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

7:30 p.m. Auditorium of the North City Military Region General Hospital.

The auditorium, usually used for meetings on work style rectification, was now so crowded that there wasn't even room to put your feet down.

In the center of the first three rows, more than thirty leading scientists from home and abroad, including Gao Haiping and Liu Jianmin, sat upright. To the left of the aisle, the British expert group led by Sir Williams also sat formally. Anderson and Green had thick hardcover notebooks on their laps, and Anderson was clutching a Chinese-English dictionary tightly in his hand, the cover of which was almost torn from repeated use.

More than seventy interns were crammed onto the long wooden benches in the back row. Zhou Ming, Li Hong, Lin Yi, and others gripped their pens, their eyes fixed on the podium in front of them.

The door creaked open.

Ye Zhen entered the auditorium right on time. She had changed into a crisp, clean white lab coat and was carrying a brown paper bag in her hand.

Gu Zheng followed behind her. He didn't go to the front to join the fun, but directly pulled out a folding chair in the last corner, sat down there with his arms crossed, and stood like a guardian deity in the shadows.

The chaotic buzzing in the auditorium was instantly cut off.

Ye Zhen strode up to the podium, pulled out two pieces of white chalk. Without saying a single unnecessary polite word, she turned to face the blackboard and flicked her wrist.

The crisp "thump-thump" sound echoed in the quiet auditorium. In less than a minute, she had drawn an extremely detailed anatomical cross-section of the right ventricular outflow tract and coronary arteries.

Professor Green pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and involuntarily leaned forward halfway.

"Today, let's review case number 042, admitted during the day." Ye Zhen turned around and slammed a piece of chalk heavily on the left side of the blackboard, near the ventricle. "Tetralogy of Fallot complicated by severe hypoxic-ischemic attacks and epilepsy. I'm sure everyone has already seen the copies of the lab reports for all the physiological indicators."

A rustling sound of pages turning immediately filled the audience.

"The ventricular septal defect is 50% larger than the aortic diameter, and the blood oxygen saturation is extremely low." Ye Zhen spoke slowly and deliberately, with a calm and collected air. "In this near-death state, forcibly pushing someone onto the operating table for open-chest surgery has a mortality rate as high as 90% during the anesthesia induction period. In the past, the conventional practice in China was to give up directly or perform palliative shunt."

"So we need to change our thinking." Ye Zhen wrote three lines of drug molecular formulas on the blackboard with her backhand, "Preoperative intervention. Prostaglandin E1 microinfusion, combined with a specific β-blocker to control heart rate, reduce right ventricular outflow tract spasm, and correct acidosis at the same time."

The translator beside him quickly whispered a simultaneous interpretation in English. No sooner had the words been spoken than Sir Williams abruptly raised his hand.

Ye Zhen nodded in acknowledgment.

"Dr. Ye," Williams stood up, his expression respectful yet with an academic air of meticulousness, "Brownpton Hospital in England has attempted similar drug interventions over the past five years. However, infants' blood vessel walls are too thin, and micro-infusions can easily trigger phlebitis or even vascular necrosis. Dosage control is an extremely difficult and critical issue. How do you address this?"

Ye Zhen glanced over and, without even a second's hesitation, immediately rattled off a series of data: "Start with 0.05 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per minute. Don't use peripheral veins; directly puncture the internal jugular vein to establish a central venous access. Use a 5% glucose solution as the carrier and strictly control the drip rate."

Williams stood there, stunned.

Anderson's pen left afterimages on the paper. Professor Green pinched his brow, rapidly writing down formulas and derivations on his draft. Three minutes later, he suddenly looked up and nodded emphatically to Williams—this plan was impeccable in pharmacokinetics!

Gao Haiping's hand, gripping the enamel mug, trembled uncontrollably. He abruptly stood up, the mug lid slamming against the tin table with a sharp crack.

"Dr. Ye!" Gao Haiping's voice tightened. "Adding today's extreme intervention plan for patient number 042, combined with the eleven surgeries you've performed in the past two weeks covering ventricular septal defects, atrial septal defects, and pulmonary stenosis—this theoretical system is now completely closed!"

Liu Jianmin also realized what was happening and pulled several sheets of paper from the pile of drafts on the table: "Old Gao hit the nail on the head! We've drafted a preliminary framework, 'Standardized Clinical Pathways and Postoperative Assessments for a Series of Surgical Procedures for Congenital Heart Disease,' which will systematize all the surgical procedures we've performed recently and turn them into a set of operational guidelines that can be promoted nationwide. This will definitely be a groundbreaking review work that will shake the academic community!"

When the two leading figures in the country spoke, the more than thirty senior experts in the front row could no longer sit still. Their faces turned red and their eyes shone brightly.

Ye Zhen lowered her eyes and glanced at the titles on the paper.

"Wrong direction." Ye Zhen turned around, picked up the chalk, and drew a long timeline in the only remaining blank space on the blackboard.

