Chapter 319: The Hard-Working Giant Turtle
Ning Xiyue opened the clinic door and stepped into the courtyard, smiling at the three women still chatting excitedly outside instead of coming in. She raised her voice a little.
“Two aunties, stop praising me already—come in first! I’ll get your medicine, then you can keep chatting.”
“Aye, let’s go,” Aunt Shufen said, taking Bai Yu by the hand and pulling her inside. Then she told Ning Xiyue, “Doctor Ning, you should help this young lady first. She’s in a hurry—let her go before us.”
“I agree,” Aunt Xing chimed in, raising her hand and giving Bai Yu a push forward.
“Thank you, both of you, really—thank you so much.”
Bai Yu bowed sincerely to the two women.
“When my husband gets better, I’ll have him make you some steamed rice cakes to try—they’re really good. I always eat a big piece every time.”
“Deal, we’ll hold you to it,” the aunties laughed cheerfully.
Honestly, Bai Yu’s acting was pretty impressive—completely convincing, coaxing the two aunties into smiling from ear to ear.
Ning Xiyue went to the medicine cabinet and reached out her hand. “Alright, we’ll do as the aunties said. Give me the prescription, I’ll get your medicine first.”
While she prepared the herbs, Bai Yu and the two aunties kept chatting nonstop.
After Bai Yu finally left, the aunties were still looking quite pleased with themselves, thinking they’d learned all sorts of things about the coal-mine team woman and her background—though, of course, everything had been what Bai Yu wanted them to hear.
Aunt Xing smiled, watching Bai Yu’s figure disappear down the path.
“That lady from the coal-mine team seems so easy to talk to—not at all like that Zhang family’s city relative, who looks down her nose at us like she’s the empress of heaven.”
Aunt Shufen, sitting with one arm stretched out as Ning Xiyue took her pulse, turned slightly toward the window to glance after Bai Yu, still chatting with Aunt Xing.
“Exactly! That one’s just a petty person who suddenly got lucky. Now this Bai girl and Doctor Ning here—real city folks, educated, polite, never act superior to us. That’s what true city people are like.”
Ning Xiyue saw they were more interested in gossip than treatment and smiled helplessly. “Auntie, the other hand.”
“Oh, right.”
The auntie gave an embarrassed smile, offered her other hand, and sat up straight—but her mouth didn’t stop running.
The two continued gossiping about that Zhang family relative, seamlessly picking up the thread.
Ning Xiyue dispensed the medicine while listening in, treating their chatter as if she were listening to a live storytelling session.
After sending the aunties off, the clinic finally quieted down.
Li Xiuxiu had to work in the fields that morning, and since Ning Xiyue didn’t need to, the entire clinic belonged to her alone.
She didn’t feel lonely—in fact, it made things much easier for her to focus on her own tasks.
Last night, she had given the book meant for Li Xiuxiu to the man in the woodshed, so she couldn’t give Xiuxiu the exact same copy now.
She took out her manuscript, swapped the sample medical case, shuffled the order of the herbal annotations, and replaced certain phrases with synonyms of the same meaning.
After making numerous edits, she printed the new version on slightly different paper using her simulator. It looked quite unlike the previous one, though the core content was similar.
Once that was done, Ning Xiyue turned her attention to studying the reward item she had received last night.
She spread the newly edited casebook open on the table for appearances’ sake and sat in her chair, but most of her focus had already shifted to her internal system for learning.
The first course she unlocked was Russian language study.
She had never learned Russian before, but she knew languages relied mostly on memorization—and rote memorization was something she excelled at.
For her, anything solvable through memory was never a problem.
Following Teacher Miyan, she began from the very basics—the alphabet—feeling as if she had gone back to her early days of learning English.
But compared to the painful grind of middle-school English, this was far more enjoyable.
After finishing the lesson, Ning Xiyue took out the foreign-language teaching robot, tinkering with it to see if it could help her reinforce what she’d learned and practice pronunciation.
When she returned from the system’s Russian classroom and brought the robot out into her storage space, she found that it looked just like her pharmaceutical-testing robot—a human-shaped android.
