Chapter 805: The Medical Immortal Who Conquers All Diseases: the Divine Doctor of the Life-and-Death Pill

“Last night was rough. Heavenly maiden, you’re done now, so go. The Jangyun Sect’s nastiness is—whatever—basically resolved, isn’t it? I called you in to try that. I didn’t call you because I was short on hands.”

Inside the sealed zone, the Lord Physician wasn’t that insanely busy.

When the strange plague started, the prefectural magistrate of Kunming sealed off one corner of the city—the North District—and shoved all the sick in the entire city, and their families, into one place.

That meant a lot of able-bodied workers had been dragged in along with the patients.

Those people cared for the ones with mild symptoms, and only the severe cases were handled by the Lord Physician.

From the start, the fact that the Lord Physician could walk around Kunming itself shaking down money was proof his workload wasn’t overloaded.

Still, yesterday and today were different.

About forty Jangyun Sect fighters all went down at once with severe symptoms, so the Lord Physician had to care for patients without even properly closing his eyes.

It was only because Qing and Tang Nanna were there—kicking him out by force and telling him to rest—that he managed to sleep at all. Otherwise, he really would have stayed up all night tending patients.

“Huh? You were taking pulses until late last night, too. It’s crazy busy right now—how can I leave? I should be helping.”

“That’s enough. I’m not so desperate that I need the hands of some half-penny women physicians. The severe cases are more or less under control anyway, and the rest are just groaners—I only need to glance in on them now and then.”

“Come on. Nanna’s here too. Me, sure, I only read a few medical books, but Nanna’s a real Therapist.”

“Hey. You talk too much. If I tell you to go, then go.”

“No, old man—why are you like this? Suddenly telling me to leave. Is something going on?”

The Lord Physician clicked his tongue like he didn’t like it.

“What’s going on. You—how can a woman with a kid be that careless? Didn’t you see those Jangyun Sect bastards collapse? In one day, infected men piled up like a mountain. You’re masters, so you’ll be fine, but shouldn’t you watch the kid carefully?”

He meant Jayeo could catch it, so get lost.

Qing smiled, all sweet and sticky, and pressed in.

“Come on. You said it doesn’t spread.”

“That was true up to the day before yesterday. If grown men’s symptoms flared up like that, it’s a different story.”

“Then they probably ate something wrong as a group. And Jayeo runs around with kids all day—if it were contagious, those kids would’ve dropped first.”

Kids were the kind who saw your face and got friendly in an instant, shrieking with those dolphin laughs.

Jayeo, too, was busy running and playing with every kid in the sealed zone, only sliding back in when the sun was down and it was getting dim.

When the kids in the sealed zone were running around perfectly fine, how could Jayeo be getting sick?

If you had to put it into martial ranks, Jayeo’s level, after pluses and minuses, landed in the second-rate range.

Her body had been remade directly by the greatest woman under heaven, and she’d swallowed spiritual medicine by the bowl.

On top of that, Jayeo trained the child method of the Muscle-Tendon Transformation and Marrow Cleansing Classic, the divine art among divine arts—so even if she couldn’t handle internal energy, her body was already in a state where energy circulated smoothly.

When energy circulated smoothly, vitality rose; when vitality rose, the body became strong and resisted illness—so it was extremely rare for martial people to fall sick.

“I’m not going to take care of them for life. Why get attached to patients for no reason? Enough. Leave.”

“Why are you so desperate to get rid of me? And if you’re not taking care of them for life, you’re not allowed to help at all?”

“Why aren’t you listening when an elder is talking? Anyway—too damn kind.”

Breaking news: the Lord Physician has stated that Qing is “too damn kind.”

It was the kind of statement that would make countless people try to object, then choke on their own words and clutch the back of their necks and collapse.

“Hehe.”

“That wasn’t praise. It’s an insult, an insult. A person has to know how to be bad, and how to use medicine, too. Foolish as hell—hears ‘kind’ and thinks it’s a good thing. It means you’re easy to use, you idiot.”

“Come on, old man. People don’t just respect the Lord Physician of the realm for nothing. You’ve spent your whole life caring for the poor.”

It was just their usual time—laughing, painting each other in gold.

But in that instant, the Lord Physician’s expression hardened.

A shadow fell across that deeply wrinkled face.

“...Go.”

“Old man?”

“Don’t say that disgusting stuff. I’m just—I’m just a filthy quack. Just long-lived, so I don’t even die.”

“Old man? Are you okay?”

“Go. Please. Even if there’s never been a case of the strange plague spreading until now, there was never any guarantee it wouldn’t. And this crazy old man—what kind of senile madness made me drag in a woman with a kid? I’m the crazy one. Leave. That’s the way you help this old man. I’m so worried about you I can’t even take pulses, so stop hovering and go where you were going.”

When the Lord Physician went this far, it was embarrassing to keep clinging on, insisting you’d help.

So what could she do? Pack up.

“Uh, um. Then I’ll write you another draft. But will the exchange in this town accept a Taechung Upper House draft? I’ll ask at the exchange and switch it to something you can cash immediately, then send it to you later by courier.”

“Yeah. Good thinking. And once you finish your business, don’t loiter—go back to the Central Plains. Best policy is to avoid places where pestilence is spreading.”

Not exactly something a man who always walked straight into plague zones should be saying.

Anyway, just as Qing awkwardly started to rise—

—Old man! Old man, it’s bad!

A voice calling for the Lord Physician in a rush.

And then the urgent main point came through the door.

—A whole mob of patients is coming in from outside right now!

*****

In front of the temporary checkpoint at the blockade, the unloading of patients was in full swing.

“Unloading” meant putting down cargo.

And it was an absolutely accurate expression.

They were taking patients piled high on carts and stacking them right onto bare ground, one after another—like they were laying out corpses.

Even the severe patients who couldn’t move at all were being handled like that, while off to the side, patients with milder symptoms dragged themselves in, shambling, faces like death, trudging step by step.

It wasn’t only patients who were being shoved into the sealed zone.

The soldiers standing far off with spears kept their distance in case the sickness spread, and the ones carrying and lowering the patients were the patients’ families—who would be quarantined together with them.

There were already more than forty severe patients sprawled on the ground, so if you added their families, how many newly quarantined people was this?

And that was only the severe count.

If you added the patients who could still walk on their own, and their entire families, it looked like it would easily pass two hundred.

The Lord Physician strode straight through the chaos and approached one man.

He wore an official cap, so he looked like an official—and since the Lord Physician went to him immediately, he was probably the person in charge of this quarantine work, or something close to it.

“Look here—what is this? Where did the patients increase like this from?”

“Oh, sir. A huge mob of patients poured out of Donjagu, can you believe it? It’s a total mess. The prefectural magistrate ordered us to grab them all and clean it up—no, to quarantine them. Honestly. Even with the lockdown, the strange plague still breaks out somewhere. Do you have any prescription?”

“No, you idiot. Even so, you can’t just haul them in like this. If you suddenly add hundreds of people, what about beds? Where will they stay? And how are you going to feed this many people right now? If you’re going to cram people in, you have to release grain along with them—so you can keep the ones who would die alive, and actually examine them and prescribe.”

“Sir, even if you say that to me, what can I do? I’m just doing what I was ordered to do.”

“No—how can you say something that rotten? What, so you’re saying you’ll cram them in and leave them all to starve to death?”

“Ahem. Honestly, it’s not something I should say to you, but... we didn’t ask you to care for patients in the first place, did we? Even if you say that to me, it’s not like I have any authority.”

“What—what!?”

The Lord Physician’s mouth fell open.

How was that something an official could say?

The government office didn’t request that the Lord Physician care for patients, and he was doing it on his own—so who was he to interfere in official business?

The fact that a man called a “responsible official” could say something like that—no wonder the Lord Physician was speechless.

But.

It wasn’t enough to make Qing speechless.

“Just because it comes out of your mouth, you think it all counts as ‘words’? And if you know it’s not something you should say to the old man, then don’t say it. If you know it, why are you forcing that garbage out anyway?”

“Ahem. I mean—what I said was just—”

“Then say something that actually sounds like words. If the old man is caring for pestilence patients, a prescription will come out eventually. And then even if the government can’t support him, is that something you say? ‘It wasn’t you we asked’?”

When Qing snapped, the man lowered his head.

For a moment it looked like maybe he was ashamed.

But then—

“Heavenly maiden, don’t do that. This man, for all that, is someone who emptied his own pockets to help. What power does a lower man have? He’s just doing it because he’s ordered.”

“...Yes.”

“No—who the hell is ordering things like this? If it weren’t for the old man, the patients here would’ve starved to death ages ago. So you gather them all in one place and let them die on their own, is that it?”

Then the official spat out an excuse.

“Uh, the prefectural magistrate says he’s trying to at least save the ones who can be saved.”

“No—so you’ll still let the patients who are alive die? The old man is right here—if you just release relief grain, that’s already—yeah, where’s the relief grain? Aren’t you supposed to stockpile relief grain by default? If you won’t release it at a time like this, when will you—so now that I see it, you’re just leaving them to die, aren’t you?”

“Th-The relief grain is released when there’s a natural disaster or a locust disaster, and... we don’t even know whether these patients will improve, so we can’t just use it casually...”

In other words: even if they released relief grain, there was no guarantee patients would recover, so they wouldn’t give it.

Which was also an admission that if they couldn’t endure, they’d die—crammed in together.

“No, what—more dog-shit.”

“Kunming has tens of thousands of registered households. Isn’t it difficult to release relief grain to patients with no end in sight...?”

The official still kept defending the prefectural magistrate.

To be fair, by Central Plains standards, the prefectural magistrate’s decision was almost merciful.

When epidemics hit a big city, burying patients alive wasn’t unusual.

At least gathering them in one place, quarantining them, and telling them to survive on their own if they could—wasn’t that already something?

In an era where access to medicine was difficult in the first place, patients were treated like half-dead people.

So there was no reason to spend relief grain trying to save walking corpses who would die if left alone.

The best way to stop the strange plague was for all patients to disappear—whether by death or full recovery.

If you just let them die, the plague’s spread would end.

But if you released relief grain and kept them alive, you could even argue you were keeping the plague’s source alive...

Hearing that, Qing could understand the prefectural magistrate’s decision.

This wasn’t a world like her hometown, where you kept people alive and researched until the cure was completed.

It wasn’t exactly “kind,” but it was a judgment: abandon a small number of patients to save tens of thousands in the city.

“By the way... who are you, miss, to be speaking like this...?”

“Mm. Could you come over there with me for a second?”

Qing pulled him aside, then took out a silk pouch and slipped it into his hand.

“Ahem. It’s a bit light... I’ll deliver it to the prefectural magistrate, but even so, he probably can’t release relief grain easily. If flood damage hits the next harvest, then after using relief grain to save patients, wouldn’t healthy people end up starving?”

“That’s not gold. Look inside.”

“Ah—so it wasn’t sincerity. What in the—hk.”

The official peeked inside, and a gleaming censor seal greeted him like it was saying, “Hi. I’m the Royal Censor.”

His face drained paper-white, and he snapped his posture straight.

“Shh. Go tell the prefectural magistrate. All people under heaven are His Majesty’s property—so even if they’re old or sick and ‘flawed,’ a lower man can’t dare decide to discard or collect them. So release relief grain immediately and take measures so these people can be fed.”

“I-I obey!”

Qing understood the prefectural magistrate’s decision.

If it had been someone else’s problem, she would’ve just gone, “Ugh, yeah, primitive ancient Central Plains,” and moved on.

But when the old man had worked this hard, how could she let it go?

In this cold era, she didn’t want to make the efforts of a single noble elder—this sacred—into something meaningless. And she couldn’t.

If bad people were punished, then good people should receive repayment, shouldn’t they?

After the official ran off like he was fleeing, Qing came back to the Lord Physician and curled her lips into a grin.

“Old man, I think you don’t have to worry about grain for now. They said they’ll send relief grain.”

“No—what? How?”

“Mm. I persuaded them well?”

“No—he doesn’t have authority. Don’t tell me—heavenly maiden, did you threaten to kill them if they didn’t give it?”

“Come on. I said persuasion.”

The Lord Physician’s expression brightened.

There were bed and lodging issues for quarantined people, sure, but the biggest problem was grain to feed them.

If that was solved, what did the method matter?