Qi Yue had no idea what was happening back there. At this very moment, she couldn’t help but cheer with joy.

“Look! Look!” She was emotionally excited, somewhat losing her composure, pointing at the test tubes arranged on the shelf in front of her. In the sunlight, the white crystal emitted dazzling light.

The clan elder and several villagers couldn’t help but move closer, exclaiming in wonder.

“Such precious things must be worth a lot of money…” a woman couldn’t help but murmur. This woman looked very wealthy, so when it came time to demand compensation, she must open her mouth wide…

“No, I’m asking you to look at this…” Qi Yue said, taking a small stick to point at the test tube. “Look, here…”

In the crystal, between the clearly distinct colored liquids above and below, there was an obvious white ring, so clear and distinct.

“This is the precipitation reaction of a sick pig,” Qi Yue said, then pointed to another one. “And this one, without the white ring, is the precipitation reaction of a healthy pig.”

The clan elder and others looked at her.

“What does this mean?” they asked.

“Only pigs with anthrax will show this reaction,” Qi Yue said.

Old Physician An and his disciples also gathered around to look.

“How miraculous, it actually shows different reactions… So amazing, how did this… happen?” everyone murmured.

Experiments? Reactions? Cells? These strange terms flowed through everyone’s minds.

The miraculous… natural world…

The villagers stared at her blankly.

“This, this, this counts as what evidence?” the woman pointed and shouted, somewhat mockingly. “Who knows how you fiddled with these things? We don’t understand…”

Qi Yue was looking at the precipitation reaction she had made with joy, her body trembling slightly with excitement. Hearing this, she turned her head.

“What? Evidence?” She looked at the woman and smiled. “Evidence isn’t for you to see, it’s for me to see. Whether you understand or not doesn’t matter, as long as I understand.”

The woman was stunned again. What did that mean?

“I’m proving it to myself. As long as I know I’m doing the right thing, that’s enough,” Qi Yue smiled, turning around to look at the villagers. “Then I declare that your village’s pigs have anthrax and need to be isolated and destroyed.”

Destroyed…

The woman stared at her blankly. What did destroyed mean…

When Huang Ziqiao found them, what he saw was a chaotic scene.

Twenty or thirty villagers were angrily shouting, surrounding Qi Yue and the others.

Several disciples each tightly protected their medicine boxes.

“What are you doing! Rebelling?” Huang Ziqiao shouted loudly, spurring his horse and charging over with his whip, lashing out chaotically. The officers behind him naturally weren’t to be outdone.

After a bout of crying and shouting, the villagers retreated.

“How did you get here?” Qi Yue looked at him happily and asked.

Huang Ziqiao dismounted and snorted without speaking.

“Why aren’t you wearing protective clothing?” Qi Yue pulled him to look, frowning. “What are you doing running around like a child…”

Huang Ziqiao impatiently shook off her hand.

“Hey, did you find it or not?” he asked with a stern face.

Qi Yue paused, then immediately understood.

“Of course.” She smiled and tilted her head toward that direction. “This village’s pigs.”

“What needs to be done?” Huang Ziqiao asked.

Qi Yue nodded and pointed around.

“First, all sick pigs must be isolated, burned, and buried deep. But since there’s no time to identify them, the fastest and safest approach is to burn and bury all the pigs together…” she said.

As soon as she finished speaking, crying sounds rose from the villagers again.

“Heaven help us, there’s no way to live…” the woman sat on the ground, already crying with disheveled hair, beating her chest and stamping her feet. “You might as well burn us to death too. This cuts off a family’s livelihood…”

“Shut up!” Huang Ziqiao shouted.

Seeing his clothing and the officers behind him, the woman’s crying subsided slightly.

“Young master, there’s really no way around this,” the clan elder said in a heavy voice. “Dozens of pigs, just saying kill them and they’re killed, this, this doesn’t make sense.”

“Uncle, I told you, these are sick pigs. Don’t think of them as livestock for making money anymore—they’re like bombs! At this point, are you really going to sacrifice the lives of the entire village, even the entire city, for these pigs?” Qi Yue said.

“Don’t speak so grandly. How did the lives of the entire city become our business?” the clan elder said with a pale face.

“Because I say so,” Qi Yue looked at him and said.

“You, whatever you say goes?” the clan elder said urgently.

He had never seen such a woman—what kind of woman was this!

