Chapter 350: Master and Student [Part 2]
Whoosh—
The slum people rushed toward the wastes moment the transports started unloading them, not even waiting for it to fully unload. The fully equipped young adults claimed the center, while the women and the children scavenged the edges. Once the rest of the wastes were fully unloaded, they would rush over and scavenge that as well.
Although everyone was wearing all kinds of gloves, certain medicines were so dangerous that a small drop could cause massive corrosion damage if direct contact was made. There were also all kinds of harmful gaseous substances that the inferior face masks of the slum people couldn’t hope to insulate against, not to mention the far more common scratches and bruises one suffered when they fought each other to grab certain valuables.
They didn’t care though. In their opinion, the minutes they could’ve used to treat their fresh wounds were far better spent scavenging the waste piles. Literally everyone who did this carried all kinds of scars on their person, and they had neither the money nor the thought to fix them. After all, as long as they kept doing this, it was only a matter of time before they brought upon themselves a plethora of new scars.
There were flies of all sizes flying atop the waste pile, and since the flying car came to a stop Wheeze had been playing with them non-stop. The slum people were only interested in medicines and medicine bottles, so they paid no attention to it even though it was probably fat enough to feed a family for days.
Instead of letting his bodyguards push him around on his wheelchair like before, Flanders stepped out of his flying car and walked on his own two feet. He was more or less fully recovered after all. He glanced at the fat cat fooling around in the waste pile, but decided to ignore it after he recalled what the fourth young master had said to him.
One of his bodyguards handed him a face mask, but he waved and pushed it away. It wasn’t like they were inside the waste treatment plant itself, and the air quality was bearable since the wind happened to be blowing the terrible stench away from him. The foul odor still caused him to cough from time to time, but that was good because he was meeting his teacher right now. The more pitiful he looked, the higher his chances of persuading his teacher became. Appearing in full protection and accentuating his superiority over the slum people was only going to achieve the exact opposite.
Flanders headed toward a narrow street with the two bodyguards, Cillin and Shusag. He left the last one behind to guard the flying car.
They passed through a small alley, and at the end of the alley was a small courtyard which style reminded him of Rikulab’s accommodation. Clearly, Rikulab’s teacher had left a deep impression on his student.
The door to the courtyard was open. The scent of certain medicinal plants entered their nostrils even before they entered the place. Someone—a patient who just finished receiving his treatment—stepped out right as they walked in, and from there they saw an old man sitting inside the hall and performing tui na for a patient. There were no medical equipment at this place, meaning that there were many treatments that he could only perform with his own two hands.
The old man had a very good-looking pair of arms. Unlike the blotchy, wrinkled, and rough limbs of a normal old person, Jiu Xun’s was tough and glowing with health. There were many doctors out there who were like idiots when they didn’t have a machine to assist them, but Jiu Xun wasn’t one of those people. His arms could be a very good pair of medical equipment if need be. Yes, the healing effects might not appear immediately, and yes, it wasn’t as efficient as the medical instruments in the sanatoriums, but the fact that he could replicate them with own bare hands was a feat on his own right.
A brawny, honest-looking youngster about seventeen to eighteen years old was standing next to him. He was watching the old man’s every move without blinking.
Flanders was brimming with excitement to meet his teacher again, but he kept quiet because he knew there was nothing Jiu Xun hated more than being disturbed while he was at work. His quickened breathing and heart rate were the only signs that contradicted his calm appearance.
Ten minutes later, Jiu Xun rose to his feet and washed his hands in the basin of water the brawny youngster passed to him. Then, he put on his gloves, spoke with his patient for a bit, and gave him a medicine bottle with brown tablets in them. The bottle contained exactly the number of tablets the patient needed to take to recover properly. All he needed to do was to consume them as per Jiu Xun instructed.
Jiu Xun finally looked at the newcomers after he was finished with his patient. He scanned everyone’s faces before pausing his gaze on Flanders. He frowned in remembrance until recognition flashed across his eyes.
“Flanders?” Jiu Xun said slowly.
