Su Mu was still slumped at the foot of the wall, his legs like their bones had been extracted.
Lao Sun leaned against the courtyard wall, vomiting up all his overnight meal.
Jenny Huang stood aside holding a bowl of water, wanting to hand it to Lao Sun to rinse his mouth. Just as she extended her hand, Lao Sun dodged backward as if stung by a scorpion.
"Take it away! Quickly take it away!"
Lao Sun's voice cracked, and sour water still welled up in his throat.
Now, looking at that coarse porcelain bowl was like staring at a bowl of poison.
Jenny Huang curled her lip and placed the bowl on the ground.
"Lao Sun, when you couldn't see, you drank this water for half your life, and I never saw you missing an arm or a leg."
"Hey! That was this old man's great fortune!"
Su Mu finally caught half a breath, climbing up from the foot of the wall, his two legs still trembling.
But he didn't care at all, stumbling over to the microscope, sitting down with a plop, and remaining motionless.
"Valley Master Su, please step aside. This thing isn't just yours."
Li Sheng reached out to pull him, but Su Mu slapped Li Sheng's hand away, his eyes already glued to the lens tube, and his mouth began muttering.
"One... two... three..."
"This one is transparent, dragging long whiskers... This one is slender and runs quite fast..."
"Eh! Why does this one have a forked tail?"
Su Mu's fingers felt around blindly on the table, found a charcoal pencil, and without looking at the paper, wrote directly on the table surface.
"Long-whiskered species, transparent species, forked-tail... There are at least seven or eight species in this drop of water!"
Xu Zhan stood nearby, looking at Su Mu's possessed appearance, turned his head, and whispered to Xu Qinghuan.
"He's going to name every living thing here. Tonight, the blacksmith shop will have to be changed into an ancestral hall."
Xu Qinghuan ignored Xu Zhan and turned to instruct Li Sheng.
"Go bring that small red clay stove from the courtyard, set up an iron pot, and draw half a bucket of well water."
Li Sheng agreed and ran out, deliberately detouring around the puddle of vomit Lao Sun had left when passing through the courtyard, and brought the small stove from the corner inside.
The iron pot wasn't large, capable of holding half a bucket of water. Set on the stove, the charcoal fire licked the bottom of the pot, quickly producing steam.
Su Mu was reluctant to leave the microscope, but his peripheral vision kept darting over.
"Lord Xu, what are you..."
"Wait and see."
The water in the iron pot began to bubble with fine bubbles.
Lao Sun leaned against the wall and shuffled into the room, his face sallow, standing in the corner furthest from the water basin.
Looking at his appearance, he never wanted to touch unboiled water again in this lifetime.
The bubbles turned into splashes, and then from splashes into rolling white waves.
The entire blacksmith shop could only hear the gurgling sound of boiling water.
Xu Qinghuan didn't let Li Sheng do it; he personally picked up a clean porcelain bowl, scooped half a bowl of boiling water, and set it on the table to cool.
After the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the water had cooled completely.
Xu Qinghuan picked up the bowl, dropped a drop of cooled boiled water onto a thin glass slide, and covered it with a cover slip.
"Lao Sun."
Xu Qinghuan called out.
Lao Sun shivered and waved his hands repeatedly.
"This old man won't look! I can't look anymore! If I look again, I'll even throw up my heart, liver, and lungs!"
"Bring him over."
Xu Qinghuan's words were directed at Li Sheng and Su Mu.
Without a word, Li Sheng stepped forward and grabbed Lao Sun's left arm.
Su Mu, rarely willing to move from the microscope, helped grab Lao Sun's right arm. The two dragged Lao Sun back to the table like escorting a prisoner.
"You are trying to force this old man to death!"
Lao Sun leaned backward desperately, the veins on his neck bulging, his eyelids tightly shut.
Su Mu pressed the back of his head, forcing him onto the lens tube.
"Lao Sun, you'll lose out big time if you don't look."
Su Mu's tone carried a strange excitement.
Lao Sun's right eye was pressed against the eyepiece, and he held his breath, not wanting to see those demons again.
Unexpectedly, he first saw the clear transparency of the glass base, and then saw the liquid spread evenly under the lens, like a thin layer of jelly.
