indianbanksassociation Chapter 104 "Forensic Examination" in the Vegetable Market and Absolute Obsessive-Compulsi
Chapter 104 "Forensic Examination" in the Vegetable Market and Absolute Obsessive-Compulsi
At 5:30 a.m., at the largest agricultural wholesale market in the southern suburbs of Changxiang City.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of raw food, the rotten smell of vegetable leaves, and the tobacco smell of cheap cigarettes.
Renxin Pharmacy's "special purchasing team" seems out of place.
Pierre was wearing his signature pristine white chef's uniform, though he was forced to wear a dust cover-up. He still insisted on wearing his tall chef's hat, a red scarf around his neck, and a Louis Vuitton travel bag in his hand—used to carry onions, ginger, and garlic.
He tiptoed, trying to avoid every puddle on the ground, his expression as if he were navigating a minefield.
"What top-quality ingredients could a place like this have?" Pierre picked up a droopy carrot with two fingers, his face full of disgust. "This carrot has less than 60% water content; its soul is dead. Dr. Wang, cooking with something like this is an insult to my skills."
Wang Minyu followed behind, still holding the stainless steel tea mug, calmly inhaling the damp, cool morning air: "I don't know if the soul is dead or not, but this radish definitely needs to be in the ICU. Guan Shan, stop eating cucumbers raw over there, did you pay for it?"
At a vegetable stall not far away, Guan Shan was sampling the vegetables like a bulldozer.
The stall owner, an older woman, watched in horror as the burly man devoured cucumbers one after another without even removing the thorns. She didn't dare ask for money yet, and instead asked him if he needed some water to drink.
Su Qing squatted in front of a pork stall, wearing latex gloves, staring coldly at the piece of pork belly.
"The muscle fibers are loose, the color is dark red, and the rebound speed after pressing exceeds two seconds." Su Qing raised his head and said to the smiling butcher, "This pig experienced a prolonged stress response before dying, resulting in severe lactic acid buildup. Moreover, judging from the distribution of bloodstains on the cut surface, the bleeding was incomplete. If an autopsy were performed on this piece of meat, I would classify it as 'abnormal slaughter'."
The butcher's knife clattered onto the chopping board: "Young lady, if you're buying meat, just buy meat. Don't make it sound like a murder scene, okay? This pig was legitimately slaughtered in the early morning!"
"What time is it in the early morning?" Su Qing pressed, "Depending on the degree of rigor mortis..."
"Alright." Wang Minyu walked over and grabbed Su Qing by the back of her collar. "We're here to buy groceries, not to solve a case. Pierre, have you found your 'true love' yet?"
Pierre shook his head, his face filled with despair: "It's all garbage. Tomatoes ripened with chemical fertilizers, beef injected with water, and that pile of cabbages preserved with formaldehyde... I think my career is going to end here."
Just then, a commotion arose in a corner of the market.
"Get out! All of you get out! I said I'm not selling, and that's final!"
A roar pierced through the noisy crowd.
Wang Minyu raised an eyebrow: "Judging from that tone of voice, you have a lot of liver fire. Let's go take a look."
In the corner, a small stall was surrounded by people.
Behind the stall sat a thin old man, wearing a faded Zhongshan suit, with an old-fashioned large scale at his feet.
Strangely, his stall was completely different from the other disorganized vendors.
All the green peppers were arranged neatly according to their size and curvature, with red and green peppers alternating, forming a perfect rectangle.
The potatoes were wiped spotless and even arranged in a gradient of color according to the shades of their skin.
Even the most difficult-to-manage chives were trimmed to the same length with their roots aligned, like rows of soldiers on parade.
Pierre's eyes lit up instantly.
"This...this is art!" Pierre rushed over, his hands trembling as he tried to touch the chives. "This respect for the ingredients, this almost divine sense of order..."
"Don't move!"
The old man suddenly stood up, brandishing a fly swatter, his eyes fierce. "That bunch of chives is tilted at a 45-degree angle. You touched it, and the angle changed! It won't taste good if it's tilted!"
Pierre was stunned: "Does the angle affect the taste?"
