Shen Yanming sensed his wife's trust and reliance on him, and unconsciously curled his lips into a smile, his steps slowing down.
When they reached their own field, Shen Yanming raised his gloved right hand and poked Bi Qiaoan's cheek through his veil. "We're here. Time to open your eyes!"
Bi Qiaoan opened her eyes, raised her gloved left hand and touched her nose, "Hey, hehe, I just woke up!"
Shen Yanming smiled and opened the barbed wire gate, pulling Bi Qiaoan to the chicken coop. He took out water and millet from his bag and filled the feeding and water troughs in the coop.
Before leaving, Shen Yanming tore off a handful of sweet potato leaves, shredded them, and covered the millet with them so the chicks could eat them together.
On the way back, Shen Yanming said to Bi Qiaoan, "There are grasshoppers in the cornfield."
Bi Qiaoan paused, "A lot?"
"Can there be more locusts than before? Don't even think about it, what's coming can't be avoided!"
Bi Qiaoan nodded and followed Shen Yanming home with heavy steps.
For the next two days, neither of them went out and waited at home for news, but there was no news at all online or on TV, everything was as normal as could be.
It wasn't until Sunday night that the Qinghe Alliance released details of the outbreak.
It turns out that the Qinghe Alliance Guard Team contracted a virus called HZ while traveling abroad to deliver a special medicine (this is just a fabrication, please don't take it seriously).
Because the incubation period of this virus is relatively long, the newly returned guards did not notice anything unusual about their bodies.
It wasn't until long after they had completed their mission and returned home that several of the guards began to develop fevers.
Because these guards were assigned to different teams, they didn't communicate and assumed they had simply caught a cold and had a fever without realizing it.
Unexpectedly, despite taking medicine, getting injections, and receiving intravenous fluids, their high fever persisted.
After their respective squad leaders reported their situations, they discovered that almost all of the guards who went abroad had fevers.
This is no small matter!
The head of the Imperial Capital Guard immediately reported the situation to the Qinghe Alliance and the Research Institute, and the previously agreed-upon interview was also urgently canceled.
That's right, it was the day Bi Qiaoan watched the live stream and felt that something was off about the female reporter.
Upon learning the news, the Qinghe Alliance and the Research Institute immediately sent people to pick up the guard with a fever and isolate him. The Research Institute also sent people to draw blood for testing.
Furthermore, the Qinghe Alliance has temporarily blocked the news.
It's not that we don't want the outside world to know, but rather that before the definite results are available, unfounded speculation from the outside world can only cause public panic.
The research institute worked overtime to conduct tests, but before they could find the cause of the disease, more people were infected.
This time, not only were there guards from the Imperial Guard, including those who had gone abroad and those who had not, but also ordinary people living around the Imperial Guard.
The research institute was in a state of chaos and could only take these feverish patients to designated hospitals for isolation.
The matter did not end there, because more and more hospitals submitted reports saying that they had treated many patients with fever but could not identify the cause of the illness, and tried many drugs, but none of them could bring down the patients' fever.
Hospitals across the country requested assistance, but the research institute had not yet produced results. The Qinghe Alliance could only ask the hospitals to admit the patients first, and would inform them as soon as a treatment plan was available.
Li Cheng, the Alliance Chief, was closely monitoring the situation in hospitals across the country and the progress of the research institute. In his anxiety, he called Dean Xu and asked, "Old Xu, is this disease contagious or not?"
Dean Xu wiped the sweat from his brow. "General Li, I haven't gotten the results yet. Could you please wait a little longer?"
"The number of patients with fever keeps increasing. How are we supposed to wait? At least give us some direction. What did the new cases get infected from? Or were they spread by guards who had traveled abroad?"
"I, I..." Dean Xu was almost in tears. The pressure he was under this time was even greater than when he faced Unknown No. 1. Dean Xu had a premonition that his reputation would be ruined in his later years.
Seeing that Dean Xu couldn't give a coherent explanation, General Li sighed, "Speed up the research; the people can't afford to wait for your procrastination!"
"Yes, yes!"
The bigwigs in the capital were terrified every day as they watched the number of fever cases reported by hospitals across the country. Chief Alliance Officer Li called Dean Xu every day, but all he got was the same thing: "No progress!"
It wasn't until one day, when an ordinary infected person's hands began to ulcerate, that Dean Xu got a clue.
Dean Xu had a vague feeling that this was some kind of virus that had been forgotten by humankind, but he wasn't sure.
So, Dean Xu personally went to the hospital and drew some blood and some ulcerated tissue from the patient.
Dean Xu locked himself in the laboratory for three days and three nights. After leaving the laboratory, he went straight to the library to look up information.
Dean Xu was eager to confirm whether the perpetrator was the very thing he suspected, so he hadn't paid attention to the outside world these past few days.
When he finally confirmed the identity of the "perpetrator," he learned that in the past few days, there had been hundreds of cases in Qinghua Kingdom where patients with fever suffered from severe skin ulceration and organ failure, leading to their deaths.
But Dean Xu knew that this was only the beginning...
Dean Xu quickly called General Li Cheng, "General Li..."
This was the first time Dean Xu had called him in so long, so General Li asked anxiously, "Is there any progress?"
Dean Xu fought back tears, unsure how to begin speaking on the other end of the phone.
"Speak up! You have to give me an explanation, whether it's good or bad!"
"It's been confirmed, it's the HZ virus that disappeared more than 300 years ago!"
Li Zongmeng had never heard of the HZ virus, so he was unaware of its power. "HZ? From three hundred years ago? How could it reappear?"
Dean Xu shook his head. "I don't know either. Back then, the HZ virus came and went in a hurry. Nobody knows where it came from or how it disappeared."
Moreover, because the HZ virus broke out in Moyou Country and caused very serious consequences, it disappeared without a trace before humans could eradicate it. Therefore, very few videos and documents remain.
If it weren't for the patient's body starting to ulcerate, I probably wouldn't have guessed that the culprit was the once infamous HZ virus!
"Old Xu, let's not talk about that anymore. I just want to ask you, how do we treat this disease?" Li Cheng, the Grand Alliance official, was extremely anxious. He no longer wanted to discuss how serious the virus was; he just wanted to know how to solve the problem.
But when Dean Xu heard Li Cheng's question, he burst into tears. "Waaah, there's no cure! It's all over, they're all gone! All the infected people from Moyou Kingdom three hundred years ago died, not one of them survived!"
"General, what should we do?"
Upon hearing this, General Li slumped into his office chair, his mind blank. "How could this be? How could this be? My Qinghua Kingdom is blessed by Heaven. There will definitely be a way, there definitely will be!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
