Zhuge Liang's gentle question about the book deadline had been nothing more than a friendly tease.
He knew perfectly well that the timeline had changed. The Medical Sage's tragic fate, as later generations would tell it, had already been rewritten.
Zhang Zhongjing no longer needed to run off to the remote, malaria-infested swamps of Lingnan just to find somewhere quiet enough to write. Liu Bei had stepped in as the ultimate patron. The Lord of Shu gave the physician complete political protection, unlimited funding, and an entire support staff to help him compile his medical masterpiece.
With that kind of backing, Zhang Zhongjing could probably have written the book while sitting in the middle of a battlefield and still had someone nearby reminding him to drink tea.
Thanks to his access to the project, Zhuge Liang had even been allowed to review draft pages of the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases.
And Zhuge Liang was not merely a military genius. He was also a terrifyingly competent logistics manager.
With Zhang Zhongjing's explicit permission, the strategist went through the medical text and selected several herbal prescriptions that he considered especially useful. He focused on formulas that used cheap, readily available ingredients but could produce noticeable results quickly. Then he had those prescriptions standardized throughout the army.
During the current campaign from Yongzhou and Liangzhou into the Guanzhong region, the army's supply wagons carried far more than weapons and grain.
They carried tons of medicinal herbs.
Alongside the standard Cinnamon Twig Decoction, used to warm the body and improve circulation, the medical stores contained an entire collection of targeted treatments.
There was Ephedra Decoction for soldiers suffering from severe chills and an inability to sweat.
There was Thorowax Root Decoction for clearing wind pathogens and dealing with stubborn, recurring fevers.
For soldiers collapsing under the blazing sun with flushed faces, heavy sweating, and severe heatstroke, the medics could brew huge vats of White Tiger Decoction to cool them down.
And for troops crossing contaminated mountain streams or shivering through waves of malarial chills, they had the legendary Blue Dragon Decoction ready to go.
The results of this aggressively organized medical strategy were almost absurd.
During the entire grueling campaign to pacify the Three Qins, tens of thousands of soldiers marched through brutal weather and miserable terrain. Yet the total number of deaths from non-combat illnesses could be counted on two hands.
For an ancient army. That was practically a statistical miracle.
The effect on morale was immediate. Soldiers marched with confidence because they knew that getting sick did not automatically mean being abandoned to fate. Packets of powdered medicine were tucked into their armor. Boiling cauldrons of herbal soup waited at every camp. And sitting back at headquarters was Zhang Zhongjing himself, the actual Medical Sage, personally overseeing the army's medical supplies.
It was the ultimate psychological armor.
The soldiers knew their lord was spending money on swords, horses, food, and medicine in roughly equal amounts. More importantly, they knew that if they collapsed from a fever, someone was going to do something about it.
What soldier would not fight like hell for a lord who cared that much about keeping him alive?
Even with Kongming's lighthearted prod about the manuscript, the other warlords in the hall could not stop staring at Zhang Zhongjing. Their eyes were wide, brimming with something that bordered on awe.
They were all thinking the same thing.
A saint. A man revered by generation after generation, long after we are dust. And here he sits, drinking tea at our very table.
Even Ma Chao, who had never been known for holding his tongue, was struck speechless. As a cavalry general who had spent his whole life fighting on the harsh western frontier, he knew better than most what a good physician was worth. He had seen so many brave men survive a battle only to waste away from a fever a week later. To think that Lord Liu Bei had secured the service of someone so legendary... it boggled his mind.
It reminded him of just a few days ago, when he and Zhang Fei had sat over wine and the big man had ranted about Hua Tuo, the great healer Cao Cao had put to death over a headache. Thinking of it now, Ma Chao felt a surge of disdain toward the north. Cao Cao killed a healer like that? The gap between him and Lord Liu was wider than the western mountains.
Zhang Fei, meanwhile, was staring at the light screen with a very specific, gleeful focus.
His eyes locked onto one line: In the year 273, an apocalyptic outbreak hit Jianye, claiming the lives of over 100,000 citizens.
He slapped his thigh hard and let out a loud, dramatic sigh.
"Tragic!" he boomed, his voice thick with theatrical sorrow. "Truly tragic! Who could have imagined that Sun Shiwan would finally meet his match, not on the battlefield, but in a plague?"
He sounded devastated.
His face told a completely different story. His eyebrows were practically dancing. His eyes had narrowed into gleeful little crescents.
Ma Chao blinked at him. "Shiwan? Plague? What are you talking about?"
Liu Bei rubbed his temples. "Yide, do not mock our ally."
"Alliance is all well and good, Big Brother," Zhang Fei said, grinning unabashedly, "but you cannot tell me you never thought it. One hundred thousand men lost to sickness? It sounds familiar, does it not?"
Jian Yong stroked his beard. "Ah, yes. One hundred thousand. A very specific number, is it not?"
Ma Chao's eyes went wide. "Wait. Am I missing something? What is this about one hundred thousand?"
Zhang Fei leaned in, lowering his voice as if sharing a great secret. "Mengqi, let me tell you something. Keep this between us, alright? Our brother Sun Shiwan once led exactly one hundred thousand of his finest troops to take Hefei. One hundred thousand! And do you know what happened?"
"He took the city?" Ma Chao guessed.
"He got trashed!" Zhang Fei howled with laughter. "He got beaten and chased all the way back across the river by Zhang Liao and a handful of men! Ever since then, we call him Sun Shiwan, Brother One Hundred Thousand, because that is how many men he needs just to get beaten in a battle! And now the future says Jianye will lose one hundred thousand to sickness? The man cannot even catch a break!"
Ma Chao burst out laughing. "Oh, so that is why you look so pleased! This incompetence level is truly something else!"
"My lord," Jian Yong cut in, still deadpan, "if Jianye is fated to lose 100,000 to plague, then surely we have a moral duty to go there first? We could call it a humanitarian rescue mission. Save the One Hundred Thousand. It practically names itself!"
The whole hall erupted into banter, half-serious, half-joking, debating whether they could frame a campaign as public health work.
Amidst the noise, Zhang Zhongjing let out a long breath and finally relaxed. The generals had been staring at him as if he were a statue in a temple, and he had found it deeply uncomfortable. He was still here. He still had work to do.
But as the laughter died down, his gaze drifted back to the light screen. His expression grew grave.
"75 million," he whispered to himself.
The number was so vast it hardly seemed real. He had spoken with Kongming once, over tea, about the empire's population. Even counting all the unregistered folk, the hidden households, the tenant farmers, the clans and their retainers, the entire realm was likely no more than 60 million souls.
And this Black Death across the sea had killed more than that.
Zhang Zhongjing felt a cold prickle of sweat on his brow.
"75 million," he murmured again. "Nearly 150 years of it. How many generations lived in fear?"
The joking slowly faded. The men around the table fell still, watching him. They began to understand why the future called him a Sage. He was not just treating fevers. He was fighting an enemy that could swallow whole civilizations.
He had always known plagues were terrible. He had dedicated his life to them. But he had never truly grasped their full, apocalyptic scale.
He picked up his brush. He dipped it, and carefully wrote two phrases on his bamboo slip.
Epidemiology.
Transmission routes.
He set down his brush for a moment, thinking. The future had tossed those words out as if they were common knowledge. But to him, they were like a lantern in the dark. If he could understand how sickness traveled, if he could stop it before it even began, then maybe he could save so many from suffering.
He looked up, his gaze steady and determined.
"If we know how it spreads," he said, "then we can stop it before it spreads. If we can stop it, then no one else needs to lose their family the way mine was lost."
He dipped his brush again.
"Write it down," he said, as much to himself as to anyone. "We start here. And we do not stop."
---
Inside the opulent Ganlu Hall, Sun Simiao sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the glowing light screen. The legendary Medicine King of the Tang felt a profound sense of reverence as Zhang Zhongjing's story unfolded before him.
After a long pause, he slowly turned his head and found Emperor Taizong already watching him. Li Shimin's eyes were bright and expectant, with an unmistakably competitive edge. Sun Simiao sighed inwardly. He knew exactly what the Emperor was thinking. He could practically read it on his face.
Jealousy.
Not long ago, the light screen had revealed the precise formula for Cinnamon Twig Decoction, and Li Shimin had instantly grasped its immense value to his armies. Now the future was singing the eternal praises of Zhang Zhongjing, a man serving under Liu Bei, no less. And Li Shimin was not about to let a warlord from the Three Kingdoms era outshine the Great Tang. He wanted his own Medical Sage. He wanted his own legacy to stand alongside Zhang Zhongjing's for all time.
Sun Simiao was not easily intimidated by imperial ambition. He cared far more about medicine than the Emperor's pride. Without a word, he simply turned his head back toward the light screen, offering the most powerful man in the empire a clear view of the back of his head.
