You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 214 Studying Medicine Won't Save Americans

Just as the three of them stood still, Thomas seemed to have suddenly lost all his strength, and slowly slid down the moss-covered red brick wall to sit on the muddy grass.

The old pastor buried his face deeply in his wrinkled hands, oblivious to the bloodstains on the hem of his clothes soaking in the mud.

"Twenty years have passed —"

"I've been here for twenty years. I thought that if I could stitch up one more wound and administer one more antibiotic every day, I could pull this neighborhood back from hell a little bit."

He raised his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the gray sky, filled with despair.

"But today—as you've all seen, haven't you?"

"The people outside surged in like a tide. They had huge, festering holes in their feet and their lungs were full of fluid."

"I just watched a young man in his twenties tear his throat apart right in front of me because he didn't have two doses of cheap cephalosporin."

Thomas's shoulders began to tremble violently.

"I can't save them. I can't even afford gauze."

"I started praying to God, but God had clearly closed his eyes."

Alex stood aside, feeling a pang of sadness as he watched the once-respected head of two departments fall to such a state.

He sighed, demonstrating his smooth and considerate skills as an international student when dealing with his tutor.

"Father, listen to me."

Alex crouched down, looked Thomas straight in the eye, and spoke gently.

"You're already a saint. But Seattle is a giant meat grinder, and you can't stop the blades all by yourself."

"You can't take all the blame for the crimes of these politicians and pharmaceutical companies on your own shoulders. You've already snatched one life from the jaws of death today, and that's enough."

Thomas shook his head, and murky tears mixed with the dust on his face streamed down his cheeks.

"Not just God—"

The old pastor angrily tugged at his hair, complaining incoherently.

"This country is sick, terminally ill."

"Those Wall Street vampires, those bribe-takers on Capitol Hill, the system is rotten to the core, they are all greedy devils—"

He tried to analyze the root cause of the disaster, but no matter how he tried, the words he uttered were always limited to shallow and emotional labels such as "greed," "corruption," and "devil."

In fact, this is the reality of the political education system in American society, which is permeated with low intelligence and information cocoons.

In the American public education system, and even in the top Ivy League professional education system, apart from scholars who specialize in sociology, the vast majority of people, even top medical experts with exceptional intelligence like Thomas, have never received any systematic education on macroeconomics, class struggle, or the roots of institutions.

Students in Eastern societies, even junior high school students, can easily spout things like "ownership of the means of production," "class contradictions," or "the exploitative nature of capital" after being exposed to compulsory political courses.

In the West, however, political education is deliberately de-functionalized and trivialized.

Americans' dissatisfaction with the system can ultimately be attributed to "a certain politician being a jerk" or "big corporations being too greedy," without any underlying logic.

Leon leaned back on the bench next to him, watching Thomas's desperate accusations.

He knew that Alex's American-style inspirational platitudes alone wouldn't be enough to cure the old man's crumbling faith.

For an American intellectual who is close to being disillusioned with God and confused about the system, what he needs is something that can shatter his existing understanding.

Lyon's eyes flickered slightly.

He pulled the anonymous cell phone out of his jacket pocket and tapped the screen rapidly with his thumb.

While the old pastor was still grieving and covering his face, Leon took half a step forward and subtly nudged Alex, who was squatting on the ground, in the back with his elbow.

Alex turned around in confusion.

Lyon lowered his phone screen and shoved it right in front of Alex's eyes.

Alex glanced at it once, and his pupils dilated instantly.

He gasped, nearly spitting the saliva he had just swallowed onto Leon's face.

On the phone screen's memo app, five Chinese characters were clearly displayed:

Selected Works of Mao Zedong

Alex was completely stunned.

The flesh on his fat face twitched violently as he stared at Leon as if he'd seen a ghost.

With Thomas right there, Alex didn't dare to shout. He could only stand up abruptly, lean close to Leon's ear, and whisper through gritted teeth in barely audible Chinese, "Holy shit! What the hell are you up to now?!"

Leon gave a mysterious smile, put away his phone, and replied in an equally low voice, "Literal meaning. As an international student, it shouldn't be difficult for you to buy the English translation of this book on Amazon or at a bookstore in Chinatown, right? It wouldn't attract the attention of the FBI or NSA."

Alex stared wide-eyed, as if he were looking at an alien.

"What?!"

Alex wondered if he'd misheard. "Say it again?"

"I told you to buy a set of that person's selected works and give it to this old man."

Lyon, his voice low and menacing, uttered each word clearly, "Are you deaf?"

Alex swallowed hard, his expression slowly shifting from shock to admiration.

"Damn—you even know about this book."

Alex muttered to himself in Chinese, his eyes fixed on Leon.

"You're absolutely fucking amazing—"

Alex shouted in a low voice, "If this old man understood the essence of class struggle and exploitation, aren't you afraid he'd raise an army in Seattle and raze Wall Street to the ground?"

"Stop having such dangerous wild imaginations."

Leon interrupted him and casually patted Alex on the shoulder twice.

"When buying an English translation, don't buy the fancy hardcover edition; just buy the cheapest, most unassuming paperback. Once you've got it sorted out, just give it to him."

'

'

Alex finally nodded. "I'll go back and ask—"

Leon, too lazy to argue with Alex any longer, turned around and looked down at Thomas, who was still slumped on the muddy grass.

The old pastor was looking at them with his bloodshot eyes, his gaze full of incomprehension. He clearly couldn't understand what these two had been plotting in that strange language.

Leon stepped forward, knelt down, and looked directly into Thomas's eyes.

"Old man."

Lyon's voice returned to its cold, hard English accent, "I know you feel like God has abandoned this neighborhood and that this country is terminally ill."

Thomas closed his eyes in pain, his withered lips trembling slightly.

"But have you ever thought about this question?"

Leon extended a finger and tapped Thomas's chest.

"No matter how many wounds you stitch up or how many antibiotics you administer, you can only save a few people. Meanwhile, hundreds or thousands of homeless people like them are being created every day outside."

"Studying medicine won't save Americans."

Thomas suddenly opened his eyes, his cloudy pupils contracting sharply.

"Studying medicine—can't save Americans?" the old pastor murmured, repeating the same question.

"What—what exactly are you trying to say?"

What I'm trying to say is that the reason you can't find the root cause of the problem is because you're looking at the world from the wrong perspective.

Lyon stood up and patted the dirt off his gloves.

"Alex will bring you some books in a few days. Not the Bible, and not any medical journals."

Leon deliberately kept Thomas in suspense, looking at him with a deep gaze: "Once you've read those books, you'll understand why those people outside died, and what those vampires rely on to keep this world running."

"Then you can decide whether to continue sitting here crying or what to do."

Thomas was stunned.

He looked into Lyon's steel-gray eyes and a strong sense of curiosity suddenly welled up inside him.

Before Thomas could ask any further questions, Leon unzipped his gray windbreaker.

He pulled two thick cubes tightly wrapped in brown paper from his inside pocket and casually tossed them onto the grass in front of Thomas.

A muffled "snap" sounded.

One of the brown paper packets had a tear at the edge, revealing a stack of worn-out hundred-dollar bills tied with rubber bands inside.

Thomas's breathing stopped for a moment.

"This—this is—"

The old pastor stammered as he pointed at the money on the ground, his hands, which had stitched up countless delicate blood vessels, trembling slightly.

"Twenty thousand US dollars."

Lyon spoke casually, as if he were talking about two hundred dollars, "They're all clean, old bills, not consecutive numbers."

Thomas was completely shocked. He had thought that the mysterious masked man would give him at most five or ten thousand.

After all, in a suburban area like the West End, ten thousand US dollars is enough to buy more than a dozen lives.

Now, the other party casually threw out 20,000.

"Put your emotions behind you, old man."

Leon looked at the dazed Thomas. "Now you have money. Go buy gauze, go buy alcohol, go buy any medicine you need. Save those people outside who are still breathing."

Leon paused, glancing around the area outside the church. "If you feel it's unsafe to carry so much cash to a shady clinic, I can have Alex drive you, or I can go with you myself. Nobody dares touch this money."

Thomas took a deep breath, and with trembling hands, he reached out and clutched the two bags of muddy cash tightly to his chest.

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