The fleet loaded with relief supplies finally arrived in Suzhou City, sailing along the canal system.
When Qiu Feng saw Li Ang again, he was startled by the bloodshot eyes of Li Ang. "Risheng... are you alright?"
"I’m fine, just sleeping less lately."
Li Ang forced a smile. He had been staying in the sick house these days, sleeping only three or four hours a night, using Mind Silk to treat those with the most severe cases of Blood-sucking Worm disease, while looking for ways to control the Water Poison epidemic.
He turned and gestured for the visitors from Chang’an to follow. Qiu Feng and the others exchanged glances and silently followed Li Ang through the courtyard of the sick house to a room.
The room was filled with documents and files. Li Ang used Telekinesis to clear some seats for everyone. He held his tea for a moment before slowly saying, "I have found out the transmission route of the Blood-sucking Worm."
Director Qiu Jing of the Imperial Medical Bureau was both shocked and pleased. "What is it?!"
Li Ang raised his palm and unleashed Telekinesis, causing the papers on the table to separate to both sides, revealing the bottles and jars hidden underneath.
"These five bottles contain samples of the Blood-sucking Worm, or rather, five stages of its life cycle: adult worms, eggs, larva, tail cercariae, and larva."
Li Ang pointed to the glass bottles and said, "Similar to a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, Blood-sucking Worms also have different forms and behaviors at different stages of life. The tail cercaria stage of the worm uses its piercing thread to burrow into the host’s skin, sheds its tail, and turns into a larva. This larva stage of the worm moves into the bloodstream and goes into the host’s intestines and blood vessels, developing into an adult.
"At the adult stage, the worm reproduces, laying about a thousand eggs a day. Some of the eggs deposited in the host’s body cause symptoms such as ascites, jaundice, and splenomegaly. It tortures the host, weakening them."
He stood up and walked to the side room, bringing over two iron stands.
On the stands were two headless rabbit carcasses, both split open, their fur pinned back to reveal their internal organs.
Qiu Feng frowned slightly and asked, "This is..."
"Two rabbits. One infected by Blood-sucking Worms, the other not. Take a look at the difference."
Li Ang placed the stands on the table. After Qiu Feng and the others observed for a while, they said uncertainly, "The intestines of this one are whiter? There are also white spots all over the liver."
Li Ang nodded, using Mind to lift the rabbit’s mesentery so that Qiu Feng and the others could observe better. "What is tangled inside the blood vessels are the Blood-sucking Worms."
Qiu Feng’s scalp tingled. The rabbit’s blood vessels were densely packed with white lines. Just a glance made one feel uncomfortable.
"Correct. As for the white spots on the liver, those are the eggs of the Blood-sucking Worm." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡⚑𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚⚑𝙣𝙚𝙩
Li Ang spoke matter-of-factly, "And this is only a smaller-sized rabbit. Larger-bodied humans and oxen suffer even more severe erosion by Blood-sucking Worms."
The people from Chang’an had nothing to say. On their boat trip, they had seen many patients with swollen abdomens, which had led to a proverb among the common folk to describe those afflicted by Blood-sucking Worms—
Their bellies swell like winter melons, their faces yellow like cucumbers, their limbs thin like loofahs.
Li Ang continued, "Another part of the eggs produced by Blood-sucking Worms inside the host are expelled from the body along with feces. This is the main route of transmission for these worms."
Prince Guang, Li Shan, was slightly taken aback. "Feces?"
"Unexpected, isn’t it? The final form of our grains is, in fact, the beginning of the end of human life."
Li Ang pointed to a bottle containing eggs and said, "After feces enter the water, larva hatch from the eggs and penetrate an intermediate host, where they reproduce and become tail cercariae. These tail cercariae then swim in the water, seeking hosts to infest, thus completing the cycle. And this intermediate host is a kind of snail. To be precise, a particular type of nail snail."
Li Ang waved his hand, and a box in the corner opened, from which several glass jars floated up.
Inside were small objects the size of rice grains. One would need to pour them onto the table for closer inspection to see that they were snails with a sharply pointed end.
Li Ang said, "I asked Esteem Shen Tu to use the observation skills of Candle Cloud Realm Cultivators to watch the epidemic waters for a long time before finally confirming that the tail cercariae in the water were emerging from these tiny snails. After tracing the clues, we figured out the entire life cycle of the Blood-sucking Worm."
"It’s just a small contribution."
Shen Tuyu waved his hand and said, "After repeated experiments, we found that the larva of the Blood-sucking Worm are too fragile to parasitize larger snails or humans. They can only infest these micro nail snails, which are slightly larger than rice grains, and develop inside them."
Nail snails preferred to live in damp vegetation, such as along waterways, in rice paddies, and irrigation ditches. Suzhou’s water system was extensive; wherever there was water, nail snails could be found, and there was a risk of the water becoming contaminated.
Li Ang said, "The common people need to work in the rice paddies and fish in the lakes. They inevitably come into contact with the water, which always entails the risk of infection by these parasites. Spring farming begins in February and March. What we can do right now is try to eradicate the nail snails before the spring planting starts, and thus, eradicate the Blood-sucking Worms. These are my suggestions."
He picked up a stack of documents from the table and handed them to Li Shan.
Li Shan took the documents and carefully reviewed them. "Chemical eradication?"
Li Ang took a deep breath. "After extracting tea oil from tea seeds, the remaining residue is pressed into cakes. In Lingnan Road, these are also known as tea cakes. The extract from these tea cakes is toxic. Fishermen in Yizhou use it to poison fish; the fish killed this way are harmless for human consumption. Moreover, the tea cake extract can also kill nail snails, with an eradication efficiency of about thirty percent."
Li Shan did not ask the foolish question, "Why only thirty percent?" The dense tables, data, experiment logs, and detailed rationale on the paper were sufficient to prove that this was the most suitable method at this stage.
Li Shan said, "Good. I will immediately discuss this with the governor and arrange to collect tea cakes from the surrounding states."
Li Ang nodded and continued, "Besides chemical eradication, changing the environment is even more important. Nail snails move slowly and die off in large numbers when buried. Since they often live in irrigation ditches, we can mobilize people to fill in old ditches and build new ones, burying the nail snails in the soil.
"Furthermore, we can cut down the reeds and grass where nail snails tend to breed; burn the reed thickets around the Taihu Water System; and build dams to reclaim land for farming, which will also help prevent the spread of nail snails.
"Additionally, managing feces is critical. Patients infected with Blood-sucking Worms carry numerous eggs in their feces, which contaminate the water upon entry. I suggest, on one hand, having the ceramic workshops produce as many pottery and porcelain pipes as possible. These can be connected and buried underground to form a sewage system like in Chang’an City. On the other hand, we should build public toilets and manure storage tanks in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Private dumping of feces must be strictly prohibited. Feces should be centrally treated to prevent eggs from entering water sources.
"At the same time, many common people draw water from rivers and wash their Clothes by the riverbanks, making them highly susceptible to infection by these parasites. We need to construct numerous wells.
"Lastly, with spring farming imminent, the common people will inevitably have to work in water. We need to allocate large quantities of quicklime, rosin, and pure wine for disinfection, and distribute items like cloth leggings and oil-soaked socks to the farmers..."
The more Li Ang spoke, the more alarmed Qiu Jing and the others became. They admired Li Ang’s exceptional ability and methodical approach, while also internally assessing the vast scope of the project.
Just the excavation and refilling of ditches would require at least two hundred thousand common people. Adding the burning of reeds, construction of dams, wells, public toilets, and sewers, plus the distribution of socks and so on—the scale of human resources, materials, and finances required was unimaginably vast.
Unexpectedly, after contemplating and estimating, Li Shan simply nodded in agreement.
He seemed to notice the astonished looks from the others and explained, "People from Lu Li Academy will also come to help."
Everyone suddenly understood. With support from local businesses, wealthy households, common people, court officials and soldiers, as well as Cultivators from the Academic Palace and Lu Li Academy, the plan’s realization seemed possible.
One Cultivator was worth fifty common people, yet fifty common people might not replace a Cultivator.
For a moment, everyone was uncontrollably excited.
Li Shan spoke with the Suzhou Commander for a while and immediately went to the Governor Mansion to discuss plans with the Suzhou Governor—his status as Prince Guang naturally gave him higher authority.
Meanwhile, Doctors like Qiu Jing and Qiu Quan took the past medication lists provided by the local sick house staff to discuss which medicines to use.
Only Qiu Feng noticed the fleeting yet profound fatigue, as well as sorrow, deep within Li Ang’s eyes.