Li Dilei's face flushed at once. He had been far too cautious for his own good — to be fooled by something like this was utterly humiliating! If word of it got around, how could he ever hold his head up in the underworld again?

"I'm sorry, Brother — for putting you through all this trouble..." Li Dilei said sheepishly, then turned to Dr. Wang. "Dr. Wang, I hope you'll keep this to yourself..."

"Don't worry. A doctor is supposed to keep his patient's secrets — and all the more so for a man like you, Boss Li." Dr. Wang was only too glad to pretend he knew nothing; it had nothing to do with him anyway.

"Enough. Stop standing there making a fool of yourself and pull out the rest of those needles — yourself, and quickly!" Li Cihua shot Li Dilei a glare.

"Yes, yes!" Li Dilei nodded again and again. He meant to use his left hand — the one with no needles left in it — to pull the needles from the rest of his body, but the instant he raised his arm, he discovered, to his astonishment, that his left hand would not obey him! He tried to pinch a needle between his fingers, but his fingers had no feeling whatsoever — the entire hand was utterly dead to sensation!

"What do you think you're doing?" Li Cihua asked, seeing Li Dilei frozen in place and unable to guess what was wrong with him now.

"Brother, my hand... my hand won't move!" Li Dilei stared at his left hand in horror. There was no feeling in it at all! His arm moved well enough, but from the wrist up it was completely beyond his control.

"Won't move? What do you mean?" Li Cihua was startled.

"Brother, my left hand won't move. It's as if it doesn't belong to me — there's not the slightest feeling in it!" Li Dilei said, swinging his left arm, but the hand remained utterly dead to sensation.

"How is that possible?" Li Cihua frowned and looked closely at Li Dilei's left hand, but found nothing out of the ordinary about it. He turned to Dr. Wang. "Dr. Wang, what do you make of this?"

Dr. Wang was no less baffled. Before the needles were pulled out, Li Dilei's left hand had been perfectly fine; how could it lose all feeling the moment they came away?

"It isn't just gone numb, is it? Shall we wait and see?" Dr. Wang had never encountered anything like it either.

"No, it's definitely not numbness! If it were numb I'd still feel something, but right now I feel nothing at all — as if this hand weren't mine!" Li Dilei shook his head over and over.

"Could it have something to do with those needles?" Li Cihua eyed Li Dilei's hand with some suspicion.

"That... it's hard to say." Dr. Wang did not know whether there was any connection; in any case, he had never seen its like.

"Then what do we do now..." Li Cihua could only hope Dr. Wang had some remedy.

"For now we can only take an X-ray first. If it shows nothing, we'll run a full examination and wait for the results before deciding anything." Dr. Wang suggested.

"All right!" Li Cihua nodded and told Dr. Wang to take Li Dilei for the tests. As for the other needles still in Li Dilei's body, he did not dare pull them out either — they would simply have to stay where they were.

Ugly and conspicuous as they were, who could guarantee that pulling them out would not bring on another loss of feeling in that left hand? Whether the two were connected was still impossible to say.

Before long, Li Dilei's test results came out — and the results left both Li Dilei and Li Cihua ashen-faced!

Necrosis of the nerve tissue in the hand?

Staring at the report, the Li brothers' eyes went wide.

"That's only the nerves. But according to the systemic tests, the muscle tissue in the hand shows a tendency to necrose as well..." Dr. Wang found it just as mystifying. Both nerves and muscle dead from a pricking with a silver needle? Wasn't that a little too absurd? Strangest of all, there was no poison on the needle at all — it was nothing but an ordinary silver needle.

"Then what should we do now? Can it be cured?" Li Cihua asked.

"We can try, but it would be best to amputate the left hand at once, to keep the necrotic tissue from spreading to the arm..." Dr. Wang said.

Li Cihua frowned, his heart filled with indescribable shock. Who on earth had Li Dilei provoked, to be persecuted like this? He could not help turning to Li Dilei. "What's this person's background? Who exactly did you offend?"

"I don't know either... they just came in for a meal..." Li Dilei was frightened too. Hearing Dr. Wang say the hand might have to be amputated, he was struck dumb on the spot. Wasn't that simply too terrifying?

"Came in for a meal? Think carefully — is there anything at all you remember? What was he called? What did he look like?" Li Cihua asked.

"The person... ah, now I remember. Among them there was a woman — Tang Yun, or something like that!" Li Dilei was rather sensitive to the names of beauties, and so he remembered Tang Yun's name.

"Tang Yun?!" Li Cihua's expression froze. Surely it couldn't be such a coincidence? Tang Yun? Wasn't she Wei Zhao's girlfriend?

"Yes, that was the name. The man who did this to me, I can't quite remember his name — I think his surname was Lin..." Li Dilei, not noticing his cousin's expression, squeezed his eyes shut and tried hard to recall.

"Surname Lin? Was his name Wei Zhao?" Li Cihua drew a deep breath and struggled to master his emotions.

"Yes, Wei Zhao — that's it! Brother, you know this man? Then can we ask him to come and save me?" Hearing that his cousin seemed to know him, Li Dilei brightened at once and said hurriedly.

"I know him..." A complicated light flickered in Li Cihua's eyes. "But he won't come to save you..."

"He won't come?" Li Dilei sank into despair. "Why! Brother, beg him for me — I'll give him whatever money he wants, I'll set out a banquet and apologize on my knees, just don't let me lose my hand!"

"The grudge between him and me is a deep one! No wonder he wasn't afraid when he heard my name — instead he came down on you so ruthlessly..." Li Cihua sighed. "You shouldn't have thrown my name around. You've only brought trouble down on yourself!"

"What? A deep grudge?" Li Dilei was stunned as well. How was he to know that Wei Zhao and Li Cihua were enemies? Every time before, when he had dropped his cousin's name, people had given way to him; it had never crossed Li Dilei's mind that he might run into one of Li Cihua's enemies!

"As things stand, there's nothing for it but to beg Young Master Bing." Li Cihua was out of options. Now that he had heard it was Wei Zhao who had struck, he gave up any thought of letting Li Dilei stay on in the hospital! Wei Zhao was at the very least a Mystic-rank expert — how could any ordinary hospital undo what he had done? Wasting more time here was useless and would only delay Li Dilei's treatment. Better to go and beg Young Master Bing, and see whether he could persuade the King of Medicine to lend a hand.