It was October, and on this day, it rained sparsely in the afternoon. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info The rain is getting heavier and heavier, and it goes on and on. When the people saw it, they all complained, saying, "I'm afraid that the dragon lord is old and confused." If it had rained in July or August, it would have helped alleviate the drought, but by then there was no rain and the crops in the fields were dead. Who would have thought that it would be winter at this time, and it would rain like this, and it would be so cold that it would make people convuls. Indeed, the rarity of such rain in this winter is also dispensable for the crops. It only makes people feel the clammy and cold of winter.

Hojo Street is the only commercial street in the town, from north to south, the street is lined with shops, and the bluestone pavement is full of traffic. Because it was raining, there were no people on the street. There was a faint sound of horses' hooves in the empty street, and then a gang of more than a dozen horses came from far and near.

The bell under the horse's neck echoes from time to time, which is a common caravan in the southwest. Most of the guys in the caravan are bitter men, and they will all be drenched by the heavy rain.

"Alright, brothers, it's not early, let's sleep here for the night!"

The leader of the caravan pointed to the inn not far away.

As soon as he entered the door, the shopkeeper over there greeted him warmly, and instructed the men to prepare forage, this town is not big, but it is also the traffic artery in northwest Guangdong, and for many years the horse gangs of Guizhou, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces will go back and forth from here.

"Where is this old brother from?"

At the time of serving tea, the shopkeeper asked.

"Yunnan, didn't I hear that the sulfur price in Guangdong is high, I came here to try it, and now the place in Yunnan is in chaos, hey, the days are not as good as the day......"

After eating and drinking, the group of vendors, who had long been exhausted, except for the people who watched the goods, went into the house, slept for the night, and continued their journey the next day.

The next day, before dawn, the caravan continued to drive on the road, and for the innkeeper, it was just a passing caravan, and it didn't seem to be a big deal.

Six days later, the shopkeeper and the man in the inn fell ill and died in the store. Seven days later, the master and apprentice in the inn also died. In a small shop, four people died in an unknown manner, and they died in the same condition, fever, coughing until vomiting blood, and soon died, and their whole bodies turned purple after death.

Several people died in this mountain town, which did not attract the attention of the outside world, and the bodies were hastily collected. But the people of Yuanbao Town never imagined that this was just the beginning - several people died in the following days, and some died of domestic violence.

At this time, even the most ignorant know that the plague is coming!

As a military doctor, Li Yuan, who is a hygienist to be precise, had just jumped off his horse when he saw a soldier in the camp struggling to come from the other end of the barracks, tilting his head and acting like a marionette. His hand was on the arm of another soldier. Li Yuan, a military doctor, knew this soldier, his name was Wang Lin, a native of Guangdong, but he could speak fluent Mandarin. They were waiting for Li Yuan to come over. The infected soldier's eyes glowed and his breathing was coarse. He didn't feel well and needed to change the air. But the pain in his neck, armpits, and groin forced him to walk back, so he asked his comrades to help him.

"There are a few lumps there,"

The soldier said to the medic.

"Maybe it's because I overworked during training a while ago."

Listening to his dictation, Li Yuan pressed his fingers on all sides to the bottom of his outstretched neck, where there was something like a wooden nodule. He had a high body temperature and was clearly feverish.

"Go lie down and rest, take your temperature, and I'll come back to see you in the afternoon."

Subsequently, Li Yuan, as in the past, treated this patient like a fever, and by noon his body temperature had dropped to 38C. The patient, who felt weak and weak, lay on the bed and smiled.

Wang Lin said to Li Yuan:

"Doctor, he's better, isn't he?"

"We'll see later."

But in the evening, the patient's body temperature suddenly rose to 40C. He was babbling and vomiting again. The lymph nodes in his neck hurt so much that he seemed desperate to stick his head out of his body. Wang Lin sat at the foot of the bed, put his hands on the quilt and gently held the patient's two feet, looking at Li Yuan.

The patient's face was pale, his lips were sallow, his eyelids were lead-blue, his breath was short, his body was torn apart by the swollen lymph nodes, and he curled up in the cot, as if he wanted the bed to wrap himself, as if some voice was calling him urgently. The janitor stopped breathing under some invisible pressure.

"Dr. Li, what now?"

