Chapter 15: Scouting.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I got carried away. I'm going to tone it down. If you ever need any medical help, I will give you a big discount." I apologized to my neighbor; he was a reasonable person and didn't call the authorities on me.

Were there even any authorities in this city? I had never seen any police going around, so maybe he just didn't have the option to call the pigs on me.

Apparently, cranking up the volume for heavy metal in the middle of the night didn't sit right with the people who lived nearby.

"Finally, I can't deal with that music anymore; it's just shouting!" She screamed at me, Jasmine, after I came out of her house with my hand, the place she went into to skip any interaction I had with any other person.

"It's not shouting!" I protested; that was the only thing that stopped the voices in my head from letting me rest, other than working on things. "It's highly acclaimed and world-renowned heavy metal music; you sound just like my mother!"

"I've never heard anything about this metal music; I'm just happy you won't be able to set it to maximum volume anymore!" She replied with a smug smile on her face.

She was a fool to think that I would settle for anything but maximum volume.

A fool who would regret her words.

The louder the music, the better the metal.

I smirked.

"Oh no," she muttered, but it was far too late, as I was already slapping soundproofing runes on every wall.

The intent I put into the thing was very peaceful: 'Stop all vibrations, you sick fuck, or I will put you inside a furnace."

It worked fantastically, I hoped, as I kept going, putting more and more runes on every wall of the clinic, saying, "Stop that!" Jasmine shouted, but it was far too late to stop my madness.

She despaired, I laughed, and I turned on the volume on my magical music box to the actual maximum level, the ear-exploding level.

The only thing that spared me from having my ears shoot blood was the insanely practical thing that was cultivation. I could barely believe how many uses there were to the magical thing I could find out.

Then I lay on the ground, all the magical juice in my veins being drained, but it was worth it as I saw Jasmine disappear from the world and back into my hand. I just hoped for her that it was as soundproof as my walls.

I took my shirt off and went back to work on another of my inventions.

At the rate I was going, I might cause an industrial revolution rather than the medical revolution that I so wished for.

But who could say that the same man couldn't cause more than one revolution?

So I created a floating chair just because I could and had nothing better to do. It was done only after a couple of hours, without any feeling of tiredness after the entire night of working and partying.

"Shit," I muttered after looking at the clock.

I had played around the entire night and done no actual work, and now I was late to open the clinic.

I turned the music down and looked at the highly shiny walls of my house, as all the runes that I slapped everywhere without rhyme or reason kept absorbing all the vibrations from the music.

"Huh." This wasn't something I had calculated, mainly because I was awful at math and not because of my lack of foresight.

Definitely.

I threw a "hide every rune, you little bastard," and the walls, which regained their boring pale colors,

"That's useful." I said to myself, going to open the clinic and turning the sign from closed to open.

"Finally." I heard, seeing the same lady from the day before making her way into my humble clinic, and after wondering if she had ever told me her name and realizing that even if she had done so, I wouldn't remember it anyway, I just shrugged.

"Hello, how may I help you?" I asked while sitting on my brand new floating chair.

It could rotate, and I was no longer confined to having to move the chair around; just a push with my feet, and it would move.

And it floated, so I was particularly proud of my little brainchild that defied the laws of physics as I understood them.

But the laws of physics as I understood them didn't really matter when I could move around at inhuman speeds while creating mirage clones as if I were in some anime, so I didn't bother too much.

"As I already told you yesterday, my lady wishes to talk with you." The lady said that irritation was evident on her face.

"Sure, and I told you to take an appointment for a home visit or to come here herself or send someone to speak on her behalf; I don't think I gave you too few options." I replied with the incredibly polite smile that I had learned to put on in the face of annoying patients.

Some of my patients weren't patient at all.

As if they knew anything about my field of specialization better than I did; if they knew anything about medicine, they wouldn't be here; they would understand things like 'don't lick dust' or 'if your arm hurts for twenty years, there is a problem."

"That is exactly why I am here; I have been appointed to be my lady's speaker. Anything against these arrangements?" She asked with a small smile.

"Not at all; if it doesn't bother you, you have all the time until my first patient of the day; after that, I would have to begin my work day." I replied, putting a clear boundary on the length of this conversation.

"That's agreeable. First of all, I would like to extend an invitation to you. We have heard of your medical expertise; a doctor able to reattach a severed limb while living with no sequelae is someone we definitely want on our side." She explained.

Is she scouting me for some hospital?

I didn't even know there were hospitals in this world.

"I'm sorry, but you still haven't said who sent you; I don't know who your group or your lady is." I replied, putting my words in my usual polite, doctor-like manner. Bedside manners were something that I found very important, as every doctor should.

"Excuse me, I work under Princess Can Sue of the Blue Wind imperial family; should you accept her offer, you will perform a probatory period as an exclusive medic in the Blue Moon Profound Palace." She continued with her offer.

After my first thought, "Holy sh*t, why would a princess want me?" I came to ponder her exact wording.

"Can you define exclusive medicine?" I replied, inquiring as was usual in any job interview, even those that I didn't initiate myself or actually ask for.

"Yes," she replied without missing a beat, "as an exclusive medic, you would have a stable salary and the esteemed status of an official medic, with full coverage and treatment as an inner member of the Profound Palace; in exchange, you would have to treat the members that the profound palace sends to you, while prohibiting you from making any contract with outside powers."

