Chapter 1462: There are three in total (Part 2) [Requesting monthly votes]
The dawn light quietly rose on the horizon, spreading a blush of rouge.
Dong Dao, who hadn't slept all night, took a sip of strong tea to wake himself up.
Before he could even swallow his food, the door was pushed open forcefully, and the newcomer exclaimed with delight, "Xingdao, I've made a major discovery!"
Dong Dao's drowsiness was jolted out of his drowsiness. He woke up with a start and hurriedly grabbed his teacup: "Discovered? What discovered?"
The physician hurriedly grabbed him and dragged him away, saying, "Come and see!"
The cook, who was captured last night, was no longer in good spirits. She was now curled up into a ball, listlessly making "hoarse" sounds—several imperial physicians meticulously recorded and speculated on the different tones of these "hoarse" sounds to represent different emotions. Currently, it seems that these "hoarse" sounds were filled with fear.
As everyone suspected, the facts proved otherwise.
The physician excitedly announced his new discovery.
“Look, this patient is extremely photophobic.”
The fifteen physicians divided the work: Dong Dao and a few continued consulting the sacred medical texts, while the rest observed the precious patient. As the roosters kept at the medical clinic began to crow, the night, like ink being poured with water, gradually cleared and turned white. They noticed a change in the patient's emotions—perhaps a crucial breakthrough!
"Light?" Dong Dao's gaze fell on the burnt-out lamp on the candlestick. "Last night, even with the candlelight shining brightly, it didn't react at all. On the way back, the ground was covered in moonlight, but it still didn't react in any special way... It seems that not just any light can make it react."
As he spoke, he took out a palm-sized round bronze mirror from his pocket.
He stood by the window, using a bronze mirror to reflect the sunlight outside.
The cook seemed to have encountered something terrifying; her agitation was palpable as she crawled towards the darkness, using both hands and feet. However, her limbs were bound by the power of words, limiting her movement.
The physician asked, "Is it the sunlight that you fear?"
Dong Dao stroked his beard, feeling as if he had grasped a glimmer of hope: "That's not necessarily true... I once heard the Lord say that the moonlight we see on ordinary days is no different from sunlight. Moonlight is sunlight. If it fears sunlight, there's no reason why it wouldn't fear moonlight."
This was the first time anyone had realized that moonlight was actually sunlight.
They wanted to argue, but when Dong Dao invoked the emperor's name, they believed him—they were imperial physicians from the Imperial Medical Bureau, not officials from the Imperial Observatory, so it was normal for them not to understand astronomy and astrology. Some of them even blindly trusted Shen Tang, and when their understanding conflicted, they doubted their own lack of expertise.
"So it's not just photophobia?"
Candlelight and moonlight are both forms of light; there's no reason they shouldn't work.
"Is it fear of what appears alongside the light?"
I racked my brains but couldn't come up with such a thing.
“General Gongshu!” At this moment, someone thought of the most special general in Kangguo and said excitedly, “Speaking of which, General Gongshu can be considered a person between life and death. This patient has no heartbeat and no pulse, but can move like a living person. Isn’t this a kind of ‘living dead’? Although General Gongshu is not afraid of light, he dislikes yang energy and prefers to cultivate in the dark.”
Gong Shuwu's cultivation requires absorbing death energy, killing energy, and yin energy.
"The interplay of Yin and Yang, their mutual generation and restraint, perhaps lies here?"
Isn't yang energy the most abundant during the day?
This bizarre disease has turned people into something neither human nor ghost; it looks like a product of the underworld, so it's perfectly normal that its nature is yin.
If we approach it from this angle, it seems to make sense.
Dong Dao slapped his forehead: "Indeed!"
Some physicians from the medical profession who were not often on duty in the capital also had doubts.
Whether it's cultivation methods or personal weaknesses, these are secrets that martial artists cannot reveal to outsiders. How come this colleague is so familiar with Gong Shuwu? The physician didn't hide anything from him: "Doesn't General Gong Shuwu have a daughter? After she started cultivating, that young lady broke her bones every few days. I've been visiting her eight out of ten times. We've become familiar with each other over time."
Which parent doesn't write down the attending physician's contact information?
Gong Shuwu was a special case, and medical practitioners specializing in obscure topics were very willing to visit him for consultations without charging fees in order to obtain his medical records. She took out her medical records, found the section on Gong Shuwu, which contained detailed information about her consultations with him, including but not limited to observation, auscultation, inquiry, and palpation, and even records of conversations.
Of course, doctors must keep patients' information confidential.
Therefore, the names on the medical records are all simple codes.
The group copied the medical record from her into their own medical records and carefully examined it. They were surprised to find that Gong Shuwu's condition was somewhat similar to that of the cook, and from this, they gleaned a direction for treatment. Dong Daozhen gently stroked the medical record.
