Hope

Thanks to Sudong City's municipal image project, Doctor Ren's unscrupulous clinic didn't stand out.

Among the gaudy red and purple signs, the "Sunshine Psychologist Clinic" was like a single petal amid a riot of colorful flowers. Unless one stopped to look, the clinic was easy to miss.

Zhang Xuezhou knocked on the door. Only after the scanner above it had swept over him for several seconds did it open.

The interior of the Sunshine Psychologist Clinic was extremely spare, adopting the currently fashionable minimalist style. Apart from two chairs and a table, there was nothing else worth noticing.

If he couldn't get sedatives here that only public hospitals were allowed to prescribe, Zhang Xuezhou would have suspected the Sunshine Psychologist Clinic was some fly-by-night operation, the kind that would vanish the moment a medical accident occurred.

"You're here!"

Doctor Ren was around thirty, with exceptionally fair skin and eyes like pools of clear water. She needed only to look at someone to see the thoughts in their heart.

She had a pair of exceptionally beautiful hands, slender and narrow yet plump and fair. Her nails shone with a soft, pearly blue-green luster.

Seeing her gesture toward a seat with her right hand and then put down a stopwatch, Zhang Xuezhou immediately gathered up all the stray thoughts in his mind.

"The usual rules. You know them," Doctor Ren said.

"I brought three hundred yuan," Zhang Xuezhou said.

"Then we'll talk for ten minutes!"

After Zhang Xuezhou paid with his electronic wallet, Doctor Ren looked at her balance with satisfaction.

But she gave it only a glance before turning her gaze to Zhang Xuezhou's face.

"You look well today," Doctor Ren said. "It seems you slept very soundly last night!"

"Not soundly." Zhang Xuezhou shook his head. "I dreamed of a vicious python last night. It nearly scared me!"

"According to dream interpretation, dreaming of a snake is a good omen!"

After offering a word of comfort, Doctor Ren took Zhang Xuezhou's diary.

Compared with a verbal account, having patients prepare a short written account in advance was clearly more reliable. It prevented them from speaking unclearly because of medical anxiety that might trigger their illness.

Of course, Zhang Xuezhou's main reason for doing it was to save money.

He watched Doctor Ren's eyes sweep swiftly over the words, knowing full well that this had saved him at least ninety yuan.

"After waking from a dream, you mastered that Essential Instruction for Recuperation?"

It was not unusual for patients to believe themselves to be someone else. Ren Anran had seen hundreds of patients living in their own mental worlds, believing themselves to be emperors or generals, or to have turned into pigs, dogs, or women.

Someone like Zhang Xuezhou, who repeatedly dreamed of growing up and living in the same village, was not unusual either.

What interested Ren Anran was that Zhang Xuezhou had actually mastered the Essential Instruction for Recuperation after waking from a dream.

She shifted her gaze from the diary to Zhang Xuezhou's face. After considering for several seconds, Ren Anran questioned him.

"You didn't write in your diary that any of your relatives in the dream died. Could Zhang Weimeng and Song Fengying have met with some unforeseen accident?" Ren Anran asked.

"Doctor Ren, don't go cursing people like that," Zhang Xuezhou replied stiffly. "My parents are doing just fine. They're in excellent health!"

"So your dad is still writing those novels that will never make it, and your mom is still running her livestreaming scam," Ren Anran said with a smile.

"Doctor Ren, I know you know my parents, but could you spare a thought for their son's feelings? I still don't want to hear anyone say that about them!"

"So you don't like hearing the truth!"

"The truth sounds awful!"

Zhang Xuezhou muttered. Suddenly, he remembered something and turned sheepishly back to Ren Anran.

"Doctor Ren, when you're treating my illness, please make sure you tell me the truth. If there's one thing I'm not afraid of, it's taking a blow!"

"Oh!"

Ren Anran gave a cool reply.

She propped up her chin with her beautiful right hand and gazed at Zhang Xuezhou's slightly flushed face.

Her original plan to keep him tied to her for three to five years had gone awry. She hadn't expected Zhang Xuezhou to wake up with his cultivation accomplished.

It was somewhat unbelievable, and cases like this had even been rare in Ren Anran's previous experience.

Ren Anran made a quick calculation of the time involved. It seemed to her that all her repeated cultivation in her youth couldn't compare with a schizophrenic patient having a dream, and she couldn't help feeling rueful.

No matter how low-level a secret manual was, without a renowned teacher and resources, one could only succeed in cultivation through one's own efforts by grinding away at it over the years.

It was rare for someone like Zhang Xuezhou to succeed in just over three months.

Even when she had first begun cultivating, it had taken her more than half a year to lay the foundation.

"Tell me how you mastered this Essential Instruction for Recuperation," Ren Anran said.

"I mastered it after I woke up from the dream!"

Zhang Xuezhou gestured and mentioned the tiny white seed inside his body.

This seemed to be the sign of successful cultivation described in the Essential Instruction for Recuperation.

Although he didn't know how he had mastered it, he now had the sign.

This was the prescription Ren Anran had given him in the past to treat his schizophrenia. Zhang Xuezhou had come this time to ask what he should do next.

"Will I still have episodes?" Zhang Xuezhou asked. "Can I study like a normal person?"

"That's a question!"

Ren Anran propped up her chin.

Schizophrenic patients were in poor mental condition and were prone to mental fatigue.

Whenever Zhang Xuezhou applied himself even a little to studying, his head would grow muddled.

But schizophrenic patients who were as quiet and well-behaved as Zhang Xuezhou were relatively rare.

She saw none of the restlessness, irritability, or unclear speech associated with mental illness in Zhang Xuezhou.

On the contrary, Zhang Xuezhou was very steady, lived well on his own, and even wanted to study hard.

If she hadn't needed to develop long-term clients, and if he hadn't been young and innocent, Ren Anran thought she wouldn't have passed the cultivation method on to him.

Now he had mastered it, and had even cultivated it very quickly.

Ordinarily, Zhang Xuezhou should now be mentally robust and no longer troubled by schizophrenia, weakness, and the like.

For a moment, Ren Anran's heart felt as though it were being wrung. She felt that her steady, long-flowing source of income had been ruthlessly chopped in two.

She rested the index finger of her right hand on the table and tapped it rhythmically, thinking over what to do next.

Normally, Zhang Xuezhou had completed one stage of recovery and improved greatly. Given his age, he could go home and wait under observation without needing to visit the clinic frequently.

But as the operator of a private, for-profit clinic, how could she simply let him be discharged?

"You can use your mind to study in moderation now, but your condition is unstable and very likely to relapse repeatedly," Ren Anran said after some consideration. "We must move on to the second stage of treatment!"

"The second stage?"

"Yes. Thanks to my superb psychotherapy skills, you've now completed the first stage of treatment and recovered very smoothly!" Ren Anran said. "So we can move on to the next step!"

"What do we do next?"

Zhang Xuezhou glanced at the stopwatch.

He hoped Ren Anran would answer a little faster so he wouldn't have to pay for extra time.

After asking his question promptly and directly, Zhang Xuezhou gazed at Ren Anran, hoping she could produce a treatment plan within three seconds.

Doctors in the past had all recommended sedatives, to be taken continuously for a month whenever he had mental problems.

But Ren Anran had not.

What Ren Anran offered was a combination of recuperation methods and sedatives.

Zhang Xuezhou could feel the clarity of his senses, and he could tell that he was more relaxed than he had ever been.

His illness was moving away from deterioration and forced stabilization toward healing.

"You can now learn the Sequel to the Essential Instruction for Recuperation," Ren Anran said.

"There's a sequel?" Zhang Xuezhou said in astonishment.

"The contents of this sequel will let you see your condition clearly and sense in advance when you're going to have an episode. That way, you can also take precautions and take your medicine before it happens!"

"It's that amazing?"

Zhang Xuezhou's eyes widened.

Sensing an episode in advance was no different from knowing ahead of time when an opponent was going to slash him.

As long as he raised his shield in advance by taking his medicine, he could snuff out the illness before it launched its attack.

After taking the several pages of notes on the Sequel to the Essential Instruction for Recuperation that Ren Anran gave him, Zhang Xuezhou carefully gathered them up and tucked them into the diary he had brought.

"Oh, right. The next time you come, my fee will be one hundred yuan per minute!"

Zhang Xuezhou took the second-stage treatment plan, thoroughly satisfied, and brought this three-hundred-yuan treatment session to an end.

He felt wonderfully at ease.

But just as he was about to leave, Ren Anran's sudden announcement of a higher fee left Zhang Xuezhou feeling awful.

"The higher the stage of treatment, the greater the price that must be paid. These are treatment plans exclusive to us psychologists, extremely precious and rare. I hope you can understand!"

Ren Anran added this explanation.

That sent Zhang Xuezhou out of the clinic in a sulk.

"And she says my mom scams people. She's far better at fleecing people than my mom!"

After muttering that, Zhang Xuezhou held his notebook a little tighter.

He walked down the street with a light step.

Since the moment he had woken from his dream, he had never felt so relaxed.

And Ren Anran's confirmation and the second-stage treatment plan had given Zhang Xuezhou hope that his illness could be cured.