Grace Bennett quickly finished eating and left, while Tommy came over with his lunchbox, saying sourly, “Hey, you sly dog, you made your move first!”

“What move?” William Foster asked in confusion.

Tommy thought for a moment. Grace Bennett probably wouldn’t be interested in this silly guy anyway, so he shook his head and said, “Nothing. The braised pig’s trotters at lunch today were pretty good, just a bit too hairy.”

……

In the afternoon, William Foster packed up his things in his office—thermometers, sphygmomanometers, and so on—all into a small cardboard box, along with the cactus he’d been growing. Just a few days ago, Tommy had teased him: “With how careless you are, you’d ruin even a narcissus. Better stick to a cactus!”

Now, even the cactus was about to wither.

“Hey, where’s William Foster going? Quitting?” a doctor poked his head out of his office to ask.

“Uh… not quitting, just transferring to the Traditional Chinese Medicine Department. The director’s arrangement…”

“Oh, the TCM Department? Haha, do you know how to take a pulse? Can you diagnose by looking at someone’s complexion? TCM Department, haha, go on, go on, the feng shui there is pretty good. Maybe you’ll pick up some spiritual energy there, and Suzhou will have another barefoot doctor. Haha, soon we’ll have to start calling you Will the Seer!”

The words were openly provocative, but William Foster still kept a friendly face, nodded, and left with his things.

The TCM Department was next to the restroom, practically an abandoned place. There wasn’t even a nurse or a receptionist on duty, so you’d often see a little old man huffing and puffing, running up and down the stairs delivering slips. Don’t mistake him for a newspaper delivery man—he was actually the head of the TCM Department, one of the city’s top ten famous TCM doctors!

“Director Brooks, I’m here!” William Foster said cheerfully.

The old man looked up, poked at his glasses, and said, “Oh, you’re here… Just in time, I was about to leave…”

With that, the old man picked up his medicine box and headed out. William Foster quickly asked, “Director, when will you be back? I still need to learn more from you!”

The old man turned back with a smile: “Getting old, memory’s not what it used to be. Young man, remember, you have to rely on yourself for everything! Also, I’m officially retiring today, not coming back~”

With that, he patted his backside and disappeared down the hallway.

Facing such an empty office, William Foster fell into deep thought. In the surgery department, he could see more than ten patients a day. Even if he couldn’t operate himself, he could at least observe and learn. But now, in the TCM Department, he was all alone—though on this turf, he could at least call himself king.

To highlight its cultural heritage, the TCM Department had hung up a portrait of the legendary doctor Hua Tuo. William Foster stared at it for a while and thought Ayumi Hamasaki looked better. The secret medical book hidden under his bed—he’d continue studying it tonight. He didn’t dare bring that kind of thing to the hospital; who knows what would happen if someone found it.

As expected, not a single patient registered at the TCM Department all the way until the end of the workday. William Foster was getting impatient, wishing he could drag a few girls over from the gynecology department for a checkup.

Tommy wasn’t eating at home that night—he said he was going to the movies with Lily. William Foster felt a bit jealous of their coupledom, but didn’t have the nerve to tag along as a third wheel.

So he went home alone, cooked a bowl of instant noodles, and went back to his room.

He sat down, put the noodles on the desk, and took out the secret medical book. The spots with bloodstains still glowed faintly.

William Foster didn’t pay much attention, focusing all his energy on the healing techniques described in the book. The secret medical book also contained a set of qi cultivation methods. According to the medical theory in the book, cultivating qi could improve eyesight. Illness in the human body was due to functional impairment, with pathogens hidden inside, and you had to judge by external symptoms. But some stubborn illnesses were so deeply hidden that experience alone couldn’t diagnose them—so you had to be able to see what others couldn’t.

Moreover, acupuncture itself was a highly advanced skill, and the strength of the needle determined the effect.

William Foster was very skilled with needles. The unremarkable fine needles in his hands could unleash unexpected power. Usually, acupuncture students practiced on cloth pads—William Foster used to do the same, but after accidentally breaking a needle in his pillow, he stopped. He switched to piercing paper with needles. At first, he used a C++ textbook, but the needle bent quickly—that was due to insufficient needle strength.

Later, after constant exploration and practice, William Foster gradually managed to pierce through a sheet of paper with a single needle, then increased the number of sheets—two, three, and so on—until eventually, with a casual jab, he could drive a fine needle through an entire book! Of course, he didn’t dare tell anyone about this astonishing ability. That book, riddled with holes, had already been sold to the recycling center.

The acupuncture techniques described in the secret medical book were actually very similar to the level William Foster had reached in his own practice! This made William Foster secretly delighted.

It wasn’t until after eight in the evening that William Foster looked up and realized his instant noodles had gone cold. By then, he had flipped to the later pages of the secret medical book, glanced through them, and found that he couldn’t understand any of it—it seemed to be about feng shui.