Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

The old lady was certain that her son had never done anything immoral and was absolutely willing to hand over all his property. To be on the safe side, she and her husband even transferred the house that was originally registered in their names to their son's name!

Seven minutes, eight minutes, ten minutes...

Ming finally opened his eyes.

He raised his right hand once again.

This time, it wasn't a suspended palm grasp, but rather fingers joined together to form a sword.

The fingertips lit up.

137 months

The sword energy instantly pierced Chen Yuhang's body, and the light disappeared immediately.

The movements were so fast that they were almost invisible to the naked eye.

The first second, the second second, the third second...

Nothing seems to happen.

In the fifth second, the change began.

Inside Chen Yuhang's body, starting from his chest, the pain gradually subsided layer by layer.

He naturally took a deep breath, and the sound of airflow in the oxygen mask changed, with each breath landing steadily on the ground.

He stared at the ceiling, blinked, then blinked again.

The next moment, he felt hungry.

He turned his head and glanced around the bedside table—oranges, bananas, an unopened carton of milk, and half a piece of bread wrapped in plastic wrap.

That's what my wife brought back from the hospital cafeteria this morning; there's only half left.

Chen Yuhang went to get it. There was still tape on the back of his hand from the IV catheter. The needle was connected to the IV line. When he reached out, the IV line was pulled and the IV bag swayed on the stand.

He didn't care and grabbed the bread. When he tried to tear the plastic wrap, his fingers were clumsy and he couldn't tear it after a couple of tries. His wife quickly took it from him and helped him tear it.

He took a bite, chewed it twice, and swallowed it.

There was no top on the chest.

He took another bite.

This time he took a bigger bite, his cheeks bulging, breadcrumbs falling from the corners of his mouth. As he chewed, Chen Yuhang finally remembered: Ming was still standing by the bed. This was a global live broadcast, with at least hundreds of millions of people watching...

"Eat up," Zhang Qiliang said with a smile.

Chen Yuhang stuffed the rest of the bread into his mouth. His wife handed him a glass of water, which he took and gulped down a large mouthful.

After the initial stunned silence, all the experts' eyes lit up, and they all stepped forward to gather around Chen Yuhang's bedside.

I don't quite understand cyberspace:

"Things seem to be going well?"

"Is this really a good thing? Didn't all the patients that Ming treated before get better quietly and then gradually recover? This situation... shouldn't be considered an abnormal case?"

"The mechanism is completely different... In the past, those were all Ming's pure divine methods. The cancer cells were still there, but they just slowly disappeared. Modern medicine couldn't figure it out at all. This time it's completely different: Lung cancer patients are in a state of high metabolic consumption for a long time. The cancer cells frantically plunder nutrients. At the same time, the pressure and inflammatory response of the tumor will also lead to a sharp loss of appetite."

"It seems that cancer cells are dying off in large numbers, the tumor burden is dropping sharply, and the body is regaining its vitality—the level of inflammatory factors is decreasing, the metabolic burden is reduced, gastrointestinal function is restored, and the appearance of hunger is a signal that the body is reclaiming its nutritional needs."

"Simply put, when lung cancer patients feel like eating after treatment, it is considered a very important positive sign by doctors in clinical practice."

Chen Yuhang had no idea what the comments were saying.

All he knew was that the bread was delicious, the best thing he had ever eaten in his life.

He stuffed the last bite into his mouth, his cheeks bulging, and chewed for a long time before swallowing.

Then he took another sip of water and finished the rest of the water in the cup.

He handed the cup to his wife, and when she took it, her fingers touched his; both of their hands were trembling.

Zhang Qiliang watched quietly until Chen Yuhang's breathing finally calmed down, then turned his head and said to the nurse beside him, "Draw blood."

What kind of blood should we draw? The nurse was a little confused.

"Draw blood, 10 milliliters, in a purple tube." Dean Zhao had already reacted: "Have the medical equipment department send over the ultra-bright nanoparticle fluorescent lateral flow immunoassay strips immediately."

