At noon, hot winds swept yellow sand through a town deep in the Gobi Desert.
White warning flags hung outside the town. A few soldiers wearing white veils stood guard at the entrance, while quite a few cultivators walked its streets, all with Plague-Repelling Talismans hanging around their necks.
More than ten years ago, Empress Dowager Guo had reclaimed the Western Regions. Now, the territories beyond Fengzhou all belonged to Northern Zhou's foreign vassal states, administered from afar by the Protectorate General of Anxi. This was Hekou Town on the outskirts of Anxi City, where the plague had first been discovered. The patient was a Hu merchant who had come from Western Frost Country.
Although the Anxi army had reacted swiftly and sealed off the town, it could not stop the consequences of the frequent passage of merchant caravans from north and south. The plague had now spread to various places, with more than a hundred patients discovered in just a few days.
At that moment, dozens of plank beds stood inside a medical clinic in town. Men and women, old and young, lay on them, all bound with hemp ropes. Wails and groans rose one after another as cultivators who had rushed over from various places studied their conditions and attempted treatment.
Dressed in yellow-and-black Daoist robes, Lü Yan sat at a square table outside the clinic, using a Cinnabar Brush to write phrases such as "Repel Plague and Banish Evil" on Yellow-Paper Talismans. He then folded them and handed them to the commoners who had come to collect them.
Monk Kuya of the Ascetic Sect stood beside him in plain monk's robes, his expression deeply troubled.
"The Western Regions Protectorate has troops stationed here year-round. Once something happens and a report goes up, hundreds or thousands of cultivators