Fang Yangqin spoke very well and briefly explained the confession he received to facilitate Shen Hao to understand the context.

"A month after the first death, Xiushan Village began to die one after another. Generally, they would die suddenly on the day of the disease, less than five hours before and after. The symptoms of the disease were similar to the general wind and cold. They just felt weak and wanted to sleep, but they died after sleeping. They would only appear dark spots on their bodies after half an hour of death..."

While looking through the file in his hand, Shen Hao listened to Fang Yangqin's brief description. When he encountered doubts, he interrupted and asked, "When did Wanhekou feel that there might be a plague?"

"It was when the yamen runners who handled the first death incident suddenly died at home. At that time, the yamen leader advocated reporting, but was suppressed by the chief officer, worried that the plague would affect his promotion after it spread. Originally, the chief officer could be transferred to Pingshun City to take over as the chief officer next year."

"Damn it! Where is that person now?"

"In prison."

"Don't let him die, and don't let him relax. He doesn't know how much trouble he has caused without shave three layers of skin."

"Haha, this is inevitable."

"continue."

Fang Yangqin continued: "Sushan Village was completely out of control. Many people in the village were scared away. Some went to the village to escape the disaster, while some simply ran to Wanhekou City. There was no way to investigate where they went. In the end, the Wanhekou Yamen could only grit their teeth and continue to conceal the reports and threaten the escapees. As long as they dared to go out and talk nonsense, their population fields were confiscated. They would not come back again after the disaster. So the most rumored thing about the floods are now.

Then there were dead people from one village to another, and there were too many to count. At the beginning, the yamen would organize people to bury them on the spot, but later everyone was afraid and unwilling to do it. The yamen would dig a hidden pit on both sides of the official road, and asked the old and weak in the village who could not escape to help get out the bodies and throw them into the pit.

Later, more than ten yamen runners died, and no one dared to enter the disaster area again..."

The doctor next to him turned red and angry when he heard this, because according to the common way to deal with the plague in this world, it is to blockade so that the plague will not expand. But if you want to blockade, you must respond immediately. If you miss one or two people, you will lose all meaning. Wanhekou's approach is undoubtedly a complete ignorance of the critical period of handling the plague, and the situation is now irreversible.

"I'll send news to Fengricheng, and it's said that the situation here has already lost control. It's not clear how many people have flowed out of Wanhekou, and where they have gone. It is recommended to check all refugees who have entered the city, and the ban is urgent. Expedited delivery."

"Yes." Wang Yiming took the order and left in a hurry.

Shen Hao stood up from his seat, looked at the sky, turned his head to the doctor and said, "The starting place should be Xiushan Village. Let's go there now to see what?"

"It should be!"

So Shen Hao personally led the team, leaving Wang Yiming and Fang Yangqin to stay behind, and galloped towards Xiushan Village.

I got off the official road in the evening. Following the guidance of a local Xuanqingwei general bannerman who led the way, I walked another half an hour on the mountain road before I saw the beautiful mountain village in a valley.

"There are not many people in the village, with a total of 31 households and 125 people. One hundred and seventeen people were confirmed to have died, and the whereabouts of the rest are unknown."

"There are still statistics on the number of deaths?" Shen Hao asked with a frown. He had not seen the deaths in the file before or heard Fang Yangqin mention it.

"There is no way to count, but because Xiushan Village is the first place to get into trouble, the yamen also counted at first, but then it was in chaos."

Without busy entering the village, the doctor walked around the village and recorded all the surrounding environment and vegetation conditions, so professional that Shen Hao couldn't understand.

After entering the village, it was quiet inside, and the sky that was already darker seemed even more gloomy.

Light a torch, and according to the description in the file, Shen Hao and his party found the first house to have an accident. A small courtyard on the east side of the village, with bamboo fences outside, and a three-entry house and thatched house inside.

Shen Hao asked most people to wait outside, and those who have not yet cultivated their cultivation level are not allowed to enter.

The doctor's monk happened to be at the first level of the concentration realm, not afraid of plague, so he entered the house first, and Shen Hao followed.

There was a strange smell in the room, and the doctor and Shen Hao immediately felt it.

"This smell is very strange. It doesn't look like a stinky smell or a corpse smell. It's very strange..."

"What should be the scent of rotten things?"

After so long, no one should have lived in the house. It’s a bit like corruption, but why does it smell so weird? It’s even annoying.

"This is......"

Following this strange smell, I opened a basket in the corner of the wall, and there were some fruits that were beginning to rot. It looked very similar to pears. The strange smell came from this thing.

Shen Hao thought to himself: It turns out that the pears are rotten and smell like this? Is it so strange?

However, the doctor who came over was not as relaxed as Shen Hao. He carefully inserted a fruit with a stick and then beat it. Due to the rotten reason, the rotten flesh was easily peeled off, revealing the kernel inside.

Shen Hao was still wondering what the doctor was going to do, but when he saw the fruit core, he realized that he almost missed an important clue. The fruit in the backpack was not a pear at all.

Will the pear's core grow into a skull? Or the skull that grinned and seemed to be laughing at you.

"What is this?"

"Ghosthead pear."

"Ghosthead pear?"

"Well, a toxic plant that can cause mental confusion is also a toxic medicinal material for alchemy. It looks almost exactly the same as ordinary wild pears, and tastes similar to wild pears."

Shen Hao: "Is this the source of the plague?"

"No, the ghost-headed pear is only poisonous but will not cause plague, otherwise this thing will not be used for alchemy. What I am curious about is how there is a ghost-headed pear in an ordinary family, and it is also so much of a basket. Logically speaking, the ghost-headed pear only grows in places where the corpse is heavy and the yin energy is thick and the sun is less sunny and the environment is humid. Those places are usually rarely visited. If monks want to collect, they have to search. How did this ordinary family touch which place they go?

And if I remember correctly, there is no ghost-headed pear production in Jingxi, only Jingnan has it.”

The doctor was just confused, but Shen Hao turned his doubts into doubts out of habit. It was strange enough to appear in an ordinary family, and he was still involved in the plague in an unknown way. Will there be any connection between the two?
Chapter completed!