Chapter 82: An Emergency for a Cultivator

Chen Jue felt as though he had been in a deep sleep for ages, though in reality he had only lain in the back seat for about twenty minutes. Because of the typhoon, the roads were slick and winds fierce, so Yu Yue, who was driving, dared not go too fast and arrived at the county hospital a little slower than usual.

Father and son helped Chen Jue out of the car, then divided tasks: one rushed off to register at the emergency desk, the other supported Chen Jue and inquired of the nurse on duty, allowing both the nurse and a young doctor to take a quick look at his condition.

Though tonight was the night the typhoon made landfall, the hospital—open around the clock—still had staff on duty. Yet few came to the emergency room; after all, Dongdao County was a small place of just over a hundred thousand people, and with the typhoon raging, unless one’s illness or injury was dire, most chose to endure till morning.

“A-Jue! Wake up!”
“The doctor’s talking to you! Where does it hurt?”

Hearing the questions by his ear, Chen Jue’s eyelids fluttered. The brief rest had restored a bit of his strength, and he opened his eyes to find himself in the hospital’s bright lobby. Two figures in doctor and nurse uniforms stood before him. Chen Jue parted his parched lips and whispered, barely audible, “I... have no strength... I’m exhausted... then I fell... my chest is tight, uncomfortable...”

The young doctor, seeing Chen Jue covered in scrapes and hearing his account, guessed that the robust young man had simply suffered an accidental fall—though a nasty one, much like the fishermen on the island who sometimes tripped over nets or ropes aboard ship, or were struck by heavy waves, ending up bruised and battered. In the two years he’d worked the emergency room, such injuries were routine.

The doctor took out a stethoscope, slipped it beneath Chen Jue’s short sleeves, and listened to his chest. Chen Jue’s heart and lungs beat with a vigor far surpassing the average person, yet the heartbeat was somewhat irregular, not quite like someone entirely healthy—clearly, some internal capillaries had ruptured.

At this moment, Yu Yue returned with the emergency registration slip in hand. The young doctor withdrew his stethoscope and pointed toward a nearby office. “Looks like contusions and bruises, nothing serious. Take him to the office so our attending physician can check him over!”

Thus, Yu Da-shu and his son led Chen Jue to the office, where no one was waiting, and settled him onto a plastic stool.

The middle-aged doctor, holding a thermal mug and watching typhoon news, set it aside when he saw a patient enter. He glanced at Chen Jue, consulted the young doctor, and upon hearing it was a fall-induced injury, picked up his stethoscope and examined Chen Jue. He felt Chen Jue’s chest and abdomen, pressed several spots firmly—Chen Jue’s slight frown hinted at pain—then asked him to open wide and shone a medical flashlight inside.

The moment he looked, the middle-aged doctor was startled.

Good heavens!
Forty teeth!
Was he a reincarnation of Shakyamuni?

A bizarre thought flashed through the doctor’s mind. While palpating Chen Jue’s chest and abdomen, he’d already noticed this young patient was abnormally robust—clearly someone who spent years in the gym.

He inspected the oral cavity: a few tiny ruptures that resembled injuries from a fall. Leaning close, he sniffed Chen Jue’s breath, tinged with blood, and surmised this was a severe contusion. Quickly setting aside his wild speculation, he finished examining Chen Jue’s limbs and found no fractures. He then wrote up orders for a routine blood test and a localized CT scan, instructing him to return once the reports were ready.

Thanks to the emergency channel, with few patients around, both tests were completed in under thirty minutes.

The nurse who drew Chen Jue’s blood was quite amazed as well. His arm was long and muscular; the skin, though not tough, was surprisingly dense, almost like white jade. After drawing blood from countless people, this was a first for her!

She injected the needle easily enough into a large vein, but the sensation of pushing the needle into his flesh was strange—like piercing not human skin, but a resilient rubber ball, with immense resistance.

After drawing a vial, she removed the needle. Chen Jue pressed the wound, and it stopped bleeding almost immediately, healing swiftly.

Yu Da-shu and Yu Yue then helped him to the CT room. During the scan, Chen Jue felt his pores suddenly tighten, as if his body instinctively rejected the machine, confronted by some natural enemy.

Unbeknownst to Chen Jue, his martial practice had rendered his body hypersensitive, reacting to the X-rays of the CT scanner as they passed through him.

CT is an X-ray imaging technique, slightly radioactive, though doses are kept safe and much safer than traditional X-rays, provided scans aren’t repeated too often in a short period.

After waiting a while for the blood and CT reports, the three returned to the emergency office. The middle-aged doctor reviewed the results, his brows knitting briefly, then said, “Nothing major, just some bruising and scrapes. A few internal capillaries ruptured, but that will heal on its own with rest. You’re very healthy! Your blood sugar is a bit low, and potassium, zinc, and iron levels are on the low side. Remember to match your nutrition with your training. Get an IV drip, disinfect and dress your external wounds, I’ll prescribe some medicine for contusions. Eat more fruit, avoid strenuous exercise, and rest for a while when you get home.”

Hearing the doctor’s verdict, Yu Da-shu and Yu Yue both breathed a sigh of relief.

Only Chen Jue remained somewhat surprised. He’d suffered such severe internal injuries, yet in the doctor’s eyes it seemed as trivial as nothing at all.

What Chen Jue did not know was that his constitution far surpassed ordinary people. Even if his health index had dropped to sixty percent, it was sixty percent of a level-three constitution—not the average person’s sixty percent. Some test results simply couldn’t be measured by normal standards.

Therefore, the diagnosis could not be interpreted from the perspective of a typical human!

Had it not been for the injury and the resulting depletion of energy, his blood test numbers would likely have been off the charts, rather than appearing ordinary and unremarkable as they did now.

...

The drip and medicine took nearly two hours. The nurse on duty disinfected Chen Jue’s bloody scrapes and covered them with medical bandages.

Leaving the county hospital, Chen Jue felt his breath easing, his strength returning bit by bit, and even his health index slowly climbing back to sixty-three percent during the IV.

Yet the red exclamation marks beside his three attributes remained unresolved, and he still couldn’t allocate free points to his constitution.

“Looks like I’ll need to study this attribute panel carefully when I get home,” Chen Jue thought, his mind still muddled, as he reclined once more in the back seat of Yu Da-shu’s pickup truck and drifted off to sleep.