Xu Qinghuan stood at the wind gap, her gaze fixed on the scattered scraps of flesh on the ground.
“Marshal Tie, this venom is no act of heaven — it is man-made.”
“Eighty li south of the capital lies a place called Qingfeng Temple.”
Tie Lanshan’s brows knotted tightly.
“Qingfeng Temple? Isn’t that the sanctuary where nobles and officials go to seek immortality and alchemical pills? When I returned to the capital to report my duties in years past, I recall hearing that the Taoists there brewed quite exceptional elixirs.”
Xu Qinghuan kept her hand firmly pressed over her mouth and nose.
Xu Qinghuan: I absolutely cannot die here!
“Seeking immortality and medicine is nothing but a smokescreen.”
“Every abbot of Qingfeng Temple, generation after generation, has never cultivated longevity — they specialize solely in the art of family-extinguishing poisons.”
“Over the past century of the Great Qian dynasty, whenever a great plague swept through and corpses piled up, Taoists from Qingfeng Temple were always lurking nearby. Under the guise of performing funeral rites, they secretly collected the bones and blood residue of plague victims, carried them back to the temple, tested poisons on the living, and nurtured toxicity with death qi.”
“Across several generations, they eventually refined a poison capable of wiping out an entire city — named the Plague Mother.”
Xu Qinghuan laid this secret bare before everyone.
Deep in her memory, in the book titled Chronicles of the Great Qian, such a Plague Mother indeed existed.
In the original plot, Chen Changfeng had once deployed this venom.
But back then, Xu Zijin was blessed by fate, and an unprecedented torrential rain fell from the sky, washing away the poisonous water completely — it never stirred up trouble at Zhenbei Pass.
Yet now, the way of heaven was capricious, and the situation had long deviated from its original course because of her schemes.
Chen Changfeng, cornered and desperate, had unleashed this ultimate poison — which should have appeared later in the story — ahead of time on the North Horse Road.
Tie Lanshan’s beard trembled, fury churning in his chest.
“How on earth did such a heinous curse fall into the hands of the Helan men?!” Tie Lanshan thundered.
“Chen Changfeng came out of Qingfeng Temple,” Xu Qinghuan continued. “When he defected from Great Qian and fled to Yinshan, he must have taken this object from his sect.”
Tie Lanshan’s thick brows stood on end, his chest heaving violently.
“Qingfeng Temple sits right beneath the Emperor’s feet! Such a venomous tumor has gnawed at the capital region for a century — did the court never notice?!”
Xu Qinghuan did not reply. She simply cast her gaze southward.
The waters of the imperial court ran too deep. Some things — if left uninvestigated, all was peaceful; the moment you dug into them, the roots would drag up the mud.
Their exchange landed among the surrounding soldiers’ ears, setting off an uproar.
“A century-old poison source... family-extinguishing poison arts...” an old soldier holding a repeating crossbow stammered, his legs going weak and barely able to keep standing. “This is sorcery! Heaven’s punishment will come!”
“The Helan bastards have called in demonic priests! We can’t hold this — everyone in the city will die!”
“I can’t die here... I haven’t had a son yet...”
Fear exploded like a firecracker through the crowd.
A few young soldiers tossed down their weapons and turned to bolt toward the scaling ladders on the rampart.
“Run! If we don’t flee now, we’ll rot into a puddle of water!”
The formation collapsed into chaos, and even several old soldiers showed terror on their faces, their steps involuntarily moving backward.
“Clang!”
Xu Qinghuan whipped around and snatched the longsword from the waist of a nearby guard, the blade tip pointing directly at the backs of the fleeing soldiers.
“The entire city is under martial law!” Her voice rang out crisp and fierce, carrying a rare severity. “No one is to abandon their post! Anyone who loudly cries of heavenly punishment or attempts to flee the defense line will be executed on the spot!”
The armored guards of the personal regiment moved on her command — a dozen steel blades slid from their scabbards in unison, blocking the path to the rampart stairs.
The fleeing soldiers halted, forced back by gleaming blades, and dropped to their knees with a thud.
“Your Excellency the Imperial Inspector, spare us! It’s not that we fear death — it’s just that this sorcery is impossible to defend against!”
Xu Qinghuan stepped forward with her sword, the blade pressed flat against the young soldier’s neck.
“There is no sorcery in this world. Only poison.”
“And poison can always be defended against.”
“The blades and spears in your hands can kill. The yellow earth beneath your feet can bury the dead.”
“Meeting trouble and only praying to gods, cowering from demons — it’s cowards like you who have thrown away the territories of Great Qian!”
Tie Lanshan took a step forward and swung his great blade.
“Are you deaf to the Imperial Inspector’s words? This talk of demons is utter nonsense! This is nothing but poison brewed by that snake Chen Changfeng! Whoever dares to shake morale again, I’ll split them in half myself!”
With the commander and the inspector pressing from both sides, the turmoil on the horse path subsided.
The soldiers picked up their weapons again. Fear still lingered on their faces, but no one dared take a single step backward.