Then Lao Sun froze.
The water was completely clean!
Those transparent insects that were swimming and rolling earlier had all disappeared.
Only some extremely fine and fragmented residue settled at the bottom of the glass slide, motionless.
Those previously flailing long whiskers and constantly inhaling and exhaling bodies were completely gone.
The field of vision was so clean it made one panic.
Lao Sun's lips trembled for a long time before he squeezed out a sentence.
"Where are the bugs? Where are those bugs?"
Su Mu pushed Lao Sun aside, leaned in to look himself, and observed for five or six breaths.
"So... this boiling water can kill them."
Xu Qinghuan picked up his cup of tea, which had already cooled, and took a sip.
"Not kill, scald to death."
"High temperatures can kill the poison in the body and also the poison in the water."
"The soldiers in the camp take medicine when they get sick and change dressings when their wounds fester, but the water they drink is unclean."
"The cloth used to wash wounds is soaked in unboiled water. Before the medicine takes effect, the poison enters the bone first."
Xu Qinghuan put down his teacup and looked at Lao Sun, who stood there dumbfounded.
"Illness enters through the mouth. You all know how to recite these four words."
"No one told you that behind these four words hide countless pairs of eyes."
Su Mu started writing things on the table again.
"High temperature kills bugs... boil water... the army must change..."
Lao Sun didn't respond.
He stood next to the microscope, his eyes staring blankly.
Back then at the border pass, he had personally washed an arrow wound for an old general, using well water.
After washing, he applied the best white medicine and bandaged it tightly.
Three days later, the wound grew maggots, and five days later, the man was gone.
Before dying, the old general grabbed Lao Sun's hand and said, Lao Sun, oh Lao Sun, did you follow the wrong master?
Lao Sun remembered this for ten years.
He thought the white medicine had failed, thought his diagnosis was inaccurate.
He thought the old general's lifespan was up, thought it was the evil aura of heaven and earth.
Now he knew.
It was the invisible live maggots in the well water that had entered the wound.
It was all wrong.
The medical books of Daqian wrote about evil aura, wrote about foul poison, wrote about unacclimatization, but not a single one was right.
Lao Sun suddenly slapped his thigh.
"So that's how it is!"
He slapped again, this time hitting the corner of the table, making himself grimace in pain, but he didn't care.
"So that's how it is!!!"
Lao Sun's eyes lit up again, but unlike the terror of staring at the microscope earlier, he was truly laughing.
"It's not evil aura; it's the water carrying dirty things! It's not fate; it's drinking unboiled water, using unboiled water!"
"This old man has written prescriptions for decades, and today my eyes have finally been opened!"
His voice trembled, but his core energy grew stronger.
"Festering wounds, abdominal distension and diarrhea, high fever and convulsions—out of ten incurable acute diseases in the army medical camp, seven can find their cause in this!"
Su Mu looked up from the microscope and pushed the lens tube.
"Lao Sun, do you still say this isn't a demon?"
"Bullshit demon!"
Lao Sun grabbed Su Mu's collar, scaring Su Mu so much he leaned backward.
"Valley Master Su, lend me Lord Xu's thing for a few days."
Su Mu immediately protected the lens tube.
"Three days! This old man only needs three days! To test all the water sources in the army!"
"If you want to test the water, can't you bring the water to the blacksmith shop?"
"Done! You said it. Tomorrow morning I'll have my apprentices take jars and collect water from every river!"
Lao Sun let go of Su Mu, turned, and rushed out.
The threshold tripped his foot, and he fell forward, but he managed to stagger a few steps and steady himself. The shoe on his left foot was hooked off by the threshold.
He didn't care, running out of the blacksmith shop barefoot on one foot.
The gravel street hurt the sole of his foot, but Lao Sun was completely oblivious, only running in the direction of the army medical camp.
Jenny Huang bent down, picked up the cloth shoe, and examined it.
"When he comes back looking for his shoe tomorrow, I'm going to make him reimburse the medical camp's charcoal expenses."
Li Sheng leaned in and chimed in.
"Manager Huang, weren't you completely grossed out just a moment ago? Are you feeling better now?"
Jenny Huang's face darkened, and she backhanded the cloth shoe right into Li Sheng's face.
