Chapter 23

Chapter 23

At four in the afternoon, inside a traditional Chinese medicine clinic called Shengcaotang, two kilometers away from the entrance of No.1 High School.

Chen Mo was half-sitting on a single-person massage bed that was only wide enough for one person.

His knee was visibly swollen, and an elderly doctor wearing a white coat and glasses was bending over to insert needles into acupuncture points on his knee.

The fine needles, as long as a palm, were inserted into the flesh, their ends still shimmering with a cold gleam.

This sight made the few other young people present shiver involuntarily.

"Does it hurt?" Gou Yiyang couldn't help but ask the seated man.

Chen Mo's forehead was already beaded with cold sweat, but he seemed adept at enduring pain, showing no extra expression on his face. Hearing the question, he even lifted his head and forced a smile, "Why don't you give it a try?"

"No, no, no." Gou Yiyang quickly waved his hands, still somewhat incredulous. "Earlier on the stairs at the Yang family's place, when I helped you, you said it was rheumatism. I thought you were joking, turns out you were serious."

There were four or five boys who had come along.

On the playground, everyone saw that he couldn't walk at all and assumed he had broken a bone, so they hurriedly tried to take him to the hospital.

Although it turned out he hadn't broken any bones, the situation didn't seem much better.

Qi Lin and the others were even more puzzled.

"Your leg looks pretty bad. What exactly happened?"

"Yeah, you were running so fast on the field, and then after a half-hour rest, you couldn't walk at all."

Chen Mo gave a simple reply: "It's frozen."

"Frozen?" The others were even more confused. "How cold does it have to be to freeze your leg like this?"

At this moment, the doctor who had just finished inserting the needles looked up.

He glanced at the young man who hadn't uttered a sound throughout the process and nodded approvingly. Many middle-aged men who came here for treatment would cry out in pain.

As the old man tidied up his things, he said, "Your leg isn't just frozen; there's clearly an existing injury. The cold has exacerbated it, leading to this severe condition."

Chen Mo nodded, "Yes, it's injured."

The old man glanced at him and continued, "Today, you have some acute inflammation. Come here for five consecutive days for acupuncture and take medication as an auxiliary treatment, and you'll recover soon."

Gou Yiyang became excited, "So, is it completely healed then?"

"What are you thinking?" The old man turned and gave him a disapproving look. "There's no such thing as a complete recovery for his condition. It's like a broken bowl glued back together; the cracks will always be there. Reduce strenuous activities, stay warm in cold weather, especially in winter. As long as the condition doesn't worsen and you take precautions to prevent recurrence, it can be considered 'healed.'"

The others fell silent upon hearing this.

Chen Mo remained calm and said, "I understand, I'll be careful."

"Youngsters," the old man didn't believe him. "You say all the right things, but once you leave, you forget everything the doctor says. You must take care of yourselves while you're young, or you'll suffer later."

Chen Mo smiled, "I really do know."

How could he not know?

In his previous life, he had no concept of self-care. When busy, he relied on painkillers. At its worst, he had fluid buildup in his knee and a high fever, requiring surgery. The postoperative recovery was worse than expected, and for those two years, whenever the weather changed, he experienced recurring pain. He never stopped taking medication for his leg.

Having suffered once, he wasn't a masochist by nature and knew he needed to pay attention if there was still a chance for improvement.

Just as they were talking, Xi Siyan entered, pulling aside the curtain.

He held several prescription forms in his hand.

"How is he?" he asked the old doctor, speaking familiarly.

The old man took the forms, glanced at them, and then said irritably, "I've already explained the situation. If not for seeing you all rush in here today, thinking something major had happened, no matter how influential your Xi family is, I wouldn't have let you skip the queue. Understand?"

Xi Siyan responded, "We know your skills, which is why we came specifically to trouble you."

The old man hummed and, looking at Chen Mo, turned to Xi Siyan, "Keep an eye on him. The needles need to stay in for an hour. Don't move."

The old doctor left.

Someone asked Xi Siyan, "Brother Yan, how do you know a traditional Chinese doctor?"

"That's Old Pang, a renowned master of traditional Chinese medicine. My grandfather's minor illnesses over the years have been treated by him." Xi Siyan walked to the cabinet beside Chen Mo, picked up the phone charging there, and said to the others, "You should go back to school. After the acupuncture, I'll take him home."

