Chapter 308: The Chengzhai Medical Clinic

The corner of Lin Yu's mouth seemed to curl, a tiny movement, quickly hidden in the shadow of his profile. He turned off a certain device. Shook them off? Just like that?

The mark on Xu Xiaochuan's back, and the cold chip in his pocket, seemed to warm up extremely briefly and almost imperceptibly after the vehicle turned toward Haicheng, then returned to silence. Lin Yu's fingers on the steering wheel curled for an instant, almost unnoticeably.

Several hours of desperate speeding. When the blurry outline of the city's high-rises appeared on the distant horizon, the sky had already turned completely dark. The silhouettes of the steel jungle stood silently in the night, forming an absurd and strong contrast with the dead and desperate wasteland behind them. Xu Xiaochuan felt an unreal dizziness.

The off-road vehicle didn't slow down, rushing straight toward the edge of the city. But Lin Yu didn't choose the wide main roads, instead taking many turns and diving into an area on the edge of the city with dim lights and dense, chaotic buildings. This place was like the back of the city, narrow streets, low and dilapidated buildings squeezed together, the air filled with the smell of damp mold mixed with food waste.

The vehicle finally stopped in front of an inconspicuous three-story building. The building's wall plaster was peeling, and the second-floor windows were still boarded up with wooden planks. The only thing proving that this place was still in business was a crooked, paint-chipped wooden sign hanging at the door, with "Lin Family Bone-Setting Hall" written in faded red characters.

Xu Xiaochuan looked at the sign, then at Lin Yu, who had gotten out of the driver's seat in silence, and was completely stunned. This was... the absolutely safe place he mentioned? A... bone-setting hall?

Creak—

A pungent smell of Chinese medicine mixed with the moldy dust of an old house rushed toward them. The broken wooden door was pushed open, and the light dimmed by several degrees.

Lin Yu supported the almost limp Xu Xiaochuan with one arm, while steadily holding the unconscious Xuanyuan Qing with the other, stepping over the high threshold.

The room was quite dark, relying on a few dirty windows to let in some colorful light from outside, barely enough to see a general outline. A row of dark old medicine cabinets stood against the wall, the labels yellowed and illegible. A table was wiped shiny, matched with a few broken wooden stools with peeling paint. A yellowed human meridian chart hung on the wall, next to several banners covered in thick dust, and one couldn't tell which year they were from.

It looked dilapidated, but it was cleaned exceptionally well, even a bit rigidly.

Lin Yu didn't stop, walking straight into the inner room, carefully placing Xuanyuan Qing on a diagnostic bed. The bed sheet was washed white, but very clean.

He turned and went into an even deeper room.

Xu Xiaochuan slid down, leaning against the cold wall, his right leg hurting so much that his forehead was covered in cold sweat, his heartbeat pulling at the wound, hurting with every jump. He watched Lin Yu come out of the inner room, holding a rather old wooden medicine box, its corners wrapped in copper, and also holding a package of thin, long silver needles wrapped in oil paper.

Lin Yu walked to the bed, reached out, and pulled out the needles that had been inserted into Xuanyuan Qing, tossing them casually into an enamel tray beside him, where they clattered.

He opened the medicine box, which contained more silver needles of varying lengths and thicknesses, arranged neatly, the needle tips gleaming with cold light. He pinched the thinnest one, twisted his fingers, and pierced it into a spot on Xuanyuan Qing's forehead. His movements were light and precise.

"Poria, Polygala, Acorus, three qian each." Lin Yu didn't even raise his head, his voice exceptionally clear in the quiet room, "Third row of the cabinet, fifth drawer from the left, take it out."

Xu Xiaochuan was stunned for a moment before reacting, hurriedly supporting himself against the wall to stand up, dragging his injured leg and limping to the medicine cabinet. He looked at the blurry labels with difficulty, pulled open the drawer, and a more pungent medicine smell drilled into his nose. He picked up the small scale beside him, clumsily weighing those shriveled medicinal herbs, many of whose names he had never even heard of.

After weighing them, he handed them over; Lin Yu didn't even take them, instead reporting a few more medicine names and pointing to another drawer.

Xu Xiaochuan endured the pain, a million question marks in his heart, but still followed the instructions. He secretly watched Lin Yu's technique—twisting, turning, lifting, inserting—so fast his eyes couldn't keep up; with every needle inserted, Xuanyuan Qing's frighteningly rapid breathing seemed to really ease a little.

Beads of sweat streamed down Lin Yu's temples, but his fingers pinching the needles were terrifyingly steady, not shaking at all.

"Salvia, five units of weight. Chuanxiong, four units of weight. The black ceramic jar on the shelf behind, pour out half a bowl of the medicinal wine inside." Lin Yu said again.

Xu Xiaochuan walked into the inner room and found that it was larger than the outside. Against the wall were taller medicine shelves, filled with glass bottles and ceramic jars with labels, as well as strange-looking bottles containing eerie-colored liquids, or shriveled insects, grass roots, and so on. The medicine smell in the air was more complex, some pungent, some carrying an indescribable fragrance. In the corner, there was actually a set of expensive-looking glass equipment, similar to those in a laboratory, just covered in a layer of dust.

How did this look like an unwanted bone-setting hall?

He found the black ceramic jar, poured half a bowl of pitch-black medicinal wine, the smell particularly pungent. He carried it out to Lin Yu.

Lin Yu took it, threw the herbs he had just weighed into the wine to soak, then picked up a few thicker silver needles, dipped them in the medicinal wine, and pierced them into several spots on Xuanyuan Qing's chest and stomach. This time, when the needles were inserted, the needle tails were still trembling lightly.

"Here... have you lived here before?" Xu Xiaochuan couldn't hold it in anymore, his throat dry and astringent.

Lin Yu was wiping the frighteningly rotten wound on Xuanyuan Qing's arm with clean gauze; hearing the question, his movements slowed by half a beat.

"When I was young, I learned some things from an old gentleman." He picked up a small porcelain bottle beside him, poured out some dark green ointment, and carefully applied it around the wound, "Later, the old gentleman passed away, and this place was left empty. I come back to clean it occasionally."

He said it lightly, as if telling someone else's story. But Xu Xiaochuan listened, always feeling that the things hidden behind these few sentences were far more than he could imagine. This base guard, this Uncle Lin, what kind of background did he have?

After working for a long while, Lin Yu finally re-bandaged Xuanyuan Qing's wound with clean bandages. He reached out to touch Xuanyuan Qing's forehead and checked her neck. The skin that had been shockingly hot before seemed to have really dropped in temperature, and her breathing was longer, not as rapid. It was just that her face was still as white as paper.

"Temporarily hanging onto life." Lin Yu stood straight, his brows furrowing even tighter, "She has at least two types of neurotoxins in her body, mixed with biological infection, and her internal organs are also ruptured. Just now, those were only pulling her back one step from the gates of hell."

He walked to the window, lifted the broken curtain, and looked out. Outside were messy neon lights, the city's noise coming in through the glass, a bit distant, a bit unreal.

"Not enough." Lin Yu let go of the curtain and turned around, "To save her life, I need 'Dragon's Blood', 'Placenta', and 'Ambergris' as a medicinal guide. More importantly, I need to figure out exactly what poison she has and the extent of the internal organ damage, otherwise, using medicine blindly is useless."

Xu Xiaochuan's heart, which had just lifted, dropped again. "These medicines... are they hard to get?" ===== CHAPTER 309 =====