My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 41
by Little PandaStomach Medicine
Initially, when Mu Ning offered to rent her house to Ren Chenxi at a cheap price, Ren Chenxi had refused because she didn’t want to be indebted to Mu Ning. But now that Mu Ning was offering the house to her rent-free, Ren Chenxi could agree without hesitation. The reason was simple: in Ren Chenxi’s eyes, this was an equivalent exchange with Mu Ning.
Just as Chen Gu had said, in the apocalypse, many medicines had become exceptionally precious in the base and could even be sold for sky-high prices. In that case, her Recovery Card, which could eliminate debuffs and restore 70% of a health bar, was a priceless treasure. Using it to cover Mu Ning’s rent was more than enough.
However, only Ren Chenxi knew the true effects of the Recovery Card. The others were unaware of such a miraculous item, so even though Ren Chenxi appeared so confident, they remained skeptical. Even Ren Chenxi’s own companions, Jian Dan and the others, found it somewhat hard to believe.
“Xi… Xi-jie… can you really cure a drug addiction? That’s a drug addiction! It’s not some ordinary poisoning!” Jian Dan didn’t want Ren Chenxi to make an extravagant boast1 and deceive Mu Ning’s group just to save on rent.
“Mm… I happen to have a kind of antidote in my inventory. It has a miraculous detoxifying effect. Since you don’t have any other options right now, why not let me give it a try?”
As Ren Chenxi spoke, she looked toward Sun Jia, who was leaning against the headboard.
Meeting Ren Chenxi’s gaze, Sun Jia still wore a gentle smile. “So, are you the doctor the Boss invited back? Then I’ll entrust my poison to you~”
Compared to the others, the poisoned person herself was willing to give it a try, so there was nothing more for anyone to say. Besides, they truly had no other options.
Ren Chenxi had a good impression of this strong and rational girl. She smiled and shook her head at Sun Jia. “I’m not a doctor, but I do have medicine with a very good detoxifying effect. Your addiction hasn’t acted up yet. You’ll know how well it works after you take the medicine in a bit.”
“Alright, then I’ll be in your hands~” Sun Jia said, her gaze shifting to the well-behaved Tantan nestled in Ren Chenxi’s arms. “It’s rare to see Tantan let someone hold it so obediently, and even let them pet its head…”
Being envied by someone else yet again for how special Tantan’s attitude was toward her, the smile on Ren Chenxi’s face gradually widened. At the same time, her heart soured with a feeling of guilt toward Tantan.
“Tantan~” Ren Chenxi nuzzled Tantan’s fluffy little head again and apologized with great solemnity, “I’m sorry. I’ll never abandon you again!”
“Meow meow meow meow—” Responding to Ren Chenxi was a series of coquettish meows and a purr that sounded like a tractor.
“Abandon? You’re Tantan’s owner?” The observant Sun Jia sharply caught the two important words in Ren Chenxi’s sentence. She looked at Mu Ning with some confusion. “But… didn’t the Boss say this cat was…” Wasn’t it raised by her boyfriend?
Mu Ning also stared intently at Ren Chenxi, waiting for her explanation.
“…” Crap, I was speaking so naturally to Tantan that I accidentally said something I shouldn’t have again… But, it’s fine. I’ll just push everything onto Ren Muhui. “This is my brother’s cat. My brother once told me that if he didn’t have time to take care of Tantan in the future, he would entrust it to me, so I guess I’m technically half its owner. Now that my brother is gone, and I didn’t find Tantan right after the apocalypse started, I’ve felt for the past two years that it was my fault it got lost. Seeing it so suddenly now, I was just too happy and said something like that…”
“Your brother is gone?” This time, Sun Jia’s focus was on Ren Muhui. She subconsciously looked at Mu Ning again, at a loss. “Boss…” For the past two years, the Boss had braved all dangers, setting foot in nearly every corner of H City, just to find her boyfriend. But now, the Boss’s boyfriend was…
Being reminded once again that Ren Muhui was dead, that the person before her was Ren Muhui’s younger sister, and that no matter how much they resembled each other, but…
Mu Ning was unwilling to think about it any further. She just looked at Ren Chenxi with a cold expression and asked flatly, “Didn’t you say you had a special medicine? Let’s try it on Sun Jia now!”
Mu Ning’s reaction stunned Sun Jia again. The Boss’s cold attitude… is it because she already knew about her boyfriend’s death and had grieved in advance? Or… is her boyfriend no longer that important in her heart?
While Sun Jia was in a daze, Ren Chenxi had already walked to her bedside. Tantan had been placed on the floor by Ren Chenxi, but the clingy little thing just wound itself around her feet, refusing to leave. Ren Chenxi coaxed Tantan gently, but the usually very perceptive cat let her words go in one ear and out the other this time, stubbornly clinging to her and refusing to move even half a step away. Ren Chenxi could only ignore it for the time being and check Sun Jia’s wound first.
She had no choice. In just that short moment, Ren Chenxi noticed that Sun Jia’s health bar had actually dropped by another tiny bit! Her Recovery Card could only restore 70% of her health! If Sun Jia’s health bar continued to drop like this, then even if she dispelled the drug addiction debuff, her health wouldn’t be restored! She didn’t want to waste such a precious SR-rank Recovery Card if the injured person couldn’t be fully healed!
So the most important thing right now was to first stop Sun Jia’s bleeding, and then apply all sorts of anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving medicines.
Seeing that Ren Chenxi was about to apply medicine to Sun Jia, Wu Tong and Zhang Tongqi helped from the side, cutting open Sun Jia’s thick bandages. As the bandages were unwound layer by layer, before they were even halfway done, Ren Chenxi saw blood seeping through. Has the wound opened up again? No wonder the rate at which her health bar was decreasing hadn’t stopped. Although Ren Chenxi had originally planned to stop the bleeding before using the Recovery Card, now… forget it. Using the card first and then stopping the bleeding wouldn’t make a difference. In any case, she didn’t know when Sun Jia’s addiction would act up, so it was better to dispel the debuff for her as soon as possible.
Inconspicuously, Ren Chenxi took out a Recovery Card from her inventory and pinched it between her fingertips. She glanced at Sun Jia and saw that her attention was also on her arm, which was still wrapped in several layers of bandages, her brow tightly furrowed. Clearly, Wu Tong’s careful peeling of the blood-soaked bandage was hurting her. Although it hurt, the girl just bit her lower lip and didn’t make a sound. Ren Chenxi pretended to casually flex her wrist and took the opportunity to shoot the Recovery Card toward Sun Jia. The thin card simply vanished into Sun Jia’s body, and Sun Jia herself didn’t notice a thing.
It was to be expected. Right now, Sun Jia was busy fighting against the intense pain.
“Heavens…”
The gauze was finally completely removed. Wu Tong’s voice began to tremble again at just one look at the gruesome wound, while Zhang Tongqi, her eyes red, turned her face away. A wound this large would have required stitches in peacetime. But was it because they couldn’t find a skilled doctor to suture the wound now that it was the apocalypse? Ren Chenxi only had to glance at the wound, which was even more horrifying than the one on her own shoulder, to feel a phantom ache begin to throb there, as if feeling it herself.
“Xi-jie, the wound medicine…”
“Here, it’s this packet. You saw it on the way back. It’s from an old Chinese doctor. It’s excellent for stopping bleeding and can also reduce inflammation. Go ahead and sprinkle it on her. Right, I have bandages here too, clean ones.” As Ren Chenxi spoke, she took out another roll of bandages.
“Then… what about the antidote?” Wu Tong still remembered Sun Jia’s drug addiction. If this addiction wasn’t cured, even if the wound medicine was effective and the bleeding stopped, Sun Jia might tear the wound open again during a withdrawal episode.
“Mm… the antidote…” Ren Chenxi glanced at Sun Jia, who no longer had any debuffs, and had to brace herself and take out another bottle of medicine. “Have her take this. Two pills, three times a day.”
“Eh? Sodium Bicarbonate Tablets? Isn’t this stomach medicine?” After taking the bottle and reading the instructions on it, Wu Tong looked at Ren Chenxi as if she were looking at a jianghu swindler.2
“No, it’s just a stomach medicine bottle! The medicine inside is the antidote! I already said it’s a very rare antidote, so of course it’s not something you can buy in a pharmacy! I’m just using this stomach medicine bottle to store it.” In reality, the bottle contained Cephalosporin3 drugs. Given Sun Jia’s injuries, taking this type of antibiotic was definitely the right move.
A doctor had prescribed this medicine to Ren Chenxi once when she was injured, to reduce inflammation and prevent wound infection. But the Cephalosporin tablets came in blister packs, and Ren Chenxi found it troublesome to pop them out one by one, so she had simply taken all the pills out and put them in an empty medicine bottle. Who knew that bottle happened to be for stomach medicine? Wait a minute. I’ve always eaten and drunk well, so how did an empty stomach medicine bottle end up in my inventory? The stomach medicine from this bottle…
Suddenly, Ren Chenxi whipped her head around to look at Mu Ning. She remembered now. There was a time when Mu Ning was hunched over a desk, suffering from a stomachache. After finding out, Ren Chenxi had specifically sought out a doctor, described Mu Ning’s condition, and bought some stomach medicine, which included this very bottle. Mu Ning seemed to be in a lot of pain at the time, so she hadn’t resisted her approach and had obediently taken a few pills.
Back then, Mu Ning’s compliance had made Ren Chenxi very happy. Afterward, she had run over every day to supervise Mu Ning taking her medicine. But on the third day, Mu Ning had thrown the empty bottle at her and said coldly that her stomachache was better, the medicine was finished, and she should stop bothering her.
How could a whole bottle of stomach medicine be finished in just three days? Ren Chenxi thought of all the other gifts she had given that had been thrown away, and she instantly understood where those pills had gone. She had quietly taken the empty bottle from Mu Ning and, in her dejection, had casually tossed it into her inventory. This empty bottle happened to be in the first slot of the medicine category. When Ren Chenxi was unpacking the Cephalosporin, she had glanced at the other medicines in her inventory, saw the empty bottle’s information display, and on a whim, had taken it out to store the antibiotics.
Meeting Ren Chenxi’s gaze, Mu Ning was first taken aback. Then, seeing her quickly look back at the so-called antidote, she also turned her head to look at the bottle in Wu Tong’s hand. With just one glance, Mu Ning felt that the bottle was incredibly familiar.
“Let me see!”
“What are you looking at! This is medicine for Sun Jia!”
Giving Mu Ning no chance to look at the bottle, Ren Chenxi rudely snatched it from Wu Tong’s hand. As she twisted the cap, she explained to Wu Tong, “I’ve thought about it. It’s really not a good idea to put such a valuable antidote in a stomach medicine bottle. It would be bad if someone else mistook it and took it. Do you have any other pill bottles?”
“…”
If you put these antidote pills in a different bottle, won’t people still be misled by that bottle’s label? Wu Tong was very confused, but Zhang Tongqi, who was standing to the side, nodded and said she had an empty moisture-proof pillbox that would be perfect for storing these “antidote” pills. After pouring all the pills from the stomach medicine bottle into Zhang Tongqi’s pillbox, Ren Chenxi screwed the cap back on, preparing to put the bottle back into her inventory. Just as she was tightening the cap, Mu Ning walked right over.
Ren Chenxi’s movements had been very fast, but Mu Ning had still clearly seen several red characters written on the bottle’s label. Two of those characters were a large “2 片” (2 pills).
The author has something to say:
Tantan: Meow meow meow meow~ Oh no, Master’s vest slipped a little bit again! No, I must transform into a blanket and hold Master’s vest on tight~~~
Xixi: Tantan is so good~ Tantan is so great~ Tantan is so cute~ (petting and rubbing)
Wooden-head: ……
ps: I’m the kind of person who puts loose pills in a bottle. I super hate those blister packs. It’s so annoying to have to squeeze them out every time, and it’s easy to cut your fingers. So I always find an empty bottle to put them all in at once and then stick a label on it~
Footnotes
- ‘Kua xia haikou’ is an idiom that literally means ‘to boast down a sea-mouth’. It means to make an extravagant boast or an empty promise.
- ‘Jianghu’ refers to the ‘martial world’ or the world of adventurers and vagrants. A ‘jianghu pianzi’ is a swindler who operates outside of mainstream society, often selling fake medicines or tricks.
- Cephalosporins are a large group of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
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