Xu Qinghuan sheathed her sword and turned to Tie Lanshan.
“Marshal Tie, does the city have quicklime reserved for repairing the walls?”
Tie Lanshan nodded. “In the warehouse at the northwest corner, we’ve stockpiled over ten thousand jin of quicklime — originally saved to reinforce the bricks come spring.”
“Bring it all up,” Xu Qinghuan ordered. “Quicklime reacts with water to generate intense heat. Its properties are extremely caustic — it counters this kind of yin-cursed venom.”
Tie Lanshan immediately assigned the task. “Yang Cang!”
“Your command!” Yang Cang sprinted forward from the rear.
“Take your men to the west district and haul every last bit of quicklime from the warehouse to the North Horse Road. Move fast!”
Yang Cang acknowledged the order, then turned to assemble a hundred or so sturdy men and dashed down from the city wall.
Before long, cart after cart piled high with snow-white quicklime was pushed up onto the horse road.
Xu Qinghuan stood at the wind gap, calmly laying out the epidemic-control measures.
“Select fifty volunteers willing to die,” Xu Qinghuan said, looking at Yang Cang. “Every one of them must smear thick layers of sheep or cow fat over their hands, and wear cowhide gloves on top.”
“Soak multiple layers of hemp cloth in strong vinegar, and use them to bind mouth and nose. Anyone without full protection must not approach within ten steps of the poisoned corpses.”
Yang Cang bellowed at the top of his lungs: “Guards of the personal regiment — if you’re not afraid to die, step forward now!”
Wang Shuan slammed the butt of his spear into the ground and took the first big stride forward.
“Count me in!”
Zhang San followed on his heels, grinning with half a missing front tooth: “I’ve eaten sand in the northwest for twenty years, haven’t yet tasted this kind of poison water — count me in!”
A scarred old veteran stepped out as well, and fifty death-defying soldiers were quickly assembled.
The group hauled large vats of sheep and cow fat from the field kitchen, slathering it thickly across their hands and forearms.
They pulled on coarse cowhide gloves, then wrapped their heads and faces tightly with thick hemp cloth soaked in strength vinegar, leaving only their eyes exposed.
Wang Shuan hefted a spade, scooped up a full load of quicklime, and walked up to a dying horse carcass that was oozing yellow fluid.
“Watch closely, everyone. Douse this poison water just like this!”
Wang Shuan threw his weight into both arms — the snow-white lime powder poured downward, landing squarely over the pool of yellow liquid and putrefied flesh.
Hiss—!
Quicklime touched water and immediately erupted in violent churning.
Great sheets of white steam boiled upward. The yellow-green venomous liquid that could melt bone and flesh was baked dry under extreme heat and the corrosive force of the lime, shriveling into ash-white crusts.
Zhang San’s spirits soared at the sight.
“It actually works! The poison water has been neutralized!”
The volunteers’ morale surged. They swung their spades with vigor, heaping basket after basket of quicklime over the corpses and poisonous sludge.
White smoke billowed across the North Horse Road, the hissing unceasing.
Several low-ranking soldiers pushing carts stood in the distance, watching the scene, muttering among themselves.
“What exactly is this white powder for? Can it really burn up the poison water?”
“What do you know, you damned fool!” the old soldier beside him said in a lowered voice.
“The imperial envoy has spoken—quicklime is for burning the dead! That scoundrel Helian wants to poison us all in Zhenbei, but we'll use this white powder to boil their poison water into mud!”
Lao Sun, who had been crouching in the distance, rose to his feet and strode over to Xu Qinghuan and Tie Lanshan.
“Imperial Envoy, Marshal Tie.”
Lao Sun clasped his hands in salute.
“Quicklime can indeed neutralize the poison water, but leaving corpses on the city wall will only breed more trouble.”
“This old man suggests we dig several pits thirty feet deep in the open ground below the wall. Spread a layer of quicklime at the bottom, use long poles to lower the treated plague corpses into the pits, cover them with another layer of quicklime, and finally seal the whole thing shut with packed loess.”
Xu Qinghuan gave a slight nod of approval.
“Do as Lao Sun says. Deep burial cuts off the source of the poison—that is the soundest approach.”
Tie Lanshan immediately issued orders, mobilizing laborers to dig deep pits by the foot of the inner city wall.
Xu Qinghuan’s gaze swept over the suicide-squad soldiers at work, and she spoke again.
“Order the entire army.”
Xu Qinghuan stressed firmly.
“Every soldier who has come into contact with the plague corpses or the quicklime must, after being relieved from duty, have all clothing soaked in vats filled with strong vinegar.”
“Hands and feet must be scrubbed repeatedly with distilled spirits. For the next three days, these men are not to touch the city’s water sources or food supplies, and they are to be quartered separately in their own barracks.”
One military order after another was relayed in an orderly manner.
Tie Lanshan looked at Xu Qinghuan’s back and let out a long, heavy breath.
What Tie Lanshan did not know was that Xu Qinghuan carried a heavy weight of worry in her heart.