“Ding. Foreign-language teaching robot activated. Currently equipped with two channels: Chinese and Russian. Can switch automatically.”
“Not bad,” Ning Xiyue muttered, circling the robot for inspection.
Little Turtle flapped its tiny claws, following her in circles around the robot.
“Host,” it said, “this foreign-language robot won’t just help you learn Russian—it’ll be extremely useful for studying any future languages.”
Ning Xiyue’s curiosity piqued. “Oh? Tell me more.”
“Although it currently only supports Chinese and Russian, that’s not its limit. As long as you import a language textbook or even a sentence in a new language, it will automatically unlock that language module and teach it to you.”
Little Turtle flew onto the robot’s shoulder, tapping the import-activation button with its claw.
“From now on, whenever you want to learn a new language, it’ll be your assistant.”
“That’s awesome—I love it.”
Ning Xiyue clapped happily. This was like carrying around a multi-language translator and a personal tutor.
The robot was truly a treasure of a reward—if she ever went abroad, languages would no longer be an obstacle.
She switched the robot to the Russian channel and began reinforcement drills on the alphabet and pronunciation.
The robot was like a living ruler—able to detect even the slightest pronunciation error and correct her instantly.
After finishing Russian, Ning Xiyue decided to use another of her earned learning opportunities—this time, for driving lessons.
There were two vehicle types available: sedan and truck. She chose the sedan first.
Activating the “Sedan Driving Course,” she suddenly found herself in a driving-school environment.
The first class covered the written theory exam (Subject One). The test questions were displayed for her to read, while Instructor Miyan only explained the trickier ones. The class lasted barely fifteen minutes.
“Subject One ends here. Students, review the materials on your own. We’ll now begin Subject Two: Driving Practice.”
Teacher Miyan—the big turtle—waved his claw, and the classroom scene transformed into a vast driving-practice field.
Only one training car was parked there. A giant turtle sat in the passenger seat, head sticking out the window, waving its claw for Ning Xiyue to get in.
Ning Xiyue fell silent at the sight. She almost didn’t want to go.
Everyone else had human instructors in their training cars—
only hers had a turtle.
If anyone ever asked who taught her to drive, she could honestly say, “A turtle did.”
It felt as though she’d wandered into a fairytale world—one where her instructor was a talking turtle.
When the turtle saw she wasn’t moving, it opened the door and climbed out.
After getting out of the car, it transformed.
What appeared before Ning Xiyue was a labor-class version of the giant turtle—It wore loose grandpa pants, a short Chinese jacket, and an old man’s undershirt. A white towel hung around its neck, an empty leaf-stem pipe dangled from its mouth, and in one claw it fanned itself with a big palm fan.
Even though she’d seen the turtle in many forms, Ning Xiyue still couldn’t help but be impressed. She applauded the creature’s dedication—it really went all-out with its teaching costumes.
“Get in the car,” said the turtle, twisting its head, speaking in a thick Yunnan dialect that Ning Xiyue barely understood.
“Coach, please speak Mandarin! Any harder and I won’t understand you at all!”
“Alright, get in. Don’t waste time. You only have one hour for today’s lesson,” said the turtle, taking the long pipe from its mouth and using it like a pointer.
“Got it, I’m getting in.”
Hearing there was only one hour, Ning Xiyue climbed in quickly and sat in the driver’s seat.
Instructor Turtle—Teacher Miyan—took the passenger seat beside her.
Since the technology in her world wasn’t advanced yet, cars were still all manual transmission—so that’s what she had to learn.
The training vehicle was a Red Flag sedan, the most popular model of the time.
The turtle coach began by explaining the functions of each control, familiarizing her with the clutch, brake, and gears.
Then came repeated clutch-pressing drills and by the time she’d finished practicing, the class was over.
“That’s it for today’s lesson,” said Teacher Miyan. “Student Xiyue, please return tomorrow morning for the second session of Subject Two. Duration: two hours. Class dismissed.”
The moment he said “class dismissed,” the driving-school training ground vanished, reverting to a normal classroom, and Ning Xiyue was ejected from the course—back into her system space once again.
