“She said undress, but really it was just unbuttoning the outer skirt.”
Wen Shuhe looked at Shen Yu, her tone carrying a hint of disappointment.
At this moment, Shen Yu was holding a shiny metal object, with one end placed in her ear and the other pressed against her own chest, listening intently.
She was extraordinarily focused.
Wen Shuhe didn’t understand.
Seeing Shen Yu silent for so long, she thought she might have said something wrong and chilled the atmosphere.
So she carefully made a joke to get Shen Yu’s attention.
But Shen Yu simply placed her finger before her lips, signaling Wen Shuhe to remain quiet.
Shen Yu’s gaze was so serious that it even startled Wen Shuhe for a moment.
As the saying goes, it’s not the smiling Imperial Physician that scares you—it’s the one with lowered brows.
At this moment, all kinds of negative emotions were interwoven in Shen Yu’s eyes, making Wen Shuhe slow her breathing by several beats.
“Imperial Physician Shen, is there something seriously wrong with my body?”
Wen Shuhe asked cautiously.
“Don’t worry, let me conduct a more thorough examination. Miss Wen, how old are you this year?”
“Nin… nineteen. What… what’s wrong?”
Hearing Shen Yu’s question, Wen Shuhe became even more frightened.
Truth be told, she had already suspected her illness might not end well.
Because she coughed up blood.
Wen Shuhe remembered that the daughter of the Lu Family in the southern part of the Capital City had the same symptoms as her.
She was gone before she reached thirty.
When she died, she didn’t even look human anymore—clearly hadn’t eaten or drunk for days, yet her entire body was bloated.
It was terrifying.
If her own fate were the same, to be gone before thirty, wouldn’t that mean…
Wen Shuhe didn’t dare continue thinking.
She was afraid.
Fear began to spread through her heart.
At this moment, time suddenly felt unbearably long.
Every movement Shen Yu made during the examination became incredibly clear.
Wen Shuhe could even count Shen Yu’s breaths.
Though she was already at her limit of tension, she still didn’t dare ask Shen Yu about her current condition.
She worried that speaking might affect Shen Yu’s examination results.
“Take a deep breath. Inhale. Yes, again… Exhale. Slowly now. Good. That’s enough.”
After about an hour, Shen Yu finally finished the examination.
The expression on her face remained grim.
“I’ve heard from Minister Wen that Imperial Physicians from the Imperial Academy of Medicine were previously invited to treat you. Do you remember what their conclusions were, Miss Wen?”
Though the Imperial Physicians weren’t particularly reliable, Shen Yu still wanted to hear their opinions.
Combined with what she already knew, it might help her make a more accurate judgment.
“They said my condition has five symptoms.”
Wen Shuhe nodded and recalled carefully.
“First, coughing. This is not an ordinary common cold cough. The sound varies—sometimes light, sometimes heavy. It lingers without healing, unpredictable between morning and evening, even turning into violent fits. The sound is like a broken jar. Medication has little effect. This requires close attention.”
Shen Yu nodded.
The Imperial Academy of Medicine’s diagnosis did have some merit.
The persistent coughing was indeed one of Wen Shuhe’s major symptoms.
“Second, bloody sputum. At first, the sputum is white or yellow, but occasionally you see traces of blood, like red threads scattered in white snow. It’s not a large gush, so people often overlook it. But they don’t realize this is a sign of lung damage—the most critical indicator.”
Coughing up blood.
When the Imperial Physicians first examined her, it was just blood threads.
By now, it had evolved into plum blossom-sized blood stains.
The speed of progression exceeded Shen Yu’s imagination.
Without a doubt, this added another layer of unease to Shen Yu’s mind.
“Third, dull chest pain. The pain is not in the center, but on the right side. It’s subtle, like a light needle prick, coming and going. In rainy weather, after exertion, or when coughing severely, the pain always worsens.”
“Fourth, shortness of breath. At first, it’s only when climbing stairs or walking quickly. She thinks it’s just a weak constitution and doesn’t pay attention. But upon careful observation, it’s caused by impaired lung qi ascending and descending—not comparable to simple qi and blood deficiency.”
“Fifth, gradual physical decline.”
At this point, Shen Yu interrupted Wen Shuhe.
She couldn’t bear listening to the Imperial Physicians’ flowery, literary diagnoses any longer.
If there were a real emergency, by the time they finished all their verbose descriptions, the patient could have died three times over.
It was nothing more than coughing, coughing up blood, chest pain accompanied by chest tightness and shortness of breath, along with physical weakness and gradual weight loss.
“I have a general idea, Miss Wen. The results might be difficult for you to accept. But…”
Shen Yu didn’t know how to tell Wen Shuhe.
It was clear that Wen Shuhe’s condition was most likely lung cancer.
A disease with an extremely high mortality rate even in modern times, let alone in this ancient era.
However, there was good news: Wen Shuhe’s condition was relatively stable.
Based on Shen Yu’s examination, it was almost certainly early-stage lung cancer, still a long way from mid-to-late stage.
But the bad news was…
Shen Yu was powerless to do anything about it.
Moreover, Shen Yu didn’t have professional equipment, let alone the ability to perform a biopsy to see the extent of cancer cell spread.
If considering the worst-case scenario, even for early-stage lung cancer, small cell lung cancer spreads exponentially.
Once the cancer begins to form a significant mass, it often takes only a few months to progress from early to late stage.
However, based on Shen Yu’s memories from her previous life, about thirty percent or more of lung cancers are “indolent” tumors.
Their doubling time often exceeds four hundred days.
They grow slowly and aren’t immediately fatal.
