Chapter 66: Medical Care

Damn, duck eggshells!
What is going on here?
Chen Ling hurried into the thatched cottage to check the basket of duck eggs placed against the corner of the wall.
Upon looking, the basket was already filled with cracked shells.
"This fellow, I just left them here untouched, and they actually managed to hatch little ducks?"
Chen Ling was both amazed and helpless. These were the duck eggs he had picked up the last time he went fishing. After placing them in the grotto-heaven, he had completely forgotten to take them out.
Never did he expect that after spending about a month in the thatched cottage, they would hatch all by themselves.
"It seems my understanding of the miraculous nature of the Sun-Moon Grotto-Heaven is still far too little. Besides blooming and bearing fruit without pollination, it can actually hatch eggs directly..."
Amidst his inner astonishment, Chen Ling walked out of the thatched cottage to look for the newly hatched ducklings.
It didn't take much effort to find them in the woods in front of the thatched cottage.
He saw a group of yellowish, fluffy little creatures huddled closely together, lying in a tree pit with their eyes half-closed in a doze.
The leaves of Solomon's seal and the stems of gastrodia elata near the tree pit had suffered quite a bit of damage.
Although inside the grotto-heaven damaged plants could quickly regrow, many leaf stems pecked off by these ducklings could still be seen scattered among the grass.
"Better let them out. Ducks cannot be raised in the grotto-heaven; not only do they wreak havoc everywhere, but if they went to paddle in the pond, I'm afraid they would end up in the bellies of the fish and soft-shelled turtles."
Not to mention that the several soft-shelled turtles were growing larger by the day, the fish caught from the South Sand River were also thriving wonderfully.
Originally just wild river fish, after entering the grotto-heaven, they had become increasingly fierce and full of wild spirit, frequently leaping out of the water to chase and bite each other.
These freshwater fish, which inherently lacked ferocity, had also become aggressive and pugnacious under the nourishment of the grotto-heaven, and even the tiny fish fry were no exception.
If the ducklings dared to go paddling, there was a high probability they would lose their lives in the fish's jaws, being devoured piece by piece by the increasingly fierce big fish.
"Chirp, chirp, chirp..."
As soon as Chen Ling approached, the ducklings vigilantly opened their eyes, raising their little heads in unison to gaze at Chen Ling as this strange creature. While huddling together into a tight ball, they chirped and backed away all at once.
Ever since hatching from their shells, these little beans had never seen any other living creature.
Although they possessed an instinctive vigilance, they didn't immediately flee upon seeing Chen Ling.
Therefore, Chen Ling unhurriedly took off his jacket and tossed it over the flock of ducklings.
Following that, ignoring their startled "chirp, chirp, chirp" cries, he directly wrapped them up in his jacket and placed them into a bamboo basket inside the thatched cottage.
He threw some vegetable leaves inside, covered the basket with a lid, and then carried the bamboo basket out of the grotto-heaven, placing it next to the ox cart.
Afterward, he unlocked the small street-facing door on the ground floor, preparing to set up his stall to sell vegetables, only to suddenly realize he hadn't even prepared a sign.
After a moment of thought, he had no choice but to go to the county middle school diagonally across the street to ask for a small blackboard and a few boxes of chalk.
It was Sunday, so there weren't many people at the county middle school.
Chen Ling carried a bundle of vegetables over, and as luck would have it, he recognized the old man on duty—it turned out to be the mathematics teacher who had taught him in high school.
After retiring, the teacher had come to this new school to manage logistics. Said to be in charge of logistics, he actually did the gatekeeping job as well.
Upon seeing Chen Ling, the old man immediately recognized him.
Because this fellow was exceptionally handsome and stood out like a crane among a flock of chickens among all the students, yet he made a complete mess of his studies and suffered from extremely severe subject bias.
He could score around ninety points in Chinese, but in mathematics, he got single digits every single time, and sometimes even scored a zero.
The old man's impression of him was simply too profound. Upon meeting him, he immediately stroked his beard and glared, "What are you doing here, you brat? The new Lingyun Middle School is already built; are you here to steal wire clamps again?"
Hearing this, Chen Ling was instantly left between laughter and tears. The high school he used to attend was the old Lingyun Middle School, located on the same street as the old county hospital, now referred to as the old Lingyun High.
When he was in high school, the new Lingyun High here had just started construction.
Every Sunday after school let out, he and a gang of boys would come to steal wire clamps from the new school's construction site, hoard them to sell for money, and then spend it on food and drink.
Later on, the stealing became an addiction, and before Sunday even arrived, they would scale the walls to steal them.
As a result, after only a few times, he was reported by a girl in his class and received a fierce scolding from the teacher. Fortunately, they weren't caught red-handed, otherwise, there probably would have been other punishments.
"Teacher Liang is bringing up ancient history again. We were young and didn't know any better back then; how could we possibly do such thieving things now?"
"I came to the school to see if I could borrow a small blackboard and a few boxes of chalk. I opened a shop diagonally across the street and want to hang a sign."
