Passing on Leprosy, Selling Madness

Leprosy was one of the oldest and most terrifying chronic infectious diseases known to humanity. It had a long history of outbreaks and a wide range of transmission.

To understand just how dangerous it was, consider the company it kept: the world's three great chronic infectious diseases—leprosy, syphilis, and tuberculosis.

Leprosy was terrifying for two reasons. First, it caused a high rate of disability. In its late stages, it could deform the body and cause fingers, noses, and other body parts to fall off, making sufferers look horrifying, like monsters in horror movies.

The other reason was that there was no specific medicine to treat it, and it was contagious. It could spread through contact with bodily fluids or through droplets, so leprosy sufferers faced severe discrimination and had to be isolated.

That wealthy young master and his ilk were a case in point. The physician called in to examine him might not have understood the disease's pathology, but experience told him it could bring disaster upon the whole family. He wanted the young man driven out—in plain terms, to prevent the disease from spreading.

Records of the Court and the Countryside contained an account of a folk custom concerning leprosy: In the Chaozhou area of Min, many women contracted the disease. After falling ill, they would briefly regain their radiant beauty, their faces blooming like peach blossoms. They took advantage of this to seduce men and sleep with them, passing the disease to their partners and escaping death themselves. The men they slept with were certain to die. Once a woman had passed on the disease, she could marry someone else and live an ordinary life, just like anyone else. The people of the time called this "passing on leprosy, selling madness."

This was merely a folk tale, with no scientific basis, but it showed how terrified people were of leprosy in those days.

No wonder the Imperial Medical Academy had made such a fuss after hearing there was leprosy in the Eight Great Alleys. It was a truly terrifying disease.

Leprosy was linked to damp-heat toxins and often originated in the humid, hot southern regions of Min and Guang. Northerners knew little about it, but the Imperial Medical Academy was, after all, the nation's foremost medical institution. Its people knew more than ordinary folk, so naturally they were worried.

The Eight Great Alleys, a district of brothels and pleasure houses, was a breeding ground for infectious diseases. If leprosy spread through the Capital City, it would be a catastrophe.

Lin Shou had considered this too. He lived a detached life and might not have cared about the Capital City's people, but it would still be bad if the disease ravaged the whole city.

The people might flee, the shops might close, and the quality of life could plummet. How could he enjoy himself then?

So this time, Lin Shou had, for once, intervened in other people's business and helped the authorities uncover the leprosy den.

Lin Shou watched from the shadows as the Imperial Medical Academy and the Three Judicial Offices sealed up Red Person Hall. They would probably investigate the entire Eight Great Alleys next. Then he vanished into the night and returned to the Corpse-Stitching Shop.

The next day.

As expected, rumors spread through the streets. The Eight Great Alleys had been temporarily sealed off for investigation. Something this big was bound to set the Capital City's gossip-hungry crowds alight.

The "Heavenly Punishment" disease was soon explained to every commoner. Hearing that it could leave people disabled sent everyone into a panic.

Then all kinds of clever rogues came out to cause trouble.

Over the next few days, Lin Shou saw even more swindlers on the streets. They hawked medicines that supposedly cured Heavenly Punishment, taking advantage of the crisis to make a fortune. Crowds of people flocked to buy them.

Later, when the authorities began cracking down and arresting vendors of fake medicine, the swindlers changed their pitch. They started selling "preventive" medicines for Heavenly Punishment. "My medicine doesn't cure the disease, it prevents it. The authorities can't arrest me for that, can they?" Once again, crowds of people flocked to buy.

That was how it went for people trying to make a living at the bottom of society: there were always clever ones who found loopholes and made money.

Later still, Tongrentang, the biggest pharmacy in the Capital City, caught wind of it. They thought, "That works? I'm the leader of the medicine trade. How can I let you take all the money?" So, naturally, they started selling it too.