"Nonsense!" the old man roared. "Everything has its reason! When the energy flows smoothly, the flavor is right; if it's misplaced, the energy dissipates! You ignorant folks, don't you dare dirty my food!"
The surrounding vendors were whispering among themselves.
"Old Cai has gone mad again."
"That's right, there are always a few days every month when they don't sell vegetables and just curse people."
"It's a pity about his excellent vegetable-growing skills; the vegetables were indeed delicious, but he was sick."
Wang Minyu stood outside the crowd and activated the [Aura Observation Technique].
The system panel pops up:
[Target: Cai Genhua (Nickname: Cai Chi)]
[Occupation: Experienced Farmer]
Symptoms: Cluster headaches (during attacks), severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, temporomandibular joint disorder.
[Current status: Pain level 8 (on the verge of exploding), extremely high visual sensitivity; any asymmetrical object will trigger severe neuralgia.]
Wang Minyu laughed. This wasn't a bad temper; he was just in excruciating pain.
"Pierre, step back." Wang Minyu handed the teacup to Li Siyuan and strode forward.
Old Cai is on the verge of collapse.
In his view, the world is distorted.
The chef in the white shirt had his bow tie slightly crooked by a millimeter. This one-millimeter error was magnified infinitely in his eyes, like a red-hot steel needle piercing his eye socket.
"Straighten your bow tie! Straighten it!" Old Cai roared in pain, clutching his right eye.
Pierre was so startled that he immediately reached for his collar.
"Sir," Wang Minyu's voice wasn't loud, but it was extremely penetrating, "does it feel like there's a drill drilling behind your right eye socket? The tears won't stop, your nose is stuffy, and... you feel like vomiting when you see anything messy?"
Old Cai froze, staring at Wang Minyu with a one-eyed glare: "Who are you?"
"I'm a doctor," Wang Minyu pointed to his white coat, "and a doctor who specializes in treating the 'I can't stand anyone' kind of person disease."
"Nonsense! I have a migraine! Painkillers aren't working!" Old Cai waved his hand irritably. "Get out of the way, don't block the light, it's causing asymmetrical light refraction!"
"This isn't a migraine, it's called a cluster headache, commonly known as a 'suicidal headache.'" Wang Minyu didn't back down; instead, he took a step forward. "When it flares up, the pain is comparable to childbirth. And yours is visually induced, meaning that your compulsive behavior of setting the dishes is actually a defense mechanism your brain has developed to relieve pain. You think that setting them straight will stop the pain, but actually, the more you set them straight, the more it hurts."
Old Cai was stunned.
Every word the young man uttered hit his sore spot perfectly.
"So what?" Old Cai gritted his teeth, cold sweat streaming down his forehead. "It's incurable... I've had this problem for twenty years. I went to a big hospital, and they said it was a nerve short circuit... Ah!"
A scream rang out. Old Cai suddenly clutched his head, curled up under the table, and convulsed violently. The pain had clearly exceeded his limit.
"It's acting up." Wang Minyu's eyes sharpened.
People around were so frightened that they all backed away.
"Call an ambulance quickly! Old Cai's gone mad!"
"Is it a brain hemorrhage?"
"Su Qing, hold him down!" Wang Minyu spoke very quickly. "Guan Shan, go to the seafood stall next door and get me a basin of ice water, the colder the better! Pierre, give me one of those long chopsticks from your pocket."
"Huh?" Pierre was adjusting his bow tie when he subconsciously pulled out the long chopsticks he always carried with him for tasting the food.
Su Qing moved extremely quickly, kneeling on one knee and using her weight and the principle of leverage to firmly lock Old Cai's kicking legs.
Guan Shan rushed over carrying a bucket of dirty water mixed with crushed ice: "It's here! Chilled!"
"What are you doing?" a middle-aged woman buying groceries nearby exclaimed. "Are you trying to kill me?"
Wang Minyu ignored him, grabbed a handful of crushed ice, and applied it directly to the Fengfu acupoint on the back of Old Cai's neck and the temples on both sides.
