Nyoi-Bo Studio

  Nyoi-Bo Studio

  At dusk, it was still snowy. It seemed it would never stop. After dinner, Wang Yao stepped through the snow to go up the hill. It was a snowy and quiet night.

  The next morning, snow was splendidly wrapped around the mountain. The snow had blocked the mountain and the road. San Xian played on the mountain and was too happy to go home.

  Wang Yao decided to use this time to prepare some medical soup. With the weather, he figured there wouldn’t be any patients waiting to see him for treatment.

  He was familiar with how to make and boil blood deblocking powder and regather soup. Ginseng, matrimony vine, sealwort, gorgon fruit, glossy ganoderma…… Shanjing, guiyuan, Ephedra, the root of angelica, Chinese peony, panax notoginseng…… Polygonum vine, ziyu……

  In the small room on the mountain, the firewood burned with a bursting sound. The fragrance of drugs floated outside, where snowflakes were flying in the sky and covering more than half of Qi province.

  It was also snowy in Zhu.

  “Ah, Mom!” Du Baozhan was in his room whining.

  “Xiao Bao, please try to endure it again.” The middle-aged woman in the other room was really worried. Her husband quietly sat on a sofa and drank tea.

  “How can you be so relaxed and just drink tea?” she asked. “You need to think of some ideas.”


  “I have no idea other than to bind him until the intermittent suffering goes away,” the middle-aged man said as he took a sip of tea. “Calm down and have some tea.”


  “You…… You…… Sometimes I doubt whether he is your son,” she said.

  “Of course he is, ” the man replied.

  “Why aren’t you broken-hearted?” the woman asked

  “Do you have any ideas?” the man asked

  “Why would I ask you if I had?” she replied.

  Although it seemed like a typical quarrel between a couple, this time it was special and serious. They were both worried and had no idea to handle the problem.

  “Why not consult Doctor Wang? Maybe we should bring Xiao Bao there,” the woman said. “Call him now first. It’ll be useless if he is not available.”


  They gave him a phone call but did not get any reply.

  “He is not available,” the man said.

  “You should have asked him to leave his mobile phone number,” the woman said.

  “Do you think he would leave it? Just endure it,” the man replied.

  The couple opened the door to their son’s room. They saw their son’s painful expressions caused by being bound on the bed. As his mother, she was broken-hearted and could not bear to see him like that. But, she had to be relentless or her son’s whole life would be ruined.

  “One bite,” Xiao Bao said. “I’ll just take one bite this time, and I won’t eat them again, Mom, please!”


  “Handle the pain!” His father yelled in a low voice and slammed the door.

  Their son gradually lost his energy after yelling one day and night. During this time, his mother only sent him one meal.

  “No, I don’t want to eat,” Xiao Bao said.

  “Have some bites. You will gain strength once you eat something,” she said.

  “I don’t want to eat that. Pease, Mom!”


  Bang! The woman forced herself to slam the door.

  The same thing was also happening with two other families, only the time was different.

  “I’ll ask one person to see whether he’s available.” A short and fat man touched his bald head and called to see whether Wang Yao was in the clinic……

  The heavy snow blocked the road, which was really hard to walk along. A four-wheel drive car could handle the weather.

  “My god, what’s going on?” a young man said.

  “Who knows? But, we were asked to see whether he’s at home, even though it’s so cold now.”


  The two young men hurried on with their journey in the cold and heavy snow weather. They bantered back and forth during the ride.

  “What if he’s at home?”


  “Then tell him.”


  “And, our attitude?”


  “We must show our respect.”


  “Ah, I even made an appointment with a beauty at home to talk about our life.”


  “Shut your yap. Be careful while driving. It is too easy to take a slip.”


  The two drove from Zhu to Lianshan. They found the village based on GPS. It would not have been so easy to find it if it had happened many years ago.

  “My god, what a small village!”


  They were a bit absent-minded when they arrived.

  “How can we find the man?” one of them said.

  “We can ask a local for help,” the other young man said.

  It was snowy. Nobody would want to come out in such bad weather. They knocked on the door of a villager, who told them where Wang Yao’s clinic was. They went to find it, but it was locked and closed.

  “Nobody’s available. What can we do?” one of the young men said.

  “Tell him the truth,” the other replied.

  “Do you think it is possible that he lives in the village?” the first young man said.

  “Don’t be stupid. Did you forget what elder brother told us? We can’t go to his home!” the other young man said.

