Chapter 8
By participating in the 100-Day Live Streaming Plan and completing the daily check-ins, regardless of viewership, streamers could receive a 5,000 yuan participation fund.
Although Mrs. He’s gifts alone had exceeded 200,000 yuan during the first live stream, 5,000 yuan was still money. Thinking of his impoverished old father, Wu Heng didn’t find any amount of money excessive.
The He family was at a loss for words, looking at Wu Heng awkwardly.
Seeing that the time was almost up, Wu Heng reluctantly put down the last piece of shortbread, picked up his backpack filled with tools, asked Mr. He to hold the phone stand, and instructed the He family to carry He Yunxiao to the garden.
Yes, carry.
He Yunxiao couldn’t even walk now, let alone get emotionally agitated, or he might give birth on the spot.
Everyone arrived at the He family garden. Wu Heng sat down at the stone table, checked the time, opened his phone, entered the Shark live streaming platform, and started the live stream.
After yesterday’s premiere, Wu Heng had become famous overnight. The Chengde Medical Clinic account on Shark had been followed by netizens who had heard the news. By now, it had several hundred thousand followers, with many more netizens observing from the sidelines.
As soon as the live stream started, tens of thousands of fans flooded in.
[Ahhhhh, Doctor Wu is live, I finally made it! I’ve been in a daze all day, the image of the patient vomiting live snakes replaying in my mind.]
[If the recording is real, immense traffic is coming.]
[Streamer, streamer, answer me, are you a high school boy?]
[What happened to the patient after he vomited the snakes? Before the stream ended, his belly was still quite big, so the problem wasn’t completely resolved, right?]
The barrage comments surged, too fast to read clearly.
Besides netizens obsessed with Wu Heng’s looks, many were analyzing He Yunxiao’s condition.
Some observant netizens had searched online and found that snakes, unlike humans, didn’t just give birth to one offspring at a time. Snakes could lay dozens of eggs at once! So He Yunxiao’s illness was definitely not cured yet.
Being able to diagnose the illness but not treat it was useless.
Mrs. He anxiously asked, “Doctor Wu Heng, how are you going to treat my son?”
As the butler clumsily adjusted the camera, netizens finally saw the patient from earlier, He Yunxiao, and his parents.
[Holy crap, how fast is this? Already meeting offline? It hasn’t even been 24 hours, right?]
[Time is life, serious illnesses can’t be delayed, understandable.]
[I knew it, a real doctor would definitely be responsible for his patients, not just treat them halfway and run off. So he went offline abruptly this morning, oh no, yesterday morning, to rush to the capital city. Truly a benevolent doctor.]
[This should be a follow-up consultation, right? We have to go to the hospital for follow-up consultations too.]
Wu Heng, however, was unhurried. He opened his cloth backpack and asked He Yunxiao, “Did anything strange happen before you got pregnant?”
He Yunxiao’s lips twitched at the word “pregnant.” He thought for a moment and shook his head.
Wu Heng took out a box of plant-based paints from his backpack, glanced at He Yunxiao’s left arm, and chuckled. “Weren’t you bitten by a snake?”
He Yunxiao almost jumped up in surprise, his stomach churning.
Seeing He Yunxiao’s reaction, Mr. He knew there was something more to the story. He immediately roared, “Are you still not telling the truth?!”
He Yunxiao touched his already healed left arm, where there had once been snake bite marks. Avoiding his parents’ anxious gazes, he lowered his head and said, “Just, just about three months ago, during our class’s swimming test, those guys from the Li family thought the guy next door was putting on an act, so they secretly threw a non-venomous water snake into the pool.”
The guy next door.
The He couple instantly knew who He Yunxiao was talking about: Shi Xuan from the Shi family next door!
The Shi family was very strange, especially that Shi Xuan. Despite being an eighteen-year-old high school student who should be full of youthful energy, he had a deathly aura. Just looking at him sent chills down your spine even in the summer, so although they were neighbors, their families didn’t interact much.
The live stream chat exploded.
[??? So this is school bullying? I’m speechless.]
[I sympathized with him before, but now I can only say he deserves it!]
[+1.]
[He Yunxiao, you idiot, what nonsense are you spouting? Believe it or not, I’ll rip your mouth off?]
[So speechless, saying whatever he wants? Don’t let me see you at school.]
The Li family boys had just gotten a huge piece of gossip today, hearing that the seemingly kind He Yunxiao was pregnant with snake fetuses and that it had become public knowledge.
Someone in their class group chat had shared the live stream link, and Li Hao and his friends immediately clicked in to watch the drama unfold.
Who knew that they were involved too??
That idiot He Yunxiao had actually sold them out! He had revealed that incident.
He Yunxiao in the live stream, unaware that Li Hao and his friends were watching, just wanted to clear his name, his expression wronged. “I didn’t participate! I was the one who caught the snake. The snake was startled and bit all of us, but I released it.”
Seeing that no one believed him, He Yunxiao almost gave birth on the spot from agitation.