"No problem, we'll stay with you."

"Yeah, we're already here."

Xi Siyan showed them the message on his phone, "Lao Xiang just sent a message. If you don't want to be punished, hurry back. There's a test tomorrow, and he won't ignore so many absentees."

The others shrank their necks and, after saying goodbye to Chen Mo, left one by one.

Gou Yiyang, walking last, saw Xi Siyan still scrolling through his phone and suggested, "Brother Yan, why don't you go back? I'll stay here."

"You?" Xi Siyan looked up from his phone, his eyes emotionless. "He needs to come here for five consecutive days, and he might miss evening classes even after the treatment. Aren't you going home? I share a dorm with him, so it's more convenient for me. Go ahead."

Gou Yiyang looked at Chen Mo.

Chen Mo nodded, "Do as he says. I'm fine here."

"Alright, call me if anything happens."

Gou Yiyang also left, and Xi Siyan dragged a stool over from the side and sat down on Chen Mo's left.

He continued tapping on his phone, presumably explaining the situation to Xiang Shenglong.

Chen Mo felt somewhat bored.

The acupuncture points were slightly numb and painful, but bearable, yet hard to ignore. In this small therapy room, he could only look out through the small window beside him, watching the various potted succulents planted under the corridor to distract himself.

His phone vibrated.

Picking it up, he saw that the message was from Lao Gou, who had just left.

Gou Yiyang: "If you really can't stand being with the class monitor, I'll try to accompany you for the next few days."

Chen Mo: "?"

Gou Yiyang: "Although he didn't say anything, I sensed he was a bit emotional, hard to describe. Just thinking about how you have to spend an hour with him every day for the next five days makes me feel suffocated for you."

Chen Mo: "…"

Chen Mo subconsciously glanced at Xi Siyan.

Seemingly sensing his gaze, Xi Siyan looked up and then at the needles on Chen Mo's body. "Painful?"

"It's okay," Chen Mo shook his head and asked, "What did Lao Xiang say?"

Xi Siyan must have finished replying to the message and put his phone away. "Nothing much. He said to rest well and find someone nearby to help you with tomorrow's exam."

Chen Mo, experienced, replied directly, "It's not necessary. I can walk, and I can manage on my own for the next few days."

Xi Siyan didn't say whether he would allow him to come alone or not.

He sat in the chair for a while, looking at Chen Mo, and suddenly asked, "Did you hurt your foot at the Chen family's place?"

Chen Mo paused slightly and nodded, "Yeah."

There was nothing shameful about it.

Chen Mo leaned back, relaxing, and for the first time, spoke casually about that day during a tranquil afternoon, "I'm not sure if it was four or five years ago, in winter. My mom—Li Yunru—had a severe migraine. She had been beaten by Chen Jianli for years and did a lot of heavy work, so she had many health issues. She gave me five yuan to get some medicine from the village doctor. On my way back, it started snowing heavily. Yuhuai Village is different from Sui City; it's the highest point in Baima County, and it snows every winter, sometimes burying people up to their calves..."

Chen Jianli had been drinking again that day and had lost money gambling.

When Chen Mo finally made it back, step by step, Chen Jianli was dragging Li Yunru by her hair across the threshold, leaving a trail of blood on the ground.

Li Yunru was pregnant, but no one knew it then.

Chen Mo instinctively tried to stop him. His knee was smashed by an enraged Chen Jianli with a wine jar. He cursed him as a bastard, accused him of stealing money, and tied him up with a rope, leaving him by the open well to reflect on his actions.

In the middle of the night, when Li Yunru seemed close to death, Chen Jianli finally sobered up, fearing manslaughter, and enlisted several men from the village to take her to the town hospital.

Chen Mo remembered the wooden courtyard of the Chen family, that square patch of sky.

That night was truly cold. He thought his mother might die, though she wasn't particularly good or bad to him. And he thought he might freeze to death that night.

In fact, Li Yunru was discharged three days later.

She was lost in the pain of losing another child. When her barely saved son was brought back to her the next morning, she simply asked, "Where have you been these past few days? You're so irresponsible."

When the Yang family found him.

Chen Mo was no longer the little boy trudging through the snow that night, nor the one who couldn't fight back against Chen Jianli for five yuan.