But even with such slow progression, it wouldn’t take many years to claim Wen Shuhe’s life.
Shen Yu was ninety-nine percent certain it was lung cancer, with the lesion located in the upper lobe of the right lung.
The location of the cancer cells was textbook-perfect.
If a lobectomy were performed, the blood vessel distribution in that area was relatively regular, and the surgical field would be easy to expose.
But unfortunately…
There was no “if.”
For now, Wen Shuhe’s situation left no option but to wait for death in despair.
What Shen Yu could do was perhaps only let her understand clearly while waiting for the end.
For Shen Yu, that was too cruel.
Nineteen-year-old Wen Shuhe, at the prime of her life, and still unmarried at her age—she was most likely the pearl in her family’s palm, deeply cherished.
Plus, her elder brother Wen Boyan’s nickname was Zhaomei’er (Sister-Seeker)… In such a feudal era, for a wealthy family to treat a daughter this way was something Shen Yu couldn’t even imagine.
Such a wonderful young girl, her life had only just begun.
Shen Yu didn’t want to be the one to pronounce the death sentence on her beautiful life… but she had no choice.
As a physician, she could only watch her patient die in pain with clear eyes.
Shen Yu knew the treatment plan.
In her previous life, for Wen Shuhe’s condition, all that was needed was to remove or partially remove the upper lobe of the right lung where the cancer cells were located.
With proper care and relying on the body’s powerful compensatory functions, her life wouldn’t be affected at all.
She could still enjoy all the beauty of this world, all its sweetness and bitterness.
She could still run and jump, talk and laugh, and spend the rest of her life happily with those she loved and those who loved her.
But reality was…
Sigh.
Thinking about this, a deep sense of powerlessness and failure enveloped Shen Yu.
She really didn’t know how to begin.
“Imperial Physician Shen, my condition… is it very bad? Do I not have many years left?”
“Please… please just tell me. It’s alright. Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more exhausted. My appetite keeps shrinking, I’m getting thinner, I can’t muster any strength, and I can barely speak.”
“Facing the concern from my father, mother, and elder brother—at first, I felt warmth. But later, it only left me irritated.”
“I feel like I’m dragging them down.”
Wen Shuhe lowered her eyes.
Her delicate face was full of sorrow.
Every word she spoke came with a sigh.
“To be honest with you, in the past two years, my health has been declining. My father is busy with official duties every day, but he never forgets to care for me. The silver he’s spent on me—if not a hundred thousand, then at least eighty or ninety thousand taels.”
“But it can’t be cured… The savings our family accumulated over the years are almost all spent by me.”
The more Wen Shuhe spoke, the more dejected she became.
Tears as large as beans flowed from the corners of her eyes.
They fell with a patter, landing on her chest, soaking a large patch of her white inner garment.
“There were several times when I even thought about just jumping into the river and ending it all.”
“But whenever I think of my parents and my brother, I can’t bring myself to do it. My heart is full of reluctance.”
“They’re so good to me. They’ve done so much for me… How could I bear to leave them and go?”
“It’s not untreatable.”
Shen Yu hesitated repeatedly before finally voicing the bold thought in her mind.
Honestly, she regretted it the moment she said it.
How was Shen Yu supposed to treat Wen Shuhe?
The probability of curing Wen Shuhe with herbal decoctions was no higher than Shen Yu finding a two-ton gold nugget on the street.
“It can be treated?”
Wen Shuhe instinctively looked up.
If someone else had said her stubborn disease could be cured, she wouldn’t have believed it for a moment.
But when Shen Yu said it…
Wen Shuhe believed it completely.
Not because she was fond of Shen Yu’s exceptionally beautiful face, but mainly because Shen Yu’s reputation was truly thunderous.
Even someone like Wen Shuhe, who was bedridden and recuperating at home, had heard about it.
Listing them one by one, the miraculous things Shen Yu had done couldn’t be counted on one hand.
“It can… it can be treated. I’ll do my best, Miss Wen. You shouldn’t give up easily either.”
Shen Yu nodded with some difficulty.
“Then… can you call me Shuhe, Imperial Physician Shen?”
“Hmm?”
Shen Yu couldn’t quite understand this girl’s train of thought.
She was trying to reassure her, and what was this about?
“That’s fine, but what does this have to do with the illness we’re discussing?”
“The Imperial Physicians said that for my condition, keeping a light heart helps alleviate it. This… this is part of the treatment too, isn’t it?”
Wen Shuhe’s eyes darted.
She was lying, but in her view, it wasn’t really a lie.
She just wanted to get closer to Shen Yu.
When the relationship between patient and physician improves, they can talk about anything, and treatment becomes smoother.
Isn’t that right?
So this was part of the treatment!
“Which Imperial Physician said that? Quite interesting…”
Considering the patient’s emotions—that wasn’t common among those rigid Imperial Physicians.
For cancer patients, this was an extremely important topic, even as critical as a scalpel.
As a doctor, Shen Yu had seen too many patients with similar conditions and similar treatments who ended up with completely different outcomes.
The difference in mindset was often a key factor in the gap in their quality of life, and even survival time.
“A light heart does help greatly with your condition. If this makes you happy, I have no objection.”
“Then! Then from now on, we’re friends. Can I call you by your name too?”
Wen Shuhe was somewhat surprised.
What she had casually said actually had merit in Shen Yu’s eyes.
Indeed, heaven was looking after her, allowing her to grow closer to Shen Yu.
This was practically heaven spoon-feeding her!
“Of course. But I’m more curious which Imperial Physician told you these things.”
Shen Yu’s Mu’en Hall was desperately seeking talent.