Daomu Biji: A Thousand Faces

Long Immortal stayed silent and seemed to be thinking. After a long time, he said a very long word in English. 

"You mean ‘hemispherectomy’?" Pan Boda asked him.

"I don't know how to translate it into Chinese," Long Immortal said. 

"Do you mean to directly cut out the largest tumor and the compressed half of your brain?"

"No, not the tumor. Just remove the compressed hemisphere to relieve the pressure on the other half,” Long Immortal said. 

"Why?" Pan Boda didn't understand. 

"When I look at myself in the mirror, I don't see any large black areas inside my head. This means that the largest tumor isn’t malignant, so treatment isn’t needed for that part. But I can see some long-shaped dark shadows, which should be the brain tissue that’s being compressed. Those do need to be removed."

"It’s impossible to operate on you with a diagnosis like that. No doctor would dare do it."

"Dr. Pan." From the beginning to the end of this conversation, Long Immortal hadn’t raised his head once. He was curled up with his face right next to Xie Yuchen's face, his eyes vacant like he was concentrating on another time and space. "I’ve always had an idea, and I want to share it with you. It’s very systematic, so you can understand it quickly.” 

"Go ahead."

"I don't think the thing in my brain is a tumor,” Long Immortal said. “Although I don’t know what it is, I know it isn’t a tumor. Before I die, I want to see what it is. I want to see what these things are—these things that made me like this.” 

"What the hell are you talking about? The X-ray is clear. It’s tumor tissue. With all the books you’ve read, I’m sure you know how to read an X-ray."

“Hyperplasia-like tissue shows a similar venation under an X-ray (1). The things in my brain can’t be captured accurately on an X-ray, so you only see the venation of the tissue above it,” Long Immortal sounded extremely certain while saying this. “Do you think this is a plausible explanation?”

"If it can’t be seen, then—"

"Dr. Pan, cut open my brain. It's worth it. I know you believe in what I’ve just said. There’s definitely something strange in my brain.”

Pan Boda fell silent, his face set in a very serious expression. He looked back at the medical staff and research students walking behind him and whispered, "No one can do this. We can’t get approval for it.”

"I already bought an operating room with sufficient specifications, as well as a house. It’s right behind the ancestral temple. It’s an old house that’s very spacious. Once the equipment arrives, can you please help me guard and sanitize everything? Dr. Pan, I'll file a document beforehand exonerating you. It may not be applicable under local law, but it'll at least clear you of most charges in case something goes wrong. But of course, nobody actually knows what might happen. I’ve also saved some blood in reserve that you can use during the operation."

"Without the backup of a hospital, you’ll die almost immediately if anything goes wrong during the operation. I can perform the craniotomy, but I can’t do it by myself. Since the tumor is too big, I need enough skilled people to assist with the operation. The vessels are too complicated—"

"It's not a tumor, it's something else," Long Immortal emphasized again. "Don't you want to see it, Dr. Pan? You're a good man. I want you to have this chance."

Pan Boda fell silent again. "Keep me awake. If I can’t make it, just let me take a look at my brain with the monitor. That’s all I want," Long Immortal said quietly. 

Pan Boda fumbled for a cigarette as he walked out. Long Immortal’s eyes were still vacant, but tears were streaming down his face. "Please," he whispered.

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TN Notes:

(1) Hyperplasia is an increase in the amount of organic tissue that results from cell proliferation. It may lead to the gross enlargement of an organ. Venation is an arrangement or system of veins (as in the tissue of a leaf or the wing of an insect)

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