"Arrange flow cytometry as well." Next to him, an expert wearing gold-rimmed glasses took out his phone from his pocket and quickly swiped his fingers across the screen: "Circulating apoptotic cells, Annexin V staining."

"Notify the PCR lab to come over and collect samples quickly for quantification," another voice came from behind the crowd, with a slight Northwestern accent.

“Histological evidence is the most direct and powerful,” another expert cautioned, “and frozen pathology slides should also be arranged as soon as possible.”

"Okay...the operating room will be ready soon..." The medical staff were already on the phone.

“Let me do it,” Zhang Qiliang turned to Chen Yuhang, his fingers flashing once again: “...Come on, make a slice.”

"Okay!" Without saying a word, Chen Yuhang lifted the blanket and quickly unbuttoned his hospital gown, revealing his thin, bony chest.

“No need,” Zhang Qiliang chuckled, extending his right hand and lightly tapping Chen Yuhang’s ribs with his fingertips.

The moment Zhang Qiliang's fingertips touched his skin, Chen Yuhang felt a slight chill, but the coolness only lasted for a moment before Zhang Qiliang's fingertips were gone.

A small, thin piece of tissue, enveloped in invisible sword energy, landed in the specimen cup that the head nurse quickly brought over.

"Send it for pathology immediately."

After the specimen was sent away, the ward became quiet.

Chen Yuhang leaned against the pillow, his oxygen mask still on, but his breathing was already as steady as someone who had just woken up.

About ten minutes later, the head nurse reappeared at the door, holding a cordless phone in her hand.

Dean Zhao took it: "How much?"

The person on the other end of the phone gave a number.

Dean Zhao pursed his lips. "Test it again," he said.

The person on the other end of the phone said something else.

Dean Zhao handed the phone back to the head nurse.

"Fluorescent lateral flow. Tumor marker concentrations have decreased to three times the upper limit of normal."

The air in the ward seemed to be suddenly sucked out by something.

Three times the upper limit of the normal value!

When Chen Yuhang was admitted to the hospital, the concentration of tumor markers was more than ten times the upper limit of the normal value. Everyone present could recite the routine data for late-stage lung cancer.

It went from more than ten times to three times.

The live chat exploded.

Dean Zhao doesn't have time to read the comments!

A flurry of footsteps approached as lab staff rushed into the ward, holding a transparent specimen bag containing a freshly printed report.

Dean Zhao pulled out the report and glanced at it.

Then, he handed the report to the expert next to him who wore gold-rimmed glasses. The expert took it, looked at it for three seconds, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with the hem of his white coat, put them back on, and looked at it again.

"Flow cytometry showed that the number of apoptotic cells in the peripheral blood circulation was 47 times higher than the baseline."

Forty-seven times.

Cancer cells are dying at a rate 47 times faster than normal. Their remains, like dams breached by a flood, burst into the bloodstream and are counted one by one by a flow cytometer.

Chen Yuhang's wife suddenly squatted down.

She squatted by the bed railing, covering her mouth with both hands, her shoulders trembling.

Chen Yuhang reached his hand out from under the blanket, placed it on the back of her head, and ran his fingers through her hair, combing it back and forth.

Twenty-five minutes later, the pathology report came out.

Four photomicrographs, each accompanied by the pathology department's interpretation: "Extensive necrosis of cancer cells, cell membrane rupture, nuclear condensation, and chromatin marginalization. Necrotic area: more than 90%."

Someone in the hallway clapped once.

Then the second ring came, the third, and the fourth.

After confirming the result, Zhang Qiliang stood up from another bed, walked to the head nurse, and found a pen and a few blank pages of pathology records.

Then, the viewers in the live stream saw Zhang Qiliang quickly write down a long string of densely packed characters that filled an entire page... tadpoles.

Then, Zhang Qiliang turned to the second page and wrote down something longer, more complicated... what was that?

Then, on the third page, there was another drawing... probably an exorcism talisman?

Fortunately, there were enough viewers in the live stream, including many knowledgeable experts:

"Target name".

