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

Before dawn, the wailing from Old Qian's house and Widow Li's house in the east of the village had not stopped when two more corpses were carried in from the west of the village.

Same problem.

Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, the whole body was emaciated, as if someone had drained all the blood and energy from it, the eyes were sunken, and if you grabbed a handful of flesh and pinched it, you would make a hole, and you couldn't get up for a long time.

In less than a day, seven or eight houses in Maocao Village collapsed.

The news from the neighboring village was even more terrifying.

Two families died over there!

The village was in an uproar!

"The plague god! The plague god is coming!"

"I was saying, last time the barbarians caused trouble, spreading disease and killing people. We've angered the plague god, and he's coming to collect them!"

"Quickly, call a shaman, kill a chicken and a sheep, and send away the plague god!"

On the threshing ground, Liu the Goddess, with her hair disheveled and her copper bells jingling, jumped and danced around a pile of ham and burnt paper money. The whole village, young and old, knelt on the ground, their heads kowtowed until they resembled a beehive.

Some people were so frightened that they packed their valuables and tried to run up the mountain!

Yang Hu lay on the patient's bed, gently touching his eyelids and feeling his pulse, his brows furrowing more and more as he looked.

He knew perfectly well what was going on.

Where did this plague come from?

He knows about the illness!

Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, dehydration leading to death, and one infection can spread to many people!

In his world, he could tell at a glance what this disease was: an epidemic!

It's a problem caused by eating dirty things.

The cause of the disease is not the weather, but the water!

He stood by the kang (a heated brick bed), not in a hurry to write a prescription, but first went through all the details in his mind.

The drought was severe, with little rain and dried-up rivers and ditches. The old well in the east of the village was also very close to the pigsty and cattle pen, so the filth seeped in and polluted the entire well.

By going through this chain of events, the origin of the illness can be clearly explained.

In summer and autumn, when the weather is hot, any well or ditch in the village that becomes polluted will spread the infection to other places if people drink from it, and the whole village will be ruined in an instant.

Others thought it was divine punishment or the work of gods, but he only felt it was something that had a beginning and an end.

It can be detected and cured!

"Dr. Yang! Say something!" the village chief cried, grabbing his arm. "Have we really offended a plague god? What should we do?"

Yang Hu stood up, his voice not loud, but resolute.

"There is no plague god."

The field fell silent for a moment.

Liu the fortune teller stood there, her copper bell frozen in place.

"This isn't divine retribution, it's an illness." Yang Hu looked around. "The illness comes from the water; the water in the village is no longer clean."

"Bullshit!" Granny Liu jumped up and shrieked, "That water has been drunk by our ancestors for decades, how could it be unclean? You're just a young, inexperienced doctor, what do you know? It's clearly you who caused the plague, attracting the real plague god to your house!"

"Yes, yes, his family caused an epidemic, attracting a real plague!"

Some people just followed suit and shouted nonsense.

Yang Hu was too lazy to waste words with her.

His priority was saving the lives of everyone in the village, not gaining an advantage through words!

"Village Chief," he turned his head and said, "Let me be frank. If you do this, you can save most of the village. If you don't, within ten days, eight or nine out of ten people in the village will be gone."

The village chief trembled slightly. "Speak! Speak!"

"First, the two wells on the east and west sides of the village are sealed off starting today! Nobody can drink water!"

"Seal the well? Seal the well!" The village chief was dumbfounded. "What will happen to the whole village?"

"Secondly, the mountain spring behind the mountain is a bit far, but the water is clean. We can have strong laborers carry it there, and then boil it to drink and use it again when we're working."

"Third, all the patients are moved to two rooms at the end of the village and housed separately! The caregivers' mouths and noses are covered with wet towels, and they must wash their hands with liquor and soap every time they come out. The vomit from the patients is to be buried in a pit and covered with lime; it is forbidden to dump it into the ditch!"

One thing after another, the village chief's head was spinning.

Sealing wells, isolating people, boiling water, throwing disgusting things... I've never heard of any of these.

"Dr. Yang! If we seal the well, aren't you afraid you'll fight them to the death?"

"Thirst won't kill you!" Yang Hu glanced at him. "Drinking dirty water, that's when people really die!"

Just as the village chief was struggling with his decision, the curtain in the inner room was lifted, and Qin Ying, who was holding the door, let out a chilling aura.

"I'll do whatever Dr. Yang says!" The voice wasn't loud, but it carried an air of superior authority. "I'll take responsibility if anything goes wrong!"

The villagers were so intimidated by her murderous and arsonist aura that their murmurs subsided considerably.

Yang Hu glanced at her.

This woman always manages to stand up for me at the most crucial moments!

With Qin Ying present, the village chief went all out, calling on a group of strong men to start sealing the well, fetching mountain spring water, and moving houses.

The villagers were skeptical, but were forced to get to work.

Even though the well was sealed, the resentment still couldn't be suppressed!

Before long, several men with empty wooden buckets surrounded Yang Hu, pointed at his neck, and shouted:

"The well is sealed off, the spring is too far away, and the old folks and children are all crying from thirst. You, a young, inexperienced doctor, can't cure the illness and you've even cut off our village's water supply. What do you mean by that?"

"Thirsty? Bear with it! Nobody's going to die!" Yang Hu didn't get angry. He pointed to the two corpses covered in white sheets at the end of the village. "Those who drank from that well are lying there now. You can drink from whichever water you want!"

The men looked at the white sheets, their faces turning pale. They cursed and swore, but in the end, they stuck out their buttocks, picked up empty wooden buckets, and went to the back mountain to fetch spring water.

Among the crowd, some who wanted to cause trouble swallowed their words.

Yang Hu was also constantly on the move while tending to the patient.

The most difficult part of this illness is the vomiting and diarrhea, which deplete a person's internal fluids and essence, making it impossible for even a miracle to save them.

Lu Rou was instructed to stew a large pot of thick rice soup, add salt and a little brown sugar, and bring it over hot. She then carefully pried open the patient's teeth and poured the soup into the soup spoonful by spoonful.

The first person to be forced to drink it was Old Qian's wife. She inhaled more than she exhaled and looked like she was about to collapse.

Yang Hu personally watched over her, prying open her clenched teeth. Rice soup dripped down her chin, most of it leaking out, leaving her with only a few mouthfuls.

"Don't stop! Every sip counts; if you get it down, you're alive!"

"Simply stopping the vomiting won't help," Yang Hu said to Lu Yan while feeding her. "We have to make up for what we've lost, drop by drop. What we can't eat, we need to slowly let it seep into our system, feeding her every half hour, without stopping!"

In his previous world, this method involved inserting the medicine into the bloodstream. But in this environment, that wasn't possible, so he had to use the most naive method: feeding the patients the medicine bit by bit.

Lu Yan, Lu Rou, Liu Ye, and Qin Ying, who had just started learning to recognize medicines, all began working, each taking care of one patient.

Qin Ying was responsible for the most patients. Following Yang Hu's instructions, she gave the patients water and turned them over to wipe their sweat. She didn't sleep at all that night.

During her rest in the middle of the night, she suddenly said softly: "I have been in this military camp for several years. What I fear most is not the enemy attacking, but an epidemic in our camp. An epidemic can kill more than half of the soldiers without fighting. Many people die not in battle, but from diarrhea and fever."

She glanced at Yang Hu and then said, "If your technique of sealing water and using it to replenish soup were applied to a military camp, it could hold off a detachment of troops."

Yang Hu felt a surge of excitement, but he only smiled.

He could tell that the woman was still suggesting he take the path of joining the army, just one more step.

One hour, two hours.

After dark that day, the first group of patients who were given rice water had their deep pupils regain some life. Those patients who had been delirious and didn't recognize themselves were able to respond to him.

A man suddenly knelt down at Yang Hu's feet, tightly hugging his knees. "Dr. Yang, my mother...she drank water, she can live!"

Yang Hu helped him up, but didn't feel much joy.

He knew he had only just opened a breach.

The resentment over the sealed well and cut-off water supply still weighed heavily on their hearts. Any mistake in fetching water, boiling water, or keeping someone away would render all their previous efforts futile.

More importantly,

He walked to the sealed well on the east side of the village, and looked at it by the firelight. The more he looked, the more his brows furrowed.

This disease came on too quickly and too violently; it could spread from a few households to other villages overnight. Ordinary water contamination wouldn't cause this.

He crouched down and carefully examined the edge of the well platform by the firelight. There was a small pile of damp soil there, and some of the marks were not left by people from their village.

footprint.

Boots with a border military style.

Yang Hu's heart trembled violently.

This disease was not sent down by God.

Someone put something into the well water.