He said, "The treatment can be delayed for now."
Everyone was both shocked and furious: "What are you saying?"
This doesn't sound like something a royal physician would say.
Isn't this treating human life like dirt?
Dong Dao's lips twitched, and the old man sighed inwardly again—he was indeed the most cunning person in the medical department.
The day he steps down from his position as Imperial Physician, won't those politicians devour all these people whose minds are only on medicine? Dong Dao has no doubt that they'll be happy to be sold out and count the money for others.
"Gentlemen, have you seen how manic these infected people are? They are not only extremely aggressive, but they also cannibalize others. Have you considered how many people will be eaten if this situation is not controlled? And if those who are eaten are not completely consumed, they will 'come back to life' and eat the next one, generation after generation, endlessly." The primary task is not to cure the disease, but to control its spread. Control first, then treat!
He didn't say the real reason.
If they don't first come up with a reliable and effective control method, he fears Ning Tunan might ruthlessly and decisively seal off and eradicate the source of the disease. To put it more cruelly, it would mean sealing off an entire area, leaving the people within it not to fend for themselves but to be manually destroyed.
Should a small group of people die, or should the entire city die?
Is it the one who dies in a city, or the one who destroys a country?
If necessary, he even believed that Ning Yan would order the lockdown of the capital city of Fengluo, so that she could die peacefully along with everyone else in the city.
Dong Dao's gaze swept over the listless cook.
Just as they were considering whether to send someone to bring over a few death row inmates—one patient was simply not enough, and the sample size was too small—the Fourth Prefecture sent over thirteen more patients. Two of them looked exactly like the cook, while the remaining eleven were covered in bloody, mangled teeth marks.
Dong Dao was shocked: "How come so many more people have appeared?"
Were these people all yesterday's diners?
The military officer who brought the man over said, "No, we received a report this morning from a resident that a merchant who had stayed at their home had committed murder. The Fourth Prefecture sent people to investigate."
The Fourth Prefectural Office spent the entire night searching through its diners, but found no patient; the strange diner the landlady had mentioned was still missing. Just as they were worrying about this, the case fell into their hands. The deceased happened to be the strange diner, but the glass tube on the diner's body had vanished. They could only first grind the uncorrupted corpse to ashes, and then bring back the injured commoners.
Fortunately, it was daytime, and the patients who had already developed symptoms and become aggressive were trapped inside, preventing further spread.
These patients were all confined to specially designed rooms.
Dong Dao asked, "Are there any fish that slipped through the net?"
Even the Four Prefectures dared not make any guarantees.
All we can say is that we've screened out everything that could be screened.
Fortunately, amidst the pile of bad news, there were a couple of pieces of good news. For example, the energy of heaven and earth in the region where the disease originated would change, and martial artists, with their exceptional sensitivity to energy, could use this clue to trace the patient. As long as the medical practitioners could develop an antidote, the advantage in this battle would be on their side. Faced with this pressure, Dong Dao also felt an immense weight on his shoulders, and he almost couldn't breathe.
As long as the general direction of the research is correct, the progress will be incredibly fast.
Within half a day, the medical department roughly determined that these patients feared Yang energy, especially the Yang martial energy that had been carefully purified by martial arts masters.
"...If these martial energies are woven into a net, the patient can be easily trapped, making him more docile and less likely to attack living things for a short time." Dong Dao immediately went to report the good news to Ning Yan. "However, this requires a high level of martial arts skill."
Ning Yan asked, "Can patients develop resistance?"
Dong Dao gave a relatively optimistic answer: "It shouldn't be possible in the short term. Even a powerful general like Gongshu is very wary of Pure Yang Martial Qi. These patients have become manic, irritable, and aggressive due to the pathogen, but the carriers are still ordinary people."
Ning Yan frowned: "So, if the patient is a martial arts practitioner, the same level of suppression might not be effective?"
Dong Dao's face turned ashen: "That's possible."
I just hope that God will have mercy on Kangguo and that this will never happen.
Ning Yan then summoned the military officer in charge of the matter from the Four Commanders' Office.
"The missing glass tube has been found?"
"Reporting to the Attendant, not yet."
Military generals of varying strengths have different abilities to sense auras. The strongest generals of the Royal Guard have already been dispatched, following the faint aura leaked from the glass tube to find the culprit who released the source of the disease. However, the Royal Capital is vast and densely populated, with a huge flow of people during the day. The various mixed auras mask the slight anomaly, making the search difficult.
Ning Yan then asked, "Any clues about the location depicted in the portrait?"
She stared intently at the painting the artist was copying.