He pulled out his small leather-bound notebook, picked up his brush, and began copying down every new term and concept he saw. He would take these back to his clinic and study them properly.
Li Shimin blinked, momentarily taken aback by the complete lack of response. Then he huffed softly, though there was no real anger in it.
"Master Sun," he prompted, leaning forward slightly. "You have no comment? No thought for how we might match such greatness?"
Sun Simiao did not even lift his eyes from the page.
"Your Majesty," he said calmly, "medicine is not a contest to be won or lost against men long dead. It is a duty to the living."
"But think of the glory!" Li Shimin insisted. "Zhang Zhongjing served one lord, yet his name has echoed through the ages. We have the entire realm at our disposal. Surely we can accomplish something even greater."
Sun Simiao paused and finally looked up.
"Greater things are certainly needed, but not for glory. I will be honest with you, Your Majesty: treating great pestilence is not where my own greatest strength lies. I have spent my years studying the body's balance, prolonging life, and compounding complex remedies. The future, however, has given us a warning we would be foolish to ignore."
He set down his brush and folded his hands over the notebook.
"Those plagues do not respect borders. If we expand our maritime trade and open our ports to the wider world, ships will arrive from every corner of the ocean. Merchants, envoys, sailors, and travelers will come from lands we have never seen. Wherever people travel, sickness can travel with them."
Li Shimin's expression gradually became more serious.
"We could encounter diseases our people have never known," Sun Simiao continued. "If we wait until such diseases arrive before preparing, we may face something as terrible as what struck the West."
"You speak of the Black Death."
"I do."
Sun Simiao's gaze returned to the light screen.
"What frightens me most is not simply the disease itself, but what the screen showed us about the people who suffered through it. Some became so terrified and desperate that they simply gave up. They lay down and waited for death."
His fingers rested against the leather cover of his notebook.
"That is not medicine. That is surrender. I refuse to accept that we must simply stand aside and watch our people die when there may be something we can do."
Li Shimin fell silent, his fingers tapping slowly against the armrest of his throne. His gaze returned to the light screen, and the direction of his thoughts began to change. The Emperor who had wanted his own Medical Sage was now considering something much larger.
"The disaster shook the authority of the Catholic Church," he murmured. "A power so great that it could influence the fate of an entire continent, yet when disaster came, it could not protect its own people. Its authority weakened as the population suffered."
He looked toward Sun Simiao.
"We already trade with the Arab lands. We hear stories of kingdoms and empires far beyond the western seas. If a single disease can shake the foundations of an entire continent, then this is not merely a matter of medicine."
His expression hardened.
"It is a matter of state."
Sun Simiao remained silent.
Li Shimin turned back toward the screen.
"If we cannot protect our people, then no amount of trade or territory will keep this empire standing. An empire can survive a lost battle. It can recover from a bad harvest. It can even endure the loss of a province. But if disease spreads through the population faster than the government can respond, then all those other strengths may become meaningless."
[Lightscreen]
[Modern sociologists often say that the history of human civilization is fundamentally a history of our relentless war against infectious diseases.
But in the 22nd year of Jian'an, as Cao Cao stood on the deck of his flagship staring out at the mouth of the Ruxu River, he definitely lacked that broad, sociological perspective.
He only knew that everything was going horribly wrong.
A terrifying plague had begun to creep through his military camps.
The coughing, the fevers, and the rising death toll had already planted a deep seed of panic in Cao Cao's mind. He desperately wanted to retreat, but pulling back without a victory would severely damage his political prestige.
Fortunately for him, Sun Quan possessed an incredible sense of political timing. Just as the situation in the northern camp was turning critical, Sun Quan officially submitted a formal letter of surrender.
This piece of paper was a political lifeline.
It allowed Cao Cao to declare a victorious end to the campaign. He could march home claiming he had subjugated the south, avoiding the humiliating disaster Sun Quan had suffered when he failed to take Hefei.
But as the northern army hurriedly packed their camps and began the long march back to Yecheng, the plague finally stopped hiding in the shadows and bared its bloody fangs. The death toll soared. The elite ranks of the Cao administration were hit directly. First, Sima Lang succumbed to the fever. Shortly after, the literary star Wang Can died in agony.
In ancient times, plagues were not just viewed as medical events. They were widely interpreted by scholars and peasants alike as terrifying omens from heaven, divine punishments for the sins of the ruler.
Facing this endless barrