I was surprised that "Mr. Wei" was a woman, but no one else seemed surprised.
Even Wu Ling hadn't had the slightest doubt about Mr. Wei's gender.
Mr. Wei looked rather old, and her feminine features might not have been very obvious. With a change of clothes, it wouldn't have seemed strange for people to mistake her for an elderly man.
Wu Ling reached out and touched the back of Mr. Wei's wrinkled hand, then pressed her fingers to Mr. Wei's forehead. She asked the young man, "May I ask how long Mr. Wei has been like this?"
The young man answered fluently, "He started feeling unwell at the beginning of the year. At first, he just had some palpitations and shortness of breath. Later, he started feeling weak and dizzy, and his vision became blurry. After that, his mental state kept getting worse, and he became listless. For over a month now, he's often been falling into a deep sleep and not waking up. We've taken him to the hospital several times. Their initial diagnosis was that it was a common ailment of old age—that these symptoms had naturally appeared as his body's functions deteriorated. He was on medication for a while, but it didn't help much. They recommended that he recuperate. Mr. Wei insisted on staying home, so we hired a family doctor to help him recuperate there. We changed his diet and lifestyle, but his condition didn't improve. After he started falling into those deep sleeps, we took him to the hospital again, but his condition was still worrying. They ran all kinds of tests, but couldn't come up with a definite diagnosis."
The young man paused. "We'd been considering other options for a while. Mr. Wei lost his wife early in life and his son in