I thought about it; this lady definitely knew what she was doing, talking about the benefits first and foremost.

Thankfully, I had asked Jing Yun and his uncle about what was going on in the city; the fact that there were political powers actively vying for power, even using force to acquire it, was sickening to me.

This was the wet dream of any anarchist: a lawless society where the strongest called themselves kings and hogged the resources while those without power had to fight for the scraps, and unfortunately, a good medic was among the resources they were fighting for.

"What kind of injuries are we talking about?" I asked because knowing what the job entailed would make everything easier.

"Stabbing wounds and strong impacts, mainly amputated limbs, are mostly the kinds of injuries you would find in cultivators fighting among each other." She explained, but I didn't like her answer one bit.

Why should I help people who went out of their way to fight among each other while the coming people in my area relied on me to live with dignity or even just basic survival, helping them and teaching them how to cure the basic ailments that preventably took their lives?

But those benefits were tempting; I couldn't lie about it; just the protection from the profound palace, one of the biggest powers in this city, would be a great boon to help me in this violent city, and eventually my disciple too.

"Would I have to move for this job?" I asked.

The girl thought for a few seconds before giving her answer: "That would be most ideal; while the road from here to the profound palace isn't long at all, it would make bringing urgent patients there easy and without danger." She concluded.

I sighed, "Then, I'm afraid I'll have to refuse."

"Why?" She replied, "If it's the compensation that is lacking, for someone of your skill, it is easy to get more benefits, a steady influx of cultivation aids being the least of them."

I had no idea what cultivation aids were, but they were like drugs in bodybuilding, and I didn't want them. I was the natural kind of guy; my body is a temple and all that.

"No, it's not about that, you see." I said, as the bell above the door rang as the first patient came in, "There are many people that need me here; I can't just leave them without the help they need. Excuse me for a couple of minutes."

I left my office, walked to the old lady, and greeted her with a smile. I always loved when the old lady of the neighborhood passed by and said, "Miss Yang, it has been a while!"

"You're always so busy, brat. I passed earlier and found the clinic closed. Did you oversleep, or did something happen? I heard from Old Feng that he heard many loud noises tonight." She said, failing to mask her concern about my health with a facade of annoyance, that Old Feng, my neighbor, had evidently already started gossiping.

"Nothing troublesome, I assure you; I was just too taken in by my new invention!" I replied.

"Young people these days..." She mumbled in humor as I guided her into my office. She then saw the nameless lady who tried to scout me while I was still inside. "Oh my, doctor, I didn't know you had a guest; she is so pretty! Is she your girlfriend? And here I wanted to put you together with my granddaughter."

She just seemed sad about it, but I could see the spark in the old lady's eyes: "Keep him tight, young lady; he is a perfect husband, but also the kind that all the ladies aim for!"

The nameless lady just raised an eyebrow in question. I chuckled at the old lady's antics and retrieved the usual medication that I had always ready for her, which I finally managed to make in pill form: "Here, Miss Yang, the usual; take them with a glass of water after the meals and it should help your pain, and your granddaughter is fourteen years old; that's a bit younger than I'm used to."

"You would be a match made in heaven, I tell you!" She chuckled as she left—what a storm that old lady was!

But she was one of the few windows to the outside world that I had, and the food she made was fantastic.

I sat back on my floating chair in front of my guest and said, "Excuse the interruption; would you like some tea as an apology?"

"Yes, thank you." She replied that, for some reason, she seemed far less stuck up than she was before.

"Oh, where are my manners? I never asked your name; what can I call you?" I continued; she seemed nice, and it was never bad to make a friendship with someone close to the princess of the empire you lived in.

"I am called Lan Xueruo; I assume that I can call you Doctor Paracelsus, correct?" She replied, wondering at the sight of my magical automatic tea maker.

This magical cultivation thingy was really nice and versatile too.

"Oh yes, I'm still not used to people calling me by that name; you can call me as you wish. I still regret the day I chose it; I should have taken something cooler." I replied, not making it a secret that Paracelsus had been a fake name.

While it sounded cool, it lacked that something that was so important to a real name, something that I couldn't describe, so I just decided to use it as a store name and nothing more, remaining nameless myself.

"Is that so? In that case, what is your real name?" She replied, sipping on my automatic tea, probably marveling at how good it was; the certainty of the machine was fantastic.

"I forgot it; that's not important." I replied nonchalantly.

Was it Yun or something? No, that was my client; maybe something with 'ao' in it, but the day I came into this world, learning my name was the least of my worries.

"Is that so?" she mumbled.

Did she need anything else? It would be too awkward to ask her to leave now.

"Are you positive that you don't want to work for us? It would bring a great amount of wealth your way, more than you can need." She continued.

"I'm sorry, but wealth and power are not what I'm after," I replied, cutting to the chase. "Is there anything else that I can help you with?"

"In that case, I would like to ask for your help. Should the need for a skilled medic ever arise, I assume that taking an appointment for a so-called 'home visit' should be enough." She concluded.

"Absolutely, helping people is my job, but in case of an emergency, you won't need any appointments; we do emergency treatments here." I concluded, escorting the young lady out of the clinic after she finished her tea.

That day, I had fewer patients than usual.