Chapter 5: Don't Slander the Immortals

"Since Angelo sent you to fetch me, of course I'll go. But I dropped ten grand on this meal, someone flipped the table, and my parents were scared out of their wits. I can't just walk off with you like nothing happened." Carlos Yale dragged out a chair and sat, making it clear he wasn't going anywhere until this was handled. Bennett Lawne was good at reading faces. He swept the room. "Who flipped the table?" "I did." Jonas Quinny didn't fear Bennett. The Quinny family stood behind him. He didn't know why Angelo would beg a banished, useless son-in-law for help, but he was sure Bennett wouldn't touch him over a piece of trash. "Compensate him ten grand," Bennett said. He didn't dare lay hands on Jonas, but he dared make him pay. "Why should I pay?" Jonas sneered. "Even if I burned his house down, who can make me pay?" Bennett's eyes narrowed. He wanted to hit him, but he held back. "Looks like I need to keep teaching you on your sister's behalf," Carlos said, rising and walking toward Jonas. "What are you doing? Don't come closer!" Jonas stumbled back. Seeing Carlos advance step by step, he shouted, "Bennett, save me! Hurry!" Bennett didn't move. Jonas went limp with despair. "I'll pay, damn it, I'll pay!" He really was afraid Carlos would slap him a few more times and ruin his handsome face. Carlos had his mother send over her bank number. A moment later, a text chimed in-$10,000 received. Callie Yare lit up. It was like eating half a feast for free. Carlos said, "The meal's covered. What about my parents' emotional distress?" Bennett was running out of patience. He looked to Kayden Showyer. "Wire Mr. Yale's parents a hundred grand for emotional damages. Immediately." "Y-yes!" Kayden didn't dare refuse. He took Callie Yare's account and sent $100,000 at once. Only then did Carlos let it go, and he left with his parents alongside Bennett. "Damn it! I'm not letting this slide!" Jonas pounded his chest and raged, so mad his lungs felt like they would burst. ... A little over half an hour later, at Jenden First Hospital, in a luxury ward. "Mom, what's wrong? Don't scare me, Mom-doctor! Get a doctor!" Angelo had been talking to his disoriented mother when she suddenly grimaced and collapsed. She wouldn't respond no matter how he called her, and he cried out in panic. A team of top experts rushed in and began an urgent examination of her head. In under three minutes, the results came back. Richard Wokey, face ashen, approached Angelo and said timidly, "Angelo, her condition is very bad. A blocked cerebral vessel has massively ruptured. I'm afraid..." Before he could finish, Angelo kicked him over and roared, losing control, "Trash! Useless trash! If anything happens to my mother, I'll chop you all up and feed you to the dogs!" The doctors trembled. Only a near-septuagenarian pulled down his mask and said, "This isn't the place for bravado. I have two options for you." "One, wait for your mother to die." "Two, consent to immediate craniotomy." Angelo reined in his temper in front of this elder. The hospital had specially brought him from the Imperial Capital to save Angelo's mother: top neurosurgeon Hugo Looske. He was at his best in brain medicine, but his attainments in other fields were deep as well. Even in traditional Chinese medicine he was nationally renowned, hailed as a living fossil of integrated Chinese and Western medicine. It was hard to find a second doctor in the country more famous than him. He had treated countless officials and elites in the Imperial Capital. That was why Angelo didn't dare explode at him. "What's the success rate for a craniotomy?" Angelo asked. "One percent," Hugo said. "What?" Angelo stared. "Last time you said ten percent. How is it only one percent now?" "You delayed the optimal window. If you still won't decide, even that one percent will be gone," Hugo said solemnly. Angelo was crushed with regret. At ten percent, he'd thought it too low, afraid the surgery would fail and he'd lose his mother forever. He put it off for days. Now it was down to one percent. "Mom, I did this to you." Angelo wept, tears streaming. He was famed for cunning and ruthlessness, but when it came to his mother, he was a rare paragon of filial piety-a dutiful son through and through. "Angelo, I brought the man," Bennett said, leading Carlos Yale into the ward. Angelo's eyes lit up. He turned and urged, "Mr. Yale, save my mother. Please, save her!" "Alright." Carlos had meant to set terms, but Angelo's tear-streaked face said the old lady was on the brink. Bargaining now felt wrong. Save first, talk later. He only wanted a hundred grand; he didn't believe Angelo would begrudge that. "Wait," Hugo Looske blocked Carlos and told Angelo, "We can't delay. If he fails and then I operate, I'll tell you now-the morgue can reserve your mother a bed." Damn it, trying to cut off my payday? Carlos bristled, about to speak, but Richard Wokey