Cyber Ghosts

Chapter 106 Selfish Motive
“My cousin is the person in charge of that airline whose airplane had crashed,” Wen said with a strange expression on her face as if she did not like to mention her cousin, “Oh, it’s Water Airline. Since their flight had such an incident, he would, of course, be very anxious; otherwise, he would not have sent them to our hospital. Besides, he is my grandfather’s grandson, no wonder why he could persuade the two elderly to help him just by a phone call.

That explained everything. Hao Ning had thought that it was weird: even if Wen ran into an intractable medical problem, it should be the hospital to consult and seek help from related experts from other hospitals. However, only Wen’s grandfather came to the ward that day and judging from his tone at that time, he was more like an advisor rather than an expert to resolve medical issues. It was clear now that inviting Wen’s grandfather to the hospital was a personal behavior of Wen’s cousin but not the hospital. But why would her cousin do that?

“Water Airline?” Just as Hao Ning was thinking, Long Fei who was following him sudden-ly spoke, “There is a person in charge with the surname of Chen who is extremely su-perstitious, especially stingy, does not treat illness even when he is sick. Instead, he prefers to go to masters. Do you know him?”

“Err …” Wen looked at Long Fei strangely and smiled, “Although I do not know who the person you are talking about is, but from your description, there is a great chance that he is my cousin. How do you know that?”

“Hey!” Long Fei laughed and said, “This man had constantly sent his secretary to wor-ship in my Dragon God Temple. Every time she made a wish for her boss, someone big in Water Airline with the surname of Chen. The wishes he made were extremely huge, but the money he gave was very little, his wishes simply could not be fulfilled, so I did not even pay attention to it. But he believed in it, or else he would not have sent his sec-retary to my temple — Ouch, it hurts!”

Long Fei was talking excitedly when he was suddenly pinched by Hao Ning and immedi-ately turned his head to see what had happened. Looking at Liu Shuai’s livid face and Wen’s puzzled expression, he carefully thought for a moment and realized he had got into trouble.

“Your Dragon Temple?” Wen stopped and turned her head to look at Long Fei carefully. Then she turned back and asked Liu Shuai: “Your colleague is quite superstitious. He is even running a temple as a side business. Why wouldn’t he do something else? Run-ning a temple…”

What kind of nonsense was this! Liu Shuai forced a smile on his face while scolding Long Fei in his heart. As a doctor, Wen was naturally opposed to this magic-miracle thing, and from Wen’s past performance, she should be a good doctor that took her work seriously, so she obviously did not like doing other things besides work. Now she would think that Liu Shuai’s own employee had used his free time to run a place related to feudal superstition and have a not-very-good impression on Liu Shuai. Thinking about it, Liu Shuai immediately turned to Hao Ning for help.

“Ah, that…” Hao Ning laughed bitterly in his heart and said hurriedly: “The parents of our colleague really believed in this. When Long Fei went to university, they found him a part-time job of cleaning a temple to support his study. He had no choice but to spend his vacation in the temple. However, he didn’t like it, he still believed in science. So, when he graduated, he found a job in an Internet company.”

“Oh, so that’s the case,” Wen obviously did not notice the logic problem behind Hao Ning’s nonsense. Liu Shuai wiped his sweat and gave Hao Ning a big thumbs-up. But soon Wen frowned and asked, “But why have I never heard that temples hire part-time workers…”

“Ah, Long Fei,” Hao Ning hurriedly changed the topic, “Back then, when you were doing a part-time job in the temple, what did your master say about that Chen?”

“Oh, right, my master mentioned that,” No matter how dumb Long Fei was, he now un-derstood what the issue was and immediately changed his tone, referring to his non-existent “master”. “In the year when SARS was prevailing, every airline had a strict steri-lizing procedure, and staffs were equipped with various types of masks and other equipment. Guess what did the Water Airline do? In addition to equipping its employees with disinfection equipment, it also gave each employee a talisman with a string of incan-tations written on it, asking its staff members to read the incantations every time when they boarded flights. It believed that doing so would protect its employees from getting sick. Would someone get infected, it had to be because he or she wasn’t sincere in chanting!”

“Ah? Hahaha,” hearing Long Fei’s words, Wen laughed so hard that she bent over. After laughing for a while, she stood up with a smile still on her face, but it was already a bit ironic as she said, “Getting sick was because of being not sincere. Hmph, yes, it must be him, it must be my cousin! No one else could have done it…”

“Hehe, ” Long Fei saw that Wen no longer had any doubts, so he ignored the slight change in expression on Wen’s face, scratched his head and laughed, then he contin-ued to speak, “But it’s quite efficient too. After the people from Water Airline recited the incantations, no one really got SARS. Maybe the incantations really worked. However, I didn’t know that kind of mana…”

“It was absolutely not because that the incantations worked,” Wen looked at Long Fei with a severe expression, “it was just a matter of probability. I would rather believe that the staffs of Water Airline were paying more attention to hygiene.”

