For Guo Huai, his previous false surrender had only one purpose, which was to escape from the Shu camp and return to Wei.
Therefore, from the first moment he entered the Shu camp, he had been thinking about how to escape.
As luck would have it, he was assigned to the logistics department outside Wuwei City to deal with the bloody injuries caused by the siege of the city, and found the rotting corpses of Wei soldiers soaked in the moat.
It was around that time that I contracted the plague.
But Guo Huai was preoccupied with escaping and did not know that he was physically ill. Taking advantage of the opportunity to deal with the corpse, he quietly changed into the corpse's clothes and disguised himself, intending to take advantage of the chaos and escape.
But no success.
He was blocked by Ma Su.
Immediately afterwards he was put into prison.
Guo Huai has been guarding the place for many years and has seen many plagues, so he has a good understanding of the plague. Although he does not know how to avoid being infected, he knows the general symptoms of the plague and how to survive the plague.
To put it simply, if someone survives the same epidemic, give a little of that person's saliva or blood to the person infected with the plague.
Although this method cannot 100% cure patients suffering from the plague, it can effectively prevent the symptoms of the plague from getting worse.
Because during the several plagues that Guo Huai experienced, there were cases where the saliva and blood of recovered patients were given to seriously ill patients to achieve cure.
And there’s more than one case!
Of course, some people will have abnormal reactions and even accelerate death after receiving blood. But Guo Huai is sure that this method is effective.
So after learning that he was infected with the plague, a more perfect escape plan quietly took shape in his mind.
The word "plague" itself has a shocking and terrifying power in this era.
Make good use of these two words, and all problems will be solved.
In the next few days, Guo Huai deliberately spread his excrement everywhere, got close to the guards and inmates whenever he had the opportunity, and successfully infected everyone in the prison.
Originally, he was a little worried that he would be killed by the plague if his plan was not successful, or that he would die prematurely without waiting for a survivor to survive the plague.
But luckily, since the doctor gave him half a small black pill, he miraculously survived. Although the symptoms of the plague on his body became more and more serious, he was safe and sound!
At that time, he was still wondering, was there still half a pill left?
But he was relieved when he saw that he and the medical worker were the only two people left alive in the prison.
The destination of the other half of the black pill is self-evident.
Of course, none of this matters.
What matters is the jailbreak plan.
Since there were only two people left in the cell, Guo Huai would lie quietly every day except when eating. At other times, he would cover his body with straw and pretend to be dying, waiting to be moved out of the cell.
Burn it in the wild.
Because this (burning) is the most direct and effective way to prevent the spread of plague.
He knew that people outside could not wait too long.
Sure enough, he was carried out of the cell not long after.
To be honest, Guo Huai knew very well that this plan was not perfect and was extremely risky. Although the last process was burning, there could actually be another process interspersed in the middle, for example: kill first and then burn.
The Shu soldiers could have killed him first and then burned the body.
Guo Huai was betting that Shu soldiers were as afraid of the plague as tigers. They were afraid that the patient's blood would be infected, so they did not dare to kill him first and then burn him.
Obviously, the final result proved that he won the bet.
Guo Huai, who was hiding behind the big rock, secretly admired his wisdom, which had almost reached the upper limit of human beings in this era, and was able to take advantage of the situation and come up with such a "perfect" plan.
Amidst the "cracking" sound of burning, the raging fire quickly came to an end.
The two Shu soldiers glanced at each other from a distance, then went back together to resume their lives.
Guo Huai, who was hiding behind the boulder, breathed a long sigh of relief and waited for a while longer before carefully getting up and following the path in the wilderness, one step deeper and one step shallower, and walked in the opposite direction of the setting sun.
.
Because he was wearing very little, the first thing Guo Huai felt was the biting cold wind before dusk, which made him shiver; then came waves of hunger, which made him dizzy; and finally, it was the plague.
The intense discomfort made him shiver.
After walking less than ten miles, Guo Huai, who was tired and hungry, finally found an abandoned house before exhausting his energy.
