Two beauties bleed to subdue the mother insects, the prince simmers soup to warm his beloved

Zhen Meili shouted and jumped off the wooden dam to get the kerosene barrel.

On a rock by the riverbank, Shen Ling'er was using a silver knife to cut open a dead carp that she had just pulled up from the shallow water.

The knife tip sliced through the bulging belly of the fish; its internal organs had long since been eaten away.

A fist-sized, Nine-Segment Mother Insect with a hard black shell was curled up inside the fish's belly, its underside densely covered with newly hatched red eggs.

Upon seeing the light, the female insect's stinger suddenly shot upwards, spitting out a stream of foul-smelling Black Water. Shen Ling'er reacted quickly, using her medicine shovel to block it, and the surface of the bronze shovel was immediately corroded, leaving a honeycomb-like pattern of pits.

"Stop pouring kerosene! There's a mother worm at the bottom of the water!"

Shen Ling'er gripped the still-wriggling black-shelled mother worm tightly with tweezers, her face extremely pale.

"The Japanese had at least thirty large earthenware urns filled with the rotting flesh of living people submerged in the sewage channels beneath the walls of Hanseong, specifically to raise these things!"

As long as the mother insect in the sewage outlet doesn't die, no matter how much lime is washed down from upstream, it won't matter; the larvae will only burrow deeper into the ground when they see the lime!

No sooner had she finished speaking than a chaotic commotion of smashing and screams erupted from the vanguard camp on the south bank.

Murong Xue, spear in hand, charged forward with dozens of her personal guards. Several scratches stained her armor, and her forehead was covered in sweat.

"Sister Shen! Has the antidote been prepared yet?"

The forty-odd auxiliary soldiers responsible for fetching water all confessed, their wrists covered in red lines. Now they're acting like wild dogs, biting anyone they see. My mother ordered men to tie them all to trees with rope.

But there are still several hundred men in the camp who have just drunk well water. If we delay for another half an hour, the camp will break up on its own, even before the Japanese attack!

Shen Ling'er threw away the tweezers in her hand, turned around and frantically searched through her medicine box, pouring more than a dozen packets of herbs onto the oilcloth, but her hand stopped in mid-air.

Common realgar, mugwort, and tripterygium wilfordii are only effective against newly burrowed insect larvae.

However, if the medicine was intended to be poured into the earthenware urns at the sewage outlet of Hanseong to kill those black-shelled mother worms by flowing back into the turbulent river, the potency would dissipate completely within ten steps of entering the water.

Meng Jiuning, who had been squatting nearby grinding herbs, stopped pounding the medicine.

She looked down at the herbs on the oilcloth, then looked up at the dark mass of the Hanseong Water Gate in the distance, and gritted her teeth.

She reached out and unfastened the silver bracelet on her left wrist, slowly rolling up her purple gauze sleeves to above her elbows, revealing a delicate forearm that was as white as jade, with even the blue veins clearly visible.

"Soaking herbs in water won't kill the Nine-Segment Mother Insect; they only feed on blood."

Meng Jiuning took out a small, curved knife used for shaving herbs from her waist, ran her fingertip along the sharp blade, and turned to look at Shen Ling'er.

"Go and bring over that copper basin used for boiling medicine, and add three catties of herbal ash and two qian of arsenic."

I grew up in the Dali Royal Palace, where people soaked my body in Hundred Poisons Herb from Southern Frontier. My blood was extremely toxic to these insects, but also the most tempting bait.

Mix my blood into the medicinal mud and stuff it into the drain. The female worms will smell it and scramble to eat it, and within half a quarter of an hour they'll be fighting each other to death in the jar."

"Are you crazy?!"

Shen Ling'er grabbed Meng Jiuning's wrist, which was holding the curved knife.

"Thirty large earthenware urns, with the fresh water of the Han River seeping upwards, must be filled with at least three large bowls of blood to be enough as a medicinal ingredient!"

You were already physically weak; with all this blood loss, you'll be a dried-up corpse before the army even reaches Hanseong!

