Those people puking out on the streets with pale faces were probably the curious ones of the crowd. Right now, all of them had been scared away.
Yan Liqiang used his sleeves to cover his mouth and nose. Those sharp eyes of his studied the corpse at the end of the alley. Thoughts went through his mind since it would definitely not have been a coincidence for this corpse to have appeared here.
“Who are you? Hurry! Get… get out of… here…”
A voice came from behind. Before the speaker could get a full sentence out, he could not stop dry gagging at the smell.
Yan Liqiang turned his head around. He saw a forty-something-year-old law enforcer leaning against the wall and dry gagging with a pale face while waving his hand asking him to leave.
Yan Liqiang turned around and walked over towards him. Before the law enforcer was able to talk, he took out an identity metal paiza and showed it to him.
“Ah! Greetings, lord…” That law enforcer saw his metal paiza and hurried to bow in front of him.
“Who discovered the body?” Yan Liqiang asked with a low voice.
“Some servant out on chamber pot duty… this alley is rather deep so not many people would come here normally. That chamber pot guy smelled the foul odor as he was walking past here with his dung cart. He went to check out the source and was frightened by what he had seen. He ran to report to us…” that law enforcer replied accordingly.
“Was the corpse seen yesterday?”
“No, this alley is sweeped every morning. The man said that yesterday morning when he was walking past, he did not see or smell anything out of the ordinary.”
“Alright, I understand the situation now. First, seal up the whole alley, move the families that live around here, and ask the rest to stay away from this place as well. You guys don’t approach carelessly either — under no circumstances should you be in any kind of physical contact with the corpse. This is not something you guys can handle. Report to the Provincial Military Governor’s Office and ask them to send someone here…”
“Lord, we have already sent someone to deliver the message…”
“Remember, when you have to get close to the corpse, don’t forget to cover your mouth and nose. You must wrap your hands with something. Do not let anything from that corpse touch you. After getting home, use hot boiling water to sterilize your clothes. Go ask around the neighborhood for kalk, realgar, and some salt. Bring them all here at once…”
At this critical time, Yan Liqiang would not try to act nice. Instead, he gave out orders directly.
Hearing the orders, that law enforcer looked like he had discovered a lifeboat and immediately regained his liveliness. “Lord, please wait for me for a second, I will go check it out now.”
As he spoke, he ran back out from the alley — Yan Liqiang waited where he was standing, preventing other people from coming in.
It must have been less than two minutes before that law enforcer came in with another one of them. They were holding some bags in their hands. “Lord, we have found some of those ingredients…”
“Alright, hand it over to me!” Yan Liqiang took over those bags and guided the two towards the corpse. When they got close, Yan Liqiang held his breath and grabbed a handful of salt. As he waved his hand out, millions and millions of tiny salt particles shot out as if they were assassination weapons. The air-slicing noise was actually recognizable to the human ears. Huge clusters of red maggots on the ground and on the wall had been hit. They all stopped moving and fell onto the ground.
When the two law enforcers who stood behind Yan Liqiang saw that even salt could be this powerful in his hands, they felt admiration for him from the bottom of their hearts.
After sprinkling all of the salt, nothing seemed to be moving within a ten-meter radius. Yan Liqiang took out kalk and realgar. He sprinkled them onto the corpse and around it, making two layers of protection separating the corpse from the rest of the world. After the first stage of disinfecting, Yan Liqiang then felt safe enough to walk back.
“Remember, besides humans, those cats and dogs or even rats and cockroaches cannot be allowed to touch this corpse…”
“Lord, we will remember it!” The two law enforcers looked at Yan Liqiang with respect. They seemed to be full of gratitude.
“Then you guys just wait here for the people from the Provincial Military Governor’s Office to come. I am going to leave now…”
“Thank you, Lord, for helping us!”
“No problem. We all serve the empire, so it is just my responsibility!”
Yan Liqiang said goodbye to the law enforcers in the alley before leaving. As he left, a couple of more of them arrived and surrounded the land. The families around had already been removed. The street was busy, but all of the people looking at the alley showed scared expressions. Yan Liqiang could hear words like “red maggots” and “pestilence”…
Too many people had seen the corpse so messages like this could not be sealed away anymore before spreading.
Without a doubt, that corpse had been placed there on purpose.
Given the warning from Hua Ruxue before, right now, all he could think of was the White Lotus Society. He thought they were the ones all behind all this. Perhaps this killing weapon of theirs was actually the method to create pestilence? If that was the case, then the imperial court indeed would have a huge problem…
Ten minutes after leaving that alley, Yan Liqiang passed through two streets. It had been thousands of meters, but still he saw another big group of law enforcers surrounding an alley. He grabbed someone close to him and asked — it turned out there had been another corpse here as well. It was just as rotten and full of red maggots.
On this day, in just the morning, there had been discoveries of five corpses within the Imperial Capital. Fear was in the air and appearing in everyone’s hearts.