“Yes, yes. They must have been more concerned about hygiene!” Liu Shuai immediately went along with Wen’s words.

Just as Long Fei was about to refute, he saw Liu Shuai glare at him fiercely. Then, he immediately scrunched his eyebrows because he could clearly see Liu Shuai had mouthed to him, “No more Sea Lantern!”

“You deserve it!” Hao Ning wiped his sweat off at the side, looking remarkably relaxed. He was secretly laughing at Long Fei in his heart, “Who allowed you to disrupt the peace and unity of others.”

“So, your cousin also found some experts this time?” Liu Shuai thought about the “ex-perts” Zhang Chi Hang had mentioned during their first meeting, who were acquainted with Director Wang. So, he asked Wen, “These experts made some talismans and cured those people?”

Hao Ning thought that it could be reasonable; these people were not actually sick, and Liu Shuai had just wanted to use Long Fei to “cure” them. Liu Shuai obviously knew how to talk to Wen.

“Of course not. How could there be such experts? How could you even believe it?” Wen laughed lightly and then said somewhat embarrassedly: “They were cured by a doctor of Chinese medicine.”

“Chinese medicine?!” Shouted not only Hao Ning and Liu Shuai but also Long Fei. For-tunately, they had already reached a floor where no one showed up; otherwise, they would be pinned by people’s gazes.

“Sigh …” Wen shook her head as if she did not believe it herself, “I had once learned some related knowledge of Chinese medicine. In terms of human vegetables, though it can’t be said that Chinese medicine has no effect at all, it takes time. Usually, among dozens of vegetables, a few will wake up after a few months. However, the three people that were taken away by my cousin all woke up on the second day after accepting the treatment, as if they had only had a sleep. This is nearly impossible in terms of either medicine or probability. I couldn’t explain it. It only showed that doctors didn’t help much.”

Liu Shuai could tell that Wen was a very cautious person. When describing the entire treatment process, she tried her best to choose more neutral phrases, to avoid exag-gerating the results of the treatment and bringing her personal emotions into the situa-tion because of her being a doctor of Western medicine. When Liu Shuai heard this, he also felt that it was bizarre, although he was not a medical practitioner, during his univer-sity years, because of professor Chen, he had contact with clinically relevant cases. It would be impossible for ordinary human vegetables to wake up within such a short peri-od, not to mention that the situation of those people was more complicated. Even with Long Fei’s method, it could take more than a month, how could they wake up the next day?

Liu Shuai was just about to ask when Wen suddenly stopped and pointed to a door on the left. Just as they were about to push open the door, they heard Professor Chen’s voice from inside: “You old lady, what nonsense did you talk? The older you get, the sillier! Where do those heretical ideas come from? Have you been brainwashed by some evil cult recently, or have you gone to practice some fake Qi Method? ”

Wen laughed awkwardly at everyone. Liu Shuai was also surprised that Professor Chen was usually a very amiable person who would never speak in such a straightforward manner and hurt others. It could be seen that he was more heartless to people close to him. When thought of this, Liu Shuai suddenly had recalled Zhang Quan. The way he spoke to Zhang Quan was also brutal, was it the same reason?

Before Liu Shuai could think it through, another voice came from inside, “You said I’m old? You said I’m sillier? Don’t forget that you’re five years older than me! What did you say about me when we got together? You complimented me, saying that I was smart and avant-garde, and many thoughts of mine broke the convention, and that was the point you liked so much. Why are you so against me today? I only made some assumptions. Tell me, do you think I’m old? Have you got bored of me? After a lifetime of ups and downs, you suddenly complain that I’m old. Do you have someone else in Chang’an? Oh! I knew it, you must have a crush on that young woman in her fifties in your research lab!”

“A young woman in her fifties?” Hearing this, Hao Ning could not help but widen his eyes, holding his mouth while laughing. He never expected that the quarrel between the two elders was so funny. The old lady’s imagination was truly plentiful. Within a minute, she had actually self-composed a family ethic drama in her mind which told about an old professor who loved her wife so much in their young age but turned to complain and tried to abandon his wife when she got old. It could be seen that knowledge was of lim-ited use to family conflicts. He looked at Liu Shuai and found that he couldn’t help laugh-ing, too. Wen shook her head and smiled bitterly. She said something without sound, and Hao Ning read her mouth as “the older, the more childish.”

But Long Fei pushed open the door and walked in with a surprised expression. Long Fei’s action was obviously beyond others’ expectations, so they did not even have time to stop him.

Author’s words: Strictly speaking, Chinese medicine has some healing effects on human vegetables. But the patients wouldn’t awaken very quickly. Instead, it would awaken in months. Besides, it is misleading that the probability for human vegetables to awaken becomes higher as time goes by. It is often the opposite. The questions raised by Liu Shuai and others in this chapter are merely based on their knowledge and the particu-larity of this incident. I have no intention to diss Chinese medicine.