“In this matter, indeed whatever I say goes,” Qi Yue said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to patiently explain to you. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do. I can only do what I should do.”

What should be done?

“Xiao Qiao, go back quickly and tell your father to bring people to seal off this village. All the pigs, including other livestock, must all be destroyed,” Qi Yue said to Huang Ziqiao.

Upon hearing this, everyone was in an uproar again, and the woman began wailing again.

“Why do I need to tell my father? If I say it, it’s done,” Huang Ziqiao didn’t care about these people and said, waving the whip in his hand. “Now you all go home immediately and pack your things. For now, all go to…”

He looked at Qi Yue at this point.

“For now, all go to Qianjin Hall for suspected case screening,” Qi Yue said.

“You, we’ve lived in this village for generations. You say we should leave and we leave? Impossible!” The clan elder was also angry, gritting his teeth and shouting. “We won’t leave!”

Following his words, the other villagers also shouted loudly.

“We won’t leave!”

“Fine!” Huang Ziqiao glared and raised his whip to strike, but was grabbed by Qi Yue.

With so many people, they would definitely be at a disadvantage if a conflict broke out. Besides, it was better not to have any external injuries here.

Seeing that Qi Yue and the others stopped talking, the villagers became happy.

Exactly—opening their mouths to burn their pigs was just like bandits robbing people’s property.

No matter where they took this case, they would be in the right! As for those diseases and such…

“They say our pigs harm people and cause disease—how come we’re all fine?”

“Exactly, fiddling with those bottles and jars and then saying it’s our pigs’ fault?”

As they spoke, one of them suddenly looked at the ground.

“…Second Uncle, why do I feel like the ground is shaking?”

“What?” The person next to him looked down and also noticed it. “Could it be an earthquake?”

Upon hearing this, the noisy crowd fell silent.

An earthquake?

“It really is moving!” someone shouted loudly.

Before he finished speaking, they heard hoofbeats approaching from far to near.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s hoofbeats. Making such a fuss and scaring people to death,” the clan elder turned to scold, but before he finished speaking and turned his head, he froze, his gaze falling on the rear.

Not understanding what was happening, everyone also looked over, only to see that at some unknown time, teams of mounted soldiers were approaching from behind, surrounding them in a fan formation. The riders wore bright armor, with swords and spears like a forest.

How did so many… garrison troops come?

Everyone was stunned. There wasn’t a sound of quarreling, only the uniform hoofbeats pressing closer step by step.

Looking at the man walking at the front, Huang Ziqiao snorted and irritably whipped his whip on the ground.

These garrison troops approached, and following gestures from several leader-like figures, they spurred their horses and scattered. As they scattered, a line of white lime appeared on the ground.

It turned out each person’s horse had lime bags tied to it.

“You won’t leave, is that right?” Chang Yuncheng finally looked over and asked, sitting high on his horse looking down. “You can’t bear to part with your pigs, is that right?”

Facing these garrison troops with swords and spears in hand, the villagers didn’t dare breathe heavily.

“Military sir, it’s really that without an explanation, we, we…” the clan elder gritted his teeth and stepped forward to speak.

Before he finished speaking, Chang Yuncheng nodded.

He pointed at the white line on the ground.

“No problem, you can stay,” he said. “But those who stay must not cross this line. Otherwise, like those pigs and livestock, you’ll be killed without mercy.”

The villagers gasped.

“Military sir,” the clan elder called out in a trembling voice, “what great crime have we committed?”

Chang Yuncheng said nothing. Someone beside him stepped forward and unrolled a scroll in his hands, displaying it to the clan elder.

The villagers were illiterate and could only see several bright red official seals on it.

The clan elder squinted and looked bit by bit, his face pale.

“Let’s go quickly, let’s go quickly,” he waved his hand and said.

“What does it say?” some villagers couldn’t help but ask.

“This is a plague notice jointly issued by the Governor and the Provincial Governor. There really is plague in our Yongqing Prefecture…” the clan elder said in a low voice.

Watching the villagers obediently go back to pack their things and leave the village, Qi Yue breathed a sigh of relief.

“The government still has authority,” she sighed.

All her good words and bad words for half a day were useless…

“Without your confirmation, the government would have no opportunity to show authority,” Chang Yuncheng said.

Qi Yue glanced at him and patted his arm.

“Thanks for the flattery, I’m very pleased,” she smiled.

