Lively Pinecone Town

Kaiming had three main types of clients. In his own words, they were the mad, the dead, and the families of the dead. His main lines of work were treating illness, burying the dead, and communicating with spirits.

"Madness is the main source of income. The prices for the other two are basically open and transparent, with no real extras to charge for," Kaiming instructed.

"The files on existing patients are all in the first-floor study. The most important thing in them is the patient's family finances. The treatment plan also depends on those finances. Simply put, you can divide patients into three groups: mages, the rich, and the poor."

"Mages usually know how they want to be treated. Some even come to me with their own treatment plans, asking me to use specific spells and potions. They have great faith in their own insights and knowledge, and they're not very receptive to my advice. What I have to do is simple: as long as they aren't trying to kill themselves, I just follow their instructions to the letter."

"As for ordinary people... it's easy to make money from the rich but hard to fool them. It's easy to fool the poor but hard to make money from them."

"When treating the rich, they're more receptive to plans involving long-term medication and care, my personal attention, and relief from their suffering. The poor prefer miracle medicines that work quickly and magic that can cure them instantly. You understand. Even if the cost is high, they can accept it. Once you've grasped those two points, you're an entry-level mind and soul physician."

Much of what he said was remarkably direct, with no hint of holding anything back. It was as though he trusted Xie Yu completely and was sharing everything he knew, despite having met him only that day.

He placed the files of hundreds of patients on the desk and let Xie Yu look through them.

Xie Yu was somewhat surprised. He hadn't expected Kaiming to skip the stages of "assessment," "suspicion," and "getting used to each other" entirely. Even at a tailor's or bakery in town, a master would probably make an apprentice do hard labor for a month before teaching him anything...

Xie Yu soon understood where Mr. Kaiming's confidence came from.

Kaiming was a mage, and he wasn't. No matter how much Kaiming taught him, even guiding him by the hand, he could never replace Kaiming as a physician, much less set up shop on his own.

Kaiming's true core asset was still his status as a two-star mage: the kingdom's certification and society's recognition.

As Kaiming saw it, there was no need to set any barriers for him. He couldn't wait for Xie Yu to get familiar with the medical records and start working.

"Come to think of it, I'm your patient too." Xie Yu began working as Kaiming had instructed, still having enough attention to spare for a chat.

The medical records were interfering with him, and he needed to distract himself to escape their chattering voices.

"Your mind is perfectly normal, apart from your occasional habit of talking to yourself. But that's nothing. Plenty of people like to talk to themselves when they're alone. There's no need to treat it," Kaiming said.

"You heard that?"

Xie Yu wasn't surprised. He had spoken to the cloak and the coat at the banquet, and although he had lowered his voice, it was a public occasion, so being overheard was inevitable. He had deliberately avoided some bizarre words when he spoke.

Although the cloak was such a pervert, outsiders listening only to Xie Yu's side of the conversation should have been completely unable to understand its secret.

Kaiming said:

"I heard that you really liked my cloak, and that you wanted to play with it again in the street. I could tell you're someone who's kept a childlike innocence in his heart, someone who can find joy in the most ordinary things."

[Shy cloak (affection: 100)] had been hung by the door, but it heard Kaiming's words too. It immediately let out an [Eee!], as though its inner desire had been satisfied.

"Ahem, you flatter me."

Kaiming returned to the subject:

"Back to treatment plans. When a patient is capable of acting independently and accepts treatment voluntarily, you can assume he isn't ill. All the treatment plans are meant to make the patient and his family believe, as far as possible, that the illness has been cured. At present, your abilities are sufficient to handle cases like these. You mustn't handle any other cases on your own."

Xie Yu was startled and a little surprised. He almost thought he had misheard:

"You intend to let me handle those cases on my own?"

Kaiming said:

"When I'm out making house calls, you'll stay at the clinic, receive visiting patients, determine what type they are, and triage them. Handle the ones you can under my name, and only leave the ones you can't handle to me. Understand?"

