“Going back? Is the business regarding the Pavilion of Herbs settled?”
Lin Mengya pondered for a moment before she raised the question.
“Yes, I suppose Zuo Qiuyu and Zuo Qiuchen will be able to handle the remaining matters.”
Long Tianyu reached out his hand to push her back into the blanket. It seemed that Zuo Qiuyu was right. It was easier to bring her out of there when she was asleep.
“How about Hongyu and the rest? Moreover, I need to find a place to settle them down before I leave, right?”
Unable to stop worrying, Lin Mengya pressed on with her questioning and as a result, Long Tianyu did not know whether to cry or to laugh.
Holding her tightly in his embrace, Long Tianyu answered every one of her questions patiently.
“They wanted to follow you. As for those who wished to go home, I’ve sent them home. Don’t you worry anymore. Why don’t you just take a good rest on the horse carriage? We may well get into more trouble when we return to Dajin this time.”
Long Tianyu spoke with some hint of helplessness in the tone of his voice.
Although there seemed to be calm in Long Tianyu’s dark eyes, Lin Mengya could almost spot the anxiety deep within.
She decided not to probe any further. Given Long Tianyu’s character, she believed he ought to have made the necessary plans and preparations.
“Did something happen in Dajin? Is it about your father, the emperor or is it the court of officials?”
They had been away for such a long period of time. From the time rain turned into snow, to the arrival of the warm springtime when flowers started to blossom, many things ought to have happened in the court of officials.
The collusion between the queen, the crown prince, and Candle Dragon Cult was enough to cause a headache to Long Tianyu’s father, the emperor.
Now that his most trusted and capable son was not by his side all because of her, it was not surprising that the situation had turned desperate.
“It isn’t so much about any problem with my father. It’s because of the change in season that a pandemic has broken out in the five provinces of Dajin. My father has exhausted all his energy while reconfiguring the court. The people in all five provinces are living in dire poverty because of the widespread pandemic and we lost many lives.”
Long Tianyu’s brows knitted together into a deep frown.
His usually elegant and handsome features were clouded with a shadow of anxiety in this instant.
Taken aback, Lin Mengya knew that Long Tianyu was never interested in the cold, golden throne in the palace.
If not for her, Long Tianyu would be at the frontline combatting the pandemic.
She had to do something to help.
She reached out her small hand and laid it on Long Tianyu’s large hand.
As she felt the rough texture of his hand, Lin Mengya’s heart ached.
This man had given up so much for her in order to bear with her willfulness.
The country and its people were of such great importance.
“Let’s— go straight to the places that are affected by the pandemic, shall we?”
Lin Mengya cocked her head as she gently sought Long Tianyu’s opinion.
Her dark, watery eyes were filled with her earnest plea and her wish that he would agree. However, if he disagreed, she would abort the idea of going ahead on her own.
Her words seemed to bring relief and comfort to Long Tianyu’s heart.
He did realize that the lass seemed to be seeking his permission.
Although he was not sick of running after her every day and helping to handle all her affairs, it was a novel idea if occasionally he got to be the one making decisions while she meekly obeyed.
.
“That’s exactly what I’m thinking. But the people in the affected areas are living in poverty and the situations there are tumultuous. If we go, you will not run around lest the infected people cause harm to you.”
Long Tianyu reached out to push the strand of her hair behind her ear.
This trip to the Nation of Lintian was not completely unfruitful given that Lin Mengya had received recognition from the Nation of Lintian.
Moreover, she had even had the chance to get rid of the dissidents between the Zuo Brother by a lucky hit.
Before she left, Zuo Qiuchen had officially announced Princess Anle’s royal status to everyone in the Nation of Lintian.
In this way, there would be at least a century of peace between the two nations so that they would not wage war against one another.
Because of this, Dajin would be rid of one strong enemy in its surrounding.
It was every emperor’s ambition and dream to dominate the world, but now they got to enjoy at least a century to take a breather.
Wars were not something he desired. Moreover, the powerful people in Dajin have not united themselves.
Therefore, all the more he would need Zuo Qiuchen’s support.
“Yes, rest assured. I’m after all also a physician, right? Although there are many well-known physicians who are more skillful than me, I believe I have the right to speak in terms of combating the pandemic.”
Lin Mengya spoke with flashing eyes. She seemed too complacent with her words.
It should be noted that in terms of preventing and combating the pandemic, countries in modern society had long discovered a way of prevention.
Therefore, basically, it was not difficult to bring the large scale pandemic under control today.
The reason many people died from the pandemic in the olden days was mainly that they lacked preventive measures.