said, "Professor Looske, Mr. Yale's acupuncture is incredible. Maybe let him try first?" Hugo's face went cold. "If acupuncture worked, when Cao Cao had his headaches, why did Divine Doctor Hua Tuo propose opening the skull instead of using needles?" Richard had no answer. Angelo had been wavering on who should go first. Hearing that, he decided at once. "Operate on my mother!" "Prep the OR. Everyone else out," Hugo ordered, masking up and moving into pre-op. Carlos spread his hands. Angelo had decided. What else could he say? He stepped out. "Mr. Yale, wait," Angelo stopped him outside the OR. "You've already chosen surgery. Why are you stopping me?" Carlos asked. "For safety's sake, wait. If the operation fails, you go in and save my mother. Whether you succeed or not, I'll pay you a hundred grand. If you pull her back, I'll pay you a million." Just for the promise of payment even if he failed, Carlos stayed. It wasn't entirely for the money. If it were, he would have shoved Hugo aside earlier, flicked a few silver needles, and the old lady would have woken up-easy hundred grand. He stayed because Angelo's filial heart moved him. Carlos himself was a filial son. "Angelo, something's wrong!" Barely three minutes after he sat on the bench outside the OR, the doors swung open and Richard Wokey sprinted out, panic-stricken. Angelo's heart sank. A wave of dread flooded him. "Speak." "Just as we were about to start, the old lady... she..." "Mom!" Angelo didn't need to hear the rest. He burst into the OR like a gust of wind. "Mom! Wake up, Mom! I never had the chance to honor Dad. I was counting on you to take double my filial piety for him. If you go, I'll regret it all my life, Mom..." The man in his fifties shook his mother's shoulders and sobbed like a child. "Please accept my condolences. I did everything I could. Her brain suddenly hemorrhaged on a massive scale. Even an immortal couldn't bring her back," Hugo said, drained. "Bullshit." A crisp voice cut through. Carlos Yale strode in with a roll of silver needles. "Don't slander the immortals just because you're a quack. As long as there's one breath left and the three souls and seven spirits haven't scattered, an immortal can turn it around." He yanked Hugo aside. "You-!" Hugo trembled with anger. He bore the title of the Imperial Capital's number one Divine Doctor, and this kid called him a quack? "If you can revive this patient, I'll kneel and kowtow to you," Hugo snapped. "Watch closely." Carlos drew three silver needles. "For a patient who looks dead but still has a breath, you first seal the three souls." He slid needles into the old lady's brow and both shoulders. "Then seal the seven spirits." Seven more needles went in. "Next, clear the cerebral vessels." He peppered her scalp with over a dozen quick strikes, then pulled them out. "After that, vent the stagnant blood." Another flurry of needles flashed. Soon, dark, clotted blood trickled from the old woman's eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. "Impossible... miraculous!" Hugo had thought Carlos was putting on a show. Seeing the clots drain, he couldn't help crying out. The other doctors stood slack-jawed. "Finally, unseal the three souls and seven spirits." When the bad blood had drained, Carlos first removed the phlebotomy needles, then the ten sealing needles. The old lady's eyes snapped open as if jolted back from the dead. "Mom! You're awake!" Angelo lunged forward, ecstatic. "Daya? Are you my Daya?" the old woman whispered through dry lips. "Yes, Mom, it's me, Daya. It's me!" Angelo laughed and hugged his mother tight. Warmth flooded the operating room. "Divine Doctor Yale, please accept the bow of your junior, Hugo Looske!" Before Carlos could speak, Hugo knelt, thoroughly convinced. In front of a true master of the healing arts, age meant nothing-he was the junior. "Divine Doctor Yale, please accept Angelo's bow. Thank you for saving my mother. I will remember this kindness all my life!" Angelo knelt in gratitude. A man's knees were worth gold; for his mother, it was worth it. "Divine Doctor..." The old woman tried to get off the table to bow as well, and Carlos stopped her. "No need, ma'am." "Up, both of you," he said. "Thank you, Divine Doctor." They stood. "Bennett, get Divine Doctor Yale's account number. Have Angelo Group wire him a million-no, two million." "Yes, Angelo." Bennett quickly took Carlos's bank details and stepped aside to notify Finance. Carlos looked to Hugo Looske. "Can you get me a medical license?" "I can. Absolutely." "How fast?" "If we start now, I can have it for you first thing tomorrow." "Good. Then let's go." A gentleman's revenge could wait ten years. Carlos Yale didn't wait a day. Once he had the license, he'd go slap Arya Zimmerman's father's face. That bottle of sleeping pills had come from that old man. He had goaded Carlos into swallowing them, too. He who did evil reaped evil. Time to let that old man have a taste.