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

The next morning, the snow in the northern part of the city had not yet melted, and the entire city was shrouded in a layer of gray, cold air.

But for the top academic circles in China, the temperature that morning was even hotter than in June.

The long-distance switchboard at the Beicheng Post and Telecommunications Bureau nearly crashed completely within an hour. Several young operators were sweating profusely, their hands constantly plugging and unplugging cables.

Dozens of long-distance calls were made from the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital, personally spearheaded by medical luminaries such as Gao Haiping and Liu Jianmin. Following the telephone lines, these old men precisely targeted the editor-in-chief's offices of major top medical journals.

The scripts used in these calls were strikingly similar; there was no probing whatsoever, only blatant attempts to sabotage the event.

"Old Li! This is Gao Haiping. Enough with the chit-chat, the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital just published a groundbreaking cardiac surgery paper! It solves the problem of right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction in Tetralogy of Fallot using autologous pericardial glutaraldehyde tanning technology. Don't ask me if it's true or not, the first author is Ye Zhen, and the co-authors include me and Old Liu, along with 37 other department heads from top-tier hospitals! The entire manuscript is over 50,000 words, all in Chinese, with practical data and extreme case data!"

The news caused an uproar.

Those long-time editors-in-chief in China who have been struggling to produce top-notch scientific research results and can only publish articles on improved appendectomy incisions in journals have all gone mad.

Inside the editorial office of the Chinese Journal of Surgery, located on the East Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, Li Changqing, the nearly 70-year-old editor-in-chief, is drinking cornmeal porridge.

Having just finished a phone call with his old friend Gao Haiping, he smashed the enamel bowl in his hand, which was printed with "Serve the People," onto the cement floor with a loud bang, splashing thick porridge all over half of his trouser leg.

Li Changqing didn't even bother to clean up the broken porcelain shards on the ground. He grabbed the phone receiver and roared, veins bulging on his neck: "Old Gao! Thirty-seven department heads co-signed this? You've kicked over this foreign stuff?! Where's the manuscript? Cover it up! Don't let anyone see it! I'll have someone prepare a car right now, no, I'll go to the North City General Hospital myself to get it!"

Hundreds of kilometers away in Tianjin, the deputy editor-in-chief of the journal *Chinese Journal of Practical Surgery* had just arrived at his workplace on his old-fashioned bicycle when he heard what the operator was relaying. He threw down the handlebars, rushed into the office, and grabbed the keys to the unit's only jeep.

Several medical journal publishers in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and other cities, all simultaneously went into a frenzy.

Everyone knows that if this technology is truly a decade ahead of the rest of the world, as claimed on the phone, then the journal that publishes this paper will instantly become the most authoritative voice in the medical field in China and even Asia! Such a historic achievement is something we'd fight for even if we had to sell the roof of the editorial office!

Before noon, the most surreal scene in the history of the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital unfolded outside its quiet gates.

Two old-fashioned jeeps with Beijing license plates hadn't even come to a complete stop when their doors were kicked open. Several middle-aged and elderly men in green military coats, half-bald, clutching briefcases under their arms, rushed towards the administration building like madmen, their feet stomping through muddy water.

They were utterly disrespectful and ran like red-eyed rabbits.

"Hurry up! That shameless old man from Peking Union Medical College has already taken the early train! We absolutely can't let him get there first!" Li Changqing urged his assistant behind him, panting heavily as he ran.

Ten minutes later, the director's office on the third floor of the main hospital had completely turned into a vegetable market.

Zhou Hai sat behind his large desk, holding a teacup with only half a sip of water left. He was completely surrounded by the editors-in-chief who wielded life and death power in the academic world. His expression was extremely distorted—a mixture of the pain of being driven dizzy by the noise and an extreme sense of pride that the institute had finally triumphed.

"Dean Zhou! Our *Chinese Journal of Surgery* is a national-level core journal! That 50,000-word paper must be published in our journal!"

Li Changqing slammed his hand on Zhou Hai's desk, making a pen jump. "If you give it to us, not only will we not have to pay a single penny for publication, but I'll call right now and have the entire first half of next month's issue removed! We'll free up a full sixty pages to give Dr. Ye's epic novel a completely independent special column! The cover will feature a full-body color photo of Dr. Ye!"

You have to understand, a color-printed magazine in the 1980s was incredibly expensive! Li Changqing really went all out!

"Old Li, stop trying to intimidate me with your big names!" A chubby man with gold-rimmed glasses, who looked refined, immediately squeezed over. This was Zhang Wenyuan, the deputy editor-in-chief of Peking Union Medical College.

Zhang Wenyuan slammed his briefcase on the table, unzipped it, pulled out a blank contract stamped with a large red seal, and slammed it heavily in front of Zhou Hai.

"Dean Zhou, the conditions offered by our *Peking Union Medical College Hospital Journal* are—not only will the full text be published, but our publishing house will also allocate special funds to print an additional 50,000 copies, which will be distributed free of charge to surgical departments of Grade II hospitals at the county level and above nationwide on an official basis! All copies will have the words 'Special Acknowledgements to Beicheng Military Region General Hospital' printed on the back cover! Can Old Li offer such a level of promotion?!"

"Bullshit! Our magazine can print individual volumes too!"

"Printing a separate edition is nothing! Our journal, *Chinese Journal of Practical Surgery*, will go through special approval and give us the highest level of compensation—100 yuan per thousand words! Plus, we'll include this paper as a permanent key presentation at the annual medical conference!" another old man shouted.

One hundred yuan per thousand words! Fifty thousand words is five thousand yuan! In an era when an ordinary worker could only save a few hundred yuan a year without eating or drinking, this was a huge sum of money that would make anyone envious!

The argument was deafening. These old Confucian scholars, who usually held themselves together and judged each other's papers for their formatting, were now fighting over this groundbreaking piece of practical cardiac surgery technique, even grabbing each other by the collar.

Zhou Hai's temples throbbed from the noise, and he slammed his teacup heavily on the table.

"Everyone! Editors-in-chief! Quiet!" Zhou Hai shouted, drawing his breath from his dantian, finally managing to suppress the noise a little.

He cleared his throat and put on an extremely snobbish and slick smile.

"It's an honor for our hospital to have you all come all this way. But this manuscript was written by Dr. Ye, the chief surgeon, and Vice President Gao, who worked tirelessly through the night. It's not under the jurisdiction of our administration building at all." Zhou Hai spread his hands. "Which institution to submit it to and what the terms are are all up to Dr. Ye. She's in her outpatient clinic this morning and is downstairs reviewing medical records right now. We can't very well disturb her while she's seeing patients, can we?"

Zhou Hai's move was a masterful maneuver, both extricating himself from the situation and subtly elevating Ye Zhen's absolute central position in the courtyard to an unparalleled level.

The chief editors exchanged glances. They were all shrewd and immediately understood the meaning behind Zhou Hai's words—the decision-making power lay in the hands of that young, miraculous doctor.

Li Changqing reacted the fastest, grabbing the briefcase on the table and tucking it tightly under his arm.

"Which clinic? First floor or second floor?" Li Changqing strode out, shouting as he went, "Seeing the doctor is important, I won't disturb Dr. Ye! I'll wait at the door! Even if I have to wait until the end of the workday or until midnight, I must pack this manuscript and take it back to Beijing!"

Upon hearing this, Zhang Wenyuan and the other editors-in-chief, no longer caring about getting close to Zhou Hai, fearing that falling behind even by half a step would mean missing out on a single sip of soup, all squeezed out of the dean's office doorway and rushed towards the stairwell.

"Old Li! You with a heart condition, slow down! The special surgical clinic on the first floor, right? I can run faster than you!"

A series of hurried and chaotic clattering sounds of leather shoes echoed down the corridor.

This is in the special clinic on the first floor at this time.

Ye Zhen had just finished flipping through a cardiac ultrasound medical record and picked up her pen to prepare her diagnosis. The noise coming from the hallway outside could be faintly heard.

She didn't look up. Her eyes, clear and cold as stars, were completely calm.

Because she knew very well that the raging fire she had personally ignited was sweeping across the entire Chinese medical community exactly as she had predicted. There was no need to pander to Western arrogance; the era of Chinese medicine standing up independently had been forcibly ripped open in this northern military compound, a testament to its vibrant spirit!