45: All well?

When attending physician Mu Xin rushed into the ward, she almost thought she had entered the wrong place.

"Director Mu! Please come and see!" Wang Xiufang grabbed her white coat as if she had found a life raft.

Mu Xin was the associate director of hepatobiliary surgery at this hospital and Gao Haoming's attending physician.

She pushed away Wang Xiufang's hand and walked directly to the monitor, her brows furrowed.

The data on the screen was as perfect as an example in a medical school textbook.

This was impossible.

How could a patient with Advanced liver cancer, whose organs were all failing, have their vital signs recover to be healthier than a healthy person overnight?

"What did you give him?" Mu Xin turned around, her questioning tone making Wang Xiufang's heart tremble.

"N-nothing... We didn't give him anything..."

"Nothing?" Mu Xin's voice rose, "Don't lie to me! Did you use some unlisted targeted drug from abroad? Or some messy folk remedy? I'm telling you, if something goes wrong due to unauthorized medication, the hospital will not be responsible!"

As a doctor, she had seen too many family members who, in their desperation, tried anything, only to end up losing both their loved one and their money.

Gao Ningning stepped out from the side, shielding her mother, and calmly replied, "Doctor, we didn't use any other medicine. We just... took a Medicinal Pill I brought back."

"Medicinal Pill?" Mu Xin scoffed, "Little girl, do you think this is a TV show? Do you know how serious your dad's condition is? Can a Medicinal Pill cure liver cancer? Are you insulting my profession, or are you making a joke of your father's life?"

Wang Xiufang looked at her daughter's calm profile, remembered the pill from last night, and also plucked up the courage to say, "Director Mu, it's true! It was the pill Ningning brought back, and after my husband took it, he... he became like this!"

Mu Xin's face completely darkened.

She didn't believe in ghosts or gods, only in scalpels and lab reports.

"Absurd!" She uttered two words, immediately picked up the phone, "Immediately arrange a full-body enhanced CT scan for the patient in bed 307, as well as a complete blood count and liver function tests! Immediately! Right now!"

As an associate director, she had the right to activate the green channel in an emergency.

She had to figure out what was behind this absurd data.

Half an hour later, the test results were rushed back.

Mu Xin snatched the still-warm lab reports and imaging reports from the nurse's hand.

She first looked at the blood indicators.

Alpha-fetoprotein, the core tumor marker for liver cancer.

Upon admission, over eight hundred.

Yesterday, twelve hundred.

Now... one hundred fifty?!

Mu Xin's hands began to tremble.

She flipped to the next page, the liver function report.

Transaminase, bilirubin... all the off-the-charts values had miraculously returned to the normal range, some even healthier than normal.

She finally picked up the CT imaging report, her pupils suddenly contracting.

The conclusion from the imaging department was written very cautiously, even with a hint of uncertain hesitation.

"Compared to yesterday's imaging, the large tumor in the liver... shows clear, unexplainable signs of shrinkage, with large areas of necrosis and liquefaction internally... Cancer cell activity has sharply decreased... Further observation is recommended."

Mu Xin held the report and rushed to the computer, pulling up the two CT images for 3D reconstruction and comparison.

On the screen, the huge tumor that had been entrenched in Gao Haoming's liver, like a ferocious monster, now looked as if it had been doused with concentrated sulfuric acid, its edges atrophied, its center collapsed.

The spreading cancer cells were even more like snow exposed to light, rapidly melting away.

This was not an improvement.

This was... a miracle.

Mu Xin collapsed into the chair, her mind a blank.

In the ward.

Gao Haoming had already woken up.

He felt like he had had the most comfortable sleep of his life, and the heavy and painful feeling that had lingered in his body for several months had disappeared.

He tried to take a deep breath; the suffocating feeling of being compressed in his lungs was gone.

"Wife, I... I seem to have strength again." He propped himself up on the bed and actually sat up on his own.

Wang Xiufang covered her mouth, tears falling like broken pearls.

She handed the lab report to her husband, her voice choked, unable to utter a complete sentence: "Old Gao... your cancer cells... are gone... really gone..."

Gao Haoming took the papers, looked at the data he couldn't understand, and then at his wife's ecstatic face.

He reached out and touched his abdomen.

