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

On May 25th, the medical team broke camp and returned south.

The 147 people followed. After walking five li, Yang Hu looked back once. The group of people at the back of the procession were still there, walking very slowly, but without stopping.

Cui Ting's horse came closer.

"General, these people cannot enter the camp."

"I know."

"The two tribes that contracted the plague burned down 417 people in one fire," Cui Ting said. "Who knows what these people who crawled out of the ashes were carrying? There were 11,000 people in the camp, tent after tent."

"That makes sense," Yang Hu said. "That's why we won't enter the camp."

Twelve li north of the camp, downstream along that river branch, there is a stretch of beach lined with tall willow trees, where the water is sweet and the grass is soft and green.

On the second day of the sixth lunar month, thirty-nine tents were erected on the willow beach.

The tents were old felt tents from the Da Cheng army, spaced far apart, arranged in circles, a method the herdsmen themselves used. The camp sent twelve military doctors and twenty soldiers, who carried only shovels and ropes, not bows.

When Cui Ting delivered the last batch of salt and pots, he walked around the beach once.

"General, this place is surrounded by water on three sides and a slope on the other; it cannot be defended."

"It's not for guarding," Yang Hu said. "It's for watching. Within sixty li north of Liutan, the people on the beach know before our scouts who are moving tents or gathering horses."

"Would they be willing to talk?"

"Their sheep are here."

Cui Ting asked another question.

"How long does the general intend to support them?"

"We won't raise them," Yang Hu said. "Give them sheep, give them salt, teach them to recognize grass and water, and they can live on their own."

"Then what are we after?"

"From now on, there will be a place on this piece of land that is on our side."

On the third day after settling in, Yang Hu went to Liutan, accompanied by the translator and Su Heng.

The first thing he wanted wasn't medicine, but a name.

The names of the nine people who contracted the disease.

"General, everyone has been burned to ashes," the translator said.

"Those who are alive remember," Yang Hu said. "Ask them one by one. Ask them what their names are, when they fell ill, where they went in the ten days before they fell ill, who they shared a tent with, and what they ate."

The translator asked for two days.

The information obtained filled six pages. Yang Hu spread the six pages out on the grass and weighed down the four corners with stones.

“Nine people,” he said, pointing to the paper. “Seven are the men of one tent, and two are their wives. The wives fell ill later, six and nine days later.”

"General, you mean the seven who fell ill first?" Su Heng said.

"The seven men went out on the seventh day of the third month, sixty li to the north," Yang Hu said. "They returned on the eleventh day of the third month. On the fifth day after their return, the first one to lie down collapsed."

"What are you going out to do?"

"Releasing sheep in spring".

Yang Hu moved the six sheets of paper around, stacking the first two together and pushing them aside.

"Let me tell you what it wasn't first," he said. "The first thing isn't water. In March, their unit drank water from two different sources. Of the nine sick people, six drank from the eastern source and three drank from the western source. The remaining four hundred or so people drank the same water as them, and none of them got sick."

"The second thing is that it wasn't a case of one person passing on to another," Su Heng continued. "If it were a case of one person passing on to another, then one person would fall ill first, followed by a second a few days later, and then a third a few days later. But these seven people fell ill around the same time within three days, as if they all contracted the virus on the same day."

"That's right," Yang Hu said. "So what we need to find is something that only these seven people touched during the four days from the seventh to the eleventh of the third month, and that no one else touched."

Yang Hu moved his finger to the fourth sheet of paper.

"They stayed there for four days, and during those four days they did three things: tended the sheep, watered the horses, and did one more thing."

Su Heng looked down at that line.

Digging for otters.

"There's a whole bunch of otter dens by the spring," the translator said. "They dug up more than a dozen, cooked their meat, and took their skins back with them."

Yang Hu stood up and went to find the one-eyed old man.

The old man was teaching two children how to braid rope. After listening to the translator's words, he put down the rope he was holding.

"There are two kinds of otters," the old man said. "The ones that can run can dig, but the ones that lie motionless at the entrance of their burrows with their fur droopy are not to be touched."

"Why can't I touch it?"

"It was passed down from the elders. If you touch it, you have to follow it."

"What does 'follow along' mean?"

"If it dies, you die too."

Yang Hu stood there for a while.

"Your department is aware of this rule?"

"Everyone knows that," the old man said. "But in the lean years of spring, when food is scarce, people will take advantage of the plump otter larvae."

That afternoon, Yang Hu gathered all the people who could walk around on the willow beach together.

One hundred and forty-seven people, plus twelve military doctors and twenty soldiers, sat on the beach.

He first had the translator read out the contents of the six papers one by one. When they got to the line about the seventh day of the third month, a woman in the crowd covered her mouth.

"This disease didn't come from heaven," Yang Hu said. "It came from that otter den."

After he finished reading, he remained motionless on the beach.

"Four rules," he said. "First, from today onwards, no one on Willow Beach is allowed to dig for otters. If they see a nest of dead otters, they must walk around it and report back. Second, anyone who has dug for or skinned an otter must live alone for ten days. If they do not fall ill within ten days, they may return to their tent. Third, all skinned pelts and worn clothes must be burned, and I will compensate them with sheep at the price. Fourth, if anyone in a household falls ill with blood in their excrement or spots on their body, they must report it on the same day. Those who report will not be punished, but those who hide and do not report will have their entire tent isolated along with them."

The translator translated it sentence by sentence.

After reading the fourth point, Yang Hu said something that wasn't originally on the paper.

"There's one more thing, which is your own rule, and I want to make it clear here."

He pointed north.

"After those nine people lay down, you distributed that tent to a place far from the water. As a result, only nine out of your more than four hundred people fell ill."

As the translator finished speaking, a very low murmur arose from the crowd.

"This practice of dividing the tent wasn't taught to you by the shaman," Yang Hu said. "It was passed down from your elders. They said it was because Heaven was taking people away, so you all believed it was Heaven taking people away. But it's a rule for healing, and it's useful."

The woman with the child burst into tears.

"Won't anyone ask, since only nine are sick, why burn 417?" Yang Hu said. "I can't answer that. You can think about it yourselves."

When he returned to the camp, it was already completely dark.

Starting the next day, a register was made in Liutan.

One hundred and forty-seven people, their names, ages, original departments, number of family members remaining, and whether they are sick or not, were recorded in duplicate.

Some people refused to write their names down. The translator's question was: "If you write down your names, the royal court will use this list to execute people."

"Tell them a couple of things," Yang Hu said. "First: This booklet won't be sent north, only south, to the archives in Beijing. Second: Anyone who wants to leave can leave anytime, even a sheep. If they want to come back after they leave, I'll take them back as usual."

"General, this way, people can come and go as they please, anyone can come and go as they please," Cui Ting said from the side. "But what if a spies sneak in?"

"There will be," Yang Hu said, "but if you close the door, only spies will come in."

The first volume was written over six days. By the last page, only three of the 147 people on Willow Beach had left; they were all heading north to find their relatives.

On the day they left, Yang Hu had someone give them three days' worth of dry rations.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, cattle and sheep appeared on the slope north of Liutan.

They weren't the survivors who had escaped. They were two entire tribes, with their own tents, their own cattle and sheep, their own elderly and children, slowly moving over from the north.

Liu Ye led the group up the hill and counted them: 170 tents, 1,200 men, women, children and the elderly, and 23,000 livestock.

The first leader rode his horse to the beach, dismounted, and stood there waiting.

Liu Ye went over and asked him what he wanted.

The chieftain pointed to the large herd of cattle and sheep behind him.

"We brought our own sheep," he said. "We're not here to beg."