Xu Qinghuan stood still before the wide sand-table desk at the center of the main hall.
The table's surface was built from yellow clay and broken wood, shaping the crisscrossing streets and alleys of Zhenbei Pass, with a few blue lines threading through to mark the watercourses.
Poison water seeps into the earth.
She fixed her gaze on the location of North Horse Road, already circled in cinnabar.
The yellow-green sticky paste splashed across the city walls yesterday had been boiled with quicklime into gray-white crusts. But as the poison liquefied and flowed, it had long since seeped through the brick gaps into the shallow soil layers. The underground water veins of Zhenbei Pass were interconnected; the speed of the poison's spread was in no way slower than a galloping stallion.
The isolation measures around those dozen or so vacant houses west of the city could not possibly stop the erosion from beneath the ground.
She picked up a brush and dipped it into the ink.
Conventional medical principles were useless against this kind of poison, which was laced with the death-aura of generations past. The gentle, measured prescriptions of the Imperial Medical Academy—their methodical diagnosis, their warm-natured therapies for epidemic diseases—were as flimsy and worthless as a fallen leaf in the face of this calamity sent from the heavens.
Only the harshest military discipline could forge the flesh and blood of these forty thousand soldiers and civilians into a single iron chariot with no room for cowardice or retreat.
The brush tip hovered above the rice paper.
First death-command: cut off the water.
The old wells of Zhenbei Pass were not dug deep, drawing from surface seepage water.
"All shallow old wells within the city shall be sealed and filled with earth immediately. Anyone who privately breaks open a well curb, or draws water from an old well, whether official or civilian, shall be beheaded on the spot."
Having written this line, Xu Qinghuan did not pause. Her wrist shifted sideways, and on the second line she wrote down the strategy to break the deadlock.
"Dispatch the military engineer corps, muster them at the high ground east of the city. That rise in the terrain is underlaid by hard, thick rock layers."
"Order the engineers to bore through the rock, digging deep beyond ten zhang. Bypass the septic seepage from the surface, and draw out the pressurized, sunless living water hidden beneath the bedrock."
With the water sourced, next came purification.
With tens of thousands of mouths at Zhenbei Pass, deep wells alone were far from enough. In times of chaos and great disaster, raw water was the most likely hidden source of poison.
She sketched out on paper the specifications of the settling pools beside the deep wells.
"Beside the deep wells, build three reservoir pools overnight."
"The first pool shall receive daily doses of alum, left to settle and sink the sediment; the second pool shall be lined with coarse sand and crushed stone, filtering the water layer by layer; the third pool shall be packed with burned-through charcoal, to absorb the foul vapors."
Having written so far, she added a striking line in vermilion.
"All water consumed by soldiers and civilians within the city must be boiled thoroughly. Military law officers shall patrol the streets; whoever is found drinking raw water shall be punished for undermining military morale—no mercy, beheading without exception."
These two military orders cut off, with iron finality, the route through which plague entered by the mouth.
The brush, soaked in thick ink, moved as she stepped to another blank case file before her.
The frontline soldiers directly faced the poisoned corpses. A single layer of cloth armor could not stop the flesh-melting poison pulp. The Great Qian had no method for making oilskin. She had to push every available material to its limit.
"Decree that the city's armory and all major merchant houses shall surrender entirely their supplies of tung oil and raw lacquer. Take coarse hemp cloth, soak it thoroughly in the lacquer and oil, hang it at the windward opening to dry, and sew it overnight into impermeable hooded robes."
Cloth armor absorbed moisture; only a thick layer of oil could block the poison pulp.
"Requisition all pig hides in the hands of the city's butchers, and have veteran tailors rush to craft elbow-length protective hand-sleeves."
She thought for a moment, recalling how Lao Sun had covered his nose and mouth with medicated cloth, and wrote again.
"Cut multiple layers of thick cotton cloth, stuff the layers with crushed atractylodes and mugwort dregs, and steep them in strong vinegar. All defending soldiers, and all laborers carrying away the mutilated corpses, must cover their faces and mouths with this cloth. Anyone who dares to bare their head and face shall be punished severely for violating military orders."
After writing the protective measures, Xu Qinghuan walked to the folding screen bearing the city-defense map.
Within Zhenbei Pass, civilian dwellings and military camps were interwoven.
She sketched the outline of the city defense on paper and made her annotations along the boundaries.
"From this day onward, the city is divided into three zones."
"The original salt-merchant vacant-house quarter in the west is designated the death zone, to receive the gravely afflicted with swollen bellies and oozing sores; the three streets surrounding the outer perimeter of the death zone are designated the suspect zone, to house those who came into contact with the afflicted and their families; the two great camps in the east and west, along with the main avenue of the inner city, are designated the clean zone."
The boundaries must never remain merely on paper. They needed blades and axes to guard them.
"Strictly forbid any crossing between the three zones. All deliveries of firewood, rice, herbs, and medicine must be made across a thick spread of quicklime laid wide to one zhang at the intersections. Both sides shall toss the goods across the lime barrier, and must never approach each other. Anyone who dares to privately step across the lime boundary shall be shot on the spot."
Having written this far, she changed to a wolf-hair brush, dipped it into the freshly ground ink in the inkstone, and the murderous intent surged forth.
Wartime command and control allowed not a single moment's delay.
"Seal the storehouses."
These two characters were written extremely large, the force pressing through the paper.
"Immediately place seals upon all grain depots, pharmacies, and wood-fuel stores across the city. The private storehouses of wealthy households and magnates shall be broken open and taken over by the personal guard battalion. From this moment onward, all trade with copper cash and gold or silver is abolished within the city. The daily rations for forty thousand soldiers and civilians—equal for noble and lowborn alike—shall be distributed by head count, each day, from the office of the commander-in-chief."
The moment this order was issued, the wealthy families of Zhenbei Pass would inevitably resist as one. The local magnates had held sway over this border town for generations, cherishing their private property above all else. To hollow out their grain stores and herb reserves was nothing short of pulling meat from a tiger's mouth.
A cold glint flashed in Xu Qinghuan's eyes. She set the brush down beside it and added a ruthless statement.
"Whoever dares to exploit the situation to stir up trouble, or obstructs the sealing of storehouses, need not be brought before a tribunal. The personal guard battalion shall execute them on the spot, and the head of the household in question shall hang from the command-post gate of the commander-in-chief's residence. In chaotic times, use harsh punishments. If you don't slaughter a few head of cattle, you cannot suppress the restlessness of the entire city."
The common people are ignorant. When catastrophe strikes, they are quickest to give birth to rumors of evil spirits and heavenly punishment. Once rumors take flight, panic spreads, and the city's defenses collapse before a single sword is drawn.
Fear only breeds rout. Hatred alone forges the reversed blade.
She smoothed out a sheet of stiff yellow paper and drafted a proclamation to reassure the people. The pen of a civil official could kill more cleanly than a general's saber.
"Decree throughout the city: discuss of sorcery or heavenly punishment in the streets and alleys is strictly forbidden. The putrid, festering condition of the plague-dead, along with the sight of corpses being hurled from beyond the city walls, shall be written into public notices and posted in every quarter. At every posting, literate clerks shall stand and read them aloud to the crowd."
"The official verdict shall state: this is not heavenly punishment. It is an insidious poison spread by the Hulian barbarian dogs."
Only by using the most plainspoken words could the living within the city be made to understand that this calamity was poison intentionally sown by the blade-wielding barbarians outside the city walls. Only when the people knew the full truth would they transform their fear of death into venomous hatred of the enemy.
The art of governing the people required even deeper handling.
Xu Qinghuan wrote the four characters: "Mutual responsibility, joint guarantee."
Household registration was an old practice of Great Qian, but today it must be driven to its extreme.
"The entire city's population shall be organized into units of five households per bao, ten bao per jia."
"Within each jia, if one person falls ill and conceals it, the five households of that bao shall all be held guilty. Adult males are sent to hard labor, women and children lose three days of food rations. Anyone who reports a concealed case shall be rewarded with ten days of rations. The personal guard battalion shall verify door by door against the household registers—not one person missed."
