Rebirth in the 50s: The Couple with the Hidden Space novel Chapter 1230

Chapter 1230: Chapter 1103: Bell-Bottoms

Man proposes, Heaven disposes; you can’t force it.

Zhuge Liang, Kongming, did his utmost, then sat and waited for the right moment.

Only at the very end did he help Liu Bei establish Western Shu, passing through two generations, and Liu Bei still only guarded his tiny corner of land, never fulfilling the grand wish of reviving the Han Dynasty.

Does that count as success?

Even sages and wise men dare not force things—let alone ordinary folk.

You are not a fish; how can you know the joy of fish? What is honey to me is arsenic to another.

So sometimes, whether it’s doing things or being a person, you really can’t force it.

Zhou Jiao had figured it out. She wasn’t going to force her children’s wishes, but she couldn’t just ignore them and toss the matter out of her mind, either.

She, who had inherited the full body of Doctor Hu’s unique skills, packed up the medicines and sent her three sons off to do internships at the grassroots level; she herself also returned to the municipal hospital’s traditional Chinese medicine clinic on weekends.

Here with her third senior brother, Dong Zhichao, she wasn’t the deputy director of some department in the Planning Commission, but her master—over eighty-year-old Doctor Hu’s disciple, a young TCM doctor adept at acupuncture.

As some historical turning point drew near, Zhou Jiao spent more and more of her spare time on medicine. To train her hand feel, she even picked up embroidery work again.

Lately the happiest one had to be Doctor Hu. If Zhou Jiao didn’t also have achievements in her current job, the old man would have wanted his only successor to give up work entirely and devote herself to studying medicine.

With such thoughts, he naturally brought it up whenever he had the chance, hinting left and right.

Like this day, in the ward, Doctor Hu once again watched Zhou Jiao performing acupuncture on a patient. When they stepped out and saw his little disciple starting to beam, he raised the old topic yet again.

"Jiao Jiao, seeing another patient recover, doesn’t it feel like a great achievement?"

"Mm."

"To save a single life is better than building a seven-story pagoda. No profession is greater than healing the dying and rescuing the injured. That patient just now is the pillar of his family—saving him is equivalent to saving a whole household. As the ancients said: if you cannot be a virtuous minister, then be a virtuous doctor. In the old days, a doctor’s status was no less than that of an official."

Zhou Jiao looked at him, face full of guilt. "Master."

This trick worked on Doctor Hu every time; the old man immediately rolled his eyes and waved his hand broadly. "Aiya, forget it, forget it. As long as you’re happy."

Zhou Jiao might be indifferent to whether outsiders lived or died, but toward the old man she truly felt sincere guilt.

The better he treated her, the more guilty she felt. In the past, constrained by circumstances, he hadn’t forced her—he was worried about her.

But now?

Originally he’d let this good-for-nothing disciple go, then picked the youngest, Wu, and the old man genuinely wanted to train his grandson-disciple single-mindedly to succeed him.

In the end her youngest son wasn’t interested either, happily running off to college. Together with his mother, they both went into what he called a "side track."

Luckily the sect still had her senior brothers. She remembered clearly the oath she’d sworn when entering the sect: she must not let the lineage die out, or she’d truly have to apologize with her life.

When Zhang Guoqing came to pick her up, Zhou Jiao was still thinking about a question.

"The old man really doesn’t want to take another disciple? Should I try persuading him?"

Zhou Jiao shot him a sidelong glance. "Five years ago he already said he’s just a pile of old bones now; he’d have to be crazy to waste time and effort teaching people. And not just him—even I have no interest in teaching outsiders.

It’s not about some secret art that mustn’t be passed on, it’s that it’s exhausting, emotionally draining. You need talent and hard work both. Do you know how many books I read in those first three years?"

Zhang Guoqing shook his head wordlessly. Wife, you’re being proud and tsundere, you know?

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