A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

That night, no one in Thatched Village slept.

Yang Hu's method, to put it bluntly, is worthless!

Are barbarians afraid of the epidemic?

Let them see a real "epidemic village"!

First, they called the village chief to gather everyone at the threshing ground, then thoroughly explained everything to him.

To fight it out is certain death. Reporting to the authorities is too late. Only if everyone together spreads a plague can those few barbarians be scared away, saving the lives of everyone in the village, young and old.

The villagers were skeptical and chattered amongst themselves.

Pretending to have the plague? If the barbarians find out, they'll wipe out the whole village!

But then I thought of those gleaming curved knives, and I remembered these past few months: Dr. Yang saved the old lady with a spoonful of porridge, suppressed the child's seizures with a few silver needles, and cured the stubborn old soldier with a single finger...

In the end, she gritted her teeth and believed him.

Then came the preparations that lasted all night.

A pile of wet firewood at the village entrance caught fire, billowing thick smoke that made my eyes water!

This is what burning filth and excrement looks like in a plague-stricken village to drive away the disease!

In several homes, large white crosses with lime water were painted on the door panels!

At the east end of the village, several daring young men wrapped stones in mats and tied them into "corpses," placing them by the roadside, covering them with white cloths and pressing them down with several sheets of yellow paper.

Widow Li, along with several women, with their hair disheveled, sat beside the "corpse," ready to wail at any moment!

The most crucial element is water!

The well at the village entrance is the only way down from the back mountain.

Yang Hu crushed several laxatives and some dizzying herbs, and threw them all into the well under the cover of darkness.

"If you drink half a bowl, within half an hour you're guaranteed to vomit, have diarrhea, feel dizzy, nauseous, and have a fever!" Yang Hu instructed the villagers. "For the next two days, we'll only drink the water stored in our own jars. Nobody is allowed to touch that well, understand?"

Nods emphatically!

Some were timid, their hands trembling as they tried to draw the white cross on the door properly. They would get a fierce glare from their wives, and they would grit their teeth and shudder.

Some clever young men volunteered to smear soot on their faces and paint their lips purple with grass juice, preparing to play a sickly person on the verge of death!

There were also seven or eight-year-old toddlers who were held down by the adults and made to imitate that listless and weak look!

The entire village was thus brought together by this outsider doctor.

It's all done; it's almost dawn.

Yang Hu dressed in filthy clothes, with a little bit of soot on his face, making himself look like a village doctor whose skin was withered and rotten from the plague.

Qin Ying hid in the house and saw this scene through the small door. She couldn't describe the feeling in her stomach.

"Are you so sure they'll be fooled?"

"I don't know if people will fall for it," Yang Hu said, adjusting the medicine basket in his hand. "But people's hearts know! The more the barbarians fear the plague, the more suspicious they become. If we put on a good show, they'll scare themselves to death!"

The sun had just risen over the hillside.

Those five barbarians from the back mountain have really come over!

The leader was a fat man with a stubble beard, a heavy broadsword hanging at his waist, and eyes like an eagle's, scanning the village.

As they entered the village, the thick smoke and the large crosses on the wooden doors made them tighten their horse reins.

Running a few meters further in, they saw corpses hanging on white cloths and covered with yellow paper by the roadside, along with women with disheveled hair, wailing loudly. The faces of the barbarians were all terrified.

"plague?……"

The burly man leading the group spoke broken Chinese, frowned, and muttered something.

Several barbarians led their horses and wandered around the village. The more they wandered, the more afraid they became, and the more afraid they became, the more uneasy they felt.

The grasslands are home to wild men, whose curved swords can slice through jackals and cleave through Han armies, but they cannot cut through this invisible and intangible plague.

The fiercer a man is, the more he fears dying this way.

The bearded man walked for a long time, feeling both scared and anxious, his throat rumbling with dread.

He saw the well at the village entrance, hesitated for a moment, but finally couldn't resist his thirst. He strode over, scooped up a mouthful of cold water, and gulped it down.

The other two barbarians squeezed over and joined in, drinking like oxen.

Yang Hu, hidden in the shadows, slightly raised the corner of his eye.

The fish has taken the bait.

For about half an hour, the bearded man clutched his stomach.

His face turned from red to green, and large beads of sweat streamed down his forehead.

"Gurgle."

His stomach churned violently, and he bent over, vomiting uncontrollably.

Then, his thighs went weak, and he collapsed to the ground, his buttocks completely flat, looking exactly like Pigsy from Journey to the West.

The remaining two people were also dragged along like shadows, vomiting and having diarrhea, burning with fever, their vision blurred, and they were waving their arms wildly as if they had seen a ghost.

The two barbarians, who had never drunk water, were first stunned, then terrified and panicked.

They had seen such scenes on the grasslands.

Before a plague takes a life, doesn't it cause vomiting and diarrhea?

Hot, irritable, and screaming?

"Plague! There really is a plague!"

It was at this moment that Yang Hu saw the opportunity to cast his net and catch fish. Wearing dirty clothes, covering his mouth and nose, he "kindly" poked his head out of the house crookedly and waved from afar.

"Hurry up! Hurry up! This village is plagued by disease, more than ten people have died. If you run into someone, you're as good as dead!"

This shout completely broke the barbarian's spirit. The two barbarians who were still standing, along with their companion who was vomiting and had diarrhea, scrambled and crawled onto the horse's back.

Who cares about finding someone or not?

Five short-legged horses, leading a group of barbarians who were vomiting and had diarrhea, crying for their mothers and fathers, disappeared into the mountains and forests in the direction they had come from, without looking back.

Not long after, the grove of trees on the back hill was completely empty.

The whole village came out, peeking out from under the door like cat ears.

First there was complete silence,

Then came a deafening roar.

"They've retreated! The barbarians have retreated!"

"Dr. Yang is amazing! He drove away all those killers without uttering a single sword or spear!"

Stone Brother clung to Yang Hu's arm, jumping and bouncing around, making the whole yard dusty.

The village chief, leaning on his cane, tears streaming down his face, grabbed Yang Hu's hand and managed to squeeze out a few incoherent words after a long pause:

"Thank God, thank God, thank Guanyin..."

Yang Hu didn't show much pride.

He knew this was a stroke of luck, a gamble on the low probability event that the barbarians were afraid of the epidemic; next time, it might not be so coincidental.

Inside the room, someone gently lifted the curtain behind the door.

That was Qin Ying, leaning against the door frame as she walked out step by step.

His usually cold and ruthless face held an indescribable expression.

In the years she had fought on the frontier, she had only ever witnessed lives being exchanged for lives. A city or a pass often required the sacrifice of tens or even hundreds of thousands of lives to gain control.

But this man before us, with just a well, a few herbs, and a play, managed to repel the barbarians without the soldiers disarming or the generals turning against them, and protected the villagers.

Qin Ying had never seen such skill in the army.

"Yang Hu!" she said softly as she walked up to him.

"Um?"

"I thought the only things in the world that could protect people were swords and soldiers." She looked at him, her eyes revealing genuine emotion for the first time. "Today I realize I was wrong."

She paused, then spoke seriously for the first time:

"You repelled those spies who were groping the border without firing a single shot or losing a single soldier? That's a great military achievement in the army. When I return to the army one day, I will definitely advocate for this merit for you."

Yang Hu was stunned for a moment, not expecting her to say that.

This was the first time his female general had thought about "military merits".

Yang Hu laughed, just about to say something to tease her.

Qin Ying suddenly stopped smiling and lowered her voice.

"But don't get too excited."

"The barbarians managed to find this area, right next to our village, to come looking for me." She pointed to the hill behind the village, emphasizing each word: "Who gave them the road signs on this road outside the village?"

The smile on Yang Hu's face slowly disappeared.

The barbarians have retreated.

But the traitor hidden in the western camp, the one who guided the barbarians, remained firmly seated.

This body of water was much deeper than he had imagined.