Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

“Those are public parking spaces,” Mr. Qi said.

"Is that a public parking space?" Old Zhang couldn't help but retort loudly, "The parking space is next to the green belt, but you're parking right in front of my shop's main entrance!"

“Don’t worry, Mr. Zhang,” the traffic officer gently patted Mr. Zhang’s arm and turned to Mr. Qi. “We’ve checked the surveillance footage. The spot where you parked is indeed not a designated public parking space; it’s the fire lane and pedestrian walkway in front of the shop. Even outside of business hours, you shouldn’t park there, let alone deliberately blocking the entrance during mealtimes.”

Boss Qi turned his head away and said after a few seconds, "Okay, I won't stop anymore."

“The third thing,” the municipal staff member spoke up this time, “is that you contacted the property management and requested that the water and electricity to this shop be cut off on the grounds of ‘contract dispute’. Cutting off commercial water and electricity is a serious violation of regulations.”

"But they haven't stopped."

"The property management company did not comply because they adhered to their principles, but that does not mean your request is reasonable."

Boss Qi gritted his teeth: "Fine, I won't do any of this... Anyway, there are only six months left on the contract, we'll see what happens in six months."

"Speaking of six months from now," the market regulator said, pulling out the bottom document from the pile and pushing it to the center of the table. "According to the latest 'Guiding Opinions on Commercial Property Rent in Y City' issued by the Municipal Development and Reform Commission, the annual rent increase for all commercial and semi-commercial real estate leases in the city shall, in principle, not exceed 3%... Regardless of whether you renew your contract with Lao Zhang or not, the next tenant's contract period cannot exceed this limit."

"Why should I?" Boss Qi asked anxiously.

"Why should I? You know very well."

After giving a curt reply, the market inspector turned his head and said seriously to Old Zhang, whose back teeth were practically sticking out in a grin, "Boss Qi also mentioned that you've been two months behind on rent!"

“He’s always complaining about raising prices. What if he suddenly gets kicked out one day?” Old Zhang said with a bitter face, “Where am I supposed to go to cry?”

“Y City will protect your legal rights, but you must pay the rent on time.”

“…Okay,” Old Zhang looked at the market supervisor for a few seconds, then lowered his head, “but it will be evening soon.”

"Should we claim interest?" the market regulator asked Mr. Qi.

"...No need."

"And you?" The market inspector looked at Lao Zhang again: "Disturbing you during mealtimes, and the parking issue, do you want to claim compensation?"

"...No need."

160 background color

Zhuang Yan stuffed the recorder into the inside pocket of his jacket, walked out of the inpatient department of the Second People's Hospital of the city, and lit a cigarette on the steps.

In October, the evening in Y City was already cool. A breeze blew in from the direction of the outpatient building, carrying a few sycamore leaves that swirled around the steps.

The queues at various hospitals in Y City were as quiet as a river.

People stood in the queue, clutching their medical records, CT scans, and ID cards. They occasionally exchanged a few words in hushed tones, but most of the time they simply moved forward in silence.

But if you look closely into their eyes, you'll find something beneath their exhaustion that you won't see in other hospitals.

It's hard to say whether it's anticipation or nervousness; it's more like a flame that's been ignited but we're afraid to let it burn too brightly.

Zhuang Yan stubbed out his cigarette, stamped his foot, and followed a middle-aged man who had just come out of the inpatient department carrying a CT scan bag.

"Brother, could I trouble you for a few minutes?" He showed his press card. "I'm from the provincial newspaper and I'd like to know some information."

The middle-aged man glanced at him and said, "Go ahead and ask."

"Where are you from?"

"Guizhou, Zunyi".

"Did you come alone or..."

“I came with my dad.” The middle-aged man tilted his head toward the inpatient department. “Lung cancer, I’m on the waiting list, treatment will start tomorrow.” He paused, and the corners of his mouth involuntarily twitched upwards. “I came all this way, it wasn’t a wasted trip.”

Zhuang Yan wrote this down and then followed up with several more patients.

They were from Hubei, Henan, and Shaanxi—all neighboring provinces, all ordinary families—and they had turned their entire fortunes upside down.

But unlike the similar patients he had seen in other hospitals, these people also had worried faces, concerns about costs, and fatigue, but their eyes were steady when they spoke.

It's like once you arrive in Y City, you've found a switch, and all that's left is to press it.

Just as he was about to finish work, a person at the end of the corridor caught his attention.

She was a woman in her early forties, wearing an oversized windbreaker with the zipper pulled up to her chin.

What attracted Zhuang Yan was not her clothes, but her skin tone and facial features, which were somewhere between Southeast Asia and East Asia, making it hard to say which region she belonged to.

She sat on a bench in the respiratory department's waiting area, clutching a stack of test results in her hand, with an old canvas bag beside her.

