When the girl regained consciousness, Clan Head Tang first checked her condition.
Then he immediately asked the village chief to gather the sick people again.
“Being such tiny creatures, the effect is better than expected. Could you gather the sick people again?”
“Ah, certainly!”
As the village chief was about to run out at Clan Head Tang’s request, I shouted to stop him:
“Wait!”
Chagas disease has an incubation period, and even if infected, only 20-30% develop serious symptoms.
So if we were giving medicine, everyone in the village needed to take it.
There would clearly be many more carriers than those showing symptoms.
“What is it, young hero?”
“Elder, if we can give medicine to everyone in the village, we should give it to everyone. Since it doesn’t manifest right after being bitten, we can’t tell who’s sick or when they’ll get sick.”
At my words, Clan Head Tang checked the recovered girl’s condition again and nodded.
“Hmm… Then we’ll have to dissolve it in water to share. I think I gave the girl too much.”
It seemed he’d concluded from examining the girl just now that dissolving the parasites didn’t require as strong ingredients as dissolving gu.
So at the village chief’s direction, people gathered in front of his house in the middle of the night.
The Sichuan Tang’s clan head Tang Cheolsan dissolved the Shamanic Gu Dissolving Pill in water and distributed one spoonful to each villager.
To treat both patients and carriers simultaneously.
“Ohh! They’re regaining consciousness!”
“Their fever’s going down and their minds are clearing!”
“W-we’re saved! You’re truly our village’s savior!”
“Waaah…”
As Clan Head Tang said, even though they only drank the medicine dissolved in water, quite a few people regained consciousness or recovered their condition.
He might have been excessive with his Tang clan pride, but this seemed worthy of pride.
When people gathered to praise his medical skills, he shook his head and said:
“I merely distributed medicine. It’s all thanks to this young hero – it would have been difficult without him identifying the cause. So your true savior isn’t me but this young hero.”
“Thank you, young hero!”
“Young hero, thank you!”
“Young hero is our village’s savior!”
While black companies often have bosses stealing interns’ achievements, Clan Head Tang gave me credit despite treating them with medicine he made.
I revised my evaluation of the Sichuan Tang clan upward.
Yielding credit to subordinates means having excellent character.
It means he’d be fine to serve under as a boss.
+100 points. Clan Head Tang seems like a good person. Though he did slap my cheek.
So the dying village regained its vitality.
Of course, while many people regained consciousness, that didn’t mean everyone completely recovered.
Since Chagas disease causes organ deformation, enlargement, and central nervous system abnormalities through parasite invasion, those who had collapsed would likely have permanent heart or organ problems with quite high probability.
Even if all the parasites causing Chagas disease were killed, hearts and organs that had already enlarged couldn’t be restored.
Even in my past life, when the heart enlarged for various reasons, the only treatment was heart transplant.
But heart transplant was nonsense in this era, so most people would have to live with disabilities.
The village chief’s granddaughter was a relatively lucky case.
She had collapsed because of her weak constitution as a girl, not because of major heart problems, so her irregular pulse disappeared after taking the Shamanic Gu Dissolving Pill.
It was somewhat reassuring since Clan Head Tang checked her pulse several times and concluded there was no problem with her heart?
After feeding a spoonful of medicine to every villager’s mouth, Clan Head Tang said to the village chief with a regretful expression:
“I’m afraid nothing can be done for those whose hearts are already deeply diseased. When I return to Sichuan, I’ll try putting in a word with the Divine Physician[1] and Divine Pharmacist[2] elders. They might come out of curiosity since it’s a disease caused by bugs parasitizing human bodies.”
According to Clan Head Tang, there were two great doctors in the Central Plains – the Divine Physician and Divine Pharmacist.
The immortals of healing and medicinal herbs?
He was saying he’d ask them to look at the villagers, but the village chief answered with an apologetic expression:
“N-no. This is already fortunate. I thought all the villagers would one by one… eventually all die… Just being alive is fortunate.”
The atmosphere grew warm.
Though happy voices of villagers who had regained consciousness and recovered their condition filled the village in the middle of the night, I reminded them their work wasn’t over yet.
The most important task still remained.
“It’s too early to celebrate, elders. The work isn’t finished yet.”
“What do you mean, young hero?”
“Ah, right. It’s not over yet.”
The village chief tilted his head at my words.
Since Clan Head Tang seemed to quickly understand my meaning, I first checked how long the Shamanic Gu Dissolving Pill’s effects would last.
Hoping it would have lasting effects.
“Yes, elder. How long do the effects of the Shamanic Gu Dissolving Pill last?”
“Originally when taken, besides dissolving gu it would prevent gu from settling in the body for about three months. But since we dissolved it in water to share, maybe about fifteen days?”
Fortunately the medicine would last fifteen days.
