Mastering the Sword Manual, sweeping across the globe

"So it's useless?" he said.

Sun Min did not speak.

The young male doctor's gaze briefly touched Liu Haitao's face before quickly looking down and pretending to flip through some documents.

The nurse switched the tray to another hand, and the edge of the tray bumped against the bed rail with a clatter. She quickly steadied the tray.

Liu Haitao stared at the page. Sun Min's thumb was pressing down on the corner of the paper, revealing a small section of printed text—"EGFR ex20ins." He didn't quite understand it, but he knew what it meant.

"So?" he asked.

Sun Min put the paper back into the folder, a simple action that took her at least ten seconds: "So, the hospital's recommendation is..."

"...Well, to prepare for unforeseen circumstances such as being unable to be contacted or not arriving on time, this lottery has a 20% reserve quota..."

"...Well, that means there are 60 other critically ill patients like you who were a little unlucky in the lottery, and they might...um...maybe..."

"We need this opportunity even more," Liu Haitao calmly finished the sentence.

Sun Min looked at him and nodded very lightly.

“Of course,” the young male doctor finally spoke, his words rapid, as if afraid he would hesitate to speak if he spoke too slowly, “If you insist on trying it, that is entirely your right. The choice of treatment plan always rests with the patient. This… this is absolutely no problem.”

"Do I need to sign anything?"

“Yes, I need it,” Sun Min said, taking the folder from the young male doctor and turning to the last page. “It’s a confirmation form for giving up a spot. You can just sign here.”

Liu Haitao took the document and signed his name.

Everyone in the ward was looking at him.

Old Zhao wasn't there. The patient on the bed near the door put down his milk carton. The patient whose name Liu Haitao couldn't recall also turned his head, his gaze shifting from above his phone screen to Liu Haitao's face.

Liu Haitao met his gaze and smiled.

"What are you looking at?" He pointed to his bald head. "Never seen anyone so handsome?"

The man didn't laugh. He put down the milk carton, the straw tilted to one side, and just stared at Liu Haitao with his head tilted to the side, without moving.

The young male doctor lowered his head, took off his glasses, and wiped the lenses with the hem of his white coat. There was actually no fog on the lenses; he just couldn't find anywhere else to put his glasses.

Sun Min stood ramrod straight, looking Liu Haitao in the eye. “Mr. Liu, please rest assured. Your condition is currently in the early to mid-stage, and the expert team has already adjusted your treatment plan. Continue using the third-generation targeted therapy, combined with local radiotherapy. Director Sun will personally oversee the process. Furthermore, your ward has been moved to a single suite, facing south, with a private bathroom. Treatment will be prioritized, and all examinations will be conducted without queuing. Accommodation for your spouse, who will be accompanying you, has also been arranged by the hospital at the family guesthouse behind the building; it will be free.”

She took another document from the young male doctor and opened it: "There's one more thing. Didn't your wife used to work as a cashier at the supermarket? The Third Municipal Hospital's logistics department happens to be short of a warehouse manager. The work isn't strenuous, the hours are flexible, and it's convenient for her to take care of you. What do you think..."

Liu Haitao was taken aback: "It's all arranged so neatly?"

"Of course."

"Thank you then."

Sun Min closed the folder: "Get some rest."

She left with a young doctor and nurse.

The footsteps faded into the distance in the corridor. The patient on the bed near the door picked up the milk carton again, put the straw in his mouth, and kept his eyes on Liu Haitao.

He didn't say anything, but the level of milk in the straw remained stagnant for a long time without dropping.

Liu Haitao lay back down on the hospital bed.

The pillow had been fluffed up by the head nurse that morning; when you sank into it, you could smell the detergent—it was clean, with a hint of disinfectant.

He pulled the blanket up to cover his shoulders.

A gentle breeze blew in through the half-open window, causing the hem of the curtains to billow slightly before falling back down, carrying the damp scent of the passing water truck.

Outside the window, the leaves of the sycamore tree rustled in the wind, and sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves, casting a patch of dappled light on the ceiling, swaying back and forth in circles, much like the way I used to lie under the big locust tree in the yard when I was a child, with the shadows of the leaves falling on my face and swaying with the wind.

A nurse was calling out in the corridor, "Medicine for bed 23." Someone in the next ward opened and closed the drawer of their bedside table. A short but bright laugh came from afar, like a marble bouncing down the stairs.

All this good luck in this life is something I painstakingly accumulated little by little in my past life.

He fell asleep.

141 Fight back

At 9 o'clock sharp, Zhang Qiliang appeared on time in Building 1 of the inpatient department.

The head nurse stepped forward, holding a stack of signed statements.