The houses are very old and dilapidated, and cannot protect them from the wind and cold.
Guo Huai searched around inside and found nothing.
Fortunately, there is a cellar inside the courtyard and a haystack outside the courtyard.
Guo Huai stepped on his teeth and went down to the cellar, where he found some grains and fruits unique to the northwest region.
In order not to attract the attention of the Shu army, Guo Huai did not light a fire to cook, but ate some fruits to satisfy his hunger.
After that, I spent a night in the cellar.
When he woke up the next day, it was already noon. Guo Huai climbed out of the cellar and searched around the house again. This time he was lucky and found a brand new kettle, a brand new dagger and a set of daggers under the bed.
A brand new bow and arrow, and a brand new sword.
Even after walking out of the house, he found a little donkey grazing on the hillside not far away.
Guo Huai looked at the equipment on his body and the donkey not far away, feeling filled with doubts.
But after observing the surroundings, I found nothing. The purple mountain not far away was high and snow-capped; it was extremely empty all around, and there was no living person nearby.
Guo Huai shook his head, walked through the weeds to the hillside, took the donkey in his hand, and walked eastward following the sentence.
A few hundred steps away, there was the Shiyang River that turned downwards. Guo Huai lay on the water's edge and drank a few large sips of water, then washed his face, straightened up his appearance, and sat on a big stone.
Think about it.
It was already noon of the next day, and it had been a full day since the Shu soldiers burned him. The direction of Wuwei City was as quiet as yesterday, with no movement at all, and nothing unusual around him.
Guo Huai concluded that the two soldiers did not notice that he had escaped from the fire, so there would be no large group of people searching for him.
In other words, in the eyes of Ma Su and tens of thousands of Shu troops, he was already a ball of ashes.
This result made Guo Huai very excited for a while,
But he soon calmed down again.
Realizing that his current situation is still not optimistic: this place is too close to Wuwei City. If a Shu army soldier accidentally passes by this place and finds him, even if he does not recognize who he is, he will be killed on the spot as a commoner suffering from the plague.
, or report it up.
Therefore, we must leave this place as soon as possible and return to Longyou and Wei State. This is the best strategy.
But there is still a very critical issue to consider.
According to the laws of Wei State, if someone in a family is infected with the plague, officials are not allowed to go to court within fifty days, and people are not allowed to move around at will.
If the official (or citizen) is safe and sound after fifty days, all restrictions can be lifted.
Therefore, the first prerequisite for returning to the Wei State is that the person has survived the plague for fifty days. Because he has survived for fifty days, it is certain that the person has survived the plague.
People who contract the plague usually die quickly within a few days.
And surviving fifty years without dying means that this person not only survived, but also developed resistance to the plague.
Guo Huai calculated on his fingers that only thirty days had passed since he contracted the plague.
So he stood up slowly, holding the donkey in one hand and the sword in the other, and walked downstream along the river. He found a place where the river was wide open and the water flow was slow and shallow. He waded across the river, got on the donkey and headed east.
In this way, when the red sun set in the west, he finally came to the official road.
This official road is the only road from Wuwei County to Tianshui County. It is about two feet wide. Due to the war and the sparse population in Liangzhou, the sandy and gravel road is overgrown with grass. Few people walk on it. There are half of the grass on both sides of the road.
The person is so tall that he almost blocks the narrow road.
And because Sima Yi led tens of thousands of troops through this road not long ago, the weeds on the road were trampled flat and stuck to the ground.
Guo Huai rode a donkey and walked east along this road for more than ten miles. He climbed up a hillside, turned a big bend, and found a building similar to a mountain temple sitting on a ridge not far away.
"Would you like to stay here for one night before leaving?"
Guo Huai hesitated, then carefully observed for a while, and found that there seemed to be no trace of human habitation nearby, so he led the donkey and walked over.
Hanging on the temple door is a wooden plaque that has been weathered to the point of disfigurement. You can vaguely see eight words engraved on it:
