In a certain parallel universe, there was a planet called Blue Planet.
In the mountainous region of De County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, within the territory of Hua Nation on the Blue Planet, there was a small mountain village called Xiantan Village.
In Xiantan Village, there was a young man named Li Xiangdong, born in the year 2000 of the Blue Planet calendar.
In 2019, Li Xiangdong achieved the top score in the county's college entrance examination and was fortunate enough to be admitted to the Computer Science and Technology major at the School of Information Science and Technology of Shuimu University in the Imperial Capital, a prestigious university in Hua Nation.
From elementary school through high school, Li Xiangdong had always been the "neighbor's kid" who excelled at everything. But upon entering university, despite working harder than he had in high school, Li Xiangdong found that a considerable gap still remained between himself and the elites from all over the country. At that time, Li Xiangdong's greatest wish was to master computer science knowledge and, after graduation, secure a stable job in a first-tier city like the Imperial Capital, Magic City, or Guangzhou of Hua Nation, living a middle-class life with a house and a car.
To achieve this goal, Li Xiangdong spent his spare time immersed in the school library, making him one of the most diligent students in his class.
In early 2020, winter vacation for the first semester of freshman year arrived.
Like most students, Li Xiangdong returned to his hometown to celebrate the Spring Festival. Little did he know that at that very moment, a major event affecting the entire Blue Planet world was about to occur. An unprecedented novel coronavirus pneumonia broke out in various parts of the Blue Planet world. The transmission speed of this pneumonia among crowds was extremely fast, and the mortality rate for elderly and frail patients was much higher than that of ordinary influenza.
After initial panic, various provinces in Hua Nation implemented the highest level of quarantine and epidemic prevention measures upon discovering cases, taking the lead in strictly controlling the movement of people and conducting rigorous epidemiological investigations and quarantines on discovered patients.
After the Spring Festival, schools all over the country successively extended their winter vacations, and Li Xiangdong also received notification from his school to suspend returning to campus for classes, with learning shifted to online instruction. The notification emphasized that the decision of when to start the semester would be made only after the epidemic situation improved.
Hua Nation was one of the earliest countries to adopt strict prevention and control measures such as lockdown, quarantine, and traffic control against the epidemic. After more than a month of efforts, by early March, the epidemic within Hua Nation was basically brought under control, and people's living order gradually returned to normal.
Xiantan Village was the place where Li Xiangdong's family had lived for generations, named after a pool of water in the village. The pool covered an area of about two to three hundred mu, formed by the convergence of mountain spring water, with excellent water quality that was clear to the bottom. Lush forests and slender bamboo surrounded the pool, where mountains and water embraced each other, creating a scenery as beautiful as a fairyland.
Xiantan Village was located at the western foot of the Mogan Mountain scenic area, known as one of the "Four Great Summer Resorts of Hua Nation." Many guesthouses—commonly known as "farmhouse inns"—had been opened in the village. In the past, business during the Spring Festival was extremely bustling, but nowadays, due to the epidemic, not a single tourist's figure could be seen.
According to legend, the Li Family were descendants of Li Shizhen, the great physician in Hua Nation's history, who had moved from Beihu Province to Xiantan Village in their early years to escape the chaos of war. Unfortunately, the family tree was lost during the migration, leaving the generation of Li Xiangdong's grandfather, Li Youxiang, to search for the family's glory only in legends. Only the family's inherited medical skills and the surname Li could barely establish a connection with Li Shizhen. After the founding of Hua Nation, Li Xiangdong's ancestor served as the village's "barefoot doctor," followed by Grandpa Li Youxiang and Dad Li Guoqing, who naturally took over as the village's barefoot doctors. By the time it reached Dad Li Guoqing's hands, he had opened a clinic at home. In addition to treating common ailments like colds and stomachaches, the Li family was also adept at using folk remedies to treat two difficult and complicated conditions: sequelae of stroke and venomous snake bites. Because of their remarkable curative effects, they were locally quite famous, and patients from other provinces frequently came admiringly to seek medical treatment.
