Murong Jie came back when Xia Zian hired craftsmen to renovate the back garden.
After he came back, he went directly to the prime minister's residence to find Zi'an before returning home.
Zi'an was in the back garden, holding a blueprint he had drawn and instructing the craftsmen to build a small house by the lake.
The sun was very strong, and Zi'an used the blueprint to block the sun. He watched the tall figure walking towards him from the corridor, passing through Yayuan where Chen Linglong lived, and coming directly in front of her.
He looked exhausted, and he didn't know if it was the smell of sweat or blood. Zi'an raised his head and looked into his brown eyes. His eyes were deep and solemn, and his resolute face also looked a little heavier.
"Are you back?" Zi'an said. It had been almost ten days since he left. When he saw him again, he felt an indescribable attachment in his heart.
She thought it was because he was good-looking, powerful and rich. Men like him were generally more attractive.
She is an ordinary person and cannot escape the common practices.
"I have something to tell you. Are you free?" Murong Jie's voice was low and hoarse, and it was obvious that he was very tired from the journey.
Zi'an groaned, raised the blueprint, and pointed at the craftsman over there, "A bit busy."
"That's great when you're free. Let's talk over there." Murong Jie pointed to the side surrounded by willows and turned around without saying anything.
Zi'an secretly retracted the slight excitement he had just felt. No, some people may not be attractive even if they are handsome, powerful and rich, because they are too overbearing and dictatorial.
"What's wrong?" Zi'an asked after following him.
Murong Jie looked at her and said in a deep voice, "There was a biting incident in the Huaijiang military camp. Thirty-eight people were bitten, and thirty-seven of them showed symptoms of crazy biting. They died after being locked up. One of them had not yet shown any symptoms. I brought him back to the capital, but he started to go crazy on the way back to the capital."
Zi'an was shocked. "Where is the Huaijiang military camp? How far is it from the capital?"
"It is about 200 miles from the capital. Huaijiang Military Camp is the supply station for the troops stationed in the capital."
"This is to cut off the capital's retreat." Zi'an was horrified. If this so-called biting zombie was a conspiracy, the other party's intention was already very clear.
"It was discovered in time this time. If it had broken out on a large scale, the more than 30,000 people in Huaijiang would have been wiped out." Murong Jie was still in shock. This incident was discovered by accident. A soldier was found sneaking into other people's tents while on night patrol, and he was caught before anyone could take action.
However, everyone in the tent where he was was bitten to death by him.
The soldier immediately reported to the general of the Huaijiang garrison, who took action, counted the 38 people who had been bitten, detained them all, and then reported it in a secret letter. After receiving it, he immediately set off.
All but one of the thirty-eight men were killed.
He ordered his men to seal the bodies with lime first, and then bring the person who had no problems back to the capital.
Before returning to Beijing, he had already checked again to see if anyone in the army had been bitten.
"Where is that person? Take me to see him." Zi'an said immediately. She suspected from the beginning that it was not a zombie, but some kind of virus.
However, she had never seen a virus in modern times that would bite people immediately after being bitten. Even rabies would have a latent period before it would break out.
Moreover, rabies is not 100% contagious. The infection rate is only 30% to 70%. Moreover, rabies does not always attack humans. It only causes symptoms such as hydrophobia and mania, and then death. Of course, the mortality rate is 100%.
As far as we know, all those who were bitten were infected and died, except for the one who had not been sick before, but now has symptoms, which means that the infection is 100% and the mortality rate is also 100%.
Ni Rong is an exception, but it is not certain whether Ni Rong was bitten by those people.
Murong Jie took the blueprint from her hand and took a look. Seeing the wooden house by the lake on the blueprint, he asked in surprise, "You want to build a wooden house here?"
"Yes, my mother and Prime Minister Xia have divorced, so it is naturally not appropriate for her to live in Xiazhi Garden anymore," said Zi'an.
"Divorced?" Murong Jie was slightly startled. "It seems that a lot of things happened during the time when I was away from the capital."
Zi'an smiled, "It's all good news."
She looked at him, actually wanting to ask why the decree to grant the marriage had not come down yet. He had said before that the Empress Dowager would issue the decree soon.
But if she asked, wouldn't that be the same as Chen Liuliu's impatience? Moreover, if she asked first, wouldn't it be the same as proposing to him in modern terms
She is a reserved woman!
Besides, it’s not appropriate to ask now. He has so many worries and I’m afraid he doesn’t have time to take care of these.
Zi'an once again came to the small house in the suburbs of Beijing.
Su Qing and Xiao Tuo were both here, and there were several unfamiliar guards standing with swords in hand.
There was an iron cage in the middle of the yard, with a man locked in it. The man seemed to be asleep. Zi'an took a look and found that he was a young man of about seventeen or eighteen years old.
"He has just been drafted into the army for half a year and is stationed in Huaijiang." Su Qing explained, with a hint of gloom in his eyes. When he saw Su Qing in the past, he was mostly cheerful and lively, but today was different.
"He fell asleep?" Zi'an walked closer and smelled a odor on him, a stench similar to that of rotten meat.
"Giving him the medicine can help him sleep for a whole day," said Su Qing.
Zi'an said, "Open the cage and move him out."
Su Qing hesitated for a moment and looked at Murong Jie, who nodded, "Move him out first. You watch him closely and control him immediately if you find him waking up."
Su Qing and Xiao Tuo personally moved the soldier out, and the other guards set up a simple wooden bed in the yard. They set it up in the yard because the iron cage could only be placed in the yard. If there was any emergency, it could be immediately sent back into the cage and closed.
Zi'an first checked the bite wound for him. He was bitten on the arm. The wound had turned black and blood was flowing out. The smelly thing was the blood flowing out of the wound.
The wound was very small and only bit the flesh. The imprint is almost invisible now. Only one or two small cuts can be seen, which have just been imprinted into the flesh.
The skin near the small cut turned black and bulged with edema. Zi'an poked it gently with a willow branch, but the skin didn't bounce back up for a long time, indicating that the edema was very severe.
His breathing and pulse are abnormal. His pulse is beating very fast, his heart is beating very fast, and his breathing is rapid. Even though he is now unconscious, you can see that his heart is beating fast due to the rapid breathing.
His eyelids were bloodshot and the whites of his eyes had turned red. When he opened his mouth, he saw that his teeth were slightly black. There were two canines, but these two canines should have been there originally.
"He is from the capital. He joined the army when there was conscription at the end of last year and was assigned to Huaijiang. His father and brother had died in the battlefield. Originally, he did not need to join the army because he was the only male in his family. It was after he begged for two years that the Ministry of War accepted him. I still remember that when I asked him why he wanted to join the army, he answered me in a loud voice that he wanted to defend his country like his father and brother." Su Qing's voice was a little suppressed, because he was the one who allowed this new recruit to join the army, and he was also present when the Ministry of War was recruiting.
(End of this chapter)