I asked the village chief again:
“This disease comes from being bitten by bugs. What happens if they’re bitten by bugs again after fifteen days?”
“Ah, right. We need to catch all the bugs! Young hero.”
Yes, Kissing Bugs hide in places like house roofs and wall cracks, then crawl out at night to bite people.
The Miao people of Hainan weave roofs with palm leaves and such, so Kissing Bugs would likely be living in abundance in those gaps.
Though they look like stink bugs, since they’re bedbugs, house roofs and rock crevices near houses are their main habitat.
First I asked Clan Head Tang, who prided himself as a poison expert:
“Yes, elder, do you have any poisons that kill bugs?”
Since he’d boasted about being knowledgeable about poisons, I thought he might handle poisons effective on insects.
We needed to make insecticide.
And medicine to keep insects from approaching.
Clan Head Tang smiled at my question:
“You mean for that? At home we have pyrethrum[3] from the Western Regions, but we don’t have that here. Let’s boil cinnamon bark[4] and Sichuan pepper[5] fruits in water and spray it.
Those work very well on bugs. They’re like poison to bugs? Direct contact kills them, and just the smell keeps them from approaching, so that should be enough.”
Ah right. They say cinnamon and Sichuan pepper were used as insecticides in the past?
I remembered learning this while studying insects and venomous creatures in my past life.
At Clan Head Tang’s words, I recalled that cinnamon’s eugenol and Sichuan pepper’s sanshool[6] have excellent insecticidal properties.
“Ah, I certainly remember hearing about that too. Village Chief, could you gather cinnamon and Sichuan pepper? As the elder said, let’s boil them in water and spray it on all the houses, roofs, and rock crevices around the village.
And hang cinnamon and Sichuan pepper over beds to keep Kissing Bugs from approaching carelessly while people sleep.”
“I understand, young hero. Then I’ll tell them to gather cinnamon and Sichuan pepper!”
Large-scale quarantine operations began throughout the village at the village chief’s urgent shout.
“Gather cinnamon and Sichuan pepper! Today! We’ll catch and kill all these vicious bugs!”
Operation to exterminate Kissing Bugs by excited villagers.
The operation to exterminate Kissing Bugs that came to people at night leaving sinister kisses began, and soon a subtle fragrance of cinnamon and Sichuan pepper enveloped the entire village.
***
Though they should have been tired after the noisy bug extermination work overnight, the morning village was completely in festival mood.
No, it was a festival.
A village festival was held as if they’d never coldly turned us away yesterday.
Though tired from staying up late, we were invited to something like a village hall as soon as day broke.
Long dining tables with bamboo trays.
A banquet was prepared with various foods laid out on those trays – meat, fish, fruits and vegetables.
“This is our Miao tribe’s welcoming feast, the Long Table Banquet[7]. Our saviors, please eat plenty! We’re so sorry about yesterday!”
“We’re sorry!”
The Long Table Banquet with deep history and tradition.
Literally sitting at long tables eating food laid out for each person – it was truly delicious to me who had only eaten lizard and snake meat, plus rice bought from villages and radishes grown behind the temple.
Because even when I sold snakeskin, I couldn’t afford to waste money on meat, so I only bought rice.
So this was like my first home-cooked meal since my past life?
How nice. I didn’t know I could be this happy with home cooking.
When I wolfed down the food laid out like I had with the deer meat, village women crowded around offering food with smiles.
“Young hero, would you like more meat?”
“What? Yes. Thank you!”
“Have some more fish too. How cute.”
“Oh my, even fish!”
So as we listened to Miao songs and Clan Head Tang and the warriors were in good spirits after being served alcohol.
The village chief who sat at our table asked in a careful voice.
With a very apologetic expression.
“Elder, about what you said at the village entrance yesterday.”
“What I said at the village entrance?”
“About looking for villages with missing people.”
“Ah, right. But why?”
Though it had been temporarily pushed down in priority while treating the Miao people’s illness, our original goal was finding the hideout of the great demon called the Blood Hand Rakshasa Tak Unyang.
Since the Blood-Thinning Poison Claw martial art he practiced required human blood and bone marrow, we were looking for villages with mass disappearances.
So when Clan Head Tang nodded at the village chief’s question, the village chief answered with a brightened face:
“I looked into it since I had no way to repay your kindness and thought it might help. I heard something strange.”
“Something strange?”
“Yes, among the women who regained consciousness last night, there was a girl who married in from another village, and she said her home village experienced strange deaths where people disappeared one by one a few years ago…”
At the village chief’s words, we all looked at each other.
We probably all had the same thought.
That’s it!
“Well, where is that!?”
“So that place is over…”
At Clan Head Tang’s urgent question, the village chief’s hand pointed west.
***
Ghost village.
The Miao village we arrived at after learning about it from the village chief, located in the mountains of southwest Hainan, was a ghost village.