"Molecular formula".

"Coordinates of the binding interface in the three-dimensional conformation of a protein."

"The relative positions of the side chains of amino acid residues in space."

"Investigate this thoroughly." After finishing the last page, Zhang Qiliang handed the paper and pen to Dean Zhao.

Dean Zhao's right hand trembled involuntarily—this was probably the heaviest thing he had ever received in his life.

"What does it mean?"

"The significance of new drugs!"

“In the past, targeted drug development was like finding a needle in a haystack. You only knew what the needle looked like once you found it. Ming-ge is like throwing a submarine design blueprint with GPS positioning at you, telling you where the enemy is, where the weaknesses are, and also giving you a weapon manufacturing blueprint that is detailed down to the screw.”

“In drug development, it takes an average of two to four years from the discovery of a target to the screening of the first usable ‘seed compound,’ burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, and there is a 99% failure rate. Now, the target coordinates are accurate to the atomic level. Any top pharmaceutical company in the world can identify a candidate drug and enter animal testing within a few months if it has this map.”

"This is like moving the finish line directly to the starting line."

--------

The Second Municipal Hospital.

Old Wu's finger hovered over the screen, over the words "several months".

The quiet ward was suddenly broken by a cough.

Old Liu, in the hospital bed near the door, was lying on his side with his face buried in the pillow. His cough was muffled, as if it were coming from a very deep place.

His wife quickly raised the headboard a little higher and handed him a glass of water. Old Liu took it but didn't drink it. He held it in his hand and waited for the cough to subside and his breathing to become steady before taking a sip.

The water temperature was just right, neither too hot nor too cold; the old lady tried it.

Old Liu is 62 years old and has squamous cell carcinoma of the lung. He has been smoking for 40 years and has quit seven times, the longest of which was eleven months.

When a shadow was discovered during a physical examination last year, he threw the cigarette and lighter into the trash can and never touched them again.

His son said, "Dad has broken his word many times in his life, but this time he's keeping his word."

“A few months.” Old Liu’s voice was a little hoarse, from the coughing he’d just had. “I’m sixty-two, which should be enough for me.”

He paused for a moment and turned his head to look out the window.

The curtains weren't fully drawn, and moonlight squeezed in through the gap, falling on the back of his hand, which was resting on the blanket. There were a few age spots on the back of his hand, and the tape from the IV catheter was curled up at one corner.

“But my granddaughter will be starting kindergarten next year. She insists that I take her. The kindergarten is actually very close, only a three-minute walk, just across the street, and there’s only one traffic light.”

He pressed the sticking-out corner of the tape back in, pressed it twice, and it stuck.

"I asked why I had to take her across the street. My granddaughter said that I had never held her hand to cross the street before."

No one spoke in the ward.

Old Zhou leaned against the headboard, his phone screen already dark.

He is 47 years old, has lung adenocarcinoma, doesn't smoke, has annual check-ups, and last year's CT scan showed a completely clean lung.

I started coughing this spring. I thought it was a cold, but after taking medicine for half a month it didn't get better. Then I thought it was pharyngitis, so I went to another hospital. The doctor told me to get an X-ray.

He took the photos in the morning, and the doctor called in the afternoon to ask him to bring his family to pick up the results.

Old Zhou flipped his phone over so the screen was facing up, turned it on, and the screen saver showed a boy in a school uniform standing at the school gate, his backpack strap hanging on one shoulder, making a peace sign at the camera.

“My son will take the college entrance exam next year,” he said.

"His grades are alright, in the top 50 of his grade. He wants to go to Huazhong University of Science and Technology to study mechanical engineering. His grandfather was an eighth-level fitter in the factory. When I was a child, he would fix anything that broke at home. Radios, bicycles, sewing machines. Once, when the neighbor's TV broke, he took it apart, replaced a few parts, and it was fixed."

Old Zhou pressed it again, and the same comment appeared on the screen: "The candidate drug could be identified and enter animal testing within a few months at the earliest."