248: Chapter 248 If you can't survive, you will die.

"I don't know." Xu Zhixia shook her head, an answer that left everyone stunned.

"Aren't you a doctor? How could you not know?" Lin Fan's impatient tone carried a hint of questioning.

"Because her pulse... I have never seen it before."

Xu Zhixia's expression showed confusion for the first time. "Her pulse is beating extremely fast, but it's chaotic and messy with no regularity at all, as if... as if several completely different forces are crashing around inside her body."

She paused for a moment, as if searching for a more accurate description.

"It's somewhat like signs of poisoning; tachycardia and respiratory depression both fit."

"But..."

Xu Zhixia raised her head, looking into Lin Fan's eyes. "Although a poisoned pulse is fast, it usually gets weaker and weaker, tending toward a flatline."

"Yet Qingxue's pulse, while extremely weak, also has an indescribable force pushing outward, making it intensely hyperactive."

"Weakness and hyperactivity—these two completely opposite pulses actually appear on the same person simultaneously."

Xu Zhixia let go of Su Qingxue's wrist, the color on her face not much better than that of the lying Su Qingxue.

"This simply defies common sense."

She looked at the unconscious Su Qingxue and muttered to herself.

"This is more like..."

Xu Zhixia's words stopped halfway, stuck as if even she herself couldn't believe her own judgment.

"Like what?" Lin Fan pressed.

"Like the chaotic true qi in martial arts novels."

Lin Fan almost thought he had misheard.

He stared fixedly at Xu Zhixia, suspecting that this female doctor had stayed on the Deserted Island for too long and her mind had gone wrong.

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"Chaotic true qi?" Lin Fan stepped forward, raised his hand and waved it in front of Xu Zhixia's eyes. "Look at me, do you know who I am? What time is it now, and where are we?"

Seeing Xu Zhixia's blank expression, his brows furrowed even tighter, and he continued to press: "Have you been dizzy or having wild thoughts lately? Answer me properly, is your mind clear right now?"

"Lin Fan, I don't have a mental illness, her pulse is just like this."

No mental illness? Then there was only one possibility.

"Xu Zhixia, is it because Su Qingxue said that to you last time that you are harboring a grudge?"

The other few people in the cave were also completely dumbfounded.

Zhou Kai leaned on a wooden stick, his mouth open with an expression of sheer incredulity.

He felt that Lin Fan's idea made a lot of sense; Xu Zhixia must be holding a grudge.

"I didn't, I didn't take last time's matter to heart at all." Xu Zhixia felt her scalp go numb from Lin Fan's stare and hurriedly explained.

"I just can't find any modern medical term to describe her current pulse! In all my years as a doctor, I've never seen it!"

"It's just like two balls of fire..."

"Stop, stop, stop..." Lin Fan interrupted her profound and mysterious theory. "No matter what, tell me now how to save her."

Xu Zhixia's lips moved, and finally, she lowered her head dejectedly.

"I... I can't save her."

"Without an electrocardiogram monitor, without a defibrillator, not even the most basic adrenaline and sedatives... I can't do anything."

She raised her head and looked at Lin Fan, her eyes full of powerlessness. "Now we can only rely on her own willpower to see if she can make it through. If she can't make it through..."

Xu Zhixia didn't continue, but everyone understood.

If she couldn't make it through, it meant death.

"Ouch, after all this fuss, turns out she's just a quack who doesn't know anything."

Liu Feifei, who had been silent all along, crossed her arms and finally found an opportunity to chime in.

She walked up to Xu Zhixia, looked down at her patronizingly, and her mouth was full of sarcasm.

"Dr. Xu, I thought you had some great ability, taking pulses and checking eyes, acting like a miraculous divine doctor alive."

"And the result? After talking nonsense for so long, you finally end up saying you can't save her?"

"If we had those instruments, what would we even need you for?"

"Sister Feifei! Say less!" Song Ya was extremely anxious and ran over to pull her away.

Liu Feifei shook off Song Ya's hand. "Why can't I say it? Who was it that volunteered to come forward saying she had high medical skills and could trade it for Lin Fan's protection? Now a person's life is at stake, and you're telling me you don't know how to treat her?"

"I think you're just a liar!"

Xu Zhixia's face turned pale, and she clenched her fists tightly. She wanted to refute, but the facts were right in front of her; she was indeed helpless.

"Shut up!" Lin Fan roared.

Having spent the past few months with Su Qingxue, although it couldn't be called love, he really didn't want Su Qingxue to die.

"Xu Zhixia, try again. Is it possible that I stimulated her just now?"

"Don't you doctors say it's rage attacking the heart?"

Xu Zhixia nodded and placed her hand back onto Su Qingxue's wrist.

"Lin Fan, I think we shouldn't waste time and give her some water first..."

"Wait..." Xu Zhixia interrupted Liu Feifei.

"Her pulse, besides being chaotic and weak, also has a kind of... slippery pulse characteristic."

Xu Zhixia deliberated her words. "In traditional Chinese medicine, a slippery pulse feels like pearls rolling under the fingers, smooth to the touch, which is a manifestation of abundant qi and blood."

"Yet her body is clearly weak to the extreme, with depleted qi and blood; how could a slippery pulse appear?"

Xu Zhixia raised her head, looked at Lin Fan, and finally spoke of the most absurd yet only possibility that could explain all the contradictory symptoms.

"When I was apprenticing, I heard some elderly traditional Chinese medicine practitioners mention an extremely rare situation: in the early stages of pregnancy, if the mother is extremely weak, the fetus, in order to protect itself, will frantically extract nutrients from the mother, causing the mother to show various symptoms of decline, but on the pulse, a trace of the slippery pulse characteristic brought by the fetus will be retained."

In the cave, even if they didn't understand what a slippery pulse was, hearing about a fetus made them understand instantly.

Pregnant?

Su Qingxue... was pregnant?

Lin Fan's mind went buzzing, completely blank.

He subconsciously looked at Su Qingxue's pale face and her flat lower abdomen.

Here... there was a child?

His?

A Deserted Island, a giant python, a precarious living environment.

Now, there was one more child?

A howling, dependent infant on this island would be the most fatal burden and bait, attracting all hidden dangers over.

Lin Fan's heart instantly sank to the bottom of the valley.

He wasn't having a child late in life, nor was he infertile; his first reaction right now wasn't joy, but worry about the days ahead.

"Are you sure?" Lin Fan's voice was a bit dry.

"I'm not sure," Xu Zhixia confessed honestly. "There is no ultrasound or test strip here; all my judgments are merely speculations based on the pulse."

"But the symptoms she mentioned earlier—somnolence, fatigue, dizziness—coupled with the sudden fainting now and this contradictory pulse..."

Xu Zhixia took a deep breath. "Pregnancy is the most likely explanation."

Lin Fan stared at the unconscious Su Qingxue, unable to say a single word.

Just as the atmosphere inside the cave solidified to the extreme,

a rustling sound came from the woods below...