The medicine boy went to investigate the source early this morning with him, but he got sick now. There must be some connection between them.
When Xu Hang and Duan Yelin rushed out, they saw the medicine boy scratching himself frantically on the ground, like a man thirsty for water in the desert, with his eyes wide open and trembling. The others did not dare to approach him because the medicine boy had a lot of rashes and redness on his body.
Seeing that no one came to help, Xu Hang rushed forward, held the medicine boy down, pinched his arm, and checked his pulse. But the medicine boy seemed to be unable to control himself, pushed Xu Hang away, and ran towards the water tank on the side: “Water! Water!”
Then with a splash, he fell into the water tank.
Xu Hang immediately ordered, “Come quickly, two people, put on gloves, and fish him out! Burn and throw away everything that the medicine boy has touched today! Also, burn the wormwood quickly, and buy some alcohol for disinfection!”
Everyone who was in a panic obeyed the order and started to do the work. They were busy running around for a while. The medicine boy held his breath for too long and fainted. Xu Hang asked someone to clean up a room and lock him in it.
Duan Yelin waited until he was done before asking, “What happened?”
Xu Hang put his hand on the medicine boy’s wrist and carefully felt his pulse. It was indeed the plague. He thought about it and said, “We went to the places where the bodies were found this morning and didn’t do anything else.”
“You went there too? Is there anything wrong with you?” Duan Yelin suddenly looked at Xu Hang nervously and touched his forehead. “Are you feeling unwell? Did you eat, drink, or touch anything?”
“I’m fine…” Xu Hang took his hand away but suddenly froze.
Because Duan Yelin’s words gave him inspiration, he suddenly stood up and said, “Drink something… that’s right, the medicine boy drank water from a well! The well water in the wasteland outside the eastern suburbs!”
Xu Hang didn’t drink from that well. This was the only difference between him and the medicine bou.
East Suburb? Duan Yelin thought about it and seemed a little skeptical: “Are you saying that someone tampered with the well water in the East Suburb? Well… this is unlikely.”
“Why?”
“I have adjusted the waterways in the city. The wells outside the suburbs are all dead wells, and the water is also dead. Not many people can be poisoned there. If I were the one who put the poison, I would not be stupid enough to do it there.”
This seems to be a bit confusing. Xu Hang frowned and thought for a while: “No matter what, let’s get someone to get the well water back first, and I’ll test it first.”
Immediately, within an hour, someone was sent to fetch the water. Xu Hang used it to conduct experiments on mice.
Because mice are small and drink a lot of water, they get sick much faster than the medicine boy, and many of their symptoms are similar. This incident clearly shows that the well water is poisonous.
Xu Hang looked up the information that Duan Zhanzhou had given him before. Among the dead, only three or four people were from the eastern suburbs. The others were very far away from the eastern suburbs. The water in the well was stagnant and did not connect to other wells. Could it be that something happened in other wells as well?
To verify this idea, Xu Hang took water from other wells and fed it to different mice, but none of them died.
The source is not the well water, and it is impossible for someone to poison well water that is not flowing at all. But how to explain this problematic well water then?
The investigation came to a standstill, and Xu Hang worked day and night but still could not find any clues.
Until one day at noon, Chan Yi came to deliver lunch to Xu Hang and found that he had not even touched his breakfast, which was left there intact. She couldn’t help but nag, “Head of the Household, one can’t function properly on an empty stomach, you can’t starve yourself!”
If Chan Yi starts to nag, it’s even more terrible than having five hundred ducks calling. Xu Hang put down the tools in his hand, quickly washed his hands with soap and wormwood, and sat down at the dining table: “Alright, I know, what did you make today?”
“Spiced cabbage, steamed winter melon with garlic sauce, loofah soup, and stir-fried radish.”
Everything was presented in a delicious way, but they were vegetarian.
“Is it that my Jinyan Tang is penniless, or is it that you, Chan Yi, have been stingy?” Xu Hang smiled.
Chan Yi pouted, looking unhappy: “Amitabha, vegetables are more expensive than meat now. The farmers in the vegetable fields all said that the harvest this year is not good, and the vegetable prices are soaring. This table is really expensive now.”
Xu Hang picked up a piece of cabbage with chopsticks and said, “It’s not a severe drought this year, so why is the harvest so bad? I think it must be…” He stopped talking before he could finish his words.
Vegetables. The harvest was bad.
It seems to have a special meaning.
In a flash, a picture flashed before Xu Hang’s eyes: withered vegetables, untended wasteland, and dead rats.
These things were connected in series, like a few small parts, and then spliced together to form a key, which immediately opened the mystery in Xu Hang’s mind.
With a snap, the chopsticks were slapped on the table by him, and Chan Yi was startled.
“That’s right! Why didn’t I think of it earlier!” After saying that, Xu Hang rushed out without eating a single bite of food.
Chan Yi was almost jumping up and down behind him: “Head of the Household! You haven’t eaten yet! Where are you going?! Head of the Household!”
Xu Hang ran to the suburbs and picked the withered and dying leaves from different fields. He tied them into bundles, marked them, and brought them back to his medicine room.
He chopped the leaves into small pieces, mixed them with minced meat, and fed them to the mice one spoonful at a time. Then, he moved a small stool to watch.
Half an hour later, the mice seemed a little restless.
An hour later, the mice were running around in the cage, bumping into each other, and gnawing at the sides of the cage.
Another stick of incense was spent, and they desperately tried to find water to drink, as if they had never had water in their lives, and even fought to the point of biting each other.
After another pot of tea, when Xu Hang just turned around to get the water, half of the mice were lying on their backs, with their mouths slightly open and their skin ulcerated. They were all dead.
The other half seemed fine.
Xu Hang put down the water cup with a serious expression. He finally found the source of the plague.
It’s not because of the well water but because of the vegetable fields.
Someone tampered with the vegetable fields, so the vegetables turned yellow and died. The mice gnawed the poisonous vegetables, became sick and thirsty, and rushed to the well for water to drink, where they drowned, thus polluting the well water.
People will not drink the water from a dead well, but they will eat the vegetables. The vegetables that were poisoned showed no signs in the first few days and only gradually withered over time.
The medicine boy did not live in the suburbs and did not know that the water was dead. He drank a sip and was poisoned.
After observing the mice for a few days, Xu Hang found that the virus was not stable and the incidence rate was not very high. Only half of the mice died of skin ulcers. Therefore, the poisoning was only carried out on a small scale in Hezhou City, probably to experiment on the poor.
Once the nature of this virus is stabilized and released into the well water connected to the waterway, he’s afraid that the whole Hezhou…
Will become hell.
What a vicious mind.
He was a little flustered and wanted to drink some water to calm down. As soon as the cup touched his lips, he frowned and threw it away. After knowing the truth, he really didn’t dare to even drink water.
The worst thing is that he has not yet developed an effective vaccine. Without the original formula of the virus, simply prescribing the right medicine is like a drop in the bucket, it’s just a temporary solution and not a fundamental solution.
The medicine boy was already dead. The prescriptions used to treat him only helped him live a few more days and alleviated his pain.
How should he resolve this disaster in Hezhou?
It seems that for now, he can only have all the wells in the city sealed off.
