Chapter 381: Zhang Zhongjing Conquers the Heavens by Half a Move
"Wait a moment," the young general from Xiliang murmured, his brow furrowing as he worked through the future host's unfamiliar phrasing. "If they simply buried all their daily waste in the ground, and that waste seeped into the water, then that solid garbage is just..."
He never finished the thought.
A massive, calloused hand shot forward and clamped tight over Ma Chao's mouth with the force of a steel trap. Zhang Fei had lunged across the space between their mats in a single motion. The seasoned warrior locked him in a desperate hold, eyes bulging with unmasked alarm.
At the same instant, a dozen pairs of eyes snapped toward him. The collective glare fixed on Ma Chao carried enough menace to make an entire army falter. No one wanted to hear the rest of that sentence.
Even Zhang Zhongjing, a man known across the realm for his gentle and forgiving nature, wore a distinctly unamused expression.
Beneath the hand covering his mouth, Ma Chao reeled. What has happened? Why has the mood turned so sharp and dangerous? What did I miss?
He felt the weight of hostility radiating from every corner of the hall. Wisely, he decided to offer no further comment. He nodded slowly instead.
Zhang Fei, however, could not let it go. The mental hurdle was simply too high to clear.
"Mengqi, what in the world are you thinking?" he hissed, finally loosening his grip but keeping one hand firmly planted over Ma Chao's face. "How can you be this slow to see what is right in front of us? I am telling you plainly. Do not speak of it. Do not even think about it. Not a word about anything in this city. Just close your mouth and keep it closed. Do you understand?"
Ma Chao nodded so vigorously his head bobbed.
At the head of the hall, Liu Bei rested his face in his hands. He rubbed his temples slowly, a deep sense of spiritual exhaustion settling over him. His sworn brother possessed a truly remarkable talent for making difficult situations infinitely worse simply by opening his mouth.
Of all the powerful figures gathered there, only Zhuge Liang seemed entirely unshaken by the grim revelation. The young strategist wore his usual calm composure. He held a brush between his fingers, carefully noting down the future host's description of Chang'an's soil composition and geological makeup.
Liu Bei lifted his head just enough to watch him. "Kongming," he said, his voice heavy, "how can you sit there writing as if nothing has changed? We have just learned our capital has been drinking 200 years of rot."
Zhuge Liang did not lift his eyes from the bamboo slip. "My lord, panic will not make the water cleaner. But understanding might."
He set down his brush for a heartbeat and looked toward the glowing screen. "The people of the future have shown us the cause. The foulness beneath the city has seeped into the wells. That is the root of the sickness."
Zhang Zhongjing, who had been studying the screen with intense focus, finally spoke. His voice was low but firm.
"If what the future says is true, then the water itself may be carrying sickness into the households."
Zhuge Liang nodded. "Then we need not cleanse the entire earth beneath Chang'an. We need only prevent people from drinking the foulest water."
"Begin with the wells," Zhang Zhongjing said. "Test them one by one. The wells closest to refuse pits, latrines, slaughter yards, and stagnant channels should be closed first."
"And the people?" Liu Bei asked.
"Give them another source," Zhang Zhongjing replied. "River water, if necessary, but boil it first."
Zhuge Liang considered this. "Then we shall establish clean-water stations throughout the city. Boil the water, let it settle, then pass it through clean sand and charcoal before storing it in covered vessels."
Zhang Zhongjing nodded slowly. "I would prefer this water for the sick and for those recovering from illness. If it proves safe, we can extend the practice."
He paused, his eyes sharp. "And I want records. Which water came from which source, who drank it, and who fell ill. If the future has taught us anything, it is that patterns matter."
Zhuge Liang leaned forward slightly. "No latrine, refuse pit, or slaughter yard is to be placed beside a well. Where possible, the foul water should be led away from the wells and toward the lower ground outside the inhabited quarters."
"And what of the waste already in the city?" Liu Bei asked.
"What can be safely turned into fertilizer should be gathered and left to decompose outside the inhabited quarters," Zhuge Liang replied. "Night soil and animal dung should be collected separately. The rest must be hauled away little by little."
He traced a line in the dust on the table with his finger. "We begin with the markets, the barracks, and the palace district. Where people gather in greatest numbers. The canals and streams that run through the most crowded quarters get cut off from new filth."
Liu Bei considered the matter for a long moment.
"Then we begin with the wells."
Zhuge Liang inclined his head. "Yes."
"How many?"
"That depends on how many wells Chang'an has."
Liu Bei glanced toward the map of the city. His expression hardened.
"Tomorrow, I want every well in Chang'an recorded. Its location, its depth, who uses it, and what lies around it. If Heaven has shown us that our people have been drinking poison, then we will at least know where the poison enters their cups."
Zhang Zhongjing looked up from his notes, a faint but determined smile touching his face.
"Safe water," he murmured. "And safer ways of living. For 1 month, I will record which quarters suffer the most fever and diarrhea. If the sickness declines where the wells are closed, we will know we are moving in the right direction."
Zhuge Liang nodded. "Then we have our first step. Not a perfect city. But a safer one."
Meanwhile, in a different era, the atmosphere inside the Ganlu Hall was considerably more relaxed.
Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, sat upon his throne with a thoughtful expression. The revelation that the ancient site of Han Chang'an had been abandoned due to toxic water was not breaking news to him. In fact, it was precisely because the Sui Dynasty engineers had learned from the disastrous mistakes of the Han Dynasty that they had chosen to build the new capital on the elevated terrain of the Longshou Plateau.
When the Tang Dynasty took over the city, they inherited this urban planning. Li Shimin and his court had paid close attention to the management of human waste and sanitation. They did not just rely on good drainage. They enforced their hygiene standards with the brutal efficiency of imperial law.
If a citizen was caught throwing garbage over a wall into the street, they were immediately arrested and beaten with 60 heavy strokes of a wooden cane. If foul water from a residential block spilled out and contaminated a main avenue, the government did not just punish the residents. The supervising official in charge of that specific district would be dragged into court and formally charged with dereliction of duty.
Furthermore, the Tang government had expanded upon the Sui Dynasty foundation. They constructed an intricate network of open drainage channels alongside the roads specifically designed to flush away daily wastewater.
They did everything in their power to avoid repeating the disgusting tragedy of the Han era.
Looking at it from this perspective, Li Shimin felt a strong sense of pride. He firmly believed his Great Tang was doing a spectacular job at city management.
However, his pride was mixed with a sudden, creeping anxiety.
He was amazed that the future generations, separated from his time by over 1,000 years, could investigate this issue so thoroughly and explain the mechanics of groundwater contamination with such clarity. But their scientific breakdown also highlighted a terrifying future problem for his own empire.
As the Great Tang grew increasingly prosperous, the world would flock to their doors. Merchants from the western regions, traders from Central Asia, and envoys from the eastern seas would all converge on Chang'an. The population would explode.
Could his current city infrastructure handle that kind of influx?
His top ministers, Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, had recently submitted detailed reports projecting the rapid population growth expected during a long era of peace. Thinking about those staggering numbers, Li Shimin suddenly felt his confidence waver. The drainage ditches might not be enough.
The Emperor slowly turned his head. His piercing gaze landed on Yan Lide, the chief architect and head of the Directorate for Imperial Manufactories. The poor official was currently standing on the side, dutifully taking notes and trying to remain invisible.
Li Shimin did not say a word, but the pressure radiating from the throne was immense. He trusted that his architect would come up with a comprehensive upgrade plan before the city started smelling like the Han Dynasty.
[Lightscreen]
[Of course, everything we just discussed regarding water contamination is merely an educated theory explaining the constant, rolling sickness of the early Han period. However, once we cross the timeline into the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the situation changes entirely. We enter an era where plagues walk hand in hand with catastrophic disasters.
It is a brutal cycle that repeats endlessly. Floods drown the fields. Droughts scorch the earth. Violent winds tear down homes, and locust swarms blot out the sun, devouring every scrap of green.
Then comes the chaos of war, shattering the agricultural baseline and destroying the normal functions of society.
The lives of the common people are instantly plunged into misery.
They lose their homes, their food, and their safety.
They take to the roads as starving refugees.
The countless corpses of those who die from natural disasters, starvation, and battlefield slaughter are left unburied in the wilderness. Those rotting bodies become the perfect breeding ground for lethal pathogens.
They are the ultimate incubators for disease.
Once those pathogens saturate the environment, all it takes is a single spark, a slight shift in the weather or a gathering of weakened refugees, to ignite an uncontrollable plague.
