bullyxtreme Chapter 164 Disaster Relief 1
Chapter 164 Disaster Relief 1
It is almost inevitable that a major epidemic will follow a major disaster; it is not uncommon for a plague to break out while a disaster is occurring.
In recent days, there have been small-scale clashes between soldiers and refugees in the city and outside the city almost every day. He Bi is so worried that his mouth is full of blisters, but he is helpless.
The main reason is the traditional belief that burial brings peace.
No matter how the officers and soldiers tried to persuade people to cremate the body, no one responded. They even refused to sprinkle quicklime before burying the body, saying it would disturb the deceased's passing.
No one knows who first told the family this in a dream, but everyone believed it wholeheartedly.
The disaster victims are not necessarily desperate and vicious, but they are extremely poor and truly hungry!
They were too poor to afford a coffin and too hungry to dig a hole.
The bodies were almost all wrapped in straw mats and buried shallowly.
Whether he can be reborn in the Pure Land is uncertain, but he has certainly provided sustenance for a pack of red-eyed stray dogs outside the city.
According to local legend, dogs with red eyes are cannibals and are messengers from the underworld. Even though the disaster victims still had thin porridge to drink, no one dared to mess with those dogs.
But by the time they were starving and wanted to eat the dog, they were already too weak to fight back. In a real confrontation, it was uncertain who would become whose food.
Those dogs, having eaten human flesh, have become fat and strong, even more ferocious than wolves, and have long since become a formidable force in packs.
Wild dogs used to bury corpses in the woods were rampant. Fearing attacks, the disaster victims dared not go near them, so the bodies were buried closer and closer to the people. It is no wonder that the plague spread.
The only thing He Bi can do now is to keep the disaster victims outside the city and prevent the plague from spreading into the city.
Even when the city gates were closed, soldiers were allowed to leave but not enter, and disaster relief supplies were hoisted down from the city walls.
When the disaster relief team arrived, they were met with this terrible situation. Xiao Yuan couldn't help but curse the Fifth Prince's relatives as useless.
This situation must be brought under control now, otherwise even if subsequent grain transport teams arrive, it will be of little use.
The emotions of the disaster victims are now unstable, and there have even been egregious incidents of people deliberately infecting others after contracting the disease, hoping to drag them down with them.
Instead of rushing into the city, Governor Xiao set up camp a mile away from the disaster victims and sent people to investigate.
In this era, clan consciousness was strong and there was a certain degree of reverence for officials and gentry. Therefore, the words of some respected clan leaders and village chiefs and neighborhood heads still carried some weight.
The disaster victims became agitated because they saw no hope of survival. If they knew that food had arrived and that there would be relief efforts, they would gradually return to normalcy.
After all, it's better to live a miserable life than to die a good death, and besides, dying now is really not a good death.
No matter how chaotic the disaster victims were, their instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm remained. The agents of the Eastern Depot were all strong and healthy, carrying knives and swords, so their words carried weight.
Soon, a dozen or so middle-aged men who were still relatively energetic and had some prestige among the disaster victims were brought before Xiao Yuan.
Upon hearing that it was an imperial envoy from the court to provide disaster relief, these people burst into tears and shouted "Long live the Emperor!"
No matter what, thanking the Emperor first is always the right thing to do.
They just didn't understand why these adults were covering their faces with white cloths. Did they think the adults smelled too bad?
Okay, they did smell awful.
Xiao Yuan didn't waste any words with them. First, he inquired about the disaster victims' food and illness conditions, and then about the handling of the dead.
This was a very pertinent question, and the group jostled each other like frogs trying to fill a hole, until they were all reprimanded before the oldest man finally gave his answer.
When the disaster first broke out, people were able to have two meals of thick porridge and a flatbread every day. Later, perhaps because food supplies in the city were also running low, the porridge became thinner and thinner, and the flatbread disappeared.
The old man, having lived through several major disasters, wiped away his tears and spoke very objectively.
"My lord, please don't blame the prefect for giving so little. The city has never stored much grain. It's already quite good that we can still get two bowls of thin porridge every day."
I remember that ten years ago, during the great flood, we were already eating each other's children just half a month after the disaster. Now, after nearly a month of disaster, we are still able to have two bowls of porridge to drink, and we are extremely grateful.
only……
Although a diet of porridge for a long time wouldn't kill him, it left him weak and eventually made him sick. It turned out...it turned out...
The old man choked up and dared not say any more, but even without him saying it, Xiao Yuan understood what he meant.
If one's body is weak, one will get sick; if one gets sick, one will die; and if many people die, a plague will break out.
But the word "plague" is absolutely taboo; once it's started being talked about, things will get out of control.
Even though many people in the crowd now understand that there is a plague, they still deceive themselves and prefer to believe that those people starved to death.
In desperate adversity, what keeps people alive is their spirit and spiritual sustenance. Once hope is lost and their breath dissipates, they will quickly perish.
After carefully understanding the situation, Xiao Yuan quickly formulated a strategy, which was basically just picking out the usable ones from the hundreds of strategies his wife had prepared.
These days, when Director Xiao flips through the manual, he is always amazed by its brilliance.
Although it's unclear why the lady, a woman confined to her chambers, is so knowledgeable about disaster relief, she certainly has many brilliant and ingenious strategies that he had never even considered.
The first step in disaster relief is to break the disaster into smaller groups, separating the affected people by village or town and assigning a person in charge to facilitate management.
Only by gathering a crowd can one cause trouble; the idea is that the law does not punish the masses, so the responsibility is not spread too thinly among them.
However, if the responsibility is clearly defined by breaking the whole thing down into smaller parts, those from the same village or group can nip any troublemakers in the bud.
However, before that, we must first establish our authority and bestow favors.
At Xiao Yuan's command, 200 archers were selected and lined up in a single file to advance into the forest. Soon, all the red-eyed man-eating dogs were hunted down.
Many of the disaster victims wept with joy upon seeing the more than one hundred red-eyed dogs of all sizes piled up like a small mountain.
Heaven knows how painful it was for them to watch their loved ones' bodies being torn apart and snatched away by these dogs, and some were even mauled to death by wild dogs while trying to retrieve their children's bodies.
Now, these harmful beasts have not only caused the disaster victims to kneel down and express their gratitude, but they have also come to acknowledge that these adults who came to provide disaster relief are not the vicious and ruthless villains of the past who only knew how to kill.
Taking advantage of this prestige, Xiao Yuan announced three major policies:
One approach was to manage the disaster victims separately by village, with the village head distributing food and cooking meals separately for each person each day.
Putting aside the fact that this would reduce queuing time and allow everyone to eat as soon as possible, the fact that men received two liang (a unit of weight) of grain and women and children received one liang was enough to make the disaster victims cheer.
Two ounces of dry rice can be cooked into half a pound of cooked rice, enough to feed a strong adult.
Women, the elderly, and children already eat very little; if they receive food according to this quota, they will live even better than in a year of bumper harvest.
However, the master also said that this decision came with conditions.
We're not letting you eat your fill; you're not just freeloaders. Except for the frail elderly and children, everyone else has to work.
Even so, it couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of the disaster victims.
What's there to be afraid of when working?
These farmers, who toiled in the fields, started helping adults pick up rice stalks and feed chickens and pigs when they were five or six years old.
Even in his old age, leaning on a cane, he was still working. When did he ever rest?
As long as we can survive, who's afraid of working if we have food to eat?
The reactions of the crowd were exactly what Xiao Yuan had expected.
He knew that a generous reward would surely attract brave men, and as long as the food was in place and everyone was well-fed, many things would become much easier to discuss.
As expected, with these two ounces of grain as a foundation, the other two policies, though not responded to, did not provoke much resistance.
Of course, the disaster victims were still full of rebellious sentiments, and it was only thanks to the appeasement of some clan elders that they did not cause any trouble.
These old men were shrewd and experienced. They reassured the young and strong men in the clan, telling them to first get some food and eat a few full meals so they would have the strength to make demands later.
Meanwhile, he went to Xiao Yuan to try to persuade the official to retract his decision.
After all, the idea of being buried in peace is a tradition passed down from our ancestors. Unless someone is a heinous villain, they wouldn't want their bones crushed and their ashes scattered.
The centralized care for patients is easier to accept, since it uses resources from one's own village, which is relatively safer.