"So you're going to find a bacterium in the soil that can kill other bacteria?"

It was Mrs. Emilia Grissen, a small, brown-haired woman, her hair piled up like a bird's nest, revealing her bare neck, and a diamond of gold thread fell under her earlobe, like a drop of dew creeping down her skin.

She was the wife of William Jardine Grisson, whose maiden name was Dub, and a woman of French origin. William Jardine Greason knew by name that he belonged to the Jardine family, and his maternal grandmother was Jardine's niece.

Landale, Grissen, and Henry Casewick were the Three Musketeers of Jardine Matheson in Shanghai, and they were of similar blood and age. Landale was born in 1868, Grechen in 1869 and Keswick in 1870. However, their status in Jardine is the opposite of their age, with Keswick being the highest, Grisson second, and Landale the lowest.

Henry Keswick's great-grandmother was the sister of Jardine's founder, Jardine, and although Henry was of a lower rank than Grisen, the current senior of Jardine Matheson is Henry's uncle, James Jongstone Keswick.

In fact, Jardine Matheson fell into the hands of the Keswick family after the retirement of the two founders, Jardine's and Medison, Henry's father, William Keswick, served as the Jardine Taipan for twelve years from 1874, and then passed into the hands of his second brother James, where he has remained until now. Henry had come to the Far East to pick up his uncle's class.

Henry Keswick's wife, Ada, was now sitting diagonally across from Gao Yi, listening to his answer.

"Neither Vibrio cholerae, Bacillus anthracis nor Yersinia pestis can survive in the soil." Gao Yi replied that he was now sitting in a very comfortable circle chair, carefully supported by soft, elastic velvet cushions, backrests and two armrests. He was surrounded by a large circle of women, in addition to Grissen's and Keswick's wives, but also Landale's wife Mildred, de Gray's wife Elizabeth, Hollid's wife Elisa, and Brandis's wife Jane, and the scent of beautiful cherry blossoms and irises filled the air, making him dizzy. As for whether these women who watched him really wanted to discuss academic issues with him, or regarded him as a mascot, ornamental object, or pet, only they knew in their hearts.

"The plague of 1894—" continued Gao Yi, "is the catastrophe that took my mother's life, and made me determined to study bacteriology," he said, glancing at the women, who all had the same look in them as if they had seen a kitten without a mother.

"But what happens to the bodies after this catastrophe has passed? As far as I know, the body was buried in the dirt as usual. So the question is, where did the plague bacillus go? We know that Yelsin was isolated from a lymphocele in the neck of the deceased, and Kitasato Shibazaburo also found the bacterium in the heart of the deceased, indicating that the plague bacillus was present in the corpse. But why are the people living around the corpses unaffected? ”

"If you've ever been to Canton, you'll know that 100,000 people died in the city and its vicinity because of the plague, and the city couldn't even provide enough coffins. Most of the bodies of the deceased were buried shallow on the ground, and the liquid produced by the decomposition of the corpses could easily erode the surrounding soil, and even after rain, it would flow into the river and pollute the water source due to rainwater. And most of the places where the dead are buried are in the unfenced, unmanaged wilderness, surrounded by a large number of wild dogs that may have cut open the soil and eaten the corpses, and those exposed corpses will certainly attract rats - now we know that rats are the carriers of plague, and fleas are the route of transmission - but why are these people who drink polluted water, work on polluted soil, and live in the same space as these wild dogs, rats, and fleas not become infected? On the contrary, they lived as if the plague had never happened! ”

With that, Gao Yi stopped and swept his eyes over the women's faces one by one. These thirty to fifty-year-old ladies are really not taboo, and he used so many terrible words such as corpse, decay, and gnawing that no one felt uncomfortable, but everyone listened with great interest. It is no wonder that many scientific achievements of this era were born in salons.

"So you think it's the bacteria in the soil that have wiped out the plague bacteria?" Ida Keswick said.

"That's right. From my own experience, as you should know, I lived with my father in the cemetery for a period of time for financial reasons—"

And so once again, sympathetic looks appeared on the women's faces. Gao Yi estimated that if he was seven or eight years younger, there would be a few people with the most love who wanted to hold him in his arms and rub and soothe him.

This experience in the cemetery, as well as the passage mentioned in the previous story about the death of his mother from the epidemic, were specially said by Gao Yi for them.

He had just figured out in his conversation with them why Mrs. Rida had suddenly invited him to the dinner—he had thought it had been specially arranged by Rida when he had written back from Tianjin—but he had not expected that he had done it by collecting soil for experiments at school. The fact that such a trivial incident would fly out of the walls of the school and into the top social circle and arouse widespread curiosity in this circle shows how small and boring this circle of Westerners in Shanghai Tang is.

However, this also gave Gao Yi a chance to establish his image.

His flaws are nothing more than two, one is his mixed-race identity, and the other is poverty. So, he simply strung these two flaws into an inspirational story, and put them on the bright side, turning these two disadvantages into extra points of sympathy for him, while he himself appeared as an aspiring young man, challenging the almost impossible task for the sake of his deceased mother. As for the identity of the former grave keeper, as long as his rifamycin can be produced, it will only become an anecdote such as the apple that hit Newton.

"The cemetery we guarded was for ocean-going sailors, and most of their deaths were due to infectious diseases, but my father and I lived well in the cemetery, and we never had any minor illnesses. It was during that time that it occurred to me that some microbes in the soil were killing the bacteria in the corpse and thus protecting me and my father......"

Just as Gao Yi continued his inspirational story, the servant at the door suddenly shouted:

"Mr. Frederick Anderson has arrived."

Between the reception room and the living room, where the ladies were staying, there was only a blue gauze curtain embroidered with buttercup flowers, through which Gao Yi saw a bald giant man striding in from the door. It is not because of how tall he is, but because he is unusually burly, with broad shoulders and thick chest, a neck thicker than ordinary thighs, and hard muscles can be felt through the heavy dress.

If Landale is the star of the future and Bane is the king of amateur theater, then Anderson is the real star. He was a star who played for Glasgow's Clydesdale and Queen's Park, played in the first round of the Scottish FA Cup and played for the Scottish national team against England – in an era when the Commonwealth could be considered an international competition – and scored as a striker in a game that gave them a 2-1 thrashing of England.

The Far East lacked such a celebrity, and when he arrived in Shanghai at the age of 25 as a mere ordinary employee of the Hollied family, ten years later he became a director of the Ministry of Works, and served for six years from 1893 to 1899 – except in 1896, when he returned to England to marry the daughter of Admiral Thomas L. Huntward.

"Mr. Henry Keswick has arrived."

"Mr. William Grissen has arrived."

At the door, three people came in at once, and among them was a middle-aged man of about forty years old, except for his thicker hair and younger appearance, he was almost carved out of the same mold as Rida. This should be John Ridda. The main master has arrived!