Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 508 - 459: Mold

Chapter 508: Chapter 459: Mold
"I know." Li Ang lifted his head, managing a faint smile. "How about Teacher Qiu?"
"She has already gone to sleep."
"Then you should rest too. Everyone has been very tired recently. I’ll take care of things here."
Li Ang patted his disciple’s shoulder and sent the young girl back to the temporary dormitory upstairs. He himself held a cup of hot tea and stepped outside.
The autumn wind was bleak, and leaves fluttered wildly. No common people could be seen on the streets, only soldiers and Government Officials wearing masks and various armbands, going door-to-door distributing meat, grain, and today’s plague .
The air was thick with a pungent sulfur smell. Although unpleasant, it was still better than the terrible stench that had enveloped the cityscape a while ago.
"Want some?" a rough voice called from nearby. Li Ang turned his head and saw Yan Yundang, clad in armor and holding a horse lance, standing at the doorway like an ordinary old soldier. His left hand held a cow-horn wine flask.
"No, thanks." Li Ang shook his head. "I just had some tea."
"Of all the Yu Country people I’ve met, you’re the least typical." Yan Yundang shook his head, single-handedly opened the wine flask, and took a large gulp of strong liquor. "A teetotaler. Not like an Academic Palace Disciple, more like an ascetic monk."
"I prefer to stay sober." Li Ang smiled faintly. Perhaps it was a habit from his identity as an Otherworld Doctor, as he seldom drank alcohol. Even at Song Shaoyuan’s wedding, where he attended as a groomsman, he only had a few drinks. "Although I don’t drink, I actually have good alcohol tolerance. Doctors disinfect their hands with ethanol daily. The alcohol absorbed through the skin goes directly to the liver, which then constantly upregulates enzymes (alcohol dehydrogenase) to eliminate the ethanol, effectively increasing alcohol tolerance."
"You always talk in ways ordinary people can’t understand. Not drinking takes away a lot of life’s pleasures." After swallowing the liquor, Yan Yundang smacked his lips and squinted. "The lives of Yu Country people are too hard. Before the invention of the Spiritual Energy Locomotive, before the invention of allicin and penicillin, every departure could be a permanent one. With emotions that couldn’t be expressed, drinking was the only solace.
"Hence, there are farewell drinks, reunion drinks, bridal departure drinks, and send-off drinks..."
He paused for a moment and continued calmly, "In the autumn of the second year of Tian Shou, the Turkic Army pressed our borders, violating the Yu Country’s frontiers. I left my pregnant wife to join the military expedition and was stationed in Luanshi City.
"The Turkic cavalry cut through the Northern Territory relentlessly; cities fell one by one, and Luanshi City became an isolated stronghold.
"The siege lasted five months. Arrows and grain ran out. Comrades fell one by one around us. We had to stand on the city walls, throwing stones at enemies trying to climb, to protect the few remaining Telekinesis Masters.
"The deputy general who cursed the Turkic barbarians with you one day would be dead by the next morning, having silently succumbed to diseases like blood sores.
"With no general, deputy general, or colonel left, the last three hundred comrades in the city gathered to discuss. Finally, they selected twenty of us, including me. Under the cover of night, we traveled light, riding to the Turkic Army’s rear to burn their grain and grass.
"The plan succeeded. Flames from the burning grain and grass soared into the sky. Turkic curses, hoofbeats, and the sound of Telekinesis Control Devices slicing through the air filled my ears. Arrows rained down like a scattered storm. Our group of twenty charged the enemy lines, and in the end, I was the only one to escape.
"The next morning, the Turkic Army finally retreated. Soon after, a Scout from our rear brought a letter from my hometown—my wife had a smooth delivery; mother and child were safe.
"That day, I had the best drink of my life."
He gazed at the silent city before him, a city that had witnessed too many partings and deaths in recent times, then turned to the silent Li Ang and said calmly, "Heavenly Dao cycles; life and death are natural. Don’t be too hard on yourself."
"Alright." Li Ang nodded, a realization dawning on him. He laughed. "Besides being a doorman, when did you start moonlighting as a psychotherapist? And why aren’t you wearing a mask?"
"Good intentions taken for granted." Yan Yundang rolled his eyes but still dutifully took out a mask from his pocket and put it on. "I’m a Martial Arts Grandmaster; how could I get sick so easily?"
"Isn’t that what you said before you developed anemia?" Li Ang unapologetically burst Yan Yundang’s bubble and said solemnly, "The plague is no small matter. We must take it very seriously."
"I get it, I get it." Yan Yundang impatiently waved his hand. "I’m on guard here. You go back and sleep."
After his chronic anemia was cured, Yan Yundang was still one of the strongest Martial Arts Grandmasters in the world. With him as the doorman, Li Ang could indeed sleep peacefully.
However, he still couldn’t sleep.
To curb the plague, relying solely on isolation measures to cut off the chain of human-to-human transmission wasn’t enough. A specific drug capable of treating the plague had to be developed as soon as possible to rapidly reduce the death toll and remove the plague from its status as an incurable disease.
Li Ang dragged his feet to the basement and casually flipped a switch on the wall, turning on the talisman lamp.
The light came on, revealing a basement packed with experimental instruments like test tubes, flasks, and centrifuges. The blackboard was densely covered with various data.
The drugs for the plague included aminoglycosides, fluoroquinolones, third-generation cephalosporins, tetracycline, gentamicin, kanamycin, and amikacin.
However, for the three types of plague, streptomycin was still the most effective, with the most pronounced results. It was an antibiotic extracted from the culture fluid of Streptomycetes. It acted on the ribosomes within bacteria, inhibiting protein synthesis and disrupting the integrity of the bacterial cell membrane, thereby killing the bacteria.
Streptomycetes are primarily found in soil, and there are thousands of species. We need to find suitable ones, then culture, separate, and identify them, and finally determine if their fermentation liquid is effective. The screening process alone might require preparing over ten thousand, possibly even tens of thousands of strains.
Li Ang silently walked to the lab bench. In fact, ever since successfully preparing artemisinin for the Suzhou Water Poison outbreak, he had been secretly conducting experiments to prepare streptomycin.
But the task was enormous. He had dispatched Ink Silk Clones to collect thousands of soil samples from different regions, trying to find usable Streptomycetes, but to no avail.
This led Li Ang to gradually suspect that the soil in Yu Country wasn’t suitable and that he might need to collect samples from further afield.
BUZZ.
Just as he was about to continue screening strains, the giant, locust-shaped Nearby Worm on the table let out a loud BUZZ.
"Hmm?" Li Ang paused.
Due to the severe plague in Shuo Province, outside communications were cut off. Contact with the outside world was only possible through letters and the Nearby Worm. It’s late; who would be ’calling’ now?
Li Ang flicked the Nearby Worm’s antennae and connected the call. "Hello."
"Is this Li Ang?" Sacrificial Officer Chen Danqiu’s voice came from the other end. The background was filled with the murmur of a group conversation, some voices sounding familiar—like Minister of the Secretariat Xue Ji, Minister Pei Su, and also, the Emperor of Yu, Li Shun.