Those infected failed to receive effective treatments. Those prone to infection did not know how to protect themselves against the pandemic. Therefore, there would be a large breakout of the pandemic in densely populated areas.
If it were in modern society, the government of a country would be responsible for rolling out large-scale preventive measures.
However, back in the olden days, while the royal court would definitely not just watch their people die, but most of the renowned physicians who had been sent to the infected areas lacked experience.
This resulted in further spread as the situation went out of control. Therefore, the infection and death rate would skyrocket.
If she were to take over the responsibility, the death rate would decrease by at least thirty percent.
Of course, this was just a preliminary estimation on her part.
“Are you really that confident?”
Long Tianyu looked down. There was a look of surprise in his eyes.
All he knew was that his wife was rather an expert in medicinal drugs. Even Zuo Qiuyu admired her for this.
However, he was not aware that she also had some knowledge of how to combat pandemics.
The information gathered by his planted agent troubled him deeply for the entire day, but apart from the usual treatment, he did not have any better idea how to salvage the situation.
“Erm, the solution to pandemics is none other than treatment and prevention. In simple terms, all pandemics started with a source virus. Through various avenues, the virus eventually spread to people prone to it and causes widespread death. I suppose it’s all because the frontline physician didn’t do their best. If all the physicians in the Pavilion of Herbs come together to treat one patient, there will soon be a good outcome. However, each physician in the affected areas has to deal with many patients. Even if he wishes to study the virus, his ability will fall short of his wishes. Moreover, the virus causing the pandemic would normally be very contagious. If a physician were to combat the disease alone, he would be caught unprepared. How then would he be able to think of effective ways to treat the patients?”
Lin Mengya had hit the nail on the head in every word she said.
Long Tianyu looked intently at Lin Mengya. Today, she had taken him by surprise once again.
“I think what we need to do is keep the spread of the pandemic in control by truncating the channel of spread. Then we can protect the group of people who are prone to the disease, thereby and put their minds to rest. I suppose you will have more experience handling the rest.”
Lin Mengya raised her brows to show that she was confident of Long Tianyu’s capabilities.
If the pandemic had not been so stubborn, the situation in the five provinces would not become so difficult to deal with.
She knew very well where she could make herself useful. As long as she was able to control the spread of the pandemic, she knew that Long Tianyu would be more than capable to handle the rest.
Despite having some ideas of how to begin, historical diseases such as cholera, malaria, and smallpox had been eliminated in modern society because of the widespread use of vaccines. However, these aggressive diseases were still very frightening to the people of Dajin who deemed them as natural calamities.
After all, she was still considered all talk and no action at the moment. By the time she got to the scene in person, the situation might well turn out to be far beyond her imagination.
For Long Tianyu, however, she was willing to give it a try.
At Lin Mengya’s suggestion, the large arms of Long Tianyu tightened around her.
At this moment, Long Tianyu’s heart was filled with gratitude towards her.
She was both intelligent and virtuous. What a wonderful wife the Heavens had gifted him!
If not for her, he might well only be able to think of ways to cure the symptoms instead of the disease itself.
While he was able to heal the hearts of people, he was powerless in healing the people physically.
“Oh yes, do you have detailed information about the pandemic? I want to have a look at it. Perhaps I can find some clues from the music score for the green stringed instrument.”
There was a chapter devoted to pandemics in the music score for the green stringed instrument. Not only were some common pandemics mentioned in the chapter, some pandemics which were found only in medical journals were also recorded there.
What was more coincidental was that the music score for the green stringed instrument
Those that came after would need much less effort to study the virus and understand it.
Long Tianyu pondered for a while, then took out a stack of letters from the package at the deepest part of the horse carriage and handed it to Lin Mengya.
Lin Mengya looked at the massive amount of information from the research and began to go through it with the kind of serious attitude she had back when she was studying in the university.
She began studying and deliberating the information page by page, line by line, and word by word.
This pandemic first broke out in a small town in the State of Yun.
Thereafter, it spread to the five provinces of Yun State within a month.
The disease was the most contagious in history so far.
The early symptoms included fever and vomiting etc., for unknown reasons, therefore the infected might not pay much attention to it.
However, generally, the infected would begin to have cramps in his entire body within three to five days of catching the disease. He would throw up non-stop and become completely immobile.
What was even more frightening was that it only took less than seven days from the day a healthy person got infected to the day he died.
On top of that, there seemed to be no cure at the moment.
What Lin Mengya gathered from the description in the letter was that the infected person died an extremely wretched and miserable death.
Most of them would curl up into a ball and vomit out broken pieces of their internal organs before they breathed their last.
This made Lin Mengya wonder with suspicion.
This disease was nothing like smallpox or the others. What kind of disease would possess such destructive power?