The old man had done his best to put on a calm appearance, but his tone suggested the opposite even to a stranger like Cillin.
Flanders dropped to his knees and said, “Teacher—cough! Cough cough!—I finally found you, teacher! Cough cough cough…”
Jiu Xun walked up to his student and pulled him back to his feet. “Why aren’t you wearing a breathing mask if your lungs are hurt? The air here will only worsen your condition! Just because you’re almost at full health doesn’t mean that you should tempt fate!”
A tearing Flanders coughed a couple more times before saying, “I forgot. I had rushed over immediately after I heard that you’re here.”
Cillin: “...”
The two bodyguards didn’t even blink at their master’s bald-faced lie. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time they had witnessed something like this.
Flanders acted less like the steady middle-aged man Cillin knew when they first met and more like a pitiful child in front of Jiu Xun. They had been teacher and student for several years. Even after many years of separation, Flanders still knew how to play his master better than most people.
While criticizing Flanders for his carelessness, Jiu Xun beckoned the brawny youngster to bring over a medicinal spray and gave Flanders a spray. After he said to the brawny youngster, “We’re closing early. Please close the door,” he pulled his student into his house.
One of Flander’s bodyguard and Shusag stayed behind at the courtyard in case a suspicious person or a patient showed up.
“Teacher, the fourth young master—I mean Shi Huajing—I mean Rikulab—”
Jiu Xun felt like smacking his student in the head. “Speak clearly! It’s been so many years, and you still lose track of your words whenever you get excited?!”
Flanders thought to himself: only when I’m facing you, teacher.
A huge reason Flanders became who he was today was due to his study experience. Jiu Xun was infamously a strictly teacher who demanded the best from every student he personally taught no matter who they were. It didn’t matter who they belonged to or what connections they had, nothing could get him to loosen his standards. It was why Flanders’ skills and abilities were one hundred percent the real thing. Every clinical trial he ever conducted; every thesis he ever authored and more was the product of his own efforts.
In fact, all the students who survived Jiu Xun’s teaching did pretty well in the medical industry, although not all of them felt the same deep loyalty and affection toward the old man as Flanders. Jiu Xun was an amazing teacher and doctor, but he was also bad-tempered, difficult to please, demanding and inclined to criticize the hell out of his students. There were only a handful of people in his life who could stand him.
Back when Flanders was still studying under Jiu Xun, he had had the bad habit of losing control of his speech every time he grew excited or distressed, and Jiu Xun would criticize him for it. As a result, it was almost like he was trained to lose control of his speech every time he panicked in front of his teacher. The fact that he just did it again out of pure reflex even though it had been years since he faced his teacher proved that time wasn’t the cure to all bad habits.
After learning that Rikulab, the poor boy he once took in was actually the young master of the Shi Family, a great political family om GAL, Jiu Xun had fallen silent for a very long time. He didn’t give a response when Flanders said that he wished to take him away from this place either. Knowing his teacher, he immediately figured that Jiu Xun was planning to turn him down.
Jiu Xun was very demanding of his students, but it was because he truly believed that they were capable of such heights. In fact, the old man had much higher expectations for Rikulab than he had for Flanders. However, Jiu Xun’s memory of Rikulab was the depressed boy who ran away from his home and almost let himself go to depravity, not the fourth young master who mastered the Shi Family and was at the prime of his life right now.
Jiu Xun couldn’t find it in himself to reconcile the two drastically different images because he, to put it bluntly, somewhat loathed the rich and powerful. After all, it was those people who had stripped him of his right to become a scholar, and kicked out of the high level school he had contributed many years to. Not only had he not gotten over the pain and loss, he remembered them as clear as yesterday. Of course, he understood exactly how he had come to land in this tragedy, but he couldn’t change his personality even if he wanted to.
Flanders panicked, but kept silent. He knew that any word that came tumbling out of his mouth right now would be ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst. So, he turned to Cillin and shot him a “help me” look. Shi Huajing did say that Cillin might be able to help him, and right now he could use every help he could get.