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

Wang Pangzi's packet of medicine spread throughout half the village overnight.

As the story spread, it all changed.

Some say Yang Hu's medicine can bring the dead back to life; some say he can use acupuncture and cast spells; others murmur that his three beautiful young wives were "exchanged" for evil medicine.

Yang Hu ignored him.

If you want to spread it, then spread it.

These past few days he's been planning to expand the house by one room. He's been squatting in the yard drawing patterns with twigs, thinking he'll build a big bed first, so his arms won't get numb from the weight every night.

The drawing was interrupted by a loud shout before it was even finished.

"Dr. Yang, Dr. Yang, help me!"

Stone Brother scrambled into the yard, a burly man with broad shoulders and a thick waist, but now he was as white as a sheet of paper.

"My mother! My mother is dying!"

Yang Hu jumped up.

"What's wrong?"

"She started vomiting and having diarrhea in the middle of the night yesterday. In the end, all that was left was yellow bile, and now her eyes are closed!" Brother Stone cried. "My wife went to see a shaman, and the shaman said my mother had offended a mountain spirit. She burned talismans and chanted incantations, and after all that, my mother was almost paralyzed!"

"Hold!"

Yang Hu grabbed the medicine basket from the wall and dashed out the door.

"Take me to see the person first."

In the small house of Brother Stone, the old lady was huddled on the kang (a heated brick bed), her cheeks sunken in and her lips cracked and dry.

Several people gathered around the kang (a heated brick bed). Liu, the sorceress, lit incense, muttered incantations, and shook a copper bell.

The room smelled strongly of vomit and incense ash.

Yang Hu squatted down, first examining the old lady's eyelids, then pinching the skin on the back of her hand with two fingers.

Yang Hu turned the leather over, and it stood there deflated, not puffing up for a long time.

He knew what was going on.

It wasn't that I bumped into anyone or some mountain spirit; I just vomited everything up.

If you women burn incense and chant incantations again, I'll be out of the pit tonight!

This is in the border region; there isn't even a clean needle, let alone a bottle of water.

"Make way!"

As soon as Yang Hu opened his mouth, Granny Liu was the first to object.

"You little bitch's son, what do you know?" She rang her copper bell. "I was just invoking a deity, and that incited a raging fire. You can't bear the bad luck this whole family will suffer, can you?"

"She didn't encounter a deity," Yang Hu said without looking up. "She vomited everything. You're just keeping burning up like this, chanting prayers. Tonight you'll have to take her out and bury her."

Everyone in the room gasped.

Tears streamed down Stone's face. He gritted his teeth and said, "My mother's life is at stake! Dr. Yang, what do you suggest we do?"

"Boil water, make it lukewarm. Not hot!" Yang Hu quickly ordered. "Also, cook a pot of porridge, make it thick. Honey would be best."

The man next to him hesitated, "This... medicinal porridge and salt? I've never seen that before!"

"quick!"

The item was found quickly.

Yang Hu picked up a pinch of salt and put it into the warm rice porridge, then scooped in a spoonful of honey. After stirring it with chopsticks, he helped the old lady up and fed her spoonful by spoonful with a wooden spoon.

I fed it a little, then paused.

"What's the rush? If you drink it all at once, you'll just vomit and it'll be a waste."

The room was completely silent.

Everyone was looking at the big bowl.

After about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the old lady's chapped lips gradually became moist.

After a while, her Adam's apple bobbed, her eyelids twitched, and she slowly opened her eyes.

"Mom!" Stone Brother ran over and burst into tears on the spot.

Everyone in the room went crazy.

"He opened his eyes! He really opened his eyes!"

"Rice water and salt can actually revive a person?"

"Amazing... Dr. Yang is truly amazing!"

Among the crowd, a man digging for wild vegetables had previously told others that Yang Hu was a "strange doctor who sold his wife." Now, he squeezed to the front, craned his neck to look, and muttered, "Good heavens, this... this is what it means to pull someone back from the brink of death."

