Suzhou, a prosperous land, a land of plenty.
In the past New Year, lanterns were hung high in the city, firecrackers kept going, the streets were crowded with people, carriages and horses were like dragons, temple fairs were held one after another, and the whole city was immersed in the joy of the New Year.
As the saying goes, there are many rides under the moon, and people are watched in front of the lamp. The joy is endless, and the singing and dancing last until the morning.
However, at this moment, Suzhou City seems particularly... deserted.
On the pavilion walls on both sides of the street, there are still half-hanging colorful flags and lanterns.
Passers-by are in a hurry and dare not stay in one place for too long.
In the usually busiest canal, ships from all over the world come and go, but few of them dock at the shore. Instead, they speed up and drive away from here - as if there is something invisible and dirty in the city.
Li Ang and Shen Tuyu landed outside the city, rode horses, and drove into Suzhou City.
"I only visited Suzhou a few years ago. At that time, I felt that it was not as wealthy and prosperous as Chang'an or Luoyang."
Shen Tuyu sighed and said: "I didn't expect that it would wither like this because of water poisoning."
"Infectious diseases are more powerful than tigers. Those who were able to leave Suzhou City and seek refuge with relatives have all left. The only ones left behind are those whose family property is here and cannot leave."
Li Ang glanced at the closed street merchants and frowned deeply.
It can make profit-seeking merchants give up profits and stop operations. The situation in Suzhou city is worse than he imagined.
The two of them rode towards the prefect's mansion.
The Suzhou prefect passed through the close-up insect in advance and knew that they were coming. He had already hosted a banquet to receive them, and he also lowered his profile and personally greeted them outside the mansion.
Unfortunately, Li Ang didn't have much time to make friends with courtiers. After dealing with it, he immediately asked to go to the hospital.
"You two, please come with me."
Suzhou Sima, whose official rank was from the fifth rank, did not dare to put on any official airs in front of Shen Tuyu, the palace minister, and Li Ang, the academy patrol, and honestly led the way.
Due to Suzhou's financial wealth and large population, Suzhou's hospitals are quite impressive and cover a huge area.
There are just too many patients coming in, exceeding the capacity of the hospital.
There are beds one after another in the room and yard, and the surrounding residential buildings have also been rented out for requisition.
The patients were lying on the bed with swollen abdomens, yellow faces, and thin limbs. Many of them were coughing violently and coughing up bloody sputum.
Staff members wearing uniforms and masks were either cooking herbs or running between beds, carrying basins and delivering water - they were not infected, but their physical condition was not much better.
The overload of work makes their eyes bloodshot.
"Give way! Give way!"
A middle-aged nurse hurried across the courtyard carrying a spittoon. He accidentally tripped on a stone and leaned forward involuntarily.
Seeing that the spittoon was about to fall to the ground, a force of thought was released from the air, stabilizing the nurse and the spittoon in his hand.
Suzhou Sima and the person in charge of the hospital on the side were so frightened that if the spittoon was spilled, the smell would reach the two Chang'an nobles...
Suzhou Sima was about to step forward to scold him, but Li Ang raised his hand to stop him.
“The hospital is understaffed and it’s normal to be overwhelmed.”
Li Ang turned around and asked the frightened nurse: "How do you deal with the feces in the spittoon?"
"Ah..."
The nurse was stunned for a moment, "Just pour it into the cesspool..."
"Isn't there anyone to collect it?"
Li Ang asks again.
Due to the development of manure technology, there are people in the Yu people who specialize in collecting urban manure, piling it into manure and selling it to farmers, making huge profits. In some places, there are even so-called night fragrance guilds.
"It was there before, but it's gone now."
The nurse answered honestly: "The patients here have severe diarrhea and there is blood-streaked mucus in their feces, and no one comes to collect it.
We don’t have enough manpower, so we can only dump them in big excrement buckets and then send them out of the city every few days."
"That's good, keep it up."
Li Ang nodded, no matter how incomprehensible the words were to others, he strode through the hospital room and came to the archives room to check the medical records.
Under his suggestion, hospitals all over the country have the habit of recording patient information. After checking, they can know the patient's time of illness, initial test status, disease progression, attending physician, medication and other information.
Li Ang quickly browsed through all the information, his brows furrowed deeper and deeper, and he suddenly raised his head and said to Suzhou Sima: "Please Sima find me some Suzhou maps.
River maps, water network maps, farming maps. The more and more detailed the better.
I also need a guide who is familiar with the villages around Suzhou. I will leave the city later."
Without rigorous investigation, you have no right to speak.
However, the investigation results are particularly terrifying.
Schistosomiasis is endemic in 70 of more than 100 towns and villages in the seven counties around Suzhou.
The infection rate in the most serious towns was over 80%, more than half of the people were infected with schistosomiasis, nearly a thousand people died one after another, and new tombs were erected all over the mountains and plains.
Even more desperate are the villages.
Children in a whole village are all suffering from ascites, their bellies are as big as winter melons, their faces are yellow and their muscles are thin
Their parents are also infected with schistosomiasis and they don’t know if they can farm this year.
For villagers, land is their only source of livelihood.
If you are unable to cultivate food due to physical weakness, it means that you have no money to buy medicine, no medicine to treat diseases, and you are unable to engage in production, falling into a vicious cycle.
Being poor leads to illness, and illness leads to poverty.
Villages one by one will literally become "villages with no households". In the next few years, they will be completely wiped off the map.
If we say that the cruelty on the battlefield is like blood-stained yellow sand and horse-leather-wrapped corpses, it is full of generosity and heroism.
Then the cruelty of water poisoning epidemic areas is silent misery and desolation.
The walls of the village are covered with vines and weeds, and in the uninhabited thatched houses, the sound of wind is shrill and shrill, like the cry of ghosts.
Even the skinny wild dogs on the roadside have heavy bellies - their bellies are so swollen that they have been dragged on the ground for a long time, and the hair on their abdomens has been rubbed bald.
Shen Tuyu took Li Ang and the guide with his flying sword and quickly surveyed the surrounding villages and towns.
The bloody investigation results made him feel suffocated, who had always been lazy and casual.
On the way back to Suzhou City, I couldn't help but murmured: "Why is this happening?"
He is a swordsman in the Zhuxiao Realm. Even if he faces the most dangerous first-level beast, he can confidently kill it with the three-foot green blade in his hand.
But facing an enemy invisible to the naked eye, where should he swing his sword? And where can he swing it?
"Water poisoning has existed since ancient times."
Li Ang said gloomily: "Based on the medical records of the hospital and the information provided by the villagers, there have been people in their village suffering from ascites before. But it has not been taken seriously in the past.
Until recently, it suddenly broke out."
What causes the spread of schistosomiasis?
Temperature? Rainfall? Species invasion? Or... mutation?
Li Ang was puzzled. All he could do was race against time to suppress the schistosomiasis epidemic.
Just...
Is it really possible?
This chapter has been completed!