Not a single living person could be seen.
“Not a single person can be seen?”
“It feels like they left the village in a hurry. Though it seems old, things are still inside the houses.”
“But if there were strange deaths with people disappearing, it’s odd that people didn’t flee and alert the surroundings?”
Though he was a great demon and vicious person, judging by the village’s size, it seemed like at least one or two hundred people had lived here.
Feeling unsettled by all the missing villagers, we continued searching up the mountain.
When we were nearly at the mountain peak, a foul stench wafted over.
At that stench, Clan Head Tang muttered darkly:
“Corpse stench…”
Then he shot into the forest at high speed using lightness skill.
Corpse stench meant the smell of rotting corpses.
I also ran with the other Tang clan warriors through the underbrush in the direction Clan Head Tang had disappeared.
Then what appeared was a large cave.
A large cave entrance blocked by bamboo bars appeared.
“This is?”
“Kugh. Th-this!?”
In the clearing beside the cave we arrived at, from skeletonized bones to corpses not long dead.
Countless corpses were piled in heaps.
Maggots hatched from gathered flies, and countless insects and venomous creatures gathered to eat those maggots.
Even snakes coming to eat those insects.
And then dead snakes and venomous creatures with insects laying eggs on them.
A hell where life and death repeated.
A horrific hellish scene was spread out.
“Even corpse poison has formed…”
“How horrible. Y-young hero, don’t look!”
Hey, if you’re going to block it, do it earlier…
Though the Tang clan warriors blocked my view, I’d already seen the horrific scene.
To see live the kind of mass killing site I’d only seen in documentaries in my past life.
It felt so unreal I could hardly believe those were real corpses.
After we regained our senses a moment later, we broke the bars and checked inside the cave for survivors, but we couldn’t find any survivors in the filth-stained cave.
According to Clan Head Tang, judging by corpses that weren’t long dead, it seemed the last survivors had been alive until recently, but he thought the man had probably killed them all after perfecting his martial arts.
So he thought that’s why the man had attacked Clan Head Tang.
He said since that grandfather of his, Clan Head Tang’s father, was supposedly a terrifying person, attacking him meant he didn’t fear that person.
That bastard died well.
Though we were briefly depressed at not finding survivors at the horrific scene.
What appeared to be the man’s thatched hut was discovered right next to the cave, and while Clan Head Tang and the Tang clan warriors continued searching to recover secret manuals.
While I was squatting and watching venomous creatures and snakes crawling toward the cave entrance alone.
Suddenly came the sound of a bird’s wings.
Flutter.
At the loud sound I turned my head to see something like a huge bird land on the pile of corpses with quite a noise.
“Hm? Was there such a bird?”
Though I’m not a bird expert, I know quite a few birds, but this was a form I’d never seen.
The bird was as large as a huge eagle with long legs and purple feathers that reflected bluish-green light, and golden feathers on its head that looked like a king’s crown.
And stranger still, though at first I thought it would eat the corpses, it walked between the corpses cutting off and swallowing only the heads of crawling snakes.
As I was blankly watching this sight.
One of the warriors who had finished searching approached:
“Young hero, what are you doing? Hm!? That bird? We can’t let it further desecrate the corpses.”
One warrior thought the bird was trying to eat the corpses, and took a few steps forward to pick up and throw a stone at it.
He probably thought it was a corpse-eating bird like a crow.
Thwack!
Kiruru!
Though it should have fled in surprise, the bird let out a loud cry and stared at the warrior with red eyes.
A gaze that somehow seemed to glare.
The warrior picked up another stone and threw it at the creature.
“Damnable beast, looking at me wrong!”
Flutter!
Finally the bird began to take flight to avoid the stone.
At the same time, a strange phenomenon began.
As if twilight was falling on the ground, where the bird had risen with its wingbeats began turning pitch black.
When the wind from its wingbeats scattered around, snakes and venomous creatures began turning belly-up in place.
No, turning belly-up was just the start.
They immediately began melting.
Everything from corpses to insects to snakes began flowing like heated butter.
Hisssss!
And from the chest of the Tang clan warrior who had approached the bird to throw stones, white vapor began rising.
As if he had dry ice soaked in water in his chest.
“Th-the realgar (arsenic mineral)[8]!”
The startled Tang clan warrior pulled out realgar from his chest, but its volume rapidly decreased.
From living with them for several days, I’d learned that realgar was used to check for poison and temporarily block it – for it to react like this meant incredibly potent poison.
The realgar was vaporizing madly.
That’s when.
A hand grabbed my nape.
“Kek!”
As my body was dragged toward the cave, Clan Head Tang shouted to the Tang clan warriors:
“Take shelter in the cave! That’s definitely a Zhen[9], a Zhen Bird[10]!”