Zhang Qiliang flipped it open and took a look.

It really was just "a blink," ten times faster than the speed at which a champion bank teller counts new banknotes.

Just as some new fans in the live stream who were not yet familiar with Zhang Qiliang were wondering, "What's going on?", Zhang Qiliang flicked his finger lightly, and without anyone knowing what happened, three statements floated to the nurses' station on their own.

“These three, go die wherever you want,” Zhang Qiliang said.

"Currently committing a morally reprehensible crime?"

"Blindly guessing is morally reprehensible and absurd!"

Zhang Qiliang flicked the paper again, this time selecting four pages: "These four, keep the money for yourselves."

"Holy crap, are there really people this brave?"

"I've got eyes! At a time like this, there are still people who value money more than their lives?!"

"I don't think...it's necessarily stupid or selfish. I used to have a neighbor with cirrhosis. The doctor said there was imported medicine, costing 200,000 yuan a year, with a high probability of curing him. He refused. Everyone thought he was stingy. Later we found out that his wife had breast cancer surgery the previous year, and they had a son in his final year of high school. 200,000 yuan...that's enough for his son to finish college..."

After completing these two rounds of screening, Zhang Qiliang quickly reviewed the documents again, slightly surprised: "There weren't any signed by proxy?"

At the same moment, from the provincial cancer hospital administration office to the Y city government, to the X province government, to the capital, to the health systems across the country, and to some related institutions further afield—at least tens of thousands of people broke out in a sweat.

Fortunately, fortunately there's plenty of time, fortunately we didn't actually do anything...

However, it wasn't that nothing was done.

At least on this day, there were no lung cancer patients with typical target lung cancer in the 22 beds of the hospice ward.

After all the treatments were completed, the head nurse walked over to Zhang Qiliang and reported softly, "The seven people you named have all been taken away."

Zhang Qi nodded, his fingertips lit up, and the light transformed into three hundred tiny sword energies that smoothly passed through the floor and silently flowed into the three hundred hospital beds downstairs.

After doing all this, Zhang Qiliang walked to the window.

"Ming-ge..." The head nurse suddenly called softly from behind.

Zhang Qiliang turned around.

The head nurse took out her phone, the screen was lit, and handed it forward.

The above is a photo of a page from a workbook, with crooked pencil writing.

"Mom, it was Huahua who broke the vase, it has nothing to do with me."

Zhang Qiliang glanced at it: "Who is Huahua?"

“Hua Hua is the family cat,” the head nurse said.

“Oh.” Zhang Qiliang nodded. “Huahua is innocent.”

"Hahaha..." "Don't hit my face..." "Wholesale belts, sticks, shoe insoles." "Ming-ge, you're shameless!"

"The youngest victim of quedexia has appeared!"

--------

Fate, amazing.

Just as Zhang Qiliang left the hospital, his phone displayed a notification: the global list of most immoral individuals, including a few from a certain northwestern province, was rapidly climbing the rankings at a rate of millions of votes per day.

The following morning, Xingnan Town, Western Suburbs of Shuofang City, Daxia Province.

Liu Xiulan poured the water from the enamel basin into the sink, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to the living room to turn up the speed of the electric fan.

The fan made two clicking sounds when it started spinning, but when she patted the fan cover, it stopped making noise.

Xiaoze huddled in the corner of the sofa, knees pressed against his chest, clutching the TV remote. The TV was on, but the sound was muted. The cartoon characters on the screen were laughing with their mouths open, but there wasn't a sound.

Xiaoze hasn't been to school for four days.

knocking.

Liu Xiulan walked past the kitchen door, hung up the security chain, and opened the door a crack.

A young man was standing outside the door.

“Hello,” he smiled, “I’m Zhang, a reporter from Legal Weekly. I saw Xiaoze’s story online and wanted to learn more about it.”

Liu Xiulan took a closer look. The man's figure looked familiar, but she couldn't remember where she had seen him before.

"Reporters?" she said. "A few reporters came last time, asked a lot of questions, and then we haven't heard from them since."

“We do in-depth investigations, which are different from those news flashes,” the young man outside the door said calmly. “The reporting cycle is longer, but once it’s published, someone above will read it.”

Liu Xiulan hesitated for a moment, then removed the security chain.

When reporter Zhang entered, he stood at the door for a moment.

He glanced around the living room. Several packs of opened tissues were piled on the coffee table, and there was a plastic trash can on the floor filled with crumpled tissues. On the cabinet against the wall was a family photo. The woman in the photo looked much younger and was holding a grinning baby in her arms. A man in work clothes was standing next to her.