Chang Yuncheng was somewhat amused by her words. Just as he was about to say something more, Qi Yue had already walked away.

“Let’s go, let’s go. The government has taken over here, let’s go back,” she called out.

The disciples responded and happily shouldered their medicine boxes and belongings, following her.

How to burn, how to bury deep, what to pay attention to—Qi Yue had already instructed all these garrison troops. After walking a few steps, she stopped and looked at Chang Yuncheng standing with his hands behind his back.

“Hey,” she called.

Chang Yuncheng turned to look at her.

“Don’t get too close,” Qi Yue instructed. “You have injuries recently.”

She had been saying this constantly since they met.

Chang Yuncheng smiled at her.

“Yes, I know,” he said.

Only then did Qi Yue turn around, and the group quickly departed.

The subsequent work was all taken over by the government: burning and burying human and animal corpses, prohibiting consumption of various meat and dairy products, citywide disinfection and screening, personnel and supply allocation. Hu San was satisfied to receive the money he wanted, and the isolation hospital at Qianjin Hall outside the city also concentrated physicians from Yongqing Prefecture and other places. Everything was abundant, except for medicine.

Although they had found the source of infection and carried out destruction, isolation, and epidemic prevention, those infected people buried earlier still broke out at a rate visible to everyone, such as those pig-raising families in Shihezi Village—one in every three.

Now no one felt sorry for those pigs anymore. Now they felt they were worse off than those pigs, because later Qi Yue told them that for these pigs that were slaughtered, burned, and buried, the government would give them some compensation. Although it couldn’t compare to the money from selling pork, at least they wouldn’t lose everything. But when they got sick, no one would give them money.

Cutaneous anthrax was manageable—the physicians here recognized it and had ways to deal with non-acute cases. But for those acute edema cases, intestinal anthrax, pulmonary anthrax, and other septicemic anthrax, everyone could only rely on Qi Yue’s penicillin.

“Don’t you have that medicine that can treat diarrhea?” Qi Yue asked anxiously.

Now they couldn’t even extract penicillin from urine…

“I’ve used it all up too,” the old physician was also stamping his feet anxiously. “Why can’t you make more of your medicine?”

“Don’t worry about my medicine. Tell me what you need and go prepare medicine quickly,” Qi Yue said.

“The things I need are hard to find! Do you think I can prepare it just because I want to?” the old physician blew his beard and glared. “Besides, how can I prepare medicine for so many people?”

Qi Yue rolled her eyes. Fine, she forgot—there was still the principle of confidentiality.

“Then come with me to my laboratory. There are fewer people there, and you can prepare however you want,” she said.

Qi Yue brought this physician to the laboratory area. Although the disciples here didn’t directly face patients, their work intensity was greater, and their psychological pressure was also greater.

Without medicine, people died. People died because there was no medicine. There was no medicine because they couldn’t extract it. Such thoughts weighing on their hearts wouldn’t make anyone feel relaxed.

“It’s not that everyone isn’t working hard—it’s environmental limitations,” Qi Yue repeatedly explained, but how much effect it could have was unknown.

“Master, look at this mold here—can it be used now?” a disciple ran over and called out.

Qi Yue immediately went over. The old physician hesitated for a moment. Looking around, seeing no one paying attention to him, much less stopping him, he stepped forward to follow.

What did it mean to extract medicine anyway?

The room was piled high with fruits, even clothes, and everything that could grow mold. The pungent smell could choke someone to death.

But someone wasn’t afraid. Just looking at the doorway, the old physician rushed in.

“So much here, so much, so much…” he shouted loudly.

Qi Yue and the disciple were startled.

“These are used to make medicine, not…” Qi Yue was about to explain to him when the old physician rushed up to her.

“You have so much medicine and still say there’s no medicine,” he shouted, holding two moldy oranges in his hands, touching the white fuzzy mold growing on them.

Qi Yue paused, as if thinking of something.

“Your medicine wouldn’t be…” she asked.

“My medicine is made from these things,” the old man nodded, revealing the secret formula he had once protected like his life so easily now.

Qi Yue slapped her forehead. She remembered—it seemed ancient people had discovered the bactericidal principle of penicillin very early. Initially, tailors would use moldy tofu and such to apply to wounds made during work.

The ancients were truly divine beings…

This could also be considered understanding and application of penicillin’s effects.

“Well then, since our medicine-making principles are the same, let’s work together… hey, hey, but don’t waste my penicillin…”