Chapter 120 Charcoal Ye Weiwan swallowed a piece of scalding hot charcoal right in front of her...
The plague victims of Spruce County were rescued from the caves by soldiers with their heads wrapped in burlap and settled in an ancient village at the foot of the mountain. This mountain village was strange from the inside out. The village was shrouded in the mist of the valley all year round, lifeless, and not a single lively sound of roosters crowing or dogs barking could be heard.
The villagers were mostly elderly people in their seventies or seventies.
Early in the morning, the mountain mist, damp and heavy, seeped in. The old people, their steps slow and drawn-out, gathered in loose groups, walked listlessly to the old, decaying locust tree at the village entrance, their eyes vacant, before returning at night. They didn't speak, their pupils reflecting the same murky mist, their steps incredibly slow, moving like walking corpses through the mountain fog.
This mountain village is the well-known Waguan Village in Xiling.
In years of famine and hardship, when people could not even get enough to eat, they would carry their elderly relatives up the mountain, leave them some dry rations, and let them fend for themselves. The root cause of this was the rampant problem of land annexation, which caused people to lose their land.
Since the imperial court began investigating land taxes, officials and gentry across the country have been returning their land to farmers. Families with less food shortages would go up the mountain to bring their elderly relatives back home. Waiting at the village entrance every day for that figure to come and fetch them became the only thing the village elders cared about.
The soldiers' forced entry into and requisition of civilian homes shattered the village's long-standing eerie atmosphere.
Soldiers, armed with swords and spears, surrounded the village, drove back the old people who were wandering at the village entrance, cleared out a few thatched houses at the west end of the village, and drove in many people with peach-blossom-shaped festering wounds on their skin. They then brought chains and locked the doors from the outside.
Officials from the Spruce County government carried firewood back and forth, stacking bundles and layers of dried thorns.
A felt tent was erected under the old locust tree at the village entrance to serve as a medical clinic. Inside the tent were two female doctors: one dressed in a blue imperial physician's robe with stitches on her face, and the other dressed in black with her face covered by a veil.
The two ignored each other, yet worked together with remarkable tacit understanding to prepare and brew the medicine.
The head constable went in and out of the medical tent repeatedly. The stuffiness in his chest made him stand outside the door and urge the woman in the blue dress who was smelling the herbs inside, "Imperial Physician Ye, I have already given you several days' grace. If those people's disease does not improve by midnight tonight, I will have no choice but to obey your orders."
The female doctor in the green robe raised her head and looked at the woman in black who was brewing the medicine. She didn't say anything and continued to bury herself in a pile of herbs that looked like sawdust and grass roots, sniffing and selecting them carefully, occasionally writing a few words on the yellowed prescription paper.
After the medicine pot had been boiling for half an hour, the soup was poured into a wooden bucket. The head constable called two men in, who carried the bucket to the thatched hut behind the wood-burning wall.
The woman in black followed behind the official carrying the medicine bucket, turned around and glanced back, seemingly smiling at the female doctor in the green robe.
As soon as she left, the female doctor in the green robe put down the winnowing basket she was using to collect medicine and rushed toward the head constable. When she opened her mouth, she couldn't even utter a hoarse sound.
She gestured frantically, but the head constable fled for his life.
She had spent so long in the cave with people suffering from the plague, and although there were no signs of her skin ulcerating, who knew if she was carrying the disease? Everyone would avoid her. As she grew anxious, the head constable became even more anxious. In the chase, the head constable dodged around the old locust tree, screaming in terror.
"Stop! Don't chase us! Let's talk this out! Stop chasing us!"
The female doctor in the green robe leaned against the tree trunk, panting, her fingers almost digging into the rough bark.
The head constable breathed a sigh of relief. "Imperial Physician Ye, what do you want to say?"
The female doctor in the green robe shook her head violently, her throat seemed to be blocked by something, and she couldn't make a sound. She didn't know how many days the effects of this medicine would last, so she opened her mouth wide and read out the words: "I am not Ye Weiwan," she pointed to the black-veiled figure in the thatched hut, "She is."
The head constable was too far away to see her mouth clearly, so he could only understand her meaning from her gestures. "Doctor Ye, don't worry. I know you were poisoned and made mute, but Doctor Zhu Ying was recommended by General Chen Liangyu. She even swore that she had a good cure for the epidemic. The epidemic is a big deal, so we have to wait a while before we can deal with her."
