Early the next morning, the street was shrouded in fog. Despite his efforts, Zhao Yang still felt a bit cold, so he found a nearby shop and had a steaming hot bowl of wontons. After swallowing half a bowl of hot soup, Zhao Yang breathed out comfortably.
Before leaving the house, he glanced at his watch and saw there was still half an hour before the Forestry Bureau started work.
He bought a pack of plum cigarettes for five yuan at a convenience store and had just reached the street corner when he saw a crowd gathered around a middle-aged man, who appeared to be in his fifties and slightly overweight, lying unconscious on the ground.
"What happened here?" Zhao Yang approached the edge of the crowd and asked.
"Don't know. I saw him from a distance just walking along, and then he fell to the ground."
"Call an ambulance quickly!" someone in the crowd suggested.
The onlookers were about to make a call.
The person crouching beside the middle-aged man spoke up, "Don't bother calling. You'll just waste time. The Forestry Hospital is only two streets away; let's carry him over!"
"Alright, let's carry him over!"
Just as everyone was about to reach out their hands, someone immediately said, "Take a picture first, so we have proof later."
Watching this scene, Zhao Yang thought that people's sense of prevention had indeed increased. No matter how many swindlers there were, they couldn't stop the enthusiasm of kind-hearted people. But still...
Just as they finished taking photos and were about to lift the man, Zhao Yang stepped forward to stop them.
"Don't move him just yet."
He dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stamped it out before crouching down next to the middle-aged man and placing his hand on the man's wrist.
Pulse Diagnosis?
The onlooking crowd murmured among themselves, surprised that such a young man could perform pulse diagnosis.
Zhao Yang's face was expressionless as he carefully felt the middle-aged man's pulse. After a moment, he lifted the man's eyelid for a quick look and then said, "It's a cerebral hemorrhage."
Cerebral hemorrhage!
The surrounding crowd gasped in unison!
"Call an ambulance," Zhao Yang said, turning to the people around him.
"It's so close. We could just carry him over!" the man crouching next to Zhao Yang said.
Zhao Yang frowned slightly and replied, "You think you can move someone with a cerebral hemorrhage around like that? Call the ambulance quickly."
After hearing Zhao Yang's words, someone in the crowd immediately dialed 120.
"You say it's a cerebral hemorrhage and it's a cerebral hemorrhage?" The man beside him scoffed, "Studied medicine for two days, and now you think you're a doctor."
Zhao Yang glanced at the man and chuckled inwardly. Still, he said, "Brother, has your wife been a bit unhappy lately, always acting up?"
The man was puzzled and couldn't help asking, "How do you know that?"
Zhao Yang let out a laugh and said, "How I know is better left unsaid."
Seeing Zhao Yang acting mysteriously, the crowd grew even more curious and started asking, "How do you really know?"
Among the crowd were some older individuals who understood the implication of Zhao Yang's words.
Usually, if a wife is constantly acting up at home, aside from menopause or her period, it is likely due to a lack of harmony in the couple's intimate life.
"Kid, you know about this, do you actually know my wife!" The man, seeing Zhao Yang was younger and handsomer than him, felt more and more suspicious and suddenly seized Zhao Yang by the collar.
Besides those few reasons, infidelity was also a possibility.
"Let go," Zhao Yang said coolly.
"You need to explain this to me clearly!" The man said aggressively.
Zhao Yang suddenly chuckled and said, "Don't worry, I'm not the infamous neighbor Mr. Wang. Don't you know what's going on with yourself?"
"Stop talking rubbish and tell me!" The man demanded angrily.
"The thing is, your thing hasn't been able to get hard for at least half a year now. How could your wife be happy about that?" Zhao Yang said indifferently.
The atmosphere around them froze instantly.
The man's face flushed with anger as he gripped Zhao Yang's collar without letting go, but he seemed somewhat at a loss.
Just then, the sound of an ambulance approached, arriving at the scene quickly.
The hospital of the Forestry Bureau was just two streets away, and even the paramedics thought it somewhat superfluous to come here. However, as soon as the doctor stepped out of the ambulance and performed a brief examination, his expression immediately grew somber.
"It's Director Song," whispered the nurse into the doctor's ear.
The doctor nodded and immediately ordered the orderlies to lift the person onto the stretcher. In a blink, the ambulance roared away, and it was curious that the ineffectual man from earlier also got on the ambulance with his bag and nobody said much about it.
Soon after, the Forestry Bureau opened for business, and Zhao Yang walked into the lobby just as the night watchman was ending his shift; they bumped into each other.
"Elder, thanks to you, I spent last night sleeping in a vehicle," Zhao Yang said with a smile.
"Sleeping in a vehicle? Isn't that better than sleeping on the ground?" the old man said.
"It was a tricycle," Zhao Yang grinned.
The old man was somewhat speechless and stared at Zhao Yang for a long time before saying, "Didn't you say you were here to handle some matters?"
"Yes, to handle matters," Zhao Yang chuckled. "Elder, you have a good memory."
"Then why didn't you stay in a hotel?" the old man asked.
"Can't afford it."
"Can't afford it?"
"Can't afford it."
"You should pay to stay, what's with the stinginess, young man?" the old man said.
"I don't have money," Zhao Yang was exasperated, thinking to himself, this old man is really funny, if I had money, wouldn't I stay in a hotel?
"No money? What business do you have here if you have no money?" the old man huffed, no longer paying Zhao Yang any mind, and turned to leave.
What business do you have here without money?
Zhao Yang pondered this question carefully in his heart and suddenly felt, damn, that makes quite a bit of sense.
These days, to get anything done, you need either connections or to give someone an incentive.
Of course, it's best to have both, but Zhao Yang had neither connections nor money for incentives, so what was he to do?
Zhao Yang asked around and found the department responsible for the forest on Li Family Village's mountain, and went to knock on the door.
There was no response; it was already 8:30 am, why was there still no one here?
Zhao Yang began to wait. People came and went in the hallway, and he waited until 10:30 am, yet still no one came to work.
"Sister, do you know where the people from this department have gone?" Zhao Yang stopped someone in the hallway and asked.
"I don't know," the "Sister" responded without annoyance.
Zhao Yang was almost on the verge of tears: "It's almost noon; how can there be no one around?"
"They probably won't come at this hour. You should come back in the afternoon," Sister suggested.
Zhao Yang leaned against the wall, feeling extreme frustration and helplessness, so he left the Forestry Bureau to find a place to eat lunch.
He ordered a bowl of noodles at a noodle shop and sat there until the afternoon, when he continued his attempt to catch someone at the Forestry Bureau.
It was absurd; the entire afternoon passed, and still, nobody showed up.
By evening, Zhao Yang had only six yuan left in his pocket, not daring to buy anything to eat, and spent another night on the tricycle.
...
At eight o'clock in the morning, Zhao Yang entered the Forestry Bureau.
He knocked on the door of the responsible department, thinking if no one was there today, he wouldn't even have money for food.
"Please come in."
A voice came from inside the room.
Damn it, finally someone's in!
Zhao Yang burst into the room, eager and pushy, but as soon as he saw the person working, he froze.
Who... who is this person? Oh, right, damn, how could it be him!