[Book-loving three-story wooden house (affection: 30):]

[Kaiming has lots of clients who need treatment at home. That's where the bulk of his income-no, the money he swindles-comes from.]

[Normally, he goes out on house calls after 3 p.m. every afternoon and hangs a sign on me saying he's not seeing patients. Now that you're here, he won't have to go to all that trouble.]

"Understood." Xie Yu nodded.

Kaiming gave him a few more instructions, then confirmed from the way Xie Yu had sorted the medical records that he had grasped the spirit of what Kaiming was trying to convey. He felt the boy was a real load off his mind and had the urge to keep him around long-term.

"It looks like I can go on my house calls early today. You can pick any empty room with a bed in this clinic to live in. Some of the beds may have been used to examine and treat patients before, but they're all clean. I'll come back once this evening. After that, we'll see each other in the mornings. The clinic usually opens at nine."

Kaiming left the clinic.

Xie Yu sat in the study on the [Innocent cowhide high-backed chair (affection: 0)] that had once belonged exclusively to Kaiming, his hand resting on the [Contemplative walnut desk (affection: 0)]. Everything felt leisurely and comfortable.

It looked like there wouldn't be any patients that afternoon. He would have plenty of time to win over the [Book-loving three-story wooden house]!

An important figure had come to Pinecone Town. The town's administrative office was bustling. Those on leave, those retired, the busy and the idle had all lined up to wait, clearing the narrow streets.

The few mages who were rarely seen in person in town also appeared. They brought a strong wind to blow away all the filth in the streets, then sent down a light rain to settle the dust.

Such a spectacle was rarely seen on ordinary days.

But none of this had anything to do with most of the townspeople.

"You left the child alone in the city?" the woman shrieked.

"That physician needed an assistant," the man explained.

"Are you sure he wasn't a swindler? A human trafficker? A villain who sells people to illegal coal mines?" The woman was deeply worried.

The man reassured her, "The mages in the city are all known by name. What swindler would use a mage's name to fool people?"

The woman seemed to have convinced herself too. Indeed, no one would dare use a mage's name to swindle people. If an ordinary person claimed to be a mage without the backing of the kingdom and mage circles, even a little investigation would inevitably expose them. And surely a mage would be trustworthy. If he said he needed an assistant, perhaps he really did.

"Then why did you bring back two bottles of water?"

"This is miracle medicine to treat our son," the man said. "It's for us to drink."

"?" The woman's brows shot up. She was just about to demand whether the man had gone mad when a bottle of water was thrust to her lips.

"We're supposed to drink it at times like this, when the two of us are angry. Go on, drink it and hold it in your mouth. There's amazing magic in it that uses family ties, with the parents taking medicine to treat the child." The man couldn't really explain it himself. He couldn't even remember the exact words Xie Yu had made up earlier.

"Are you sure?" The woman could hardly believe it. Holding the bottle containing four liters of water, she didn't know whether to drink it.

"I'm sure. The magic physician said so himself. He's a two-star mage from the city, on the same level as the mayor."

While the two were going back and forth, Mr. Larry, the mayor of Pinecone Town, knocked on the door of their house beside the town street.

The house had a small, level front yard with no fence, just a few flowers and plants. At that moment, it was packed with people.

After Mayor Larry pushed the door open, Mr. Yize, head of the inspection department of the provincial education bureau, a great figure who could be called a Magister and a graduate of the Forest Magic Academy in Black Pine City, poked his head in and stepped inside.

He wore an official robe of the kingdom, embroidered with gold and red patterns, a deep-red round mentor's hat on his head, and a gold Magister's medal on his chest. It was as though he carried the radiance of the sun with him, illuminating the poorly lit first-floor living room of the house.

Mr. Yize glanced at the bickering couple and got straight to the point. "Where is our outstanding examinee, Xie Yu?"