"That's better than the entire army dying of thirst on the riverbank and the prince being defeated by those Japanese pirates."

Meng Jiuning withdrew her hand without even frowning, and with her right hand holding the curved knife, she made a two-inch-long cut on her left arm.

"As long as Your Highness can protect Dali, I'm willing to die."

Besides, I'm already his woman; dying for him is worthwhile.

All I saw was...

Dark red blood beads immediately welled up and dripped into the copper basin below, emitting a strange, faint fragrance.

The bloodworms that were crawling around on the mudflats smelled the aroma and swarmed towards the edge like madmen.

Shen Ling'er watched as the blood flowed out more and more rapidly, her lips turning white from biting them.

She remembered that her grandfather had indeed mentioned a similar method.

She didn't offer any further advice. Instead, she pulled a three-inch-long pure silver needle from her hair, rolled up the pale yellow sleeve of her left hand to reveal her equally white and smooth forearm, and plunged it into the Quchi acupoint on the inside of her elbow, twisting her wrist.

Two streams of warm blood flowed into the copper basin at the same time, converging at the bottom.

Meng Jiuning's expression changed, and she stretched out her right hand to stop him:

What are you doing?

You're a legitimate healer, and you haven't practiced the Myriad Poison Body " technique, so what's the point of bloodletting!

"Who says it's useless!"

Shen Ling'er held onto her arm tightly, refusing to let her touch her; a fine layer of cold sweat had already seeped from her forehead.

"Since I was ten years old, I have tested all three hundred kinds of poisonous herbs in Medicine King Valley with my own body. In terms of the medicinal properties in my blood, it is no less than the poison jars in your Southern Frontier!"

You put in one and a half bowls, I'll put in one and a half bowls.

It's all for my husband, so neither of us should owe the other a favor!

Blood dripped into the basin.

At first, the blood flowed down in a continuous stream, but later, their breathing became lighter and lighter, and the color on their lips gradually faded, leaving them as white as rice paper.

The basin was half full of blood. Meng Jiuning's vision blurred, and she swayed before collapsing onto the cold mud. She reached for the pestle to stir the herbal powder, but her elbow gave way and slammed against the stone slab with a thud, knocking the medicine jar to the ground.

Shen Ling'er reacted swiftly, rushing over and tightly embracing the medicine jar that was about to tip over.

Her hand was pressed against Meng Jiuning's blood-soaked palm.

Two women who usually sat half a foot apart in the carriage now had their ten fingers clenched tightly together, soaked in a thick, sticky blood-soaked paste.

"Yun-meizi..."

Shen Ling'er, panting heavily, stuffed the thirty rolled-up blood medicine balls into an oilcloth bag and handed it to Yun Shuyue, who was already terrified.

"Stuff it into the vent hole of the earthenware urn under the iron gate's gate... Go quickly..."

Yun Shuyue snapped out of her daze, wiped away her tears, and without saying a word, took the heavy oilcloth bag, tied it around her waist, and led six of her best swimmer scouts.

He plunged into the swift, icy Han River, silently following the underwater currents towards Hanseong's sewage outlet.

On the shore, everyone was staring at the river.

After the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the upper reaches of the Han River, which had been bubbling with black smoke, suddenly erupted as if in a pot of boiling water.

A series of rapid cracking sounds came from the bottom of the water; it was the sound of hundreds or even thousands of black-shelled mother insects fighting over the poisonous blood in the earthenware jar, frantically tearing at each other and crashing against the jar's walls.

Immediately afterwards, a large patch of dark green, foul-smelling grease surged up from the direction of the sewage outlet, and countless pieces of the mother insects, bitten in two, floated on the surface of the water.

As soon as the mother insect died, the forty-odd auxiliary soldiers tied to the trees at the camp suddenly stopped roaring. The dark red blood lines that had been burrowing toward their hearts under the skin of their wrists visibly withered and fell off as strips of blackish-gray dead skin.