The mountains, rivers, flowers, and grasses were all quite ordinary; there were countless similar locations near the capital. Ning Yan's biggest worry was that the location wasn't in the capital, but in the surrounding area, which would expand the scope considerably. Time was of the essence, so she could only deduce the approximate area based on the clues—she ordered the Four Guards to conduct a thorough investigation around the main water sources in the surrounding area.
The military officer in charge replied with difficulty, "Reporting to the Attendant-in-Ordinary, it is not yet."
Ning Yan frowned deeply, raised her hand to stroke the portrait, and muttered to herself, "If I were the enemy, where would I poison him?"
Kang Guo is a formidable enemy whom she wants to eliminate as soon as possible, and she certainly won't let the enemy get away with it: "If it were just to poison Feng Luo, there would be no need to risk sending the source of the disease. Just pour it on the source, and it would be done without anyone noticing. There would be no need to alert the enemy."
Therefore, the enemy's objective must have some humiliating connotation.
To achieve this humiliation, they spared no effort.
Ning Yan closed her eyes, her mind completely calm.
When she opened her eyes again: "Send manpower to the National Temple!"
Ning Yan realized that she had fallen into a cognitive trap.
She assumed the enemy would tamper with the source, but she overlooked the highly contagious nature of this strange disease—it didn't need to poison the main water sources; poisoning in a small area would suffice. As long as the royal court didn't react quickly enough and missed the golden window, the epidemic could still spread throughout the city! Starting with the national temple, allowing the source of the disease that could wipe out the entire country to flow out of the temple, would be equivalent to slapping the entire Kang Kingdom in the face!
The military officer clasped his hands in salute: "Your humble servant obeys!"
While waiting for news, Ning Yan became increasingly certain.
You can't just randomly choose a major river to release the pathogen, because the pathogen might be diluted and not achieve the desired effect. The spring water behind the temple is different; many pilgrims like to fill a jug to take home, and many restaurants in the city even use it as a gimmick.
If she were an enemy, they would be more inclined to strike at the National Temple.
This allows one to obtain a secret pleasure.
She looked up at the sky and said, "Right now, we really need to fight for the fate of our nation."
Two flowers bloom, each representing a different branch.
The movements in Fengluo were synchronized with those in other locations at the fastest speed.
Shen Tang also obtained information about the glass tube.
Looking at the objects depicted in the portrait, she fell into a brief silence—not because of the tube itself, but because of the tiny figure pointing a sword inside. Ji Moqiu immediately recognized that the figure resembled a deity and naturally guessed the reason for Shen Tang's silence.
Everyone else remained silent, but Kang Shi was bold enough to speak.
"Doesn't this little man look familiar?"
Many of them I've met before.
It looks remarkably like the evil thought that was slain by the Lord back then. However, the two are only similar in appearance; their faces are not very recognizable.
No one else responded.
Nobody wants their master to be associated with such a filthy thing.
Ji Moqiu said, "It's normal that it looks familiar."
The reason these things can remain active for thousands of years lies here: it's all thanks to His Highness's life essence. Back then, the laboratory didn't develop a zombie virus or a special medicine that could help people adapt to extremely harsh environments, but they did discover the wonderful uses of His Highness's life essence.
And it has been developed for many uses.
For example, preserving human embryos or the initial zombie virus.
Of those embryos, some hatched into humans, some died, and a few lucky survivors escaped the lab in the chaos. The initial zombie virus, which should have been destroyed, was preserved and is still carefully stored in the hands of the internal organization.
While everyone remained silent, Wei Lou returned, looking travel-worn.
He looked at Shen Tang with resentment in his eyes, and Ji Moqiu raised his eyes to glare back, silently protesting—ultimately, it was all the disaster caused by the human race, so what was the point of Wei Lou blaming His Highness? Wei Lou completely ignored Ji Moqiu and delivered some bad news: "I went back to the underground ruins and found some information there. The Inner Society has a total of three poisons, stored in different underground cities."
Shen Tang was mentally prepared for this.
The actual number was much smaller than expected.
Wei Lou: "Judging from the location of the underground city and the timing of the central branch's mobilization of the poison, there should only be one dose within Kangguo, and the other dose is still on its way. The most likely location for its release is the southwest."
He circled several targets on the map.
Shen Tang asked him, "What about the last one?"
Wei Lou: "There is another branch located at the junction of the southeast and northeast."
There is also an underground city here.
The enemy is unlikely to go to great lengths to obtain the poison and then travel thousands of miles to Kangguo to deliver it. They're more likely to eliminate Quguo and the forces Shen Tang's alt account has formed nearby. This way, they can eliminate a major threat effortlessly. He said gravely, "Geographically speaking, they should have made their move in the southeast earlier than in the northwest."
Should we remind Zhai Xiaofang?
The initiative was in Shen Tang's hands.
─=≡Σ(((つω)つ
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