Reporter Zhang walked to the chair opposite Xiao Ze and sat down.

"Ma Guoqiang," Liu Xiulan called out towards the kitchen.

A middle-aged man walked out of the kitchen, a cigarette between his fingers, the other hand still in his pocket.

He stood at the kitchen doorway, looked the newcomer up and down, said nothing, and did not sit down either.

“Xiao Ze’s mother,” Reporter Zhang began, “I’ve seen some of the details online, but what’s said online isn’t necessarily accurate. I’d like to hear you tell the whole story from the beginning, starting from that afternoon.”

Liu Xiulan sat down on the armrest of the sofa, picked up an unopened pack of tissues, and clutched it in her hand. "That afternoon," she said, "September 21st, Saturday. I went to the factory to work overtime that afternoon, and when I left, Xiaoze was at home doing his homework..."

“Stop talking nonsense. Around 3 p.m., my son went out on the family’s electric tricycle,” Ma Guoqiang suddenly interrupted, his voice hard. “The electric tricycle is for grocery shopping, it’s been around for several years… My son wanted to go out to buy stationery, so he rode it out. On the way, he ran into a bunch of thugs, and those thugs saw the electric tricycle and wanted to borrow it… Why should they lend it to him? Of course, my son refused, and he got beaten up.”

“They beat him for a very, very long time!” Liu Xiulan continued, squeezing the tissue pack so hard it made a rustling sound. “They dragged him from the entrance of the residential area to the park, and then from the park back to the residential area, changing locations several times. They kicked him, slapped him… and even… spat on his head.”

"Look at this." Ma Guoqiang took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, opened a video, and handed the screen to reporter Zhang.

The video was shaky, and you could see a group of children surrounding a small, thin figure. Some were laughing, some were cursing, and some were kicking. The small, thin figure took two steps back, lost his balance, and fell to the ground.

A boy's voice came from off-screen, tinged with laughter: "I'm filming, don't hit my face, hit my body."

"See that? See that?" Ma Guoqiang poked at the frozen image on the screen with his finger. "This bastard alone was kicked three times, each time hitting his waist. The other two were holding his shoulder and leg... Tell me, does this look like the first time he's hit someone?"

"Could you please keep your voice down!" Liu Xiulan stood up and winked at the sofa.

Ma Guoqiang followed her gaze and glanced at Xiao Ze.

Xiaoze was still huddled in the corner of the sofa, staring blankly at the TV screen in front of him, his eyes not following the characters on the screen at all.

Ma Guoqiang slammed his phone onto the coffee table, took two steps back, leaned against the wall, and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“There’s an even fatter one,” Old Ma’s voice was low, but each word still sounded like it was being squeezed out through clenched teeth, “two punches and a slap, every punch landing right on my back. Damn it, if I got beaten up on the construction site, I’d grit my teeth and make sure he went to jail, even if it meant forfeiting compensation!”

Reporter Zhang did not interrupt him, but listened quietly.

After Ma Guoqiang finished speaking, he turned to Liu Xiulan and asked, "What happens after the fight?"

“They forced Xiaoze to bring them to their home,” Liu Xiulan said. “Xiaoze refused to open the door, so they broke his fingers…”

"Beat your fingers?"

“Break,” Ma Guoqiang straightened up from the wall, “break one after another, until he cried from the pain… until… until my son opened the door.”

Liu Xiulan crumpled the tissue into a ball, her fingernails digging into her palm: "After the door opened, they went inside and rummaged through things."

"Did you call the police?" reporter Zhang asked.

“I reported it,” Liu Xiulan said. “I reported it that same day. There were nine children who did the beating, the oldest being fifteen and the youngest twelve. They all have names and surnames, and none of them escaped.”

"What did the yamen (government office) say?"

Ma Guoqiang chuckled.

“The one who was fifteen,” Liu Xiulan said, “was sentenced to detention, but since he’s under sixteen, the sentence wasn’t carried out. As for the other eight, the oldest was only thirteen, and the local authorities just said: the law can’t touch him.”

"What about the school?" Zhang Qiliang asked.

"The school said that everyone involved received a warning, and those who were particularly serious received a demerit."

"Warning, hahaha..." Ma Guoqiang laughed, "A group of people surrounded my son, beat him, filmed it, warning. They came into the house and ransacked things, demerit... Haha, isn't that funny?"

As he spoke, Ma Guoqiang turned around, pressed the lighter several times, the flame appeared, went out, appeared again, and went out again.

“It’s not fun,” Reporter Zhang shook his head, took out a lighter from his pocket, and lit it for Ma Guoqiang. “Then what do you think we should do?”