped spreading. In less than half a month, the scabs fell off, and I recovered and felt much better, able to go out and pick up goods again.

The Gao family was poor. These past few days, their food has been burned by the Taoist priest's talismans.

"Yang Hu's consultation fee... is gone. The medicine... I charged a few coins based on cost!"

"I'll keep it to buy medicine. Once I'm healthy, I can go back to carrying loads to support my family," he said.

The Gao family was deeply grateful and wanted him to erect a memorial tablet and a longevity archway.

Half a month later, Gao San deliberately ran to the clinic with his load on his shoulders, blushing as he put down two bundles of needles and thread he had saved up at home. "It's not worth much, just a small token." Yang Hu accepted it.

Two packs of needles and thread may not be worth much, but to the poor, they represent a heartfelt gift.

The news quickly spread throughout the nearby alleys.

At the tea stall at the alley entrance, people were gossiping.

"He contracted shingles in his senior year of high school, and Dr. Yang cured him after just a few doses of his medicine!"

"That's right! That wandering Taoist priest was terrifying; he said that if he wrapped it around the whole body once, the person would die. But Doctor Yang said it in one sentence: the sore couldn't even be wrapped around the whole body; it couldn't even get past the line in the middle of the body!"

"That miracle doctor from the east end of the city was with the city defense battalion protecting the grain in the north a couple of days ago. They fought for quite a while at that rocky outcrop there. The bandits threw dozens of loads of explosives, but they shot and killed many of them. I've never met a doctor who can both treat illnesses and fight!"

As usual, Yang Hu didn't take any of this to heart.

It was already dark when we returned to the clinic.

Lu Yan brought him a bowl of hot medicinal soup to soothe his throat, as he had been talking too much lately. "Young master, you've been disappointed again today," the young girl said softly.

"You can't get your hands on the poor's money." Yang Hu accepted the offer.

Lu Rou added "free medicine" to the accounts and included the cost of the external medicines in the final calculation. She frantically turned the abacus, muttering to herself that this clinic was always a place where people were coming in but never coming out.

Qin Ying sat by the window, holding a lantern to look at her little dagger.

"That Taoist priest was using a fake snake to fool people for days!" She scoffed at Yang Hu, "You exposed his fake snake with just one sentence!"

"He deceives people about what they fear most," Yang Hu said. "He points out where the illness is, and that's where the illness is, so that the fear disappears."

Qin Ying paused, her small knife still moving. "No..."

Her habitually cold gaze brightened.

However, when Yang Hu opened the account book at night, he found a tall, fat man standing in the alley not far from the window. The man stared at Yang's place for a long time before slowly slipping away.

The person was dressed in strange clothes and had something hanging from their waist; they didn't look like they were there to see a doctor.

Yang Hu wrote it down.

The greater his fame, the more attention he receives.