"Oh ho, you brat have opened a shop already? Look at this, back when you were in school you cursed the small shop outside the school gate to absolute pieces, and now you also want to come and make money off students?"
Teacher Liang stood with his hands behind his back at the doorway of the guardroom, squinting and smiling at him.
The old man's full name was Liang Jinke, nearly sixty years old, not very tall—around one meter sixty-five—with a square face, wearing glasses, fair-skinned, and quite scholarly.
When he smiled, he looked rather benevolent, easily winning people's favorable impression.
"No, no, I just opened a vegetable and fruit shop, definitely not to make money from students."
Chen Ling waved his hand and brought the bundle of cowpeas he was holding right in front of Teacher Liang: "Teacher Liang, look, greenhouse vegetables, a new trend from the past two years. I brought some for you to take home and taste..."
"Goodness gracious, greenhouse vegetables! I wouldn't dare accept these. The vegetable market in the western suburbs only sells them three or four times a month, and every time a truckload is pulled over, it gets snatched clean in the blink of an eye. I heard they cost over two yuan per jin—expensive as can be."
Hearing this, Teacher Liang shook his head repeatedly, and then said, "I'll go get the blackboard and chalk for you. Take your cowpeas back; I have a vegetable garden at home where spinach and the like are already growing well enough to eat."
Then, telling Chen Ling to wait, he went to the school's equipment room and brought back a small blackboard and a few boxes of chalk for him.
"You brat, are you growing your own greenhouse crops?"
"Not really. I get these by trading from someone else."
Chen Ling opened this shop in the county town precisely to pull the wool over people's eyes, so naturally he wouldn't use his previous explanation.
"I guessed as much. You brat don't look like someone who farms; anyone with discerning eyes can tell at a glance."
"I hear greenhouse vegetables sell quite fast in the county town. Work hard, and don't take any crooked paths," Teacher Liang exhorted.
Chen Ling smiled and agreed heartily, then placed the cowpeas on the guardroom table.
"It's been a few years since I last saw Teacher Liang. Consider this a small token of appreciation from a student. Whenever you want to eat some in the future, just come across the street and get them, no need to stand on ceremony with me."
Having said that, he waved goodbye to Liang Jinke, picked up the blackboard, and strode away.
"This brat..."
Liang Jinke gazed across the street at the small shopfront and couldn't help smiling.
...
Returning to the small courtyard, Chen Ling wrote the words "Greenhouse Vegetables" on the small blackboard and hung it outside the door.
Then he displayed the four kinds of vegetables—cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and cowpeas—and set out a pole scale that had been gathering dust in his backyard at home for standby, before starting to hawk his goods.
He hadn't cried out his wares many times before someone came to ask.
It was the proprietors of the adjacent small shop and rental bookstore. Since students didn't have classes on Sunday and nobody patronized their businesses, they had plenty of free time and had noticed Chen Ling tidying up over here since early morning.
Seeing him set out his vegetable stall, they came over to take a look.
Chen Ling sold the vegetables at the market price of two yuan per jin for greenhouse produce, letting people taste them before buying as usual.
After tasting them, the two seemed quite satisfied, so they mixed the four kinds of vegetables together and bought three jin each.
Following those two, people came to buy continuously.
In less than three hours, the vegetables in all four bamboo baskets were completely sold out.
Chen Ling checked the time; it wasn't even six o'clock in the afternoon yet.
It really was just as Teacher Liang had said—these greenhouse vegetables were indeed quite popular in the county town.
"However, it's also because I picked a great location. Less than a thousand meters away is the county hospital, and not far from the county hospital are the office worker residential compound and the teachers' residential compound. There are quite a few people here with disposable income."
"The most important thing is that I didn't hike up the prices this time; I priced them at market rate, and the taste and texture are better than ordinary greenhouse vegetables..."
Chen Ling analyzed inwardly, pondering how often he should come to sell vegetables in a month.
"Twice? Or three times?"
"Forget it, I won't think about it anymore. I'll come whenever I feel restless..."
So he packed up the stall, locked the door, and drove the ox cart back home.
Just as he reached the vicinity of the county hospital, he heard someone calling out to him.
Chen Ling turned his head and saw that it was none other than the old man Chen Guoping, carrying a medicine box and standing at the main gate of the county hospital.
"Ah, Big Brother Guoping, what brings you to the hospital?"
Chen Ling hurriedly stopped the ox cart, got down, and asked.
"Don't even ask. The county called a meeting for doctors from all the townships below, saying our poor mountain ditch has been chosen as a medical reform pilot county to set up some kind of cooperative medical system."
"They said that in the future, doctors from neighboring villages in the township will rotate and visit each other's village clinics to diagnose patients, solving the masses' difficulties and high costs of seeing a doctor."
"I didn't quite understand the specifics, but the meeting lasted a whole day. It's so frustrating..."
Chen Guoping sighed, glanced at Chen Ling, and said, "Look, the sun is setting right now. If I hadn't bumped into you, Fuguī, I'd have to walk back in the pitch dark."