Although the Li family had practiced medicine for generations, with the development of the times, Western medicine had taken the dominant position, and people with physical illnesses would first choose to go to large hospitals for treatment, only visiting the clinic if recommended by surrounding villagers or acquaintances. Coupled with the Li family's friendly nature and very low fees, the clinic's income was not high, but its advantage lay in a steady, long-term stream of patients, making their family's financial situation somewhat better than most families in the village.
Grandpa Li was seventy-five years old this year, but he had always been robust in health, able to prescribe medical formulas for people at home and do all kinds of farm work in the fields.
Li Xiangdong's grandmother was also seventy-one years old and had always been in great health, taking charge of all the household chores.
Li Xiangdong also had a younger aunt named Li Jianping, who was one of the earliest college graduates to walk out of the village. She now worked in the government of the metropolis of Magic City, and was even a deputy district head of a district government under the jurisdiction of Magic City. Uncle Wang Qingsong was an associate professor at Magic City Jiaotong University, and the two had only one daughter, Wang Yilin, who was in the third year of junior high school.
Li Xiangdong's father, Li Guoqing, had taken over Grandpa's position twenty years ago. Although Dad Li had not passed the college entrance examination, he had inherited the ancestral medical skills, even studying at a medical college at his own expense and obtaining a clinical physician's qualification, long ago replacing Grandpa as the attending physician of the clinic.
Li Xiangdong's mother, He Mei, was originally a minban teacher at the township central primary school. Twenty years ago, following the tide of rural tourism that was just beginning to rise locally, she resigned and opened a guesthouse, making the greatest contribution to the Li family's step toward a moderately prosperous life. Through years of business experience, He Mei had blossomed into a shrewd and capable proprietress.
Younger sister Li Yin was three years younger than Li Xiangdong and was currently in her first year of high school this year. Her grades had always been among the top ten in her grade at the county key high school, and she had also been staying at home since the winter vacation started.
The Li family consistently upheld the tradition of combining farming and studying. Influenced by this environment since childhood, Li Xiangdong and his sister, under Grandpa's guidance, read the "Three Character Classic", "Hundred Family Surnames", "Thousand Character Classic", and "Zhenguangxianwen" at an early age, studied classic Hua medicine texts, memorized the "Rhymes of Decoction Formulas", and learned the basic diagnostic methods of "Looking, Hearing, Asking, and Feeling" hand in hand. Sometimes they would diagnose people who came for medical treatment in a very professional manner, and the villagers jokingly called the brother and sister the "little doctors of the Li family."
It could be said that even without attending university, Li Xiangdong could still inherit the ancestral business and live a moderately prosperous life. However, people in rural areas all yearned for the outside world. The reason Li Xiangdong studied hard was partly because he was truly interested in studying, and more importantly, to broaden his horizons in the big city.
An asphalt road running north and south across the village passed through it along the terrain. Because their home was in a mountainous area, every household in the village had contracted mountain land, and most of what was planted on the mountains was moso bamboo.
Li Xiangdong's family's contracted mountain was a small hill covering an area of over 150 mu. It was situated right at the southeastern end of the village, and the Li family's courtyard was located by the southern foothills of the contracted mountain. Behind a leveled parking lot was a large courtyard covering an area of more than 5 mu. The east, west, and south sides of the courtyard were simply built with mountain stones to form a half-circle of one-meter-high low walls, and close to the southern entrance, three single-story rooms were built, two serving as garages and one as the clinic.
On the north side of the courtyard, right against the foot of the contracted mountain, two buildings were constructed side by side at a distance of more than twenty meters apart. On the west side was a beautiful three-story small villa. The first floor was a large living room and dining room, Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, and Mom lived on the second floor, and Li Xiangdong and his sister lived on the third floor, with each bedroom having an independent bathroom.