Chapter 3349

The flames of the candles on the brass candelabras flickered constantly, adding a few more eerie touches to the already dim interior. Two long, slender black figures stood in front of the operating table, as if performing some mysterious sacrificial ritual. If one got close enough, one could hear faint, fragmented murmurs.

"I say, brother, we really can't go on like this." One voice said, "You have to let me see what the effect of successfully curing a patient is, right?"

"Do you think this only depends on me?" The other voice said, "This is a duo game; the other person can't just stand there and talk nonsense, right?"

"When did I just stand there and talk nonsense?"

"The problem is you're not even as good as just standing there and talking nonsense!"

"I think our primary task now is at least to cure a patient to prove this is an operating room, not a morgue."

"The primary task now is to prove this is an operating room, not a cafeteria!"

"Then didn't you eat it too?"

"I performed surgeries until two in the morning, and my dinner was only a tuna sandwich."

Shiler put one hand on his waist, one hand on the bird beak of the mask, and then said, "Alright, it's too early to argue now. This game can't just let us repeat the process of treating patients; there must be some other gameplay, so we have to hurry up and pass the first level."

Strange also sighed and said, "Let's make a three-point agreement; the next patient arrives, we must treat them with all our might, ensuring no problems, okay?"

Shiler nodded, considering it a promise.

Pulling the lever down again, two more copper coins fell out this time. Shiler put the coins into his pocket, but the next thing that fell out wasn't a patient, but a wrinkled, tattered rag.

Shiler picked up this rag and found it stained with black coal ash, and also a bit of red bloodstains. But judging from the dried appearance of the blood, it didn't look like human blood, but more likely avian blood.

"Hello, I am Mr. Raven. May I ask if you want to subscribe to a newspaper? One copper coin per copy, you can subscribe to morning and evening papers every day; this is the premier choice for you to understand the world."

Strange also saw that line of text; he said, "Sure enough, this world isn't that simple; is it finally going to start explaining the background story?"

"We only have four bucks now." Shiler said, "But we can try to subscribe to a newspaper and see what information is on it."

"How do we pay?"

Shiler thought about it, took out a copper coin from his pocket, put it into the passage, and then closed the gate. He heard the very slight sound of the copper coin sliding down, immediately followed by two raven calls.

Shiler knocked on the metal passage door and said, "Give me a morning paper, thank you."

Shiler had originally thought the newspaper would also be sent through the metal passage, but he didn't expect that a small window above the room wall would open, a pitch-black large raven would fly to the window, and throw a rolled-up newspaper in.

Shiler looked up at that window; the window was too high, even if he reached out his hand, he couldn't reach it. And it was pitch black outside, and he couldn't see anything. The window was too small to allow an adult to pass through. It seemed escaping through the window was impossible.

Shiler stepped forward to pick up the newspaper; the newspaper was also written in Latin, and reading it was a bit laborious. Shiler handed the newspaper to Strange and then said, "You read first, I'll go see if the nurse has come."

Strange walked to the chair in front of the fireplace and sat down, starting to read the newspaper. Shiler came to the door.

The door could be opened, and the corridor could be entered, but Shiler found that as long as he left the one-meter range of the door, he would fall into complete darkness. Even holding a candle wouldn't work; the area in front clearly didn't allow exploration.

However, what was strange was that the corpse of the man who had fallen by the wall before was gone. He didn't know if it had been carried away by the nurse or had disappeared into thin air.

Shiler felt it was a pity: "If there's a reward for treating patients here, then that man might have had money on him. Should have looted the corpse earlier."

Returning to the operating room, Strange had already finished reading the newspaper at an astonishing speed. He summarized it briefly and then said, "It should be a Victorian-era steampunk-magic worldview; the location where we are is a place called Magic Pivot Town, located in the south of a certain country. A large-scale plague has broken out here, and the entire area has been blocked off."

"This wouldn't be the background of the Black Death, would it?" Shiler inhaled lightly, "This really has become traditional Western medicine."

"I'm afraid so." Strange said, "And it might be a background that fuses several plague outbreaks in Europe, otherwise there wouldn't be so many patients in one day."

"No wonder so many patients died, and no one came to find the two of us." Shiler said, "The medical level of the Black Death era, it would be strange if they didn't die."

"Although it's an ancient background, the two of us are modern doctors." Strange emphasized, "We can't be in the same boat as that group of quacks."

Shiler waved his hand, indicating he knew. He drew a bucket of water from the sink, started cleaning the still, and then said, "Giving us the opportunity to understand the world situation is definitely not just for killing time. Maybe we can influence the world situation by choosing who to cure."

"Then I'm afraid the world situation is already a mess now." Strange was also wiping his scalpel and said, "Who do you think this Mr. Raven who lets us subscribe to newspapers is? The boss of the hospital?"

"I'm afraid it's just the opposite." Shiler said, "There is blood on that rag, which shows he didn't come in the normal way. It also shows that there is someone guarding the reception area on the other side of the passage, and only with the consent of the people there will patients be sent to us."

"Since the hospital is open, we have to cure a few people, otherwise it will look like we are too useless." Strange said, "Even if the cure rate of other hospitals isn't high, we can't be too excessive."

"Just watch, I'm afraid things aren't that simple."

After cleaning up, Shiler pulled the lever down again. This time a black-skinned woman fell down. Her height was much taller than a human, about two meters plus, and the fabric on her body wasn't much, and it looked a bit tattered.

Strange put on his gloves, first opened the woman's eyelids, and saw a pair of blue eyes. The vitreous body was a bit turbid, which showed she hadn't rested well recently.

Immediately after, he checked the limbs and didn't find any hollow symptoms, nor were there any extra tentacles and flesh buds, nor were there any hardening phenomena.

The woman also didn't have symptoms of coughing blood or skin disease; the only problem was that there was a large cut on her abdomen, which looked like it had been caused by a sharp weapon. Once the tattered cloth wrapped around it was taken off, Strange couldn't help but frown.

This wound clearly hadn't appeared just now; it had been at least three or four days, the infection was very serious, the entire wound was swollen, and pus was constantly flowing out; the abdominal cavity had accumulated fluid.

Since the other party wasn't human, Strange couldn't judge if her body temperature was normal, but by human standards, it was on the high side, approaching 40 degrees. It might be a coma caused by high fever from infection.

Strange reached out and pressed the wound lightly; the woman had no reaction, only the abdominal muscles twitched instinctively. But looking at the black powder sticking to his fingertips, Strange's frown deepened.

Strange stood up straight and gave Shiler a look.

Shiler walked up and patted the woman's face, then said, "Do you still have consciousness? Wake up..."

Shiler also looked up and shook his head at Strange. Strange sighed and said, "The wound infection is too serious; they might have used some local herbs, but besides aggravating the infection situation, there was no effect."

"How do you say?"

"Debridement first."

As soon as Shiler heard this word, he knew there was work to do.

Debridement surgery and simple debridement treatment were not the same thing. Debridement surgery was definitely one of the surgical nightmares.

Debridement surgery was like that kind of math problem with a very large calculation volume; to say it was difficult wasn't very difficult either, especially for a top surgeon like Strange, the difficulty was completely at the level of a pediatrics course.

But the operation volume of this surgery was large, the operation environment was complex, and if you encountered a difficult wound, cleaning it for several hours was normal. And if debridement wasn't thorough, the consequences might be more fatal than some high-difficulty surgery failures.

It was also fine for the chief surgeon, but this surgery really tired the assistant to death. A normal operating room at least had several assistants plus nurses, but here there was only Shiler.

Moreover, Strange was the most difficult type of chief surgeon. No one in the operating room where he was could idle; they would all be ordered around by him like spinning tops, helping him do work while also getting scolded by him. When his temper flared up, everyone from the assistant to the patient got scolded, and even the needles and threads in the operating room couldn't escape.

Sure enough, after Strange completely entered the working state, he didn't consider the game background at all. He directly took off the bird-beak mask that was in the way, embedded the monocle he took down from the tool shelf nearby into his eye socket, leaned over, rested his hands on the edge of the operating table, closed one eye, and began to observe the wound carefully.

"Prepare 35°C physiological saline." Strange said while looking, "1% povidone-iodine and 3% hydrogen peroxide..."

"Please, where do you expect me to get povidone-iodine and hydrogen peroxide?" Shiler said while mixing physiological saline in front of the workbench, "But I remember the treatment manual said that ulcerated skin wound infections can be rinsed with one-third ounce of black thorn bile diluted ten times, combined with brown copper rust mushroom juice..."

"That's your business." Strange said, "You didn't let me believe in your medicine-mixing level? If the rinsing isn't thorough, it's your problem."

Shiler gritted his teeth, inhaled, rolled up his sleeves, and said, "Fine, I must let you see my medicine-mixing level!"

After speaking, he began to mix medicine at high speed, first putting the mixed physiological saline into a copper plate heated on a charcoal basin to heat, then taking out the jar soaking black thorn bile, pouring out the soft-bodied animal that looked like a sea urchin but was sticky, mashing it, scraping the mucus into a copper test tube, and then measuring it with a standard ounce cup.

Immediately after putting on gloves, he took out the dried mushrooms from the box under the cabinet, threw them into the mortar to grind, and at the same time took down the physiological saline that was about the right temperature, and loaded it into the syringe.

Suddenly he heard footsteps coming from the corridor, and without looking back, he shouted at the back, "Circulating nurse! Put on the mask!"

The head nurse's eyes appeared behind the observation window again. Shiler glanced at it, but his hand movements didn't stop, and he said while operating, "Sorry, ma'am, a difficult one came, no time to chat with you now."

"What... disease... does she have?" The head nurse's hoarse voice rang out.

"Hippocratic Oath, ma'am, I cannot disclose."

"Hmph hmph." The head nurse snorted coldly twice, then disappeared.

Shiler wiped the sweat on his forehead, took all the things with a brass tray, and walked to the operating table. Strange had already cleaned up the dirt outside the epidermis.

(End of chapter)