The Chen family was like a swamp that stained anyone who stepped into it.

But what the Yang family did was even more insidious.

In a high-status family, where interests came first, he couldn't see clearly at first, but once he did, his life had already restarted.

The therapy room was eerily quiet.

The last rays of twilight streamed in through the window.

Xi Siyan couldn't discern the source of the calmness on Chen Mo's face.

"I thought you'd want revenge," Xi Siyan said.

Chen Mo looked at him and laughed, "How? Kill my adoptive parents? Then bring down the Yang family?"

"Never thought about it?"

Chen Mo nodded honestly, "Thought about it."

And he had done it.

Chen Jianli was sent to prison by his own hands. The year Li Yunru died of illness, Chen Mo visited her and told her that her beloved son was vacationing abroad and didn't want to see her on her deathbed.

Also, just a week after Yang Zhi transferred his shares to Yang Shule, Chen Mo caused significant trouble for Yang Zhi, severely damaging the Yang family's foundation.

Though he never got to see the aftermath.

He had done everything possible and impossible.

No wonder the future Chen Mo was considered a madman by many.

But this time, Chen Mo, relaxed in the small therapy room, looked at the person he least expected to become familiar with and lazily said, "But thinking and doing are two different things. With all my health issues, I can barely handle myself, let alone kill the Chens. Also, I might not even make it into the top ten in my grade. Graduating from a third-rate university, bringing down the Yang family would be a pipe dream. The worst thing one can do is to go against oneself. Isn't everyone being happy better?"

Xi Siyan put his right foot down from his knee and nodded, "Indeed."

A few simple words dispelled the heavy atmosphere that had lingered in the space. Xi Siyan watched the face before him, which had returned to a sleepy state, and remained silent for two seconds, his eyes unreadable: "If that's truly what you think, it's best."

"Uh-huh." Chen Mo nodded perfunctorily. "Hurry up and get the doctor. I'm starting to feel some pain."

Xi Siyan stood up, looking down at him. "Finally can't take it anymore?"

"Yeah, hit my limit. Hurry up."

Chen Mo getting himself into the traditional Chinese medicine clinic with a ball became quite the topic of discussion among the second-year students.

He had recently become famous, with people greeting him all along the way back to school.

His response was always: "I'm fine, not limping."

Everyone looked and saw that he seemed perfectly normal.

Little did they know that the next day, during the monthly exam, a heavy rain fell.

In late October, once the weather turned, the wind blew so fiercely that people wished they could wrap themselves in their winter coats.

Chen Mo hadn't experienced a monthly exam since returning to school. It was his first exam at No.1 High School, and his performance was average, placing him in a classroom on the third floor.

Early in the morning, after breakfast, many students rushed to the teaching building, shaking off water droplets from their colorful umbrellas.

At the peak of arrivals, a shout came from the third floor.

"Lao Gou, where's my knee brace?!"

Those passing by, waiting, or closing their umbrellas all looked up.

They saw the school bully leaning over the railing. He seemed to have just gone up, as his forehead was still damp from the rain. Spotting someone coming up the stone steps, he continued, "I remember putting it in your bag this morning!"

The instantly surrounded Lao Gou, feeling like an animal on display, said irritably, "Why would you put it in my bag?!"

"It wasn't cold this morning," the school bully shook his hair, looking like a wet animal, completely unfazed by how his request and actions affected his image as the top bully in high school. "Now I'm cold, come up here."

Five minutes later, most students were already seated and waiting for the exam to begin.

The invigilators entered the classrooms with the test papers.

"Excuse me." A small commotion arose in one of the third-floor classrooms.

The invigilator turned to see the person at the door and spoke gently, "Looking for someone? No problem, come in, there's still time."

The top student in the grade entered this ordinary classroom, carrying a pair of brown fur-lined knee braces.

He walked straight to the middle seat.

"Why are you here?" The school bully looked around amidst the murmurs. "Look at you, drawing attention like a national leader visiting a slum."

Xi Siyan glanced at him. "You do look like you're from a slum. Everyone's talking about how the mighty school bully is cold enough to ask someone to bring him knee braces early in the morning."

"Hand them over." The school bully held out his hand coolly.

The students in the classroom saw that the school bully wasn't taking what belonged to him.

Instead, the top student slightly lowered his eyes, frowned, and asked softly, "Hurting again?"