After spending a little silver to grease palms at the government offices and consulting the Imperial Medical Academy, Tongrentang began selling medicine as well. Lin Shou even bought some and analyzed its ingredients using the Compendium of Materia Medica. It was mostly disinfecting medicinal herbs such as realgar, with ingredients much like the disinfectant used by the Imperial Medical Academy.

Every day now, people from the Imperial Medical Academy could be seen on the streets, dressed in sackcloth protective suits as they walked through the Capital City, spraying disinfectant.

Every morning when Lin Shou opened his shop, he saw the streets outside shrouded in mist.

This went on for four or five days. Then the situation improved, and the neighborhood shops started opening for business again.

When an official from the Bureau of Corpse Management brought a body to Lin Shou's shop, Lin Shou gave them some cooling tea and asked how they would stitch up the body if the person had died of leprosy.

The official said that anyone who died of plague or disease was sent to the Six Afflictions Pavilion, where staff handled the body. By the time it came out, it would already have been stitched up.

They didn't burn the bodies of people who had died of infectious diseases? They buried them whole? Lin Shou thought it was strange how much emphasis they placed on burial rites.

Still, he learned something useful.

There were corpse stitchers inside the Six Afflictions Pavilion too.

He had never heard anyone mention that before. After his initial job training, he had been sent to one of the twenty-four corpse-stitching shops in the Capital City. He had never heard of anyone being sent to the Six Afflictions Pavilion.

In any case, the Heavenly Punishment case was over.

Red Person Hall had been sealed, the Eight Great Alleys investigated, and all the patients with Heavenly Punishment sent to the Six Afflictions Pavilion for isolation. Thankfully, the outbreak had been contained in time and hadn't spread.

The one thing Lin Shou couldn't quite understand was why the young male prostitute Xu Linfang had been allowed to remain in Red Person Hall when she was so sick.

Brothels had no compassion, and actors no loyalty.

It was a harsh saying, but Lin Shou couldn't believe a place that raised children to make money by turning them into catamites would willingly support a leprosy patient for free.

That was even more absurd than the United States invading Iraq in the name of world peace. No one with half a brain would believe it.

Unless Red Person Hall had deliberately kept an infected person there, hoping she would spread leprosy through the Capital City... It looked like another rebel organization was behind this.

Tsk. There were far too many terrorists in the Capital City. Just a few days ago, a White Lotus Sect member had slaughtered people in the streets. Now someone else was poisoning the city.

Lin Shou shook his head and thought, If you'd just stormed the Forbidden City and killed His Majesty, I'd have applauded and tossed you a couple of coins as a reward.

But waging biological warfare was wrong. It was downright inhumane. If you emptied the whole Capital City, how was he supposed to live afterward? What would he eat and wear?

Now that his own interests were at stake, he couldn't just stand by. Besides...

Lin Shou silently recited the Classic of Burial, feeling the qi circulate through his body.

One full cycle added twenty days' worth of cultivation.

His cultivation was advancing even faster now.

The methods in the Classic of Burial could use feng shui arrangements to affect the speed of cultivation. And of course, feng shui wasn't limited to the small space inside Lin Shou's Corpse-Stitching Shop.

It extended outward: to the whole street around Caishikou, the entire Capital City, and the vast lands of the Great Jing Dynasty, with their mountain ranges and rivers, their fated lands and outstanding people. Everything beneath his feet, and everyone and everything on that land, influenced Lin Shou's feng shui.

A few days ago, leprosy had threatened the Capital City, and the feng shui had shown ill omens. Now the danger had passed and lives had been saved, so the feng shui pattern naturally improved, and the Classic of Burial's cultivation speed increased along with it.

Lin Shou had no desire to be a hero. He only wanted to cultivate in peace. As it happened, doing a few good deeds along the way could improve his cultivation speed.

Afterward, once the effects of leprosy had completely faded, Lin Shou returned to his daily routine of cultivation, stitching corpses, and tending to his feng shui.

Before he knew it, more than half a month had passed.

The Examination Hall in the Capital City had opened. The time for the Autumn Examination had arrived.