She tilted her head, staring at the other end of the corridor, where the entrance to the inpatient department was. The door was closed, and she couldn't see anything, but she just kept tilting her head, a slight smile on her lips, as if she could see something reassuring through that door.

"Big sister, where are you from?" Zhuang Yan walked over and showed her press pass.

The woman snapped out of her daze, paused for a moment, then gestured with her hands, took out her phone from her jacket pocket, typed a message, and handed it over: "I'm Vietnamese, my husband is sick, and I've come to take care of him."

Zhuang Yan glanced at the text and switched it to English. The woman shook her head even faster and typed again: I don't understand. My husband is from Da Yang. We got married in Guangxi.

"What is your husband's condition?" Zhuang Yan also took out her phone to type.

The woman lowered her head, her typing speed slowing down: "He has lung cancer. We waited in line for three days and he was admitted yesterday. The head nurse here is very kind; she says his condition is very promising."

After typing that line, she looked up at Zhuang Yan. There was no complaint or despair in her eyes, only the relief that things were finally settled.

Zhuang Yan wrote this down and asked a few more questions.

The woman's name was Ruan Shilian, and her husband's surname was Zhou. He was from Wuzhou, Guangxi, and they did border trade in Pingxiang.

The couple has been married for over ten years and has two children; the eldest is in junior high school, and the youngest is still in elementary school.

My husband was diagnosed with lung cancer last year and spent more than half a year in Nanning for treatment, but the results were not good.

Last month, I heard that there were many experts gathered in Y City and the fees were reasonable, so I closed my shop and came here with all my savings.

Upon arrival, she found that although hospital beds were scarce, the government had made very good arrangements, even taking into account accommodations for family members. Hotels near the hospital did not raise their prices, and those in dire need could stay in subsidized shared dormitories. The local street office also helped her obtain a temporary access pass.

As she spoke, she typed each line, adding a small smiley face after each one.

"So, you're saying the budget is still tight?"

The woman typed: "A charitable foundation helped us. They arranged a bed for us and found me a place to stay. I don't know them, but they said we didn't need to pay anything."

"What charitable foundation?" Zhuang Yan frowned slightly.

The woman shook her head, gesturing towards her phone: "I don't know the name. They looked at my husband's report and said he met the requirements. I don't understand any of that; I only know they helped us."

After she finished typing that line, she turned her head to look at the door at the end of the corridor.

Zhuang Yan glanced in the direction of her gaze, then turned back and asked, "How long have you been sitting here?"

The woman paused for a moment, then typed: "Starting at noon." He ate and went to sleep. I was worried he might wake up wanting water, so I waited here.

She thought for a moment, then typed another line: "The people here are all so kind. The nurse brought me a blanket last night, and a local auntie gave me two steamed buns this morning."

Zhuang Yan read the words twice, but didn't ask any more questions. He left his phone number, saying that he could contact him for help if needed.

The woman nodded, folded the note, and put it in the inside pocket of her windbreaker, right next to her heart.

Zhuang Yan asked a few more patients in the waiting area. Originally, he just wanted to collect more materials, but the more he asked, the more interesting it became.

There was more than one person in the team who had an "unconventional appearance".

A Chinese man who had returned from Malaysia was sitting in a wheelchair with a thin blanket covering his knees. He was gesturing to the person next to him, saying that the wards here were cleaner than those in big hospitals in Kuala Lumpur.

A Chinese man who had returned from Peru was video chatting with his daughter in Lima on his phone. The camera was pointed at the "Patients' Home" sign in the corridor, and he said loudly in Spanish mixed with Hakka, "Dad has arrived."

There is also a domestic household registration holder who grew up in Japan, and a Guangxi native whose mother is Thai.

They all claimed to have been funded by an unknown charitable foundation, with someone arranging hospital visits, train tickets, accommodations, and even translation services for them.

They are all East Asian.

Or perhaps, Zhuang Yan stared at that Peruvian-Chinese returnee for a long time; at least, he looked very much like him.

Walking the streets of Y City, one can see the city struggling to absorb this sudden influx of medical immigrants.

The old factory area's guesthouse has been converted into temporary accommodation, with its exterior walls freshly painted and a sign reading "Y City Patient Service Center" hanging at the entrance.

The neighborhood committee and civil affairs department set up several affordable dormitory sites around the hospital. Although the dormitories were simple, the bedding was clean, there was hot water and charging sockets, and the hours for serving free ginger tea were posted at the door.

All hotels and guesthouses near the hospital have posted price monitoring notices: reports are welcome.

This sense of order may not be perfect, but you can feel it as you walk down the street; the city has done its best.

Zhuang Yan worked through the night to find several colleagues and retrieved the admission data of major hospitals in Y City over the past two weeks.

