Chapter 22: Chapter 22: Carrot and Stick

Near the end of the wedding reception, several of Yan Ziruo’s close friends came over to tease the handsome and dashing Yan Feifan.

Yan Feifan, who wasn’t very good at socializing, found it hard to fend them off.

He turned down their suggestion to go out and keep partying after the reception, ditched his sister, and beat a hasty retreat home alone…

「The next day, a Sunday morning.」

Yan Feifan, who had come in to work at the hospital, brought Sun Wei his morning medication.

“Mr. Yan, Mr. Yan! I weighed myself this morning and I’m up fifty grams from yesterday! A full fifty grams!”

“This is the first time my weight has increased in three or four months.”

Seeing Sun Wei’s face flushed with excitement, Yan Feifan replied with a note of joy in his own voice, “This shows that our diagnosis and treatment are working.”

“But you still need to actively cooperate with the treatment.”

“After one full week, Mr. Qi will adjust the next phase of your treatment plan based on your latest condition.”

Sun Wei took the medicine from Yan Feifan and said very seriously, “I’ll definitely cooperate fully.”

The medicine Yan Feifan gave him consisted of sixteen pills of various sizes, shapes, and colors.

Sun Wei took a big gulp and swallowed all the pills in just two batches.

He even savored the aftertaste as if he had just eaten a gourmet meal.

In reality, most of the drugs Sun Wei was taking were placebos with no medicinal effect.

The few real ones were either medication to regulate his digestive system or vitamin supplements his body needed.

While reviewing Sun Wei’s check-up data from the previous day, Yan Feifan instructed, “At 10:30 this morning, Dr. Liu from the Traditional Chinese Medicine department will come to give you an acupuncture treatment.”

“At 3:00 PM, you need to go to the physical therapy department for an hour of rehabilitation training.”

“Now, I’m going to give you a basic physical examination…”

As Yan Feifan began the examination, he was unaware that his sister, Yan Ziruo, who was supposed to be off for the weekend, had also come to the hospital.

Yan Ziruo arrived at an office door, took a deep breath, and after knocking and hearing a response, gently pushed the door open and went inside.

She walked into the office and saw that it was at least forty or fifty square meters.

Behind a large desk sat a middle-aged man in a white coat, his head down as he looked through some files that resembled medical records.

Yan Ziruo waited quietly for two or three minutes, but the man continued to read his files, showing no intention of acknowledging her.

She walked straight to the guest area and poured herself a cup of hot water. She then picked up a plastic surgery industry journal from the coffee table, grabbed a big, bright red apple from the fruit bowl, and sat down on the sofa to eat and read the journal…

“You certainly make yourself at home, don’t you!”

Hearing this, Yan Ziruo put down the half-eaten apple and the journal and quickly stood up.

She looked at the suave, middle-aged man who had approached her and gave an embarrassed smile. “Mr. Wang, I was sleeping in when I got your call.”

“You said we needed to discuss something important, so I rushed over without even having breakfast.”

“So, Mr. Wang, what’s this important matter you wanted to discuss?”

Wang Chuan, the director of the Plastic Surgery Center, sat down on the sofa opposite Yan Ziruo and snorted coldly. “What important matter? You’re telling me you don’t know?”

“Is ’Perfectly Composed’ your Weibo username?”

“Let me give you another name: the big-V entertainment blogger, Hu Pingye!”

Yan Ziruo feigned ignorance. “Mr. Wang, I don’t understand what you mean by all this.”

Wang Chuan scoffed sarcastically, “Yan Ziruo, you’re really determined to play dumb, aren’t you?”

“Let me spell it out for you. Hu Pingye has already deleted that exposé and posted an apology.”

“And, to stop us from filing a lawsuit and holding him accountable, he gave you up.”

“Yan Ziruo, confess!”

Yan Ziruo just chuckled. “Oh, so that’s what this is about, Mr. Wang.”

“You want to know what happened? Simple!”

She sat back down, picked up the apple, and took another bite. Her voice was slightly muffled as she said, “At the time, I was trying to trick Zhao Yuqi into posting a picture of herself without makeup, so I made up that comment.”

“I never expected someone to actually send me photos the next day.”

“So then, I just made up a few plastic surgery procedures and sent them to the person who provided the photos.”

“I had no idea that person was a big-V entertainment blogger!”

Yan Ziruo waved her hand magnanimously. “Mr. Wang, you don’t have to thank me!”

Wang Chuan asked, puzzled, “Thank you? Why?”

Yan Ziruo said with a grin, “The Zhao Yuqi plastic surgery incident has been headline news for the past few days. Think of how many people across the country have heard of our Plastic Surgery Center because of it.”

“I happen to know that the lines for consultations and appointments at the Plastic Surgery Center have been out the door these last two days.”

Yan Ziruo then said humbly, “It was just a happy accident on my part, so there’s no need to thank me.”

“Besides, I’m the one who needs to apologize to the hospital.”

She said with a solemn expression, “I shouldn’t have used the name of a hospital doctor to fabricate information and send it to someone.”

Yan Ziruo added, “Mr. Wang, I only used the name of the Affiliated Hospital. I never mentioned the Plastic Surgery Center.”

“That was Hu Pingye’s doing. As for damaging the reputation of the Plastic Surgery Center, you’ll have to settle that score with him.”

Wang Chuan felt a little dizzy from Yan Ziruo’s machine-gun-like barrage of words.

He decided to get straight to the point, his tone severe. “Yan Ziruo, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you anymore.”

“I called you here for one thing…”

Wang Chuan paused, then said gravely, “Who exactly leaked Zhao Yuqi’s detailed plastic surgery information to you?”

“Yan Ziruo, just tell us who it was, and this will have nothing to do with you. We guarantee we won’t hold you responsible for anything.”

“If you don’t talk, heh heh…”

Wang Chuan gave a cold laugh and threatened, “Yan Ziruo, believe it or not, both you and your brother will be in over your heads.”

“Getting kicked out of the hospital would be the least of your worries!”

Hearing this, Yan Ziruo’s temper flared. She retorted defiantly, “Kick my brother and me out of the Affiliated Hospital?”

“Mr. Wang, it’s not that I’m looking down on you, but you really don’t have that kind of power.”

“My brother earned his position at this hospital through sheer talent. He’s been on the city’s television news, he’s won awards, and so many experts and department heads think highly of him.”

“And even if that weren’t the case…”

Yan Ziruo said proudly, “If my brother left the Affiliated Hospital today, he’d have offers from the First People’s Hospital and Jingcheng Bai Ning Hospital by tomorrow…”

At this point, she suddenly stopped.

Yan Ziruo put down the apple, thought for a moment, and asked for confirmation, “A moment ago, you asked who leaked Zhao Yuqi’s detailed plastic surgery information to me, right?”

Before Wang Chuan could respond, Yan Ziruo exclaimed in feigned shock, “Does that mean Zhao Yuqi had her plastic surgery done right here?”

Seeing that Yan Ziruo’s surprised expression didn’t seem fake, Wang Chuan sneered, “It seems your source didn’t tell you that part.”

“Yan Ziruo, are you using that brain of yours for anything other than eating?”

“Think about it. If Zhao Yuqi didn’t have her surgery done here, how would that person have such detailed information?”

“Did you really think someone could identify every single procedure just from a photo, without missing a thing?”

Yan Ziruo’s mind went blank for a moment before she managed to clear her thoughts.

“So Zhao Yuqi really did have her plastic surgery at our hospital!”

She muttered to herself, then said cautiously, “Mr. Wang, what if I told you that I just made up and guessed all those procedures Zhao Yuqi had done? That it was a case of a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse, and I just happened to get it all right?”

“Would you believe me?”

“What do you think? Would I believe that?”

Wang Chuan gave Yan Ziruo a look like she was an idiot.

Yan Ziruo spread her hands. “The truth is I just guessed. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do.”

“You…”

Wang Chuan was so angry he almost slammed his hand on the table and shot to his feet, but he managed to restrain himself.

He calmed himself down and sized up Yan Ziruo.

She had short hair that covered her ears, fairly delicate features, and was wearing basically no makeup.

While not stunningly beautiful, she could be described as pretty.

She was wearing washed-out, generic-brand casual clothes.

Wang Chuan reached out and pointed to the tip of Yan Ziruo’s nose, and then her eyes. “The nose is the Mount Everest of the face. It sets the standard for a person’s entire appearance.”

“If the nose isn’t good, no matter how nice the other features are, the overall look drops a level.”

“The tip of your nose is a little big, and your eye shape is a bit too long and narrow for your face shape and other features.”

Seeing Yan Ziruo take a small compact mirror from her bag to examine her nose and eyes, Wang Chuan said enticingly, “I can personally perform a nose tip reduction and a minor eye reshaping surgery for you, free of charge.”

“I guarantee I can take you from a 7-out-of-10 beauty to an 8.5, maybe even a 9.”

“I can also have you transferred from the university’s research fund auditing office to our Plastic Surgery Center to handle our finances.”

“As everyone knows, the bonuses here are very generous…”

“I’m also a member of the hospital’s professional title review committee. Your brother’s future promotions…”

Wang Chuan added a veiled threat, “Getting someone promoted might be beyond my power.”

“But making sure someone *doesn’t* get promoted… that’s very easy…”

P.S.

A thank you to reader “The Cat Who Loves to Cheat Most” for the generous tip!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep