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

Yang Hu instructed Liu Ye to keep the clue that led to the Prefectural Magistrate's office to herself and only observe from afar. On the surface, life was peaceful.

As winter approached, Yang Hu had to be wary not of any particular patient, but of a strange occurrence.

Within half a month, three people with tumors on their necks came into Yang's shop in one go.

The first one was a porter from the west of the city, with a large, peach-pit-shaped lump under his Adam's apple. He thought it was nothing serious, except that he sometimes choked when eating. A few days later, an old woman carrying a load on a shoulder pole appeared, her neck swollen as if she had clenched a small fist. Yang Hu took it all as a common goiter, took some expectorant medicine, and didn't pay much attention to it.

Until the third one.

She was a woman in her early twenties, brought by her mother. A thick towel was tied around her neck, which Yang Hu told her to remove. Right in the center of her neck, below her Adam's apple, was a fist-sized, round lump, its skin color unchanged, twitching as she swallowed.

Half a month later, three people, with the same illness.

Yang Hu's heart sank.

This is no coincidence.

Ordinary goiter is something you only see once or twice in the surrounding villages. But three people gathered here within half a month, and they were all in the same place and had the same type of goiter—there must be something in common.

Before prescribing any medicine, he asked the woman, "Where are you from?"

"Liugou Village, west of the city!"

Yang Hu's heart skipped a beat, and he asked the old woman again, "Do you know those two people from before, the porter and the woman carrying the load?"

The old woman was taken aback: "Porter Li Er? He's from the village next door. What's the old woman carrying the load called? She's from the east end of Liugou Village!"

Yang Hu's brows furrowed more and more.

As expected, all three patients came from the western part of the city.

The doctor treated patients one by one. But within half a month, three patients with the same ailment joined together, forcing Yang Hu to shift his focus from one neck to the entire area. This wasn't just one family being unlucky; it was that the water in that area was problematic!

"Do you have any more over there?" he asked in a low voice. "Does anyone else have them on their necks?"

The woman's eyes reddened: "How did you know? In our Liugou Village, there are at least seven or eight people with thick necks and tumors on their necks. The elders in the family say that it's because the feng shui of the land is bad, that taboos have been violated, and that the evil deeds of the elders have fallen on the children... There's no cure, so we can only accept our fate."

"The doctors in the city said that either they'd have to cut it open, or I have the face of someone born into a wealthy family, and there's no hope." The woman wiped away her tears. "If they stab me in the neck, my family is too poor to hire a good doctor, and I'm afraid I'll die there..."

"It's not feng shui, nor is it the appearance of a noble family," Yang Hu interrupted her.

He pinched the tumor with his index finger; it was soft and could be moved by pushing it.

He already knew clearly in his heart where the cause of the illness lay.

The area in front of the neck controls the body's Qi, blood, water, and fire.

If this one area, a large part of an entire village, is swollen, it's not because a man has a problem; it's because something is missing from that area.

The fields stretched out one after another, a golden expanse of yellow, indicating a lack of fertilizer.

The entire village was swollen up in one place after another, because there was very little of that kind of thing that was found in the sea.

Being far from the sea, lacking that certain substance in food and water, over time, the blood vessel in the neck slowly became blocked, turning into a tumor.

He understands this principle!

But talking to a peasant woman about things like qi, blood, water, fire, and seawater is like casting pearls before swine.

"Your tumor is edible," he said, picking out two concrete points to add, "but you can also eat it back."

"Eat it back?"

"You mustn't cut it!" Yang Hu said. "The veins in the neck are too intricate; one wrong move and you could lose a life. Besides, cutting it off wouldn't help; the missing tissue wouldn't be replenished, and it would just grow back. The two doctors in the city who want to cut it off are risking your life for a tumor that might not even be curable."

The women nodded repeatedly as they listened.