Under such heavy pressure, the mutual suspicion and self-preservation between acquaintances became the tightest net of surveillance imaginable.
Not only that. The common people absolutely could not be left to sit behind closed doors and wait for death.
People bred despair most readily in idleness. Only extreme, grinding labor could crush any room left for wandering, fearful thoughts.
"All able-bodied young men of the city shall be conscripted into the auxiliary soldier camps. They shall be rotated in shifts to the high ground east of the city to dig deep wells, or to haul rollers and boulders to repair the breached defenses."
"All women, children, and elderly within the city shall be organized into the weaving-and-manufacturing camps. They shall work day and night without rest, boiling medicinal broths in the streets, sewing hemp-cloth hooded robes and strong-vinegar masks. Each day's rations shall be issued by piecework, according to the amount completed."
Not a single person shall be allowed to loaf about.
Xu Qinghuan continued to write, crafting the methods for driving out the plague.
Herbal remedies might act slowly in their curative effects, but when it came to steadying the hearts of the people, they had great, invaluable worth.
At the first quarter of the hour of the Mao (around 5–7 a.m.), armored guards bearing halberds would escort carts through the city, piling up atractylodes and mugwort at every street corner and crossing to burn them.
The rolling medicinal smoke could blanket the entire city at dawn. This visual and olfactory impact was meant to give the people on the brink of collapse a dose of what they called “official protection”—a psychological balm—letting them see with their own eyes that those in power were pulling out the plague poison and steadying that string just about to snap.
The brush moved, pausing over the entry regarding the disposal of the poisoned corpses thrown beyond the city walls.
Yesterday, at North Horse Path, Old Sun had proposed deep-burying the poisoned corpses, and Tie Lanshan had already agreed.
Xu Qinghuan raised her brush and heavily struck out both Old Sun’s name and the two characters for “deep burial.”
Deep burial was a grave error.
The poisoned blood would seep into the soil, and after the winter snows melted with the spring thaw, months later it would become another great calamity.
“Abolish the order for deep burial. Load every poisoned corpse and dismembered remnant from the city walls into wheelbarrows, and transport them to the downwind zone outside Zhenbei Pass.”
“Set up dry woodpiles three zhang high on site, and pour over them the fierce oil stored by the army.”
“Ignite the flames and burn all poisoned corpses to ash. Mix the remaining charred bones and debris with a large quantity of quicklime, dig deep pits, and bury them. Cover the ground surface with a further thick layer of lime, leaving not half an inch of room for death-tainted miasma to breed.”
Finally, there were the early-stage infected patients to account for.
The prescriptions that Old Sun and the others had drawn up could not cure the plague mother’s absolute poison, but they could keep the heart meridians alive and delay the onset of the venom.
Xu Qinghuan wrote the final lines at the end of the dossier.
“Commandeer the Great Buddha Temple east of the city and convert it into a Refuge Clinic. Gather and treat those with only initial symptoms—those not yet bloated or festering—in isolation. Patients must not come into contact with outsiders; all food and drink shall be delivered by soldiers stationed at the perimeter boundary.”
“Order all blacksmith shops in the city to surrender their large cauldrons, and set them up in rows along the streets. Keep the firewood burning without cease, day and night, boiling potent cooling remedies of honeysuckle, isatis root, and skullcap.”
“Dispatch personnel to scrub the streets daily with the boiling medicinal decoction, and every day at the appointed hour, fumigate the soldiers’ barracks.”
Twelve military orders in total, each one clear and rigorous, interlocking like links in a chain.
A thick stack of rice paper covered in tiny calligraphy sat piled on the desk, the ink still wet.
Xu Qinghuan set down the brush and neatened the pages—each one holding the fate of tens of thousands of lives.
“It’s just a pity that the vaccine is truly difficult to obtain! No—I’ll need to get Old Sun and the people at the Medical Works Bureau moving! At the very least, we must try the variolation method.”