A man standing nearby said, "Old Liu the sorceress tossed and turned all night, her copper bells jingling loudly, and she grew heavier and heavier. But Doctor Yang only gave her a bowl of rice porridge, and she opened her eyes."

"Now we know that no one in the village will dare to look down on Doctor Yang anymore."

"Absolutely. My husband was just talking badly about someone, I'll tear his mouth apart later."

A cacophony of voices erupted, and what had been a moment of slight disdain instantly transformed into seven gasps of astonishment.

Liu the fortune teller shrank to one side, her face turning purple and white in turns. She stopped ringing the copper bell and slunk away with her bag.

Yang Hu wiped his hands and carefully advised Brother Shi again: "For the next two days, drink less and more, and don't eat hard food. Once you stop vomiting, you can add rice grains back in."

"Hey, hey!" Brother Stone nodded, clinging tightly to Yang Hu's hand like a puppy. "Dr. Yang, you're a living saint! Awesome! A real man!"

Yang Hu's bones ached from being pressed down by his two large, fan-like hands.

As he was leaving, Stone's wife, with tearful eyes, insisted on stuffing a bag of eggs into his medicine basket, refusing to take them back no matter what.

Yang Hu carried a bag of eggs home, encountering different kinds of villagers along the way.

In the past, when I saw Yang Hu, I would mostly look around curiously, with a hint of inexplicable wariness in my eyes.

At this point, they will greet you politely from afar:

"Dr. Yang"

"Dr. Yang, take care."

Yang Hu nodded.

That indescribable feeling was even more joyful than having a bag full of eggs.

For the first time, he was treated as a proper "doctor" in this village.

By the time I got home, it was already dark.

Lu Yan was leaning against an oil lamp, carefully arranging the various herbs from the basket on the table, sorting them one by one.

"Oh dear, husband, so many of these things haven't dried yet. If they're left out any longer, they'll get infested with bugs!" She looked up and smiled, revealing a somewhat thin face in the bright light. "Yan'er has tidied them up for you, so we can replenish anything that's missing tomorrow."

Yang Hu stared in surprise at the neatly arranged medicinal herbs on the table.

Well, to be honest, it's much better than the mess he made by himself.

"Oh, my husband." Lu Yan picked up a piece of medicinal root and handed it to him. "Husband, you picked the wrong one. Although it looks very similar to angelica, it is actually something called Gynostemma pentaphyllum. If you mix them together, it will be very harmful to your health. Let me pick it out for you and show it to you."

Yang Hu took a look and confirmed that it was indeed true.

Well, he owes her another debt...

It seems that this young lady from the Lu family has other skills besides being able to read.

When Lu Rou came in with a large bowl of freshly brewed medicine, she chimed in briskly, "My husband saved Brother Shitou's mother today, and everyone outside is talking about it."

"What did you say?"

"Oh my! My husband, you have such good medical skills. You managed to snatch someone back from the jaws of death with just a bowl of water."

Yang Hu's lips twitched.

cough.

Did he show off again?

"Hehe." Qin Ying, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed by the door of the inner room, heard the sound outside the door and remained silent for a long time.

She had been a soldier for so many years and had witnessed countless life-and-death events in the military. She wouldn't even blink at the sight of people with knife wounds or arrow wounds.

But this was the first time she had ever seen someone vomit all their blood and have only a sliver of strength left, only to be revived by a bowl of bland white porridge from their husband.

Therefore, there's something even more inexplicable about how we view Yang Hu.

"What are you looking at?" Yang Hu looked up and met her gaze.

"Uh." Qin Ying abruptly turned her head away, bluntly throwing out a sentence, "You, this doctor, are actually more useful than I imagined."

The moment she opened her mouth, a blush spread across her face.

Yang Hu didn't want to expose her lie. Anyway, he was too lazy to waste time with her here. He was thinking of sitting down to catch his breath and having another bowl of porridge cooked by Lu Rou when the door was slowly pushed open from the outside.

The village chief walked in slowly with his hands behind his back, a smile on his face, but there was something else in that smile.

"Dr. Yang," the village chief cleared his throat. "This old man has some very good news to tell you today, and I'd like to have a good chat with you."