  “Ah, I forget it. What can we do now?” the first young man said.

  “Call elder brother,” the other said.

  They called to tell him what happened, but he did not answer. They left a message and sent him a picture they took. The young men then once again absent-mindedly bantered back and forth.

  “The clinic was rather beautiful.”


  “A bit like Suzhou traditional gardens.”


  “Ah? You even know about Suzhou traditional gardens?”


  “Stop talking nonsense. I even know about the Humble Administrator’s Garden and Lion Grove.”


  “You learned that from the Golden Lotus.”


  “You know what? That’s classical literature.”


  “What kind of classical literature is it when you only read the chapters relative to Xi Men and Xiao Pan?”


  “Enough of that. Elder brother’s calling back.”


  “Hello, elder brother. Yeah, yeah. He’s not at the clinic. Yes, OK. We’ll be here waiting for him.”


  The young man hung up the phone and said, “Elder brother asked us to wait here to see when Doctor Wang comes back to his clinic and to tell him at once.”


  “Wait? When it’s so cold? How could we wait for him? In the car?” the other man said.

  They were waiting in the car with engine on, feeling the warm breeze and crouching inside. They had nothing to do but to play Fight Landlord, a popular poker card game in which two players unite as peasants and fight another player as the landlord, with black spot on, a plug-in software that allows players to cheat and chat during games. They won some golden peas as rewards.

  Nic-nac-nac. Suddenly, someone was knocking on the window. They subconsciously moved to take out their weapons. Luckily, they remembered where they were. The driver rolled down the window and saw an old man looking at him and smiling.

  Damn it! It was unkind of you to suddenly turn up. I even took out my knife.

  “Uncle, hello,” he said.

  “Young man, are you waiting for someone?” the old man asked.

  “Ah, yes, I am. I’m waiting for Doctor Wang,” the young man replied.

  The old man smiled and nodded. He then turned back and went away.

  “The old man must be crazy going outside to wander around in such cold weather,” the young man said.

  “Ah, I thought he meant to help us,” the other young man said.

  They continued to wait in the car and play their game.

  Nic-nac-nac. Someone knocked on the window again.

  You’re addicted to knocking!

  When he rolled down the window, he saw a young man in a thin down jacket.

  “How are you?” he subconsciously asked. He then blushed for his politeness.

  When did I become so polite? Was it possible that reading classical literature could change people? But, I’ve only read it for three days.

  “Are you here to see me?” the man asked.

  “Ah?” They two young men were shocked a little. They soon got excited.

  “Are you Doctor Wang?” the driver asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Wang Yao replied.

  “Brilliant!” the two young men exclaimed.

  “Which of you is ill?” Wang Yao asked.

  “Ah, not us. It is another person. We’ve only been waiting to see whether we could find you here,” the young man said.

  “Where is he?” Wang Yao asked.

  “In Zhu,” the young man said. “Ah, I guess you’ll be in the clinic for the whole day.”


  “Yes, I will,” Wang Yao said.

  “Brilliant. I’ll notify our elder brother at once,” the young man said.

  He hurried to call his elder brother, who instantly drove to Lianshan with his bound daughter in the car.

  “It’s cold outside. Why not come in?” Wang Yao said.

  They thought the man was nice. They immediately found out they were wrong. They felt colder in the room than they did in the car. They waited in the room a while but could no longer stand it.

  “Ah, we are to go outside to have a smoke,” one of the young men said.

  “Yes, you can help yourself,” Wang Yao replied.

  The two went back to the car.

  “Damn it! Didn’t that young man feel cold? He was just wearing a thin down jacket,” the driver said.

  “He might have excess heat,” the other young man said.

  “Me too, but even I couldn’t bear that,” the driver said.

  “But, you only do in the evening,” the other young man said.

  After waiting more than an hour, they saw a car drive into the village.

  “Ah, the old brother’s coming,” the driver said.

  A man with a bald head got out of the car. More people also got out of the car.

  “Be gentle. All of you should be careful,” the bald man said.

  “What? Why does he need a doctor if he kidnapped a child?” one of the young men waiting in the car asked.

  “Damn it! He isn’t going to engage in organ-trafficking is he?” the other young man asked.

  “Are you blind? That’s his daughter,” the first young man said.

  “Why did he bind her up?” the other man asked.

  They were shocked. Why did their old brother bind his daughter and bring her to this village that needed two people to explore first?