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

The situation in these streets in the south of the city is even worse than Yang Hu had imagined.

Once the gates are locked, the city becomes an isolated place.

There was a sour, foul odor everywhere, which had been fermenting in the summer heat for a day or two. Everyone kept their doors tightly shut, and the yellow talismans on them were wrinkled and crumpled by sweat and moisture, some even losing their shape. Occasionally, a few weak groans could be heard from a crack in a door, which were then blown away by the wind.

The guard at the gate covered his nose from a distance and saw Yang Hu carrying a medicine box and preparing to go in. He hurriedly shook his head and tried to dissuade him.

"You can't go in! It's plagued inside; if you go in, you'll never come back!"

"I'm a doctor!" Yang Hu held up his medicine box. "I'm going in to save people."

The officer looked him over like he was an idiot, scrutinizing every part of his body. He glanced at the young apprentice behind him, wiped away some dust, and lowered his head. In the end, he decided that it was better for someone to go in and wade through the muddy waters than for no one to go in. He muttered something that meant "asking for trouble," and then gave up the space.

Once inside the alley, Yang Hu wasn't in a hurry to see a doctor.

He wandered around several alleys, looking to see which family had died, which family was seriously ill, which family was fetching water, and where the trash was being disposed of. Qin Ying followed behind him, her eyes also busy, silently memorizing the surrounding terrain and rivers.

After going around in circles, Yang Hu learned some things.

The families who died were all at the east end of the alley, very close to the public well. Those who were farther away, or who usually kept rainwater for drinking, did not suffer many casualties.

Arriving at the well,

The well rim was filthy, covered with lush green moss. Nearby was a stinking ditch filled with dark, murky water, topped with a layer of greenish oil. A short distance ahead was a low-lying area where a pile of things lay scattered.

It's grain.

Bags upon bags of rotten, hardened, moldy, and even infested grain were gathered here and soaked in stinking water until they turned into a paste. The stench of decay was so strong that it was hard to open one's eyes. After a rain, the rotten filth slowly seeped from the ground into the well and the stream.

The root of the problem lies there.

This well had long been contaminated by that pile of old grain. The families in the south of the city used the well water to bathe, eat, and sleep every day, and of course, they all died one by one. This wasn't an illness in the heavens, but rather in this well.

"Seal the well." Yang Hu stood up, his words soft yet firm: "From today onwards, no one is allowed to dig from this well again!"

After he said that, the well-meaning neighbors who were watching immediately erupted in anger.

"Sealing the well?" What should we do then?

"It's so hot! I'm dying of thirst if I don't drink water!"

The witch appeared out of nowhere, rang a copper bell, and shrieked, "Children don't know any better! This is the power of the Plague God! What good is sealing the well? Every family should go and burn incense, and ask me to perform a ritual to send that old man back."

"Offering incense can ward off the plague, so why didn't these people in the south of the city ward it off?" Yang Hu cut her off. "Look closely. The water you drink every day is filled with this rotten grain and all that filth. How could you not vomit and have diarrhea after drinking it? This isn't some plague god descending from heaven; it's some son of a bitch who destroyed your life-saving well!"

Following his finger, everyone saw a pile of moldy grain that had been soaked and was crawling with white worms; it was disgusting to look at.

The witch's hand, which had been ringing the bell, hung in the air. Her face turned from black to yellow, but she dared not utter a sound.

"The well is sealed, but there's still water to draw." Yang Hu immediately sent someone out to do the work. "Go to the well in the alley to the west, it's farther away, go there to draw water. Don't drink a drop of the water you bring back, put it all in a pot and boil it, let it cool down before drinking. Remember, boil it first!"

He then pointed to several patients, saying, "The patients should be moved together to live in one room. Anyone serving them, especially those who have been near the patients or who have poured dirty water, must scald their hands with boiling water and wash them thoroughly with soapy water. All the filthy water should be poured into the large pit dug in the neighborhood, sprinkled with lime, and then filled in. No one is allowed to dump it carelessly!"

Yang Hu had several large vats of lime brought from the city and had them spread thickly in alleys, toilets, and abandoned wells, making it all white.

Just as they were busy, the head of the neighborhood, who was in charge of the area, arrived with two other people.

"Stop!" The ward chief's face was grim. "The Prefect has decreed that the ward be closed pending further orders. You, a mere physician from an outer ward, have dared to enter a sealed well and gather a crowd. Are you defying the Prefect's orders?"

Yang Hu stood up and glanced at him.

"The prefect's order basically means waiting for everyone in this ward to die," he said. "I'm sealing off the wells and heating water to keep these people alive. Lord Warden, do you want to bear the reputation of saving the lives of everyone in this ward, or the guilt of preventing people from living and watching hundreds die?"

The neighborhood magistrate choked, his face alternating between black and red. The neighbors who had gathered around were already extremely disgusted by the government's indifference, and now they all looked at him. The magistrate, pressured by hundreds of eyes, finally dared not stop them any longer, leaving behind the words, "Don't drag the government into this if there are any problems," and slunk away with his men.

The method is simple, but no one believes the reasoning behind it.

"You can only drink it after it's boiled? Our ancestors have never drunk that before."

"You think sprinkling some lime water will stop it? You're kidding me."

Yang Hu wouldn't reason with him. He only brought back the child who had first come to the doctor with his child and was now able to walk on his own. In front of the hundred or so people, he said: "This child is from the south of the city. He had been vomiting and having diarrhea for several days and was on the verge of dying. But after I treated him for one night, he came out alive and kicking."

A single, living piece of evidence is more effective than a hundred words.

They sealed the wells to boil water to isolate the patients, dug pits to bury the sewage... and even told each household to give the vomiting and diarrhea patients a little bit of light salt and sugar water to drink, one spoonful at a time.

As a result, in just two days, the number of people who collapsed in this alley decreased visibly!

Previously, filth had to be dumped into the pit several times a day, but now it's done sporadically, and the previously noisy and miserable human condition at night has begun to quiet down...

People's hearts are at ease.

No one listened to the sorceress's bell anymore, so she slunk away, carrying a half-empty basket, and went out into the neighborhood early in the morning.

Yang Hu had barely slept these past few days in the south of the city, visiting each household and supervising the food and drink of each patient. Qin Cun-ying followed closely behind, smearing ash on herself to disguise herself as a servant, delivering water and tending the fire, maintaining order and preventing any pushing or shoving. The chaotic alleyways were kept in check by her calm and collected demeanor, preventing them from descending into complete chaos. Everyone was clearly in line: who should fetch water, who should bury the sewage, and which family should go first.

"Your handling of scheduling," Yang Hu said after a short rest, "is really not the demeanor of a servant."

"A group of people who have gone crazy in their desperation are no different from a pile of loose sand," Qin Ying said, handing over a bowl of warm water with a blank expression. "The more frantic they are, the more they need someone to tell them what to do next."

Yang Hu took it and drank a sip.

He didn't say a word.

He glanced at her again while she was helping the old man up.

In that family that never dared to draw a knife, their commanding presence was impossible to conceal in this life-or-death situation!

The pandemic is about to subside.

But Yang Hu's heart wasn't entirely focused on the epidemic.

During his break, he returned to the vicinity of the well, squatted down, and stared at the moldy grains that had been covered by lime.

After bags and bags of grain spoiled, they were dumped out truckload after truckload. Who piled up the grain like this?

In normal households, even a single grain of rice is precious. To throw a pile of moldy grain into the water and then dump it out, one would either be a shrewd merchant hoarding goods, with a bottom full of moldy old stock, secretly finding a place where no one is in charge to dispose of it; or it would be a pile of grain that had spoiled on the way from other places, which they didn't want to expose, so they would find an unmanaged area in the south of the city in the middle of the night and throw it out.

Yang Hu reached out and pinched a corner of the cloth bag that hadn't yet gone bad from under the lime.

The way the bag was tied and the small mark on the bag's opening made his heart skip a beat.

He had seen that method of operation before, on the grain carts in the northern route!

Yang Hu's eyes darkened.

The plague that nearly killed people in the south of the city might not just be a natural disaster. The pile of moldy grain that killed dozens of people, and the thieving hands that smuggled military rations behind it, might also be related.

He discreetly tucked the corner of the cloth bag into his hand.

This line is going to get even closer to that hand.