The female doctor in the green robe waved her hand weakly, her mouth clearly saying, "I am Zhu Ying!" She picked off a piece of old tree bark and wrote a line on the ground, clearly stating their identities. She added another line and then pointed to the thatched hut.
"Let her out, and I'll go in."
She stepped back more than ten paces, allowing the head constable to get closer and take a look.
What the head constable said after reading it made her even more desperate.
“I’m just a roughneck, all I can do is scribble my own name. Doctor Ye, I can’t recognize all these characters you’ve written.”
A thorny wall had been erected around the few houses used to isolate the plague-stricken people, and flammable sulfur was sprinkled on the firewood. The officials continued to pile firewood there, and bundles of thorns dragged on the ground, the writing on the walls quickly trampled away by the running officials.
Zhu Ying closed her eyes, her head throbbing.
The mountain mist still hung over the sprawling thatched roofs, like a filthy shroud soaked in death.
Some time ago, the condition of many people in the cave worsened overnight. Their ulcerated skin stopped scabbing and developed sores, which turned into large and small pustules that would burst if scratched.
At first, everyone still believed that Ye Weiwan could cure the plague, and they endured the pain, obeying her every command, letting her cut out rotten flesh and draw blood. As the condition did not improve for days, the pills that Ye Weiwan distributed to them every day gradually became ineffective. The nearly one thousand pairs of eyes in the cave went from timid and cowardly to panicked, and then to angry at the pain of having their wounds cut out every day.
People had long revered Ye Weiwan as a deity; one person's anger was insufficient to provoke the courage to defy her. Until one day, someone suddenly shouted, "She wasn't saving us at all; she was just raising these poisonous insects!"
The person's festering wounds couldn't withstand even the slightest friction from the fabric; he was in so much pain that he was losing consciousness, yet he was still screaming.
He pointed to the pool where the blood gu were kept, "These poisonous insects feed on rotting flesh and human blood. She lured us to this cave just to feed us to her poisonous insects! Run! Run! You will all die..."
A commotion began to break out in the cave.
A dagger plunged into the abdomen of the screaming man, emerging dripping with blood. The man's eyes were still wide open when Ye Weiwan shoved him into the blood gu pool. The blood gu from the bottom of the pool surged up, attaching themselves to his body and gnawing at him.
The person at the bottom of the pool rolled around twice and then remained completely still.
People stood up one after another on both sides of the cave wall, glancing at the light at the cave entrance, ready to rush out and escape at any moment. Others picked up stones and weighed them in their hands.
Ye Weiwan put away her dagger and said, "I am saving you. If you don't believe me, then do as you please."
She gestured towards the cave entrance, indicating that she did not intend to stop them.
"Those who want to leave can leave at any time; I won't stop you. I advise you all to think carefully about why you came here. The officials down the mountain are going door-to-door arresting people; once you leave this cave, who among you will have a way to survive?"
The crowd exchanged bewildered glances, speechless for a moment, and fell silent.
After a moment, a bolder person asked, "Then why isn't our illness getting better? Instead, it's getting worse every day?"
Ye Weiwan remained silent for a moment, then said, "If I cannot save you, I will go to hell with you."
After saying that, he turned and walked out.
After the authorities discovered the blood curse, they quickly followed the clues and found the cave where Ye Weiwan had hidden more than a thousand people. She stood on a high place and looked at the black smoke that never went out day and night on the distant mountains. Two heads peeked out, looked in this direction, exchanged a glance, and then quickly went down the mountain.
They are government spies; the soldiers are coming soon.
Zhu Ying was still imprisoned by her. She didn't come to Zhu Ying's place often, sometimes every day, sometimes every two or three days. On this day, she came down from the cave entrance and silently cleaned the bloodstains on her blue official robe.
The cave was cold and damp, not as warm as places with more people. A pile of firewood was burning at Zhu Ying's feet.
Zhu Ying's limbs became increasingly limp, but her voice recovered most of its strength. When she spoke, it was no longer the hoarse voice ruined by the thick smoke; it sounded seven or eight parts like her former voice.
She asked Ye Weiwan, "Did you kill someone?"
Ye Weiwan paused for a moment, then continued to work on the bloodstains on her clothes.
Zhu Ying said, "Stop doing evil. You should be practicing medicine and saving lives, and one day you might become famous throughout the world."
Ye Weiwan was eerily docile; these were words that would normally infuriate her, yet today she seemed not to hear them at all. She said, "You shouldn't be telling me what I should have done. I shouldn't even be alive, should I?"
"I owe you."
Ye Weiwan looked at her upon hearing this and laughed mockingly, "I used to think so too, I've always thought so, that you owe me, that everything I took from you should have been mine. But what does everything I've been through have to do with you? You weren't the one who made me disabled, you weren't the one who abandoned me, and you weren't the one who raised and protected me but refused to love me. It's laughable, but only when you're here do I feel like I'm not all alone in this vast world."
Zhu Ying carefully considered Ye Weiwan's words.
She believed that what she said came from the bottom of her heart, and that was why she felt a sudden chill for no reason. Whether it was sisterly bond or something else, she couldn't say, but her intuition told her that when Ye Weiwan acted like a normal person, she would do something even more insane next.
Sure enough, the next moment Ye Weiwan handed her a gourd, "Drink this."
"I won't drink it."
"You have no choice but to drink the medicine for your throat. It's better to drink it yourself than to have someone force-feed it to you."
Zhu Ying glared at her, then uncorked the gourd and simmered the medicine.
"Give me the prescription for the Peach Blossom Plague and give it to the Earl of Chengyang. There may still be time to save the people of Xiling, and perhaps there may still be time... to atone for your sins."
"Why redeem it? I admit my guilt."
Ye Weiwan's tone was full of indifference, as if this was no big deal.
"It's just a pity that something is still missing, just a little bit."
Zhu Ying asked, "What's still a little short?"
"The prescription. After I changed the prescription, their condition actually worsened. There's nothing wrong with it, absolutely nothing wrong... So what ingredient was missing?"
Ye Weiwan's gaze fell on the burning pile of firewood, staring blankly at the clusters of flames.
“A brocade lantern,” Zhu Ying said.
The medicine was taking effect, and she was breathless and her voice was short. Ye Weiwan was too distracted to hear her clearly, so she repeated the three words, "Lantern. We're still missing one ingredient, Lantern."
"A brocade lantern?" Ye Weiwan asked.
This herb is not hard to find; it can be found everywhere in the mountains, forests, and under mud walls. Ordinary people would just mistake it for a few wild grasses.
"I and the men at the cave entrance were ordered by the Marquis of Chengyang to go south. On the way, we picked some wild lantern fruits to quench our thirst. To save some dry rations, we chewed them up, peel and all. I did not contract the peach blossom plague. If the condition of the soldiers outside the cave does not worsen, then perhaps your prescription is only missing one ingredient: lantern fruit."
Ye Weiwan suddenly laughed lightly, her laughter filled with relief.
"So that's how it is."
She took off her own blue imperial physician's robe and, ignoring Zhu Ying's struggles, forced her to change her clothes.
Zhu Ying shouted with all her might, but found herself gradually losing her voice, "What are you going to do? What the hell are you going to do?"
She watched as Ye Weiwan took out the booklet containing the symptoms of many people from her sleeve and placed it beside her.
"I want you to become me, and live on in my place."
Then Ye Weiwan walked to the fire, picked up a twig and poked around inside, as if looking for something.
What are you doing now?
"The soldiers are coming soon, and they will definitely find the Blood Curse. You have no choice. This crime concerns the lives of dozens of people in Jiuhua Manor in Liangxi City. You must live as Ye Weiwan so that Jiuhua Manor will not be implicated."
"The local officials of the various prefectures and counties in Xiling all want to emulate the methods used to contain the great plagues in Li'an and Linxia by burning the seriously ill together to cut off the source of the disease. I hope that this time, you can save them before the fire starts."
"Don't go back to the palace. It's a place where even your own children can be harmed. It's a noisy, chaotic world, a path of fame and fortune. No matter how good your skills are, you'll only become someone else's executioner. It's better to become a traveling doctor, saving lives and traveling through mountains and rivers."
"The blood gu has the habit of hibernation. During the depths of winter, the epidemic is less likely to spread and is easiest to control."
Ye Weiwan had burned off half of the branch she was using to push away the flames. She seemed to have finally finished explaining what she wanted to say, and stood there frozen. "You and I are sisters, blood relatives, but also blood enemies. We have a debt from the past that we can never repay in this lifetime. So I wish you fame throughout the world and that your name will be remembered for eternity."
Zhu Ying saw her hand reach into the fire and grasp a ball of flame.
She lunged forward, fell, and lost her voice.
Ye Weiwan swallowed a small piece of scalding hot charcoal in front of her.
Author's note: Thank you for reading this far!
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