TPWBI Chapter 122

The Spark Tribe’s hospital had studied the advanced medical techniques from Earth. Although it had only been a short time, there were still clear differences between the physiques of Earthlings and the people here. Even the plants and other resources showed subtle distinctions.

Yet, despite that, the hospital’s development over the past few years has been remarkably fast. Ting possessed an exceptional talent in this field, especially when it came to treating external injuries, where her medical skills were truly outstanding.

Because of this, many people were drawn to seek treatment there, particularly those from the Western Continent, who cared deeply about their physical health.

At first, the people of the Western Continent didn’t trust the Spark Tribe’s medicine. They had once seen how the people of the Eastern Continent treated illnesses, muttering strange incantations and performing mysterious rituals that offered no real sense of safety or reliability.

Even though the Spark Tribe was completely different, skepticism still ran deep.

Moreover, the Spark Tribe never deliberately promoted their medical skills. After all, their hospital was a welfare institution, not a commercial one.

At first, there weren’t enough medical staff to begin with. Treating people from other tribes or merchant caravans only made the medical resources even more strained.

Later, a merchant caravan member fell seriously ill. With no other options left, they brought him to the Spark Tribe’s hospital for treatment. Unexpectedly, he recovered in no time!

He had suffered an injury accompanied by fever. The wound had become infected and festering. On the Western Continent, such a condition was almost equivalent to a death sentence.

What made it worse was that the injured man held a high status, but his constitution wasn’t strong, and his resistance was weak. Normally, someone like him would have been given up on entirely in the Western Continent.

But the man refused to die just like that. Those around him decided to take a desperate gamble. They tried the Spark Tribe’s treatment as a last resort. No one expected that he would actually recover, and so quickly at that!

Everyone was utterly stunned. They hadn’t imagined that the Spark Tribe’s medical skills were truly as remarkable as some rumors had claimed!

From then on, more and more people began coming to seek treatment.

After discussion, the Spark Tribe decided not to refuse them, but they would charge a considerable fee.

Moreover, anyone wishing to receive treatment had to make an appointment in advance and would only be seen after the Spark Tribe’s own people. Otherwise, they would not be accepted.

Even so, countless people still traveled from afar to seek medical help, drawn by the skill and reputation of the Spark Hospital.

The nobles of the Western Continent were incredibly wealthy. What they feared most was having problems with their health.

The merchant caravans of the Western Continent quickly noticed the business opportunity. They applied to the Spark Tribe to purchase and transport some of their healing salves and other finished medicines.

At first, the Spark Tribe refused. Since medicinal ingredients were not easy to obtain, they didn’t yet have enough supply to sell.

Later, as their techniques improved, they began to have some surplus. With the merchant caravans from the Western Continent persistently and strongly requesting it, the Spark Tribe finally started selling certain ready-made medicines for treating injuries, as well as penicillin and similar drugs.

These medicines were extremely expensive. After all, the production costs were high. But even so, many people, especially those from the Western Continent, were still willing to spend large sums of money to buy them.

What no one expected was that some members of the Spark Tribe actually took advantage of this situation, secretly obtaining medicine and reselling it for huge profits.

“Why would these people do something like this? Are they really that short on money?” Yang Yi was furious when he heard about it.

For the Spark people, medical treatment and medicine were free. Yet some individuals exploited this loophole, pretending to be ill to collect large amounts of medicine, only to turn around and sell it to other tribes or to merchants from the Western Continent.

This was a tremendous loss for the Spark Tribe!

The reason their medicines were sold at such high prices was mostly because producing them wasn’t easy.

Providing free treatment for their own people was meant as a way to reward everyone for their contributions to the tribe, while funds collected from outside sources were used for research and production.

And yet, those people had the nerve to profit from it for themselves!

“Divine Envoy…” Ying pressed her lips together, her expression uneasy. “There’s been gambling activity appearing in Port City.”

“What?!” Yang Yi slammed the table hard, utterly shocked by the news.

“How long has this been going on? How big is the scale? What kind of gambling?”

Yang Yi fired off a barrage of questions, his expression dark and grim.

Having spent time around many newly rich people, he knew all too well the kind of damage gambling could bring.

Many people had suddenly become rich. The excess of wealth made them lose themselves. With no clear goal in life for the moment, they were easily tempted into falling into bad habits.

There were plenty of cases where gambling had led to families being ruined and people destroyed, creating a terrible, suffocating atmosphere.

No matter how much property one possessed, once a person became addicted to gambling, they somehow always managed to lose everything.

Yang Yi had never imagined that such a thing would happen within his own tribe, especially since, before this, no one even had any concept of what gambling was.

“Divine Envoy, it’s been about three to four months already,” Ying reported. “It was extremely secretive, which is why it went unnoticed.”

“Three to four months?!” Yang Yi’s expression darkened further. “That long, and not a single whisper of it reached me?!”

Then, as he spoke, realization struck him. “Wait, are you bringing this up now because those gamblers lost and started selling medicine to pay off their debts?”

Ying’s brows furrowed tightly. “Yes. They owed large sums of money, and were threatened that if they didn’t do this, their debtors would report them for gambling.”

Gambling was explicitly forbidden by the tribe’s laws.

Back when Yang Yi had first written those rules, he had hesitated over whether to include that clause. After all, no one at the time even knew what gambling was. If he mentioned it deliberately, wouldn’t that just be telling everyone that such a thing could be done?

Later, it was Hei Lie who pointed out that since their contact with the outside world was becoming more and more frequent, especially with the Western Continent, the chances of various problems arising would only increase.

By taking precautions in advance, it would actually be easier to prevent their people from being led astray.

Although the Western Continent was currently mired in internal conflicts and lacked the strength to attack the Spark Tribe outright, that didn’t mean they had no ulterior motives. They were still secretly scheming, waiting for a chance to stir up trouble. The moment the Spark Tribe revealed any weakness, they would pounce without hesitation.

Yang Yi hadn’t expected that, despite taking every possible precaution, something like this would still happen.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. What infuriated him most was that such a serious issue had gone unnoticed for so long.

This clearly showed that there were major flaws in their management system, allowing such loopholes to exist in the first place.

“This matter must be thoroughly investigated! We absolutely cannot let this kind of corruption take root!”

Yang Yi was livid, too furious to calm down. He immediately ordered someone to summon Hei Lie back.

Usually, he would take time to think before acting. But this time, he couldn’t wait a single moment.

Hei Lie received the message and rushed back as quickly as possible, his expression tense. “What happened?”

Yang Yi didn’t beat around the bush. He told him everything from beginning to end, straight to the point.

“For something like this to go unnoticed for so long, it’s no longer just a matter of a few individuals.”

The Spark Tribe was a closely connected community. For gambling activities to continue for such a long time without anyone noticing, it was almost impossible to believe that it could have been completely hidden.

Yet, those people had managed to do just that. If it hadn’t been for the other incident that exposed it, neither Yang Yi nor Hei Lie would have known that gambling had even appeared within the tribe!

Hei Lie’s expression was grim. “They’ve barely had a few days of comfort, and already they’ve lost all sense of restraint!”

“This cannot be tolerated. There must be severe punishment,” Yang Yi said coldly. “Everyone needs to understand clearly what should and should not be done.”

He knew very well that once bad habits took root, they would be incredibly difficult to get rid of.

“The people from the Western Continent mustn’t be let off either,” Yang Yi continued. “Since they were so disobedient as to lure our tribesmen into doing such things, there’s no need for us to be polite with them.”

As the investigation went deeper, the matter turned out to be far more complicated than expected. Those people hadn’t just come for the medicine. They were also trying to get their hands on the medical formulas.

If it weren’t for the fact that ordinary people had no access to those, the formulas might have already been leaked.

“They even tried to drag the pharmacists down with them?!” Yang Yi sneered coldly.

Hei Lie’s gaze held a trace of mockery. “If it weren’t for the fact that those people weren’t in Port City right now, who knows how bad things might have gotten.”

“These people really went to great lengths, didn’t they?” Yang Yi sneered coldly.

The Spark Tribe was highly united, with strict confidentiality measures and excellent security, making it nearly impossible for anyone to steal from them.

And yet, now their enemies were resorting to tactics like this. Since they couldn’t get their hands on the medicine formulas directly, they set traps, using low prices to trick people into exchanging large quantities of medicine.

Although Yang Yi had brought with him a vast collection of pharmaceutical books, every single formula had required specialized personnel to spend enormous amounts of time and resources on research before it could be successfully developed into a usable medicine.

After all, Earth and this world were vastly different. Not a single formula could be applied directly without adaptation.

If their hard-earned results were stolen, it would be a tremendous loss to the entire tribe.

Knowledge was an extremely valuable form of wealth. It also required financial support to continue advancing.

“Still, the root of this issue lies in our own failure of management,” Hei Lie said, shifting the focus of the conversation.

They had long been aware that the Western Continent and other tribes coveted the Spark Tribe and had been on guard against it. Yet, despite their vigilance, someone had still managed to exploit a loophole.

Port City was an open city that dealt extensively with outsiders, while Yi City, though also open, was clearly under much stricter control.

Especially since both Hei Lie and Yang Yi were stationed in Yi City, everything was under their direct supervision there, so no one dared to act recklessly.

“This matter must be brought to Lan for accountability,” Yang Yi said coldly. “I intend to remove him from his position directly.”

Lan was the city lord of Port City. He was a highly capable man who had once helped Jing establish Rong City.

He was also skilled in many languages and adept at communicating with others. He was a man of considerable experience.

However, with such a serious incident occurring in Port City, and for it to have gone unnoticed for so long, he could not escape responsibility.

“Was he truly completely unaware,” Yang Yi asked, “or did he turn a blind eye to it? Or perhaps… was he involved himself?”

He didn’t want to assume the worst of others, but the situation was far from small. The trafficking of medicine had all taken place in Port City, yet Lan claimed to know nothing.

The only reason this matter came to light at all was because of their greed. Their excessive dealings had even caused Ting to notice that something was off with the flow of medicine.

But when she checked the records, everything appeared normal, which made it all the more suspicious.

As a doctor, Ting was extremely sensitive to data and details. After all, she had originally been the one in charge of allocating the tribe’s limited supply of medicinal ingredients. Every distribution required precise calculations and careful planning.

She was a very meticulous person, so she began investigating little by little. Soon, she uncovered many irregularities, which ultimately exposed everything.

The large amount of missing medicine could not possibly have been caused by just a few individuals working in secret.

Medicines, like weapons, were vital resources and had always been treated with the utmost importance.

Hei Lie’s eyes darkened. “It seems that as our reach has grown, some people have started harboring other intentions.”

Yang Yi let out a deep sigh. Throughout history, whether on Earth or here, such things have always been inevitable.

The Spark Tribe had indeed given many people lives they once could never have imagined. But human desire was endless. Once people had enough, they always wanted more.

“I’m afraid this won’t be the last time something like this happens,” Yang Yi said gravely. “Our system for supervising officials is still too incomplete. We need to restructure the way administrators are elected and appointed.”

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