The dozen or so individuals all had wounds of varying severity. Even the one with the lightest injury had endured a substantial blow from a tiger’s claw, while Wang Dali, the most severely injured, had his arm and leg torn up by the tiger at close range, the wounds deep enough to expose the bone. Without ticulous care, there was a risk that the injuries could render him disabled.
Fortunately, the doctor they had engaged was genuinely skilled. The doctor cleaned the villagers’ wounds and applied his specially prepared herbal dicine, also prescribing the appropriate treatnts to each individual. He assured them that as long as they followed his instructions for applying and taking the dicine, even Wang Dali with his severe injuries, would recover in two to three months.
This should have been good news. If one were a contented and corpulent individual, having escaped the jaws of death and on the way to full recovery, one might have been eager to burn incense and paper in gratitude to the ancestors. However, Wang Dali and the others had entered the mountain in hopes of taking advantage of the situation. Now, having lost both their attempt and their health, and without reaping any benefits while also needing to spend a considerable amount of silver on treatnts, their frustration was palpable.
When the doctor asked for the dical and dicine fees, these villagers turned on him, accusing the doctor of lacking dical ethics and of trying to extort their silver with exorbitant demands.
Upon hearing this, the doctor was nearly apoplectic with rage! He had traveled through heavy snow early in the morning to this remote and impoverished place out of the kindness inherent to a healer. Moreover, the dicinal paste contained several precious ingredients that were difficult to concoct, and his pricing had been fair. To be baselessly accused of lacking dical ethics and of extortion was more than his good temper could bear, and he lost his temper.
Seeing that the villagers refused to pay the agreed sum and were using increasingly offensive language, the doctor and his attendant could not win the argunt and ended up feeling wronged and angry. Eventually, the doctor, with a flick of his sleeve, angrily instructed his attendant to pack up the dicine chest and they left Liu Yang Village, resigning himself to having encountered a bunch of shaless, morally bankrupt people.
The villagers’ houses were connected row upon row, and in such close quarters, it was impossible to keep any disturbance hidden. Consequently, the news of Wang Dali and company not paying for their treatnt and even berating the doctor spread quickly throughout Liu Yang Village. However, no one seed to know why they had risked a midnight hunting trip into the mountains and ended up tangling with a tiger.
Mo Yan was astounded by the shalessness of Wang Dali and the others. Such selfishness, combined with a lack of capability, ant that their scheming was ultimately self-destructive! Once Yang Bao, the village chief, decided to punish them for their deceitful actions towards his own family, they would likely find it difficult to stand firm in Liu Yang Village.
By evading the few hundred wen of dical and dication fees, Wang Dali and the others were quite pleased with themselves, thinking they had gotten a great deal. However, their satisfaction didn’t last longer than two days. The reason being, when Sister-in-law Wang and the others went back to the city to seek out other doctors to change their dressings and continue treatnt, the doctors, upon hearing that they were from Liu Yang Village and treated for tiger-inflicted wounds, refused to make a visit.
It turned out that the doctor from the previous day, still upset when he returned to the city, didn’t want other doctors to have the sa wasted trip and unpleasant experience. He shared the incident with several of his close colleagues, advising them to collect the dical and dication fees upfront to avoid being duped again.
After hearing the full story, these doctors were livid. They had often treated poor common folks and had encountered patients who couldn’t afford the dication fees, but most of them would speak kindly to the doctors, promising to pay the fees when they had the money.
If a family was truly struggling, they would generally only charge for the dication and forgo the consultation fee, considering it an act of kindness. But now that their friend had braved the snow to see patients and had ended up like this, they not only sympathized with him but also privately resolved that if anyone from Liu Yang Village sought their help, they would certainly refuse to see them.
And it didn’t stop there; the doctors went on to share the story with more and more of their colleagues. In this way, the story spread from ten to a hundred, and in a matter of a day or two, nearly all the doctors in the city were quietly aware of the incident of patients from Liu Yang Village failing to pay for their dical treatnt. Hence, no doctor was willing to make a visit, no matter how Sister-in-law Wang and the others threw tantrums or acted outrageously.
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