The data is scattered, but one trend is clear: in the past two weeks, the proportion of patients from southwestern border provinces and coastal hometowns of overseas Chinese has increased significantly. A considerable number of these patients, although they have domestic household registration, have lived abroad for a long time, and their passports are full of entry and exit records.

"Someone is manipulating things behind the scenes." Zhuang Yan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

A colleague discovered an interesting detail in the statistics from the provincial health commission: patients from these border provinces and hometowns of overseas Chinese showed a surprising uniformity in their genetic testing.

They were almost all diagnosed with lung cancer, liver cancer, or pancreatic cancer. The expression profiles of their tumor markers were highly concentrated on mutations in several clearly defined driver genes, such as EGFR, ALK, and ROS1. These are precisely the target ranges from which Ming Ge's sword qi showed a significant response in clinical trials.

But what truly surprised Zhuang Yan's colleagues was another layer: the whole genome sequencing data of these patients showed a very special distribution pattern in population genetic analysis.

Their principal component analysis results do not fall in the cluster center of typical East Asian populations, nor are they biased towards any other ethnic reference group. Instead, they are evenly distributed on the edge of the East Asian reference cluster, like a handful of seeds deliberately scattered, each one landing on the transition zone between East Asia and other populations.

Zhuang Yan read the message several times.

He recalled the Vietnamese woman sitting on the corridor bench, constantly tilting her head to look at the entrance of the inpatient department; her husband's genetic report was probably also in this data.

A man from Guangxi, yet his genes contain a kind of commonality that transcends blood ties and belongs to all of humanity.

Or more specifically: "It is both East Asian and global."

"These people are looking for the greatest common divisor."

If further investigation is needed, then unconventional methods will have to be used.

The first step Zhuang Yan took was to find an informant with whom he had previously collaborated, someone who occasionally operated on the fringes of the industry, and obtained a fake ID card under a false name.

The second step Zhuang Yan took was to get a new phone card. Instead of using it immediately, he put it in his phone and let it linger among other out-of-town numbers around major hospitals in Y City for three whole days. During this time, he deliberately pretended to make phone calls on several night buses and near the early morning market, loudly complaining in a mumbled dialect about his difficult life and his family's illness.

On the evening of the third day, through a familiar food delivery rider, Zhuang Yan obtained a set of battle clothes. After putting them on, he looked at himself in the mirror for a long time and nodded in satisfaction: a tired-looking migrant worker in his early forties who came to Y City to try his luck for his family.

He retrieved the number he had gotten from Nguyen Thi Lien from his phone and dialed it using the new number.

It rang five times, then stopped.

Zhuang Yan waited for ten minutes and then dialed again.

This time it rang three times before the other end answered.

"Hey?"

It was a male voice, middle-aged, with very standard Mandarin, but there was an inexplicable awkwardness in the ending of the syllables, unlike that of a native speaker.

"Hello," Zhuang Yan tried to make his voice sound tired but hopeful, "I...I heard that you can help people get on the waiting list and get admitted to the hospital? My brother has lung cancer, and we really can't get an appointment...Please, please help me...I heard you can help..."

The other side remained silent for a few seconds.

"What is your surname?"

"No need for formalities, my surname is Zhou."

"Mr. Zhou, how did you get this number?"

“It was a Vietnamese woman who told me… her husband works at the Second Municipal Hospital. She said you helped arrange her husband’s marriage, and she said you are very reliable.”

After a moment of silence, Zhuang Yan could sense that the other party was weighing their options.

“Mr. Zhou,” the other end finally spoke, “we need to understand your brother’s situation first. If it’s convenient, let’s arrange a place to meet and talk. Please bring your medical records.”

161 Area

The meeting place was to be a teahouse next to the flower and bird market in Y City.

This place is ridiculously out of the way: turn into a narrow alley from the main road, turn again, turn again, and turn until you almost think the navigation is wrong when you see a faded sign.

Zhuang Yan sat down by the window and placed the forged medical record on the table.

After waiting for about twenty minutes, a middle-aged man wearing glasses came in.

Dark blue jacket, black trousers—a very ordinary outfit.

However, Zhuang Yan's professional instincts still caught something: the man's steps were steady, his eyes swept across the tea room quickly, as if counting heads, his posture was slightly forward, his weight was on one foot, and his other foot could be pulled back at any time.

"Mr. Zhou?"

Zhuang Yan stood up: "Yes, yes, hello, hello, what's your name?"

"Just call me Lao Liu." The middle-aged man shook hands with him and took out a form from his briefcase. "Mr. Zhou, let's get straight to the point... Did you bring your brother's medical records?"

Zhuang Yan handed over the medical record.

Old Liu took it and flipped through it very carefully, looking at each page meticulously, even pointing to certain lines with his finger to confirm them.