This vicious cycle of war, starvation, and disease is exactly what triggered the ultimate tragedy of the late Han period, an era where historians famously noted that 9 out of every 10 houses were empty.
But it is precisely because these disasters were so terrifying that the people who chose to walk directly into the heart of the storm shine so brightly in the darkness of history.
The men and women who fought the plagues are truly invaluable.]
The visual interface on the light screen shifted. The maps of ancient cities faded away, replaced by a detailed portrait of a dignified elderly man holding a bamboo scroll.
[Lightscreen]
[Zhang Ji, courtesy name Zhongjing. He was born in Nanyang. Originally, his extended family clan was prosperous, boasting over 200 members.
However, after enduring the relentless impact of several consecutive plagues, his clan was decimated. Within a span of a few years, over 140 members of his family died in agony.
Out of those casualties, more than 100 perished specifically from Cold Damage fevers.
Watching his closest relatives suffer and die gruesome deaths left a permanent, devastating scar on Zhang Zhongjing's soul.
This gifted young man, who had always despised the corruption of officialdom and held zero interest in climbing the political ladder, finally found his true calling.
Standing amidst the graves of his family, he made a grand vow to the heavens: he would dedicate his entire life to curing the agony of Cold Damage.
From that moment on, the wealthy son of the Zhang clan transformed into a wandering healer. He liquidated his family fortunes to fund his medical journey.
In the chaotic, blood-soaked era of the late Han, devastating plagues always followed right behind natural disasters and marching armies.
And right behind those plagues, you would always find the shadow of Zhang Zhongjing, rushing into the danger zones to save whoever he could.
He spent 10 grueling years traveling the realm, gathering the medical wisdom of countless different schools and local healers.
In his twilight years, seeking a place to organize his vast knowledge, he settled as a guest in the remote Lingnan region.
There, hiding from the flames of war, he poured his entire soul into writing. The result was a monumental, era-defining masterpiece of clinical medicine: The Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases.
As we mentioned in a previous video, the original, complete manuscript of this great work was tragically lost to the chaos of war.
However, we are lucky that later generations of dedicated scholars managed to track down surviving fragments and painstakingly recompile his work into 2 separate volumes: the Shanghan Lun and the Jingui Yaolue.
Because of their immense effort, the vast majority of Zhang Zhongjing's medical discoveries survived the test of time.
Zhang Zhongjing eventually passed away in Lingnan. Decades later, after the Three Kingdoms fell and the realm was unified under the Jin Dynasty, the remains of this legendary doctor were finally brought back home to his native Nanyang.
The common people, deeply moved by his miraculous medical skills and his boundless compassion, pooled their resources to build the Shrine of the Medical Sage.
They offered incense and sacrifices to honor his memory, a tradition that has continued unbroken to this very day. Future generations universally revere him as the Medical Sage.
So, we must ask a critical historical question. Did Zhang Zhongjing actually succeed in his war against the plagues?
If we look at the short-term reality, the answer is undeniably no. He failed. Even after his masterpiece was published and his formulas were distributed, the plagues did not stop. The shadow of death continued to sweep across the land.
In the year 223, a plague struck Wancheng and Xudu, killing tens of thousands of people.
In the year 253, pestilence ravaged Xincheng, wiping out more than half of the entire local population.
In the year 273, an apocalyptic outbreak hit Jianye, claiming the lives of over 100,000 citizens.
Just like in the late Han era, behind these headline-grabbing disasters, there were undoubtedly countless smaller, undocumented outbreaks erasing isolated villages from the map.
However, if we zoom out and look at the entire grand tapestry of human history, my personal conclusion is clear. Zhang Zhongjing won. He won a decisive, overwhelming victory.
The Medical Sage was a true pioneer.
In an era where everyone else was terrified of disease, when local magistrates abandoned their posts and healthy people fled in blind panic, leaving the sick to die alone, he made a different choice.
He chose to walk backward against the fleeing crowds. He chose to declare open war on an invisible enemy.
For thousands of years after his death, the classic medical formulas recorded in his treatise spread across the vast lands of Shenzhou. His prescriptions pulled countless millions of people back from the brink of death.
Because of his foundational work, the Chinese civilization was able to endure thousands of different diseases without collapsing. We suffered countless plagues, but every single time, we healed, we adapted, and we grew stronger.
The legendary title of Medical Sage also served as a burning beacon for countless future generations of doctors. Because he existed, later physicians could no longer turn a blind eye to the suffering of the masses. Instead, they chose to follow his example.