All of them had been bitten, but Shi Xuan was unharmed. The water snake even seemed to fear him, not daring to approach at all.
Wu Heng spread out the bells, masks, scarves, ox horns, and other ritual objects on the stone table and chimed in, “Yes, that snake indeed came to repay a favor.”
Repay a favor? He Yunxiao almost cried. “But, but doesn’t animal repayment usually involve the snake transforming into a beautiful woman years later, meeting me, having a passionate love affair, and then marrying me? Why am I pregnant with snake fetuses?! This isn’t how you repay a favor!”
Wu Heng: “Think about it, did you say anything, make any wishes?”
He Yunxiao suddenly remembered something and said incredulously, “Huh? I, I happened to see the guy next door changing into his swimsuit in the locker room. I think I casually said, like the girls in my class, ‘If I could give birth, I’d give birth to monkeys for him.’ Does that count as a wish?”
He had just been running his mouth, there were no impure thoughts…
Shi Xuan never socialized at school and was always elusive, even wearing a men’s one-piece swimsuit for swimming lessons. That day, he had gone to the locker room and happened to see Shi Xuan changing, and he just misspoke.
Besides, who would dare to have impure thoughts about Shi Xuan? The boys and girls at school only talked big; if they really had to interact with Shi Xuan, they would run faster than dogs.
Wu Heng was slightly curious, just how good was the guy next door’s figure to make He Yunxiao slip up like that?
Wu Heng picked up a small brush from the table, dipped it in red paint, and drew a stroke on his smooth, delicate face. “It couldn’t make you give birth to monkeys, but it could make you give birth to snakes.”
Snakes and monkeys were both animals anyway, so there shouldn’t be much difference. What was the big deal? Was there racial discrimination now?
He Yunxiao: “…”
He Yunxiao’s parents: “…”
The netizens were speechless. Was that how it worked?
[So this young man wasn’t a victim of school violence, that’s good, it’s just… a little funny? This is a stupid snake, right? Who repays a favor like this?]
[Is the streamer putting on makeup? So beautiful, a great beauty!]
[Sorry, I really want to laugh hahahaha, what a freak accident!]
[Snake: Yay, I fulfilled my benefactor’s wish √ secretly delighted; Patient: Wuwuwuwu how can I, a grown man, be pregnant with snake fetuses? Help!]
[These young people really have no respect, they deserve it. And this guy even speaks with a northern accent.]
Southern China had many gods and ghosts, while northern China had more demons and monsters. In Northeast China, there was the legend of the Five Great Immortals: Fox, Weasel, Hedgehog, Snake, and Rat. This young man wasn’t being respectful at all when talking about snakes.
Li Hao and his friends in the live stream suddenly felt a pang of fear. Was that water snake a legendary Snake Immortal from the Five Great Immortals?
He Yunxiao, for helping, ended up pregnant with snake fetuses. Then what about them…?
They were instantly horrified and looked down at their own stomachs. Would they also get some strange illness?
The He couple, thinking of their son now as an “expectant father,” suppressed their urge to beat him and asked the crucial question, staring at his large belly: “Could these… be the neighbor’s children?”
He Yunxiao almost jumped up. He had absolutely no feelings for Shi Xuan next door, they never interacted. What a joke!
Wu Heng glanced at him and said, “No, that snake couldn’t do what the Matchmaker does, so it used its own emotions and desires to form snake fetuses.”
A forced wish fulfillment!
He Yunxiao looked utterly despondent and said to Wu Heng, “Doctor Wu, I’ll never run my mouth again. Please help me get rid of them, give me some abortion pills or something? Or do I need surgery? I don’t want to keep them!”
He Yunxiao had searched online earlier. Snakes laid eggs after three months, so he should be in the late stages of pregnancy.
If abortion pills were useless, then he could only have an abortion. How damaging to his body!
Thinking of this, He Yunxiao felt even more aggrieved.
Next time, if he encountered that stupid water snake again, he would make it pay, even if it cost him his life! What nonsense!
Wu Heng didn’t reply, instead picking up the brush and painting on his clean face. He was already handsome, with fair skin, and the plant-based paints blended perfectly with his complexion. Unlike the everyday makeup of girls, the makeup on Wu Heng’s face was more vibrant.
Wu Heng didn’t limit himself to his face; he even painted runes on his exposed, fair arms.
[Ahhh Beauty crit! The streamer’s visuals are too amazing.]
[Knows metaphysics, medical skills, and is so good-looking, you’re trying to kill me wuwuwu.]
[Such fair, long, slender fingers, wifey! I declare the streamer my new wifey!]
[What’s with the makeup? Looking at the equipment on the stone table, I have a feeling…]
Wu Heng put down the makeup brush, picked up two strings of bells, and put one on his left wrist and the other on his ankle. He had heard that these bells had been offered to the Nuo gods and were very potent.
He put on a pair of large, snake-shaped silver earrings in his left ear, an exotic, wild beauty emanating from him.