Wang Lin shouted loudly to Li Yuan, Li Yuan hurriedly came to the patient's side, he carefully checked the patient, and only said after a while.

"He's dead......"

As he said this, he looked at the purple and black patient, looked at the swollen lymph nodes on the patient's body, and thought of a disease he had learned in the training class - plague! And its code name in the army is "Disease No. 1".

"How many people have touched him!"

Li Yuan asked nervously, and then said.

"All the people who have been in contact with him are all isolated, so that Squad Leader Song immediately sent someone to the team to report the matter, and I found that the "No. 1 disease" ......"

On October 13, the word "plague" appeared for the first time in official Chinese documents, and in the past, it was often only described by words such as "plague" and "great epidemic".

A sudden outbreak of bubonic plague broke out in several counties, spreading far faster than people expected. In less than a month, it spread from northwest Guangdong to central Guangdong and then to Hunan. The construction of roads and the development of commerce not only prosper the local economy, but also provide opportunities for the spread of disease.

Since receiving the telegram, Zhu Yifeng has been looking out of the window. Snowflakes are flying outside the window, this is the first snow of the year, if it is normal, maybe when it snows, he will accompany his wife and children to enjoy the snow and accompany his son to play in the snow.

But now, he is angry about the "popular uprising" that happened in Guangzhou, and the gendarmes are shooting at the people, how can they not make people angry, although those people are bewitched and instigated by others, how can they shoot?

Why shoot at those people, is there no other choice but to shoot?

"Butcher!"

After scolding this sentence hatefully, this shock and anger did not last long, and the subsequent telegrams from Guangzhou and Changsha made his whole person be tied up by another matter.

Even now, he could still feel the word "plague" echoing in the room.

The plague has broken out!

It broke out in Guangdong and Hunan!

Due to the constraints of transportation, confirmation of illness and communication, it was not until almost a month after the first outbreak of the epidemic that the two government offices confirmed the outbreak of plague. As many as 36 counties have been detected by the outbreak, in other words, a quarter of the districts have been outbreaked, and the epidemic continues to spread, spreading more and more people......

So what happens next?

Zhu Yifeng's mind conjured up old scenes of the plague that used to exist only in written historical materials: when the city was attacked by the plague, even the birds flew without a trace; The stricken cities are full of silent dying patients; The convicts piled bloody corpses in caves, in the hospitals of Tentenburg, on damp and rotting beds on hard mud floors; the sight of a patient being dragged out with a hook; When the Black Death was rampant, there were masked doctors everywhere, like living a carnival; piles of people in the Milan cemetery who have not yet died; Truckloads of dead bodies in the terrified city of London, and the cries that came from all over the place day and night.

No, all this is not enough to make Zhu Yifeng feel fear.

What he thought of was the plague epidemic at the end of the Ming Dynasty more than 200 years ago -- "Tianxing Plague", "Death in the morning and evening", and "The death of a family". Behind the meagre figures in the history books is the reality that millions of people died from the plague.

Is this the kind of history that resists change?

"History will resist change in its own way."

Again, Zhu Yifeng thought of the warning that he had been ignoring all along, could the current plague be a rebound of history?

Suddenly, a bell rang in the silent office, it was a bell, and it drove away the cruel and painful imagination in an instant, and also recovered Zhu Yifeng from his fantasy, but his brows were furrowed, history had already told him what would happen if the plague was allowed to spread!

Millions of people will die in this catastrophe, and even this catastrophe could destroy everything they have laid now! At the very least, it will have an impact on the next action.

Now it is not only the common people who are infected, but also the gendarmes and the army, and in the face of the plague, everyone is fair, and it will not let you go mercifully because you are rich or poor.

"From now on, all the work of Hunan, Guangdong, including Hubei, and the local government offices must be transferred to epidemic prevention!"

After pondering for a moment, Zhu Yifeng immediately made a decision.

"All local officials must realize that this is a war and we have to win it!"

Yes, this war must be won, or what awaits you will most likely be destruction, and everything will fall short. I have no choice, and there is no way back! This war must be won no matter what.

How to win this war?

In the face of the plague, the plague, medicine in 1856 was passive, and in fact there was no cure at all. Not to mention in this era, even after a century and a half, the outbreak of disease No. 1 can make the country feel like a great enemy, let alone this era, what to do?

Turning around and looking at Luo Bingzhang who was standing in front of him with a nervous expression, Zhu Yifeng thought of the group that was the best at epidemic prevention in the house now.

"Transfer all our military doctors, as well as the army, and let them be responsible for epidemic prevention!"

"Lord, how to deal with the matter in Guangzhou?"

Zhang Liangji asked, in his opinion, this kind of quelling civil unrest is nothing at all, let alone killing more than 100 people, even killing thousands of people, what can it do?

But after all, the lord is not the emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty!

"Guangzhou ......"

With a frown, a burst of annoyance suddenly appeared on Zhu Yifeng's face.

"My lord, in the opinion of the minister, although Li Ziyuan has some biases in this matter, he is also dedicated to the public. Today's epidemic in Guangdong Province, if there is no central dispatch, if there is no prestige in Guangdong Province, I am afraid that the people will not know how many casualties will increase! ”

Although it was a fellow villager in Guangdong who was killed, Luo Bingzhang still habitually looked at this issue with the attitude of a courtier, after all, in the Qing Dynasty, I don't know how many officials were dismissed in the township because of the problem of "position".

"My lord, now Guangdong needs such a governor who prohibits it, otherwise, it can't calm the epidemic in Guangdong!"

In the face of Luo Bingzhang and Zhang Liangji's words, Zhu Yifeng's mind sank suddenly, he looked at the two subordinates in front of him who exonerated Li Ziyuan, but what he thought of was the "bad example" formed by the Manchu rule for more than 200 years.

In the Ming Dynasty, it was common for the people to discuss freely, as well as to rob society gatherings and walk to protest, even in the darkest Wei Zhongxian period in just three years, it was impossible to control the public opinion of the people, and there were civil forces that dared to come out to challenge, and at other times, the public opinion protests of the people were enough to affect the policy direction of the imperial court and the departure and stay of officials. Whether it was the scholars and doctors of the Ming Dynasty or the common people, they all thought that this was a matter of course, but what about the Qing Dynasty? If there were similar gatherings and protests against mining taxes and eunuchs during the Wanli and Tianqi periods of the Ming Dynasty, I am afraid that this would be followed by intensified repression, with the main perpetrators killed and the people exiled for 3,000 miles......

Compared with the Ming Dynasty, although it had all its shortcomings and shortcomings, and there were many problems in the operation of the state machine, it was a vibrant society, and under the rule of the Manchu Dynasty, although the operation of the state machine seemed to be smoother, the whole society fell into a dead state.

In the end, it was precisely this kind of vigilance of the Manchu Qing against the "popular rebellion", or more precisely against the Chinese, that in order to consolidate their rule, they used the most cruel means to suppress the "popular rebellion" at all costs, so as to remove the last trace of "freedom" in the hearts of the Chinese people. In the end, they succeeded, and they succeeded in completely breaking the backbone of the Chinese, and since then the servile spirit, concealment and deception, the nothingness of drama, and the spiritual victory method have become the national character of the Chinese.

And this kind of bad influence cannot be avoided even in the Fuzhong, just like Zhang Liangji and Luo Bingzhang, they all don't feel that there is anything wrong with the bomb pressure of the people's uprising, and they don't think it's a big deal if more than 100 people die, because they are used to it, they are used to it, if this inertia continues, then even if they successfully overthrow the Manchu Dynasty, what kind of country will China be in the future?

"My lord, the minister thinks that at present, we must focus on epidemic prevention first, as for Li Ziyuan, I can send a powerful person to investigate this ......matter thoroughly while sending a secret telegram to reprimand him."

The lord's contemplation was silent, so Lin Zhiping reminded softly on the side.

"For the livelihood of the world! In Yichen's opinion, this matter needs to wait until the epidemic stabilizes before making a decision! ”

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(The 1855 bubonic plague in Yunnan is said to have been the birthplace of the third plague pandemic in human history, and millions of Yunnan people died of plague in the decades that followed.) Forty years later, an outbreak of rat infestation in Guangdong spread to Hong Kong and eventually to all inhabited continents, killing an estimated 12 million people in China and India until 1959. Now it is spreading to Guangdong in the novel, and the reason is very simple - the boom in commerce has led to the import of the epidemic, and the improvement of transportation has led to the widespread spread of the epidemic. (To be continued.) )