Poor but talented scholar

Chapter 14 Epidemic Prevention

The villagers who had been complaining about the mud removal work slowed down their tasks.

Hopeful gazes converged on Lu Chuan.

Days passed by in the daily grind of muddy labor.

For seven whole days, the men, women, and children of Lujia Village exhausted their last bit of strength to barely clear the mud from the main village roads and most of the courtyards.

The yellow mud was moved away basket by basket, revealing the soil underneath, which had been soaked, changed color, and was soft like rotten meat.

But Lu Chuan knew that once the floodwaters receded, the real "monster" would begin.

"Sixth Uncle, it's getting hotter and hotter. The dead animals and moldy grass in the mud are rotting. The disease emanating from them could take away the entire village."

Lu Chuan stood on the stone steps in front of the ancestral hall, looking at the exhausted clansmen, some of whom were even coughing, with a stern expression.

Sixth Uncle Lu Dehuang wiped his sweat and leaned on his cane: "Chuan'er, what do you think we should do? We've just survived a natural disaster; we can't afford any more trouble."

"We must establish rules, and establish strict rules!" Lu Chuan's voice wasn't loud, but it reached the ears of every man who passed by.

A moment later, the gong of Lu Family Village rang out. Sixth Uncle, standing on a high place, roared out the "ironclad rules" that Lu Chuan had prepared:

"First rule: No one in the village is allowed to drink raw water! No matter how thirsty you are, you have to boil it before drinking. If anyone is lazy and drinks that yellow water and gets a stomachache, not only will they suffer, but they will also be locked in the thatched shed on the back mountain for isolation to prevent them from infecting their whole family."

"Secondly, anyone who has gone to the county to handle business or consult a doctor must stay alone in the abandoned melon shed at the village entrance for three days upon their return. Only after confirming that they have no rash or fever can they enter the village to return home!"

"The third rule is that if anyone from another village wants to enter our Lu Family Village, even if they are relatives, they must be turned back. We will tell them that our village has been struck by a plague and is filled with disease, and we dare not harm others. Anyone who is soft-hearted and lets people in will be dealt with according to the clan rules."

"Fourthly, Third Aunt, you and the meticulous women should boil willow branches and mugwort water in a large pot every day. Not only should you use it to wash people, but you should also sprinkle it on the thresholds and under the windows of every household. Everyone understands that smoke and fire can remove foul odors."

These instructions, once issued, were like drawing an invisible line in Lujia Village.

Some of the younger men thought Uncle Liu was being overly cautious, muttering, "Can someone really die from drinking cold water?"

Sixth Uncle looked over coldly.

"Drinking raw water won't necessarily kill us, but if we get infected with disease, who will harvest the buckwheat we've been rushing to plant these past few days? Who will earn the money we have to pay next month?"

"If you want your whole family to end up in a mass grave with you, then drink as much as you want."

The man felt uneasy under Uncle Liu's gaze, shrank back, and lowered his head sheepishly.

The instinct for survival led the villagers to choose obedience.

The awareness of epidemic prevention has become the underlying tone of life in Lujia Village after the disaster.

On the muddy road at the village entrance, which had just been cleared, Lu Shoutian and several men quickly set up a makeshift checkpoint using tree branches and discarded door panels.

Lu Chuan stood in front of his half-collapsed main room, watching his uncle Lu Youcai crouching down, trying to dig out the flattened copper basin from the ankle-deep mud.

Lu Youcai scratched and cursed as he did so, his eyes occasionally drifting to the books wrapped in oilcloth in Lu Chuan's arms.

"Chuan'er, can books put food on the table?" Lu Youcai spat. "With that free time, you might as well help your uncle clear the mud from the fields. Studying? Even if you study brilliantly, the county magistrate won't shortchange us a single grain of tax."

Lu Chuan ignored him. He was staring at the dense, bluish-purple clusters of fungi at the base of the courtyard wall.

"Lu Ming, take your little hoe."

Lu Chuan stopped Lu Ming, who was about to go to the river to catch fish, and said, "Don't catch any fish. The dead fish after the flood smell bad and nobody wants them. Let's go to the shady part of the woods and look for 'Aconite' and 'Indigo'."

"What's that?" Lu Ming asked, completely bewildered.

"It's medicine, and it's also the color that the dye houses in the city desperately need." Lu Chuan's voice was calm. "The flood blocked the roads for half a month, and all the straw for dyeing cloth in the county rotted in the warehouse."

"If we send it over now, even if it's wet, we can get double the amount of old rice in return."

Lu Ming was skeptical, but Lu Chuan's calmness and insight over the past two days had already planted the seed in his heart that "listening to Brother Chuan is always the right thing to do."

Without saying a word, he crouched down and disappeared into the damp woods.

For three whole days and nights, Lu Chuan, along with Lu Ming and several other teenagers, practically turned over every inch of the shady earthen slope behind the village.

Their fingernails were filled with black mud, and their clothes were torn to shreds by thorns, but their baskets were full of herbs and dyeing materials that gleamed with a bluish light.

These "weeds" that farmers would find too prickly to even wipe their bottoms with, were automatically converted in Lu Chuan's mind into loads of brown rice and piles of silver coins, based on the supply and demand gap in the county.

On that very morning, just as the replanted buckwheat sprouted its tender green shoots, Uncle Lu Dehuang brought back news from the county that the whole village both loved and hated.

"A 50% tax reduction... is permitted with a discount."

In front of the ancestral hall, the villagers who had escaped death heard the words "tax reduction," and a hint of joy had just appeared on their originally sallow faces, but it was immediately suppressed by the following words "tax reduction."

"Sixth Uncle, what does 'Zhese' mean?" Lu Dafa asked, his neck stiff, still clutching half a hard, dry biscuit in his hand.

Sixth Uncle sighed: "It's just that the county magistrate is considerate. He said that the flood blocked the roads and it was difficult to transport grain, so he allowed us to pay the taxes we owed in silver at the official price."

"Isn't that great? Saves us from pushing carts and pulling loads!" Lu Youcai squeezed through the crowd. "Paying money is better than risking our lives!"

Lu Chuan stood in the shadow of the pillars, calculating rapidly.

"Alright?" Lu Chuan walked out slowly. "Uncle, how much is the price of a bushel of aged wheat ordered by the authorities?"

Thirty coins.

"So what is the current market price of aged wheat in the county's grain shops?"

Uncle Liu hesitated for a moment, then held up five fingers: "Fifty-five coins... I heard it had risen to sixty coins before I returned to the village yesterday."

These words immediately chilled the ancestral hall to the bone.

"Let's all do the math."

Lu Chuan picked up a dry twig and quickly slashed it across the muddy ground beneath his feet. "We only need to pay ten dou of grain; but if we pay in cash at the official rate, we'll have to pay three hundred wen."

"These three hundred coins can only buy five bushels of grain in the city now. The government claims it's out of compassion, but with this one transaction, they've squeezed a whole five bushels of life-saving rations out of us disaster victims!"

"This...this is murder without bloodshed!" Lu Shoutian angrily slammed his fist into a stone pillar.

Despair spread among the villagers once again.

A 50% tax cut is certainly good, but the resulting exchange rate difference is practically driving everyone to despair.

"Since the exchange rate has been approved, we won't pay a single grain of rice, we'll just pay the money." Lu Chuan looked up at his sixth uncle.