This ear piercing had been done by his grandfather with a needle when he was seven. In Nan Nuo village, both men and women had their ears pierced and wore earrings.
Several Nuo masks, also known as face shells, that Grandma Lai had forced on him were placed on the table.
Wu Heng ran his fingers over them and finally picked up a camphorwood Guan Gong mask. Guan Gong was imposing even without showing anger.
As the saying went, wearing a mask was playing a god, taking off the mask revealed the human. Wearing a mask borrowed the power of the god.
Wu Heng had never worn a mask before. He was the greatest shaman, why would he need to borrow the power of others? But now, having arrived here, he wanted to follow local customs for once.
Wearing the Guan Gong mask and holding a silk scarf in his right hand, he stepped into the center of the garden lawn.
Throwing a few sheets of yellow paper into the night sky with his left hand, Wu Heng began to move.
As he danced, he chanted a wordless melody, ethereal and distant, like an ancient shamanic incantation.
Dancing, he was dancing??
Everyone present was stunned, but their anxious hearts, for some reason, felt strangely calm.
[Holy crap, the patient asked Doctor Wu for abortion pills or surgery, and he’s…jumping for the gods? This is jumping for the gods, right?]
[I wanted to call it feudal superstition, but considering it’s snake fetuses, we can’t use conventional thinking, so I guess I can accept it.]
Some knowledgeable netizens commented: [This is different from jumping for the gods, it doesn’t seem like Nuo dance either.]
[I don’t know about anything else, I just know aaaaa the streamer’s dance is amazing, that slender waist, those long legs, so fluid! Wu Heng, how many more surprises do you have that I don’t know about?!!]
[Why watch boy bands dance when you can watch Wu Heng! So wild!]
Wu Heng wasn’t jumping for the gods, nor was he performing the Nuo dance like Grandma Lai. He was performing a more primal shamanic dance, imitating birds, beasts, and spirits, communicating with the divine.
As Wu Heng danced, the bells on his wrists and ankles jingled in the wind. His movements became faster and faster, He Yunxiao and the others could barely see his figure clearly, as if there were multiple Wu Hengs.
The dance blended the gracefulness of dance with the powerful beauty of a man, the earring in his left ear swaying, full of exotic, mysterious, wild beauty.
“Jingling—Jingling—”
One crisp, one deep.
These sounds seemed to pierce the night sky and reach the ears of others, reaching the desolate courtyard where the young man clutched the tightening choker around his neck.
Every jingle of the bells as Wu Heng danced brought an incredibly real sense of suffocation to Shi Xuan. His usually gloomy, lifeless eyes now sparkled with a rare brilliance, even showing a hint of excitement.
He gasped, leaning against the small gate, gazing at the He family garden.
Someone was watching him. Wu Heng thought.
That gaze was different from He Yunxiao and the others.
Wu Heng didn’t dwell on it. Dancing towards He Yunxiao, he lightly waved the silk scarf over his belly.
The force wasn’t strong, but He Yunxiao abruptly arched his body, as if struck by something both heavy and light. His tired body felt strangely euphoric under the repeated waves of the scarf.
It didn’t hurt!
Watching Wu Heng’s dance and listening to his strange, ethereal chanting even felt like a peculiar kind of enjoyment.
“Spirit of life, essence of health. Dispel the fetus, transform the qi, without harming life.” [Note]
Everyone was immersed in Wu Heng’s dance until he stopped, panting slightly, tilting his head to remove the Guan Gong mask, revealing his handsome, painted face.
A drop of sweat slid down his cheek and dripped onto the grass from his chin.
He was Wu Heng.
The live stream chat went wild.
This wasn’t a human, this was a deity.
[Ahhh, Brother is so handsome, mysterious shaman is so powerful.]
[Is this ancient shamanic dance? So much sex appeal, not at all delicate or pretentious! This is what I should be watching!]
[So powerful, men can dance so beautifully too, both powerful and graceful, wifey kiss kiss.]
[Is jumping for the gods really useful? I only know it’s used for exorcism, it feels like feudal superstition.]
[It’s beautiful, but if it’s not useful, it’s pointless. I think treating illness still requires medicine or surgery, what’s the use of just dancing?]
[+1, either conservative treatment or surgery.]
It was already late at night, but the Chengde Medical Clinic live stream was still bustling.
Netizens in the chat had to admit that the streamer’s dance was amazing, but only if it cured the illness. If not, it was all empty talk.
The subject of their discussion, Wu Heng, calmly took out a tissue from his pocket, tore it in half, rolled the two pieces into small balls, and stuffed them into his nostrils, chanting a spell silently.
Just as everyone was discussing, He Yunxiao suddenly clutched his large belly.
“Pfft—”
A very loud fart echoed through the live stream.
He Yunxiao’s face turned red. “??”
He had just let out an earth-shattering fart?
Just as He Yunxiao was about to explain, Mrs. He pointed at her son’s belly in ecstasy, “His belly, his belly seems to have gotten smaller!!”
Thanks for the chapter 🌻✨