After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

The night wind in the northern city seemed to be whistling, whistling and blowing into collars, making one's face sting.

Two streets away from the military hospital, in a state-run tavern, the lights were dim and ambiguous, and the air was filled with the smells of cheap tobacco, sour yeast, and burnt fried peanuts. Most of the plaster had peeled off the walls, revealing the grayish-blue bricks underneath, like the festering wounds of this city.

Zhao Tiancheng huddled in front of a greasy square table in the corner, with a half-empty bottle of Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor) and a plate of barely touched pig's head in front of him.

"Glug."

A mouthful of spicy liquid burned down his throat, choking him until tears streamed down his face, but the fire in his heart could not be extinguished.

"Damn it...a bunch of blind people...all blind!"

Zhao Tiancheng slammed his wine glass down on the table with a loud thud. Several diners in work clothes glanced back at him in surprise, but seeing that he was a well-dressed but disheveled drunkard, they turned away with disdain and continued their boasting.

Zhao Tiancheng's mind is now filled with the scene outside the operating room.

Ye Zhen was surrounded by Wu Wenqing from Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Liang Guodong from the provincial government, like stars around the moon, without even glancing at him. That kind of disregard hurt him a thousand times more than being slapped twice.

Why? Why is she allowed to stand in that position?

"It must be Gu Zheng... Yes, it must be because of the Gu family!" Zhao Tiancheng's eyes were bloodshot, his fingers digging into the splinter on the corner of the table. "Without this connection, would those veteran experts have let a young girl like her perform surgery? And as the lead surgeon? Dream on! Without the Gu family, she's nothing!"

He had to think this way; only by thinking this way could he barely piece together his crumbling self-esteem.

Just then, the door to the tavern, covered with a thick cotton curtain, was lifted.

A gust of cold wind rushed in, and then a white figure, completely out of place in this dirty environment, walked in.

Lin Wan wore a beige wool coat, a plaid scarf around her neck, and her hair flowed smoothly over her shoulders. She looked clean and gentle, like a white lotus blooming in the mud. She stood at the door, her gaze sweeping across the smoky room before quickly locking onto Zhao Tiancheng in the corner.

She frowned slightly, then put on a pained expression and quickly walked over.

"Brother Tiancheng..."

This soft call, carrying three parts grievance and seven parts concern, instantly pierced through Zhao Tiancheng's fragile shell.

Zhao Tiancheng groggily raised his head and saw Lin Wan's tear-streaked face. His nose stung, and a mixture of alcohol and grievance welled up inside him: "Wanwan...why are you here?"

"I heard you were mistreated at the main hospital, how could I not come?"

Lin Wan didn't mind the grease on the stool. She took out a clean white handkerchief to sit on, then picked up Zhao Tiancheng's wine glass and gently placed it aside. Her tone was as gentle as if she were coaxing a child, "Don't drink anymore, it's bad for your health. It's not worth it for someone like that."

"What kind of person? You also think I'm not worth it?" Zhao Tiancheng's voice suddenly rose as if his tail had been stepped on. "You also think that Ye Zhen is better than me? Huh?"

"Shh—" Lin Wan quickly raised her index finger, glanced timidly around, and lowered her voice, "Brother Tiancheng, keep your voice down. Ye Zhen is a big star right now. Dean Zhou praises her to everyone he meets, saying she's... the hospital's lucky star."

That phrase, "lucky star," was like stabbing Zhao Tiancheng in the heart.

"What a load of rubbish! She's a complete monster!" Zhao Tiancheng gritted his teeth, his alcohol raging and his reason crumbling. "Wanwan, you have no idea what she did! That shrapnel had been lodged in Zhao Guozhu's brain for twenty years. Experts said it couldn't be moved, but she just took a probe and shoved it in! Was she saving him? She was risking her life!"

Lin Wan's eyes flashed slightly as she keenly caught the key information.

Instead of refuting Zhao Tiancheng, she followed his words, covering her mouth in horror: "Oh my god... even the experts said she can't move? How dare she? What if something happens...?"

"Isn't that murder!" Zhao Tiancheng retorted viciously. "She was just lucky, a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse! Those experts were also muddle-headed, letting her do such a mess! This is a serious violation of medical principles!"

"Brother Tiancheng, now that you mention it, something comes to mind." Lin Wan leaned forward slightly, a glint of something deeper flashing in her seemingly innocent eyes. "Has anyone in China ever used the technique Sister Ye Zhen used before?"

Zhao Tiancheng was taken aback, then subconsciously shook his head: "No! That's foreign technology; nobody in China has ever done it before!"

"Then..." Lin Wan's voice was soft, yet it exploded in Zhao Tiancheng's ears like a thunderclap, "Isn't this... using living people for experiments?"

Zhao Tiancheng suddenly looked up, his pupils contracting sharply.

"Human, human experimentation?"

"Yes," Lin Wan sighed, her face full of worry. "Think about it, who is Zhao Guozhu? A war hero, a national hero. Ye Zhen used a foreign technique that had never been tested domestically to operate on his head. If she succeeded, she was lucky, but ultimately, isn't this just using our hero as a guinea pig?"

She paused, then added, "Moreover, I heard that when she was in Qingyun County, she also performed craniotomy on a worker who had suffered a brain hemorrhage. Back then... I don't think there were any CT scans, she just did it directly?"

"Yes! Yes!" Zhao Tiancheng slapped his thigh, sobering up considerably from the alcohol. "No CT scan, no imaging, just blindly operating! This is blatant disregard for human life! It's against the rules! It's a colossal mistake!"

He became more and more excited as he spoke, his cloudy eyes flashing with a mad light.

In the early 1980s, ideology was still a very tight string. "Worshiping foreign things and fawning on foreigners," "using class brothers as guinea pigs," "engaging in individual heroism"—any one of these accusations would have been enough to give Ye Zhen a hard time!

"But..." Zhao Tiancheng's excitement quickly faded, and he deflated again. "Gu Zheng is protecting her, and that old fox Zhou Hai is also on her side. If we report it to the hospital, it will definitely be suppressed. That old bastard will do anything for political achievements."

Lin Wan took a folded newspaper out of her bag and pushed it in front of him. "Tiancheng, have you forgotten? You're a professional doctor, and you have a duty to uphold the seriousness of medicine. If it doesn't work inside the hospital, then... what about outside?"

"Outside?" Zhao Tiancheng stared blankly at the newspaper editorial headline, "Severely Crack Down on Medical Malpractice."

"A distant uncle of mine works as a reporter for *Internal Reference*. He has a sharp pen and despises this kind of 'deification movement' where people act recklessly because of their connections." Lin Wan patiently guided Zhao Tiancheng, like a teacher slowly feeding him poison. "Think about it, if you look at Ye Zhen's two surgeries together—one was practicing on workers in a poor county town, and the other was using heroes as guinea pigs at the main hospital, taking advantage of the Gu family's power. For personal fame, they treat organizational discipline and patient safety like a joke..."

Lin Wan's voice grew lower and lower, carrying a chillingly seductive quality: "If this kind of article were published in the 'Internal Reference' and submitted to the higher-ups... even if Gu Zheng had extraordinary abilities, could he silence all the gossip?"

Zhao Tiancheng felt a chill run from his tailbone straight up to the top of his head.

This was the winning goal!