"Anything you ask."
Hearing those words, Yang Ming sneered inwardly. The heirs of Gotham's old-money families all had an arrogance bred into their bones-the belief that they could flatten anything with dollars.
Even if all of this was just Bruce's arrogant persona, it still pissed him off!
Yang Ming loosened his fingers and pulled his right hand free.
He turned, walked to the triage desk, and picked up a spray bottle of medical alcohol. Without a shred of courtesy, he sprayed the right hand that had just shaken Bruce's three times.
Hiss, hiss, hiss.
The pungent smell of alcohol instantly spread between them.
The smile on Bruce's lips froze for a tenth of a second. Inside his suit pocket, the knuckles of his clenched hand had gone white. In all his life, no one had ever disinfected themselves right in front of him as though he were some walking source of infection.
Leaning against the wall, Selene's lips curled so sharply upward that she nearly burst out laughing. She had little affection for this young master Wayne. After all, she had seen far too much hypocrisy from Gotham's wealthy.
"Occupational habit. Don't take it personally, Mr. Wayne." Yang Ming pulled out a tissue, dried his hand, and tossed the crumpled paper precisely into the medical waste bin three meters away.
"After all, you just came in from outside. Who knows what filthy things you were touching earlier, or... who you were beating up."
Bruce's gaze sharpened slightly. He caught the probing undertone.
"You have quite a sense of humor, Dr. Yang." Bruce walked over to the battered examination bed and sat down without a hint of distaste. His bespoke suit trousers rustled against the cheap plastic sheet.
"I really am here for treatment. My chest has felt terribly tight these past few days. Even breathing hurts."
Yang Ming opened a drawer, took out a fresh pair of sterile rubber gloves, and put them on at a leisurely pace.
"A racing crash?" Yang Ming walked up to the examination bed and looked down at Gotham's richest man.
"Take your clothes off. Registration is a hundred thousand dollars. The examination costs extra. If that's too expensive, turn left outside. The Emergency Department at City Hospital is open twenty-four hours."
Without hesitation, Bruce took a checkbook from inside his jacket, uncapped his pen, and swiftly wrote a string of numbers. He tore out the check and slapped it into the iron tray beside him.
"Money isn't a problem. I only want the best treatment. Take a look."
Bruce stood and took off his suit jacket, worth several thousand dollars, casually draping it over the back of a chair. His tie came next, followed by the buttons of his shirt.
Under the light, his physique was revealed-a body that pushed the limits of human sculpture.
Yang Ming's gaze never lingered on those muscles. Like a high-precision X-ray machine, his eyes immediately locked onto a swollen red patch below Bruce's right ribs.
There was a distinctly unnatural bruise there, elongated in shape, with extremely faint grid-patterned impressions along its edges.
Yang Ming had left it earlier in Falcone's study, striking through the Batsuit with the counterweight at the base of his scalpel handle.
"Lie down," Yang Ming ordered.
Bruce obediently lay flat.
Yang Ming reached out with his gloved hands and pressed his fingertips against Bruce's skin. The cold touch made Bruce instinctively tense his muscles.
"Relax. Those stiff muscles of yours do nothing but look good. In a real fight, they'll only slow your reflexes." Yang Ming mocked him without mercy.
Bruce forced his muscles to relax.
Yang Ming's fingers slid down Bruce's side. When they reached the injury, his thumb suddenly exerted force, pressing down hard without warning.
"Ngh!"
A muffled grunt escaped Bruce's throat, and a sheen of cold sweat instantly appeared on his forehead.
His upper body jerked as though he had been electrocuted, but Yang Ming's left hand pinned his shoulder firmly and forced him back onto the bed.
That press was absolutely "palpation" within the bounds of medical practice, but Yang Ming had deliberately amplified the pain tenfold.
"Does it hurt?" Yang Ming asked expressionlessly.
"...A little." Bruce clenched his back teeth, his blue eyes fixed on Yang Ming.