"This uses cold stimulation to constrict blood vessels and block the transmission of pain signals," Wang Minyu explained to Li Siyuan while quickly wiping the long chopstick with an alcohol swab.
At that moment, a middle-aged man carrying a briefcase squeezed in; he looked like a doctor who was passing by.
"Stop! This is ridiculous!" the man shouted. "The patient is clearly showing signs of an impending stroke. Moving him and applying cold compresses like this will worsen the vasospasm and cause a stroke! I'm the deputy director of the neurology department at the Third Municipal Hospital. Get out of the way!"
Upon hearing that he was the director of a reputable hospital, the surrounding people immediately changed their tune and began to criticize Wang Minyu.
"Do you even know anything about medicine, young man?"
"Make way, let the experts see!"
Wang Minyu didn't even raise his head; the chopsticks in his hand were steadily suspended above Old Cai's nostrils.
"Stroke patients often experience facial drooping and unilateral limb weakness, but this old man has extremely high muscle tone on both sides, accompanied by conjunctival congestion and tearing," Wang Minyu said coldly. "This is a parasympathetic storm caused by excessive excitation of the sphenoid ganglion. If you don't want him to die from the pain or bite off his tongue, just shut up."
"You…" the deputy director stammered, "Using chopsticks to cure a headache? That's unheard of! That's pseudoscience!"
Whether it's pseudoscience or not, look at the results.
Before Wang Minyu could finish speaking, the long chopsticks in his hand, like a venomous snake, precisely and swiftly probed into Old Cai's right nostril.
"Ugh!" Old Cai straightened up.
The horrifying scene elicited gasps from the onlookers. Pierre covered his eyes.
But Wang Minyu's hands were extremely steady.
The chopsticks pierced through the nasal turbinates and precisely reached the sphenoid ganglion located deep within the nasal cavity.
He flicked his wrist slightly, applying just the right amount of pressure, and at the same time used his internal energy to transmit a shockwave through the chopsticks.
"Sphenoid ganglion block, a low-budget physical version," Wang Minyu said in a low voice.
A miracle happened.
Old Cai, who had been curled up and roaring like a shrimp, suddenly went limp.
The taut muscle lines relaxed, and the ferocious expression on his face receded like the tide.
Five seconds later, Wang Minyu pulled out his chopsticks.
Old Cai was panting heavily, his eyes somewhat glazed over, but his bloodshot right eye had stopped tearing.
"It hurts...it doesn't hurt anymore?" Old Cai touched his head, looking incredulous. "It felt like an axe was chopping at me, and then suddenly...it was like the power went out."
The deputy director gaped, his glasses slipping down his nose: "This... how is this possible? How can simple physical stimulation achieve an anesthetic block? This doesn't make sense anatomically..."
"Anatomy is dead, but people are alive." Wang Minyu stood up, threw his chopsticks into the trash can, and said, "The sphenoid ganglion is a highly effective target for treating cluster headaches. Western medicine usually uses lidocaine nasal drops, but what I just used was acupressure. The principle is the same: to block nerve impulses."
He turned to look at Old Cai: "This is just emergency treatment. To cure it completely, we need to regulate your liver yang hyperactivity. Also, you need to treat your obsessive-compulsive disorder, otherwise this vegetable stall will drive you crazy sooner or later."
Old Cai got up from the ground and dusted himself off.
He gave Wang Minyu a deep look, the fierceness gone, replaced by a complex sense of awe.
Which hospital are you from?
"Renxin Pharmacy is right on the old street," Wang Minyu pointed to Pierre. "Now that your head is healed, can we talk about the dishes?"
Old Cai glanced at Pierre, then at the vegetables on his own stall that remained relatively neat despite the chaos.
"These vegetables won't do." Old Cai suddenly kicked over his stall.
The crowd erupted in uproar.
"These are just some 'common goods' I grew to pass market regulations. They're better than others', but they don't live up to your skills." Old Cai pointed at Pierre, his tone firm but with a hint of approval. "Since this young doctor saved my life, I can't just give you garbage. Want to eat the real thing? Come with me to the field."