The hard, stone-like lump seemed to have really softened and shrunk.

He wasn't dreaming.

The man suddenly hugged his wife, burying his face in her shoulder. The despair, pain, and fear that had been suppressed for several months now turned into hot tears, and he sobbed aloud.

Wang Xiufang also hugged him tightly, the couple crying like two children.

Gao Ningning stood by, watching her parents embrace and cry, her eyes also reddening.

She knew she had made the right gamble.

Kunlun Cultivation Academy, Principal Li Heng, had truly given her and this family a chance at Rebirth.

Wang Xiufang went to complete the discharge procedures that same day.

Mu Xin stopped her.

"Wait." Mu Xin's tone had lost its previous arrogance, replaced by a scholarly curiosity and urgency, "Your husband's condition still requires hospital observation."

"Director Mu, you've seen my husband's report, he's fine!" Wang Xiufang was now full of confidence.

"Fine? How is he fine? Just because of that unknown Medicinal Pill from your daughter?" Mu Xin pressed, "What is that thing? What are its ingredients? Where did you buy it?"

Wang Xiufang became wary.

She remembered her daughter's instructions that school matters should not be spread outside.

"It's just an ancestral secret recipe from an old Chinese doctor, and we were just trying anything we could," she vaguely replied.

"Which old Chinese doctor? Where is he? Give me his contact information!"

"He wanders everywhere, we don't know where to find him."

Mu Xin looked at her evasive manner and knew she wouldn't get anything out of her.

She sighed and took a sealed bag from her pocket.

"Is there any more of that Medicinal Pill?"

Wang Xiufang hesitated for a moment, then pulled out the wooden box from her pocket, which still had a little Medicinal Pill powder clinging to it.

She poured a little into Mu Xin's bag, probably only a few grains of sand's worth.

"That's all the Medicinal Pill powder left."

"It's enough." Mu Xin treated it like a treasure, immediately turning and rushing to her office.

She locked the door and dialed a number.

"Teacher, it's me, Mu Xin."

An old and authoritative male voice came from the other end of the phone: "Little Mu? What's so urgent?"

"Teacher, I have a case here that you absolutely must see." Mu Xin's voice trembled with excitement, "A patient with Advanced liver cancer, whose tumor shrunk by seventy percent within three days!"

"Nonsense! You must have seen wrong! Was it a misdiagnosis?"

"No misdiagnosis! It's absolutely true!" Mu Xin quickly encrypted and sent Gao Haoming's examination reports and imaging data, "Teacher, just take a look! Just one look!"

Silence fell on the other end of the phone.

A full five minutes passed, so long that Mu Xin thought the signal had been lost, when her teacher's voice finally sounded again, filled with unprecedented solemnity and shock.

"Gather all the experts in the hospital, no, call all the authorities in hepatobiliary and oncology departments in the South Province! I'm booking a flight now! I want to see this patient with my own eyes!"

That afternoon.

A small, highly confidential seminar was held in the hospital conference room.

More than a dozen expert professors, whose presence could cause a stir in the South Province medical community, sat around, staring intently at the two comparative CT scans projected on the screen.

In the conference room, except for the hum of the projector fan, you could hear a pin drop.

"This... this doesn't conform to medical logic!" An old professor pushed up his glasses, muttering to himself.

"This isn't apoptosis of cancer cells, this is... this is being completely erased by an unknown force!" Another expert stood up excitedly.

"If this drug truly exists... what does that mean? Have we conquered cancer?"

Everyone was dizzy with the impact of this thought.

Mu Xin stepped forward and carefully placed the sealed bag containing the Medicinal Pill powder in the center of the conference table.

"Teachers, the patient's family said this is the 'medicine' that cured him."

All the experts' gazes instantly focused on those few insignificant grains of powder.

Their eyes were like Columbus seeing the New World.

"Send it to the pharmaceutical research institute immediately!" The old man chairing the meeting, Mu Xin's teacher, slammed his hand on the table, "Initiate the highest-level project! Spare no expense, analyze its composition for me!"

Mu Xin looked at the fervent expressions of these medical luminaries before her, her heart filled with unprecedented anticipation.

A brand new era of medicine, perhaps, was about to begin.