Xie Yushu and her group traveled relatively smoothly. Occasionally, they encountered groups of three to five or twenty to thirty bandits, but these were mostly villagers from the surrounding area who had not fled to escape the famine. Seeing that there were many of them and that they were carrying machetes, axes, and other weapons, they all kept their distance!

Xie Tianqi was quite busy along the way, chasing and fighting with Liu Xiaodong, the fifth son of the Liu family. They not only became good buddies, but Xie Tianqi also learned the moves that Xie Yushu taught him very well. Of course, Liu Xiaodong was the one who helped him practice!

The Liu brothers were already known for their fighting skills. Seeing that Xie Tianqi's moves were simple and practical, they started to learn from him. Not only did they learn from Xie Tianqi, but along the way, their fighting skills also improved significantly!

After seven days, the group arrived outside Tai'an Prefecture. The situation here was significantly better than in the north. Many refugees had gathered outside the city, but they had all settled in the woods outside the city. Scattered shacks and thatched huts almost filled the entire woods!

When Xie Yushu and her group arrived, groups of disaster victims were pushing forward with pots and pans. Xie Baotian randomly asked someone and learned that there were government officials distributing porridge at the city gate, one meal a day, and if you missed it, there would be none left!

Hearing this, the others also wanted to get some porridge! After all, they had been eating yams for so long, and nothing was as filling as rice. However, the people around them were eyeing them menacingly, looking like they wanted to eat them, and they were very wary of them! Everyone looked at Liu Qiang!

When they arrived, they all recognized Liu Qiang as their leader. After all, the Liu brothers were numerous and had a long-standing reputation in the village. Moreover, the Liu brothers had been brave and daring in the mountains, killing the most wolves and saving many people from their jaws. So, everyone had some respect for him!

As for Xie Yushu, although everyone knew that she was the one who led the team to find the water source and the yam, they did not obey her much. The reason was naturally because she was a woman, and a group of men felt that it was shameful to listen to a woman's words!

Even if Xie Yushu had saved their lives, at most they would only have a little more respect for her! That was all!

Therefore, among this group of people, only the Xie family members actually listened to her advice. Liu Qiang, on the other hand, would sometimes consult her or ask for her advice when he was unsure of what to do!

Xie Yushu naturally saw through what these people were thinking, and she had no intention of managing them!

There's a saying that "bad people come from poor and remote places," which is quite true. They are indeed hardworking and honest, but they are also really stubborn! Managing this group of people is really a thankless task. Only someone like Liu Qiang can use pure force to suppress them. Anyone who doesn't listen can get lost, and anyone who causes trouble can be beaten up. It's much easier!

That being said

Although the surrounding refugees were eyeing them with hostility, there were many of them, so no one really dared to drive them away!

"Everyone's tired and hungry. Since it's government-run porridge, why don't we all go and get a bowl? It's free food, so let's eat it! Everyone, stay close together, or we'll get beaten up if we get separated!"

"We can't just let this go!" Xie Yushu exclaimed, stopping them.

"If you don't want to go, then don't go. Why are you stopping us?"

"Is that bowl of porridge more important than the things you have to exchange for money? Don't you see how emaciated these disaster victims are? It's clear that even if porridge is being distributed, it's only enough to keep them from starving to death. Otherwise, why do you think they're so hostile towards us?"

As soon as Xie Yushu said that, everyone realized what she meant and felt a chill of fear! Those who had been complaining about Xie Yushu also shut up!

"Let's take turns! Half of us go first, and come back to relieve the others after we've eaten! We brothers will stay here and watch the food!" Liu Qiang arranged.

After hearing this, everyone had no other good ideas, so they squeezed together to the front to get the porridge!

Xie Yushu didn't go to get porridge first. Instead, she wandered around and tried to find out what was going on in the area. It seemed unlikely that the city gate would be open. Was there any other way to bypass Tai'an Prefecture and reach Jinyang City?

But after wandering around for a long time and asking several people, they still couldn't find out any useful information, because the refugees here had never entered the city since they arrived, and the people in the city hadn't come out either, except for the officials who were distributing porridge!

They said that when they first arrived, they heard that the capital had sent a disaster relief team, but then they lost contact with them. The prefect was afraid that a large number of disaster victims entering the city would cause chaos, so he ordered the city gates to be closed early on, and only sent out yamen runners to distribute porridge once a day in the morning!

It is said that the original number of disaster victims was two or three times that of the present. Later, some died of disease and starvation, some were beaten to death in the fight for food, and some could not stand the environment and left!

Along the way, Xie Yushu witnessed people being beaten bloody by yamen runners for a bite to eat, some falling to the ground and being trampled underfoot, and some women having their bowl of porridge snatched away in the blink of an eye after going through great lengths to get it!

The law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, is vividly demonstrated here!

Even though she had seen countless deaths and deaths, she still felt that the world was too miserable!

Xie Yushu was still in a daze when she was suddenly bumped and stumbled. Turning around, she saw someone lying at her feet!

Holy crap! A staged accident?

I kicked it, but nothing happened!

Did she faint from hunger?

Out of professional ethics as a doctor, Xie Yushu squatted down to take a look and found that she had indeed been scammed!

The man before me was dressed in tattered clothes and looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six years old! He was tall, with a serious face, tightly furrowed brows, and bluish lips, clearly poisoned. He had a penetrating wound in his abdomen, a slash wound in his chest, and was in a coma with a high fever. One foot was already in the grave!

The patient collapsed right before her eyes. As a doctor, regardless of her conscience, she had to help. The only antidote she had was the gall bladder of that large red venomous snake! She even wanted to sell it for a high price! This was practically tearing her heart out! Besides, the patient was so badly injured; what if they couldn't be saved? She was a doctor, not a god!

Xie Yushu was starting to lose interest in saving him! After all, she hadn't even started practicing medicine here yet!

Whether the person on the ground sensed it or not, as she stood up, they grabbed her clothes and wouldn't let go!

Helpless, Xie Yushu resignedly dragged him to a distant spot by the city wall, ripped off a corner of her clothes, and used her small bamboo tube to scoop out a bucket of porridge.

When they returned, he had completely passed out. Xie Yushu cut off a piece of snake gall the size of a fingernail, crushed it, mixed it into the porridge, and then forced him to swallow the snake gall porridge by pinching his chin!

Snake gallbladders have the effect of clearing heat and relieving summer heat. They can be effective for both poisoning and inflammation of wounds. However, since the gallbladder is so large and made from a highly venomous snake, she was afraid that the medicine would be too strong and kill the person directly. Therefore, she only cut off the smallest amount.

After feeding him the porridge, while he was unconscious, he took out a short knife to clean the rotten flesh from the wound! He also stitched up the penetrating wound in his abdomen with five stitches on both the front and back!

There was no anesthesia, the needle wasn't a professional surgical suture needle, and the thread was just sewing thread. Whether he survived or not depended entirely on how tough his luck was!

Xie Yushu muttered to herself as she sewed.

"You don't feel pain, you don't feel pain, you don't feel any pain at all..."

Completely ignoring the fact that the muscles around the knife wound on the person under her were twitching! After she finished cleaning it, applied another layer of medicine, and bandaged it with a handkerchief, she looked up and saw the person who should have been unconscious staring at her with sweat on his face and gritted teeth!