Chapter 20 Extra 2

The doctors in town came to the village to give free medical exams to the elderly.

There was also a young head nurse who was very pretty. Fatty would deliver breakfast to them every day and quickly became a recluse who won the medical team’s favor.

I asked him if he wanted to leave our warm little group, but he said no, he just wanted to get us free medical exams.

He obviously succeeded very quickly, for the medical team came to our village house for dinner that evening. Even Little Xue came back. Fatty and I prepared a big feast for them to eat as they arrived.

After eating and drinking together, it was naturally very easy to convince them to give us a health checkup.

In fact, when circumstances prevented a blood test from being taken, they would mainly look at your teeth, ask you a few questions, and then check your body to see how your bones and organs were. If you had a fatty liver, the doctor could feel it while conducting the exam because it was larger compared to a normal liver.

Fatty had a slightly enlarged liver. I thought he’d have a big fatty liver because he ate too much every day, but the young nurse examined him and said that his muscle content was quite high. In fact, it was actually higher than mine.

An old doctor examined Poker-Face. He was an old expert who hadn’t trimmed his nose hair properly. When he touched Poker-Face’s muscles and spine, Fatty asked, “Director, have you ever seen such a perfect body?”

The old doctor had a very meaningful expression on his face as he glanced at Fatty and said, “It really is perfect. One might even say that it’s very strange.”

Fatty glanced at me. To be honest, I was also curious about what was going on with Poker-Face’s body, so I looked at the old doctor and waited for him to continue.

“The intervertebral disc and cartilage between the bones are different from normal people,” the old doctor said.

“How are they different?”

“They’re thicker and more flexible but also harder.”

I had always wondered about this kind of cartilage tissue. Human bodies weren’t designed to support long lives, so how could people who lived so long avoid cartilage loss?

“Do you usually take any medicine?” The old doctor asked Poker-Face.

“Exercise,” Poker-Face said to him.

The old doctor sighed, “Exercise is good. Look, everyone, a good environment and exercise can make people very healthy.”

His young students all nodded their heads one right after another.

He then proceeded to squeeze Poker-Face’s muscles, “Your muscle fiber density is even better than that of athletes. What kind of exercises do you do?”

Poker-Face didn’t answer him, but Fatty spoke up at this time, “Good sir, do you want to hire him as a personal trainer? The sessions are one-on-one. He can tell you all about it at that time.”

The old man smiled, and Fatty continued, “Is this the first time you’ve seen such an intervertebral disc? If you publish a paper about it, I have to be included as a co-author.”

“It’s not the first time,” the old man said. “When I was an intern in Xiamen, I also did a physical exam on someone just like him.”

We all froze for a moment as the old man continued, “The patient was a girl surnamed Zhang. She seemed to have a bad temper.”

Fatty and I looked at each other. “Maybe you remembered wrong since it happened so long ago?” Fatty asked.

“No, because she was brought in by our department head. She was very beautiful but her hair was white.”

Fatty chewed on some peanuts and squinted at Poker-Face, “Do you have a sister?”

“That was so many years ago when I was young. She’s probably as old as I am now,” the old doctor said. “She definitely wasn’t his sister.”

After that, he checked Poker-Face’s pulse. His eyebrows were lowered in thought for a while before he said, “Your pulse is like that of a general. You mustn’t fight with others because they can never beat you.”

Fatty gave the young nurse his hand, “What about my pulse?”

She took it and said, “Marshal pulse.”

“Damn, so awesome?”

“Marshal Tianpeng.”⁽¹⁾

“Shit, spit out the chicken you ate little girl! I didn’t put in all that effort just to be treated like this!”

As everyone started laughing, the old doctor silently put his hand on my pulse. I was a little embarrassed. There was someone who was in such good health here, so if anything was wrong with me, then it would feel just like being compared to a top student back in school.

After checking my pulse for a while, the scene fell quiet as everyone looked at us.

Tension filled the air. The old man took a deep breath several times, each time becoming more and more focused. I wondered if he could hear an army marching in my pulse or if he heard the pleasant sound of a fisherman singing as he took a winding path leading to a secluded spot.

About ten minutes later, the old man finally opened his eyes.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked him.

“You’ve suffered from a major illness before,” the old man said. “You’re doing very good here, very good. Eat more warm things and take some supplements.”

“Am I that weak?”

The old man pointed to my head. “Too much thinking can be detrimental to your health. Learn from Marshal Tianpeng.”

“Fuck you, you old bastard.” Fatty threw some peanuts at the old man, who cried out and asked for him to stop.

That night, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I looked at my hair for a long, long time.

Hey, hey, hey.

I didn’t find anything.

<Chapter 19><Table of Contents><Chapter 21>

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TN Notes:

(1) I think she’s referring to the “Journey to the West” character Zhue Bajie who held the title of Marshal Tianpeng. He was commander-in-chief of 80,000 Heavenly Navy Soldiers but was later exiled from Heaven and sent to be reincarnated on Earth, where he fell into a pig well and was reborn as a man-eating pig-monster. Info here.

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Oh ho, wonder if that Zhang was Zhang Haiqi?

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