"You've been working on the operating table for ten or twenty years, and the standardization of surgical procedures relies on rudimentary skills and relentless practice. To put it bluntly, if you were put in the operating room for half a year, most of you could independently remove these lesions." Ye Zhen's words were like knives, direct and piercing, yet hitting the bullseye. "But what are we really lacking?"

At the end of the timeline, she slammed a question mark down heavily.

"Thirtieth day, ninetieth day, one hundred and eighty days after surgery, the first year—how are these children who have walked out of the hospital doing?"

The entire audience stopped breathing.

"Has the patch calcified? Has the valve function declined? Has growth and development been delayed? What percentage of exercise tolerance has been restored?" Ye Zhen turned around, her gaze piercing. "The significance of this paper isn't to boast about my surgical skills. It's to show the world—Chinese cardiac surgeons can not only perform surgery, but also 'nurture life'!"

The chalk poked four large characters into the blackboard: "Long-term prognosis".

Anderson, sitting in the back row, jumped to his feet, nearly dropping his English-Chinese dictionary in excitement. He shouted in broken Chinese, "Excuse me… Dr. Ye! If you need data from the UK for a control group, we at Brompton Hospital are willing to share our clinical records from the past ten years—three thousand cases of failed conservative treatments and palliative surgeries—free of charge!"

The entire auditorium was deathly silent.

Even the interns in the back rows were dumbfounded. A long-established British Royal Hospital had actually offered up its most valuable database of failed medical records, using it as a stepping stone for the new technology from the Chinese?!

"We have only one condition." Williams straightened his back and looked at Ye Zhen. "Brownpton Hospital wants to be listed as a second-in-line co-author of this paper."

Gu Zheng, sitting in the corner, chuckled softly. Old Wei had a clever plan; he wanted to buy a hard-seat ticket and board this Chinese-made medical behemoth.

Ye Zhen stood calmly on the podium, not even raising an eyebrow. She picked up the blackboard eraser and tapped it lightly twice on the edge of the desk.

"Providing control group data is acceptable, the more solid the better," Ye Zhen said, looking at Williams. "But this paper's overall framework and core technical approach belong entirely to the General Hospital of the Northern Military Region of China. The British academic society can only be listed as a data provider in the acknowledgments. Joint authorship is out of the question."

Williams' lips trembled; he wanted to try and bargain.

"The core algorithms and pharmacological mechanisms are all stored in my head." Ye Zhen gave him no room for negotiation. "You can choose to observe or join. I'll only give you ten seconds to consider."

Anderson, frantic with worry, kept tugging at Williams' sleeve, his eyes practically twitching. This was a landmark document that would rewrite history; even just having their name mentioned in the acknowledgments section would be enough to secure their place in history!

"Deal." Williams, deflated like a punctured balloon, solemnly bowed his head and patted his chest in a gesture of respect.

"But we've never worked on this evaluation system before, how are we supposed to define the framework?" Liu Jianmin was anxious, wringing his hands in frustration.

Ye Zhen turned around, and the chalk in her hand seemed to have eyes, slamming eight lines of large characters onto the blackboard with a "swish, swish":

Follow-up time points, evaluation indicators, data collection form templates, statistical methods, inclusion and exclusion criteria, grouping principles, quality control procedures, and ethical review.

In less than two minutes, not a single detail was missing. The ironclad rules of modern clinical trials were forcefully brought into the classroom of the 1980s.

Ye Zhen dusted off her hands and turned to the panel of domestic experts: "Vice Dean Gao."

"Here!" Gao Haiping straightened his back reflexively.

"Please write this paper yourself."

Gao Haiping stared intently at the blackboard for a full ten seconds, then suddenly clapped his hands and laughed: "Good! Good! I'll be in charge of drafting this outline! Old Liu will lead the comparison of Chinese and foreign cases, and Sir Williams will be responsible for transporting the British data. But there's one condition—the corresponding author and the first author must be you, Ye Zhen!"

Ye Zhen didn't hesitate or refuse, and put down the chalk and stepped down from the podium.

The auditorium erupted in chaos. Top experts from China and abroad crowded together, arguing heatedly over a data format, their faces flushed and spittle flying.

9:15.

Gu Zheng tiptoed and quietly circled around from the back row. The group of experts were engrossed in their argument and no one had time to pay attention to this tall, imposing figure.

He walked straight behind Ye Zhen, carrying a steaming enamel mug in his large hand, and placed it steadily beside her.

A hot, sweet and spicy aroma wafted out – brown sugar ginger water.

Ye Zhen picked up the glass to warm her hands, took a small sip, and didn't turn around. Gu Zheng bent down and whispered something in her ear. Ye Zhen turned her head slightly, and their eyes met; even the air was filled with a tacit sweetness.

Afterwards, Gu Zheng put his hands in his pockets and strolled out of the auditorium.

The academic debate dragged on until nearly 10 p.m. before Ye Zhen finally finalized the details and adjourned the meeting. This battle, destined to create a storm in the international medical community, officially began in this grand hall.