16 – Zuowang

After talking to Nurse Lim, Li Yun waited in the conference room for the appendectomy to begin. There was an operating theater, but with a limited number of seatings, only senior residents and above had the luxury to watch. Li Yun and the other lower-level residents could only watch from a TV monitor.

Deputy Chief Sheng was the chief surgeon of the operation. He was in his mid-fifties and was considered the best surgeon in the hospital. Assisting him was a senior attending doctor in his late forties. Surgical operations, even simple ones, were usually performed by senior attendings. The chief residents could only hope to scrub in as the second assistance.

As Deputy Chief Sheng introduced the surgical procedure on screen, the residents chatted amongst themselves, mostly to gossip. The TV monitor was large, but the overall view and angle didn't provide much guidance. Since the live feed was recorded, they could rewatch the video later at 10x the speed. The training time was included in their overall evaluation since the attending doctors don't supervise or care about whether the residents pay attention or not, they would rather use the time to rest and catch up with one another.

The more diligent residents worked on their research papers, which was more useful for future employment than surgical skills. Li Yun and Gu Ren were the few who attentively watched the live feed. As interns, they had little experience with watching live surgeries and were not completely acclimated into the hospital system like the other residents. In addition, live feeds had a sense of rawness and time that recording lacked.

Dr. Sheng raised his scalpel and toward the bellybutton. Li Yun watched the screen, but he suddenly felt himself in Dr. Sheng's position. He could see that below him was the scalpel held by hands wearing dark blue latex gloves, but it wasn't his hands. He felt Dr. Sheng's confidence, like a surgeon who had performed hundreds of open appendectomies as the first two trocars were inserted. However, Dr. Sheng hesitated about adding in a third trocar to increase his surgical field. With his reputation, people expected him to perform with only two trocars, but he couldn't see what was going on. After deciding that another camera port was necessary, he inserted the third trocar and easily completed the operation. The appendix was separated and removed into the tray. The assistant stitched and finished up the surgery. Dr. Sheng felt a bit of regret after the surgery, the stitchwork on the appendix could have been better.

Li Yun opened his eyes. The conference room was empty, and the TV screen was off. It was after six, half an hour after surgery should have finished. Li Yun wondered when he had dozed off, but judging from his nearly drained half of jing, shen, and qi, it was likely that he had entered the state of Zuowang.

The Zuowang awarded by the system was different from the one he had achieved. If his Zuowang was a small perfection, this Zuowang could be considered a large perfection.

The Zuowang wasn't a typical meditative state, but an entirely different experience. The experience in this state felt very real, as though he was really Doctor Sheng performing surgery. Li Yun wanted to experience it again, but he had to recover his energy first.

Two hours later, Li Yun got up and looked through some videos on his phone. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to trigger it again.

"Should I try finding a live feed?" Li Yun thought.

He logged onto the surgical network and searched for any available live feed. As he watched and focused on it, he entered the same state. When he woke up, he felt excited about the potential opportunities to perform surgery like other surgeons. He wondered if it worked for other professions, and started looking up live videos on streaming sites.

For some reason, some videos worked, but some didn't. Li Yun found a fancam live feed focused on Messe that was just starting. The next moment, Li Yun opened his eyes, his body moved fast toward a defender.

Li Yun was experiencing himself as Messe, running through the field of Camp Nuo. In the game, he navigated through the defenders and shot a goal from several meters away. Messe had tricked the goalie to guard the opposite of his intended target, accurately spinning the ball into the net. By the end of the game, Messe made another goal.

Li Yun opened his eyes and looked at his phone. It was already past midnight. His energy was almost completely drained and he felt fatigued. Considering that a football game was longer than the appendectomy, that was to be expected. From the experience, there were several things that could be extrapolated, but he needed to experiment more.

After a week, Li Yun had drawn a couple of conclusions.

First, it must be in a form of digital media. He could not enter Zuowang by watching a surgery in person. Li Yun hadn't figured out why, but it may have to do with the 2nd rule-- there must be a main character. He couldn't watch a team sports event that focused on the team. It must be a fancam or event that focuses on one person.

Third, the event must be watched from the start. Fourth, in order to initiate Zuowang, he must focus on the video for 3-5 minutes. This was a problem for races and events that were a minute long. He had to find a video with preparation coverage prior to the event in order to have enough time to focus on the person. Lastly, the content must have experience value, such as fishing and cooking. A live streamer leisurely eating food did not have experience value, but a live streamer eating 50 hotdogs had experience value.

There was a wealth of experiences to be gained, but there were also limitations. For example, while watching Koyabashi eat hotdogs, he could not smell or taste the hotdog. He could tell whether it was sweet or salty, but the intricacy of the flavor was lost. Even the sense of touch was limited. He was like a ghost inhabiting a person's body without any full control.

After the experiences, Li Yun would know what it was like to eat 50 hotdogs, run like an Olympian athlete, and box like a champ, but he himself would not be able to perform any of those tasks unless he trained his own body. His stomach could not intake 50 hotdogs, his legs were not trained to maximize fast-twitch muscles, and his punch cannot magically pound like T-son.

There were few subjects that could benefit from using Zuowang repeatedly, such as surgery. Surgery was very standardized, especially in foreign countries. Technique stemmed mainly from experiences and repetition. The only physical skill required was dexterity, which Li Yun had already gained after training in calligraphy and engraving. Surgery was extremely limited in real life, especially for interns and even residents, so any sort of experience was precious.

If Li Yun used the Zuowang on a professional archer or any professional athlete, it may be beneficial the first few times to understand what it was like, but constantly using the Zuowang may not be as beneficial as him actually going to the gym and practicing himself.

Although it would be wasteful to use Zuowang on repetitive type skills, it was beneficial to use it on fighting and shooting target competitions. Li Yun didn't like to put himself in fighting competitions because of potential long-term damage, but using Zuowang was like being in a virtual reality simulator. He felt a bit of pain, but he gained a lot of insights into the opponents' strategies and developed a better sense of timing.

Guns were heavily restricted, as it was limited to law enforcement, so Li Yun searched for a lot of gun target competitions. Li Yun didn't think it was practical, but he thought it would be a cool skill to acquire.

With the Zuowang, Li Yun's sleep cycle turned for the worse. It was an endless cycle of sleep, Zuowang, read to gain action points, and then rinse and repeat. Zuowang was fascinating, like an addictive book that couldn't be put down. And once again, he fell into the trap of looking like the sleeping sloth.

During mid-review, Doctor Huang and some other attendings gave him the lowest scores they could. If they had the option, they would have failed him. However, there was a shortage of medical doctors and surgeons. Upper management, on the urging of the government officials, had been passing interns whether they were qualified or not. To most directors, it did not matter since the quality of interns was already poor throughout the country.