He was now one hundred percent certain that this bastard was using treatment to settle a personal score. (* ￣︿￣) Damn it!
Yang Ming finally moved his fingers away from Bruce's ribs. Bruce let out an almost imperceptible breath, and his taut abdominal muscles slowly relaxed.
"Relax. It's just a superficial injury. No damage to your internal organs, nothing serious. Those muscles of yours really can take a beating, Mr. Wayne. An ordinary person would have at least three broken ribs." Yang Ming peeled off his disposable rubber gloves and tossed them into the trash.
Bruce sat up and rolled his shoulders, his joints giving two sharp cracks.
"That's why I said it was a racing crash. The seat belt dug into me."
"Really? That seat belt buckle has quite a distinctive design. Elongated, with a grid pattern." Yang Ming sneered.
Bruce answered without blushing or missing a beat. "A new product from Wayne Enterprises' Applied Sciences Division. It's still being tested."
"Now that the examination is over, what miracle drug are you going to prescribe, Dr. Yang? I remember you have something green here..."
"That medicine is for saving lives, not treating bumps and bruises." Yang Ming cut him off and turned toward the glass medicine cabinet against the wall.
Ancient adhesive-tape marks still clung to the cabinet's glass doors. Yang Ming opened them and rummaged through a pile of brightly colored medicine boxes.
"Found it."
Yang Ming turned around, holding two small metal cans, one red and one white.
"Catch." He tossed them casually.
The two cans traced an arc through the air. Bruce raised both hands and caught them securely in his palms.
The metal felt cold against his skin. Bruce lowered his head.
[Yunnan Baiyao Aerosol]
Beneath the blocky Chinese characters was a row of extremely tiny English lettering.
"What is this?" Bruce frowned deeply, lifting a can and shaking it. Liquid sloshed inside.
"I don't see an FDA approval mark. Doctor Yang, are you fobbing me off with some unlicensed, unlabeled product of unknown origin?"
"Yunnan Baiyao Aerosol. A mysterious formula from an ancient Eastern land, specifically for bruises and sprains." Yang Ming returned to the triage desk, picked up a pen, and tapped the hundred-thousand-dollar check with it.
"Spray it directly onto the bruise three times a day. Use the red can first, then the white one. Absolutely no 'strenuous exercise' for a week. I guarantee you'll be full of life again, ready to bounce right back out there and... crash your car."
With mischievous intent, Yang Ming deliberately stressed the words "strenuous exercise," as though afraid Bruce might miss the point.
Bruce narrowed his eyes, staring at the aerosol cans in his hands.
A hundred thousand dollars, and all he got was a metal can without even an FDA approval mark?
He had traveled the world and encountered Eastern herbal remedies in the Himalayas. Of course he knew some of them genuinely worked, but Yang Ming's utterly perfunctory attitude made him feel that his hundred thousand dollars had been rather poorly spent.
Although a hundred thousand dollars was pocket change to Wayne Enterprises, Bruce felt as though he had been fleeced like a fool, and that rankled.
"That's it? What if there are side effects?" Bruce stared hard at Yang Ming, his face all but spelling out, "Do you think I'm an idiot?"
"The side effects are that you'll feel very cold, then very hot. What's the matter? Don't think one bottle of medicine is worth a hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Wayne? There aren't many people in Gotham who can make me fetch medicine from the cabinet personally. That's called the added emotional value of an expert's attention."
Utterly shameless, Yang Ming ignored Bruce's protest without even looking up. He took his pen and scrawled a few flamboyant strokes across the medical chart.
Bruce looked at the hundred-thousand-dollar check he had casually filled out, now in Yang Ming's hand.
Very good. That was perfectly in keeping with the usual ways of the East End.
He no longer showed any irritation. Instead, he slipped the Yunnan Baiyao into his suit trouser pocket, then leisurely retrieved his bespoke suit jacket from the chair.
He put it on, his long fingers fastening his shirt buttons one by one, his movements as elegant as though he were dressing for a formal dinner.
Gotham's decadent yet charming richest man was back.