"There are two things you need to remember," Yang Hu said, counting on his fingers. "First, you need to eat a variety of foods, including seaweed and laver, that are dried in the sea before they can be sold. Your body is lacking something from these foods. Second, I've prescribed you a traditional Chinese medicine formula to soften and clear phlegm. Taking it will gradually eliminate the lumps that have already formed. By replenishing what you're lacking and eliminating the existing lumps, they will slowly disappear on their own."

After saying that, he reminded him of something very important:

"Just tell the women in the village to do the same. This isn't just about your illness; it's about the environment and conditions of the whole village. To cure an illness, the whole village needs to be treated together."

The woman and her daughter left, extremely grateful.

Yang Hu, however, couldn't bear to just abandon it like that.

The villagers all contracted the same disease. Curing one person does not mean they are completely cured. Yang Hu thought that he could continuously supply Liugou Village with these dried goods from the sea.

This matter just happened to fall on Liu Ye.

Her planting base on the edge of the city is not far from the city, in the suburbs. She is familiar with the villagers and street vendors around her. Yang Hu asked her to buy a bunch of kelp and seaweed at a discount, and then found a merchant who runs a business in the west of the city to send some to Liugou on his way here.

"A basket of dried vegetables," Liu Ye readily agreed. "It's worth it to wipe out a village's cancer!"

For the next period of time, the daughter-in-law came to change the dressing every few days. When she came for the third dressing change, the tumor, which was originally the size of a fist, had indeed softened a lot and shrunk a bit.

The thick towel around her neck was no longer so tight, and a smile finally appeared on her face.

Seven or eight people from Liugou Village had come to pick up their medicine once, and Yang Hu carefully examined each of them, explaining in detail what kind of food to give them and how to take the medicine.

"Oh! Quite a few little ones have come." Among them was a young girl who was with that woman; the lump on her neck was just starting to appear, about the size of a soybean.

Yang Hu said to the woman, "She just got up. If you buy some seafood and use some medicine early, it will heal faster and won't end up like her second sister, who got such a big mess."

The woman nodded repeatedly, saying, "I will never listen to that talk about geomancy and feng shui again."

Soon, the news spread.

The story spread far and wide, not in the city, but in the villages west of the city. In Liugou Village, the older generation had been convinced of their lifelong problem: goiter! It turned out that a young doctor from the east of the city cured it with a few kinds of dried sea vegetables and a few doses of medicine!

The news spread like wildfire. The villagers outside the city, who had never been able to afford a doctor, had resigned themselves to their fate when they fell ill. Now, for the first time, they learned that there was a Doctor Yang in the city!

It was late at night, and as the door was being closed, Qin Ying was under the window, drawing her knife.

After hearing Yang Hu mention the matter of Liugou Village, she put down the knife.

"Treating one person is different from treating an entire village." Qin Ying turned her head, her tone revealing a seasoned understanding honed in the military. "When one person is sick, you treat the symptoms. But when an entire village is sick, the root cause of the problem lies within that area. Being able to remember to address that root cause is no small feat!"

"It's the same principle as leading troops," Yang Hu smiled. "If one soldier is sick, just cure him. If an entire battalion is sick, it's because the water is wrong, the camp is inadequate, and the food is problematic. You have to address the root cause!"

Qin Ying's hand holding the knife clenched slightly.

This really struck a chord with her... In the army, an epidemic can kill more soldiers than a battle. Countless times, the defeat wasn't in battle, but in the water in the camp, and in the land of the camp!

She didn't speak, but slowly lowered her head to wipe her knife.

Yang Hu looked out the window at the swirling snowflakes.

The villagers of Liugou Village all had the same tumors around their necks, resigned to their fate for generations. But he dismissed that with a single sentence: "What you eat can be eaten back."

But the good reputation of this city and town grew higher and higher, and the hidden thread that had been stripped of its contents and buried at the foot of the prefectural governor's mansion became as if there was a nail stuck in its back!

The snow is pressed against my body and hasn't come out yet, but it will eventually melt, and the secrets hidden beneath it will surface!

At that time, we'll see if the people of this city and village can hold out!