They carried the welfare of the nation in their hearts and shouldered the survival of the civilization on their backs. It is precisely because of heroes like him that our entire ethnic group has been able to march forward through history with our heads held high.
To truly understand his impact, we have to look outward. 1,300 years after Zhang Zhongjing passed away, a terrifying pandemic known as the Black Death, driven by the bubonic plague, swept across the entire continent of Europe.
Over the course of 150 years, this apocalyptic disease slaughtered roughly 75 million people. The entire European civilization was helpless.
They had no medical defense.
They could do nothing but lie flat, endure the horror, and wait for the disease to naturally burn itself out by killing all its available hosts.
Eventually, that exact same terrifying disease traveled along the trade routes and struck the Ming Dynasty. But the situation in China played out very differently. The physicians of the Ming era looked back at the legacy of Zhang Zhongjing and chose to rise up and fight.
A gifted doctor from Jiangsu named Wu Youxing disregarded his own safety.
He walked directly into the infected zones to study the plague up close.
He wrote the groundbreaking book Treatise on Pestilence, where he accurately mapped out the transmission routes of the disease and developed new methods to treat it.
He essentially founded the modern school of epidemiology, and his actions successfully curbed the rampage of the plague within the Ming borders.
As a quick tangent, I should mention that the Black Death played a world-altering role in European history.
Because the population died in such staggering numbers, it shattered the authority of the Catholic Church.
The survivors, realizing that life was fragile and could end at any second, developed a very strong culture of living in the moment and indulging in extreme sensual pleasures.
From a psychological standpoint, you have to admit that the European reaction was strikingly similar to the hedonistic, party-hard lifestyle popularized by Cao Pi and his literary circle during the chaotic plague years of the late Han.
The human reaction to overwhelming trauma is fascinatingly consistent across different cultures.]
Inside the government hall of Chang'an, the broadcast finally paused.
Zhuge Liang slowly turned his head to the side. He looked at Master Zhang Zhongjing.
The elderly physician was staring at the now-dormant light screen with a level of intense, burning focus that Kongming had never seen before. Zhang Zhongjing did not utter a single word, but his gaze spoke volumes. His eyes were rimmed with deep red, and the slight tremor in his hands revealed the emotional tidal wave crashing through his heart.
He was listening to the future validate his entire existence.
"Practicing medicine to cure the present, and writing a book to heal 10,000 generations," Kongming said softly, his voice carrying clearly through the hall. "The title of Medical Sage is well-deserved, Master Zhang."
Kongming's praise was not empty flattery. It came from the very bottom of his heart. As a statesman who was trying to save the empire, he recognized a man who had fundamentally saved the people.
Hearing the strategist's words, the red-eyed Zhang Zhongjing let out a long, trembling sigh. The emotions swirling in his chest were nearly too heavy to bear. He raised his hands and offered a deep, respectful bow to Kongming.
Despite the grand praise from the future, the old doctor still felt a deep sense of sorrow. The future host had been very clear. Even after his book was published, plagues would continue to ravage the land in the short term. For a man whose singular goal was to save lives, this was a bitter pill to swallow.
His original motivation for studying medicine was simple and heartbreaking: he wanted to cure Cold Damage so that the common people would never have to experience the tragedy that had wiped out his family in Nanyang. Hearing the statistics from the future, knowing that a single outbreak in Jianye would kill 100,000 people, made his blood run cold. Just thinking about those numbers sent a shiver down his spine.
Kongming possessed sharp emotional intelligence. He saw the heavy guilt settling onto the old doctor's shoulders and instantly knew he needed to change the subject to pull Zhang Zhongjing out of his dark spiral.
With a slight flick of his feather fan, Kongming smiled brightly and shifted his tone to something much more casual and pressing.
"So, Master Zhang," Kongming asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Given the incredible importance of this world-saving medical text, I simply must ask... exactly when can I expect to read the finished manuscript?"
The deep, philosophical sorrow vanished instantly from Zhang Zhongjing's face. The heavy burden of historical legacy was replaced by the sheer, unadulterated panic of an author being asked about a missed deadline.
The old doctor waved his hands frantically, his dignified posture slipping into slight awkwardness.
"Soon, soon!" Zhang Zhongjing stammered, avoiding Kongming's gaze. "It is coming along! Just a few more revisions!"