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

Sealing the well and boiling water proved effective, and the number of deaths decreased day by day.

Just as people's hearts were at ease, another disaster struck. The family at the east end, finding boiling water troublesome, secretly drank unboiled water and nearly vomited and had diarrhea all night, almost dying from overeating. The sorceress seized the opportunity to ring her bell and say, "See? Sealing the well won't help. This plague god is truly angry!" People were thrown into a panic, and several more families packed their belongings to leave.

Yang Hu remained calm. He checked the water tank of that household and found that there was still a little less than half a tank of foul-smelling water that they were reluctant to throw away. He immediately scooped out a bucket and said, "It's not that the well wasn't properly sealed; it's that this family didn't do their job properly. If the plague god is going to be angry, why would it specifically target the family that drinks untreated water?"

With just one sentence, he won people's hearts back.

After a few more days, the plague in the south of the city was finally over.

Those who had collapsed and died were gone. Those who had been vomiting and on the verge of death drank some lightly salted sugar and ate some herbal medicine that suited their taste. After a few days of recuperation, one by one they recovered, were able to get out of bed, and eat porridge. Of the dozens of households living near that rotten well, apart from the three who did not survive initially, the rest actually lived.

As soon as the gate was demolished, the people who had been holding back in the alley for a long time poured out and surrounded Yang Hu, kneeling down in a dense mass.

"A miracle doctor!"

"Dr. Yang saved our whole family!"

One of the concubines, dragging her grandson, kowtowed repeatedly to Yang Hu, her head hitting the brick wall with a loud thud. She didn't even feel the pain of getting a dent in her head. All five members of the family vomited and had diarrhea. Following Doctor Yang's advice, they sealed the well, boiled water, and drank diluted salt water. Surprisingly, none of the family died.

Yang Hu quickly stood up for her.

"We're alive because everyone is willing to boil water and listen to advice," he said. "Remember this: if you boil water and don't throw away the waste, you won't get this disease."

This plague is very strange.

The authorities sealed off the neighborhood, intending for everyone to meet their doom. The sorceress rang her copper bell for a month and a half, collecting baskets full of incense money. Even the plague god couldn't escape; people fell one by one. Several young doctors who used to work in clinics in the city ran away, disappearing without a trace.

But then a young doctor from the east end of the city, carrying a box, plunged into this den of dead bodies, sealed a well, boiled some water, and sprinkled some lime. Surprisingly, he managed to suppress the deadly plague.

This is nothing compared to curing someone's serious illness; the more you talk about it, the more miraculous it becomes.

Within a few days, half the city knew about it.

Inside the teahouse, someone was excitedly saying, "Didn't you see the plague in the south of the city? Three people died in one alley. They just closed the gate, threw the barricades outside, and washed their hands of it. That sorceress was ringing her copper bell and wandering around the alley, saying it was the plague god bringing disaster. She made a fortune!"

"What happened next?"

"Later, Doctor Yang from the east of the city went there! He went in and looked around and said, 'What plague? It's just that the well water was spoiled by a pile of moldy grain.' He sealed the well on the spot, boiled water and sprinkled lime, and it was sealed off in a few days. The dozens of households next to that well were all wiped out alive."

"Oh...you can even cure a plague that clings to people?"

"Hey, isn't it strange? Even the officials couldn't do anything about it, leaving the living to wait to die, but some young doctor in his early twenties, with no experience, managed to do it! This Doctor Yang, I think he really has some extraordinary abilities!"

An old man nearby took a sip of tea and said slowly, "Healing one person makes you a miracle doctor. Saving a whole group of lives makes you a living bodhisattva!"

The phrase "living bodhisattva" quickly spread throughout the city.

Those families in the south of the city who previously couldn't afford doctors and would simply endure their illnesses until they died remembered the Yang family's reputation in the east of the city.

People with minor headaches or fevers would travel across half the city to find this man surnamed Yang, just for peace of mind.

The first porter, widowed and unable to bear the loss, ran to the east of the city with her one-year-old baby and came to the door.

The widow, penniless and with nothing, picked a few green vegetables from her own wall, placed them at the entrance of the clinic with red eyes, kowtowed heavily, and left.

Lu Yan stood there for a long time without moving, holding the green vegetable that was still covered in soil.

Its fame spread throughout half the city.

However, there are also some distorted elements in it.

During the days when Yang Hu sealed the well to quell the plague, the prefectural governor's office in the south of the city issued an order to seal off the area and forbid anyone from interfering.

Yang Hu deliberately crashed into the crowd, saving a large number of people who had been sentenced to death by the prefectural governor's office.

Saving a person alive was truly a disgrace to the household.

The prefectural governor's office ordered the ward to be sealed off, waiting for others to die.

A doctor from the east of the city insisted on taking over the treatment of a living person. When this got back to the streets and alleys, where would those officials who were just sitting on their laurels and only wanted to keep quiet put their faces?

Some well-informed people whispered among themselves: "This time in the south of the city, Doctor Yang did save someone, but I'm afraid he also offended someone in the mansion."

Yang Hu knew this very well.

All I wanted was to save people, but this incident has inadvertently placed them in the sight of those powerful figures.

The fact that a doctor treated the patient previously attracted the attention of a scoundrel, and now that he has bypassed the government to save someone, has stuck in the eyes of some people.

He knew better than anyone that the bigger the tree, the more wind it attracts.

When autumn came, he came out from the south of the city again, and the clinic in the east of the city was still crowded with people who could not see the end of the road.

The courtyard was packed with people seeking medical help, expressing gratitude, and simply wanting to see what this living Buddha looked like.

Only after closing time at night can the family have a chance to sit around the table and eat.

Lu Yan helped him pack his medicine box. Seeing that the medicine he had brought to the south of the city was almost used up, she felt both relieved and distressed: "Young Master, you haven't had a proper night's sleep in days in the south of the city. You've lost so much weight!"

"It's an emergency, I can't worry about that now." Yang Hu picked up a cup of tea.

Lu Rou started tapping away on her abacus, meticulously recording the costs of medicine, lime, and water for the trip to the south of the city. As usual, she muttered, "This trip still resulted in a loss." In truth, she was happy to pay for it, her face beaming with joy.

Liu Ye stewed a pot of wild game to nourish his body, saying that everyone in the city called him a living bodhisattva, and even the porters who delivered medicine from the suburbs felt as if they were benefiting from his good fortune, grinning and imitating him for everyone.

Only Qin Ying sat in front of the living grave, saying little.

She had accompanied Yang Hu through this living graveyard for so many days, witnessing firsthand how he pulled one dying person after another from the plague. Now, wiping his knife, he paused for a long time, then spoke softly...

"I've seen plagues in the army," she said, her voice cold. "A single plague can kill more soldiers in a camp than a fierce battle. The bodies weren't even buried in time, and those who survived were terrified. Back then, you needed someone like you with a knack for it..."

She didn't finish her sentence, but Yang Hu understood something in the unspoken words. Sealing wells, boiling water, preventing disease, purifying—a set of methods that had saved countless lives in his camp, how many lives could be snatched back from the jaws of death by bringing them into the blood-soaked camp?

"One day," he said.

It sounded like a casual remark, but Qin Ying raised her head and stared straight at him.

She knew the meaning of those words better than anyone else: what it meant for hundreds of thousands of lives on the border to be able to suppress the plague. And the person in front of her had clearly remembered it.

In the lamplight, her eyes were lowered, and her hand moved more slowly than usual as she sheathed the knife.

At night, Yang Hu unfolded the corner of the burlap sack he had dug off from the pile of rotten rice next to the abandoned well, and carefully examined the brand marks in the corner of the sack by the light.

The more he looked, the heavier his gaze became.

The way this binding method and the branding were exactly the same as what I saw in the military food carts in the northern route. The plague that killed several people in the south of the city, and the moldy grain that rotted in the well, were actually related in some way.

Just now, he was feeling his way up the line inch by inch; now, his own dirty things have fallen to his feet.

I don't want the empty title of "Living Bodhisattva." What I want is to follow this bag of moldy grain little by little, step by step, to pull out the hand hiding in the city from under all the layers of cover.

Note 1: Origin of the names Qin Ying and Liu Ye:

"Qin" is the surname of the Qin state (including the later Zhao state), Qin Shi Huang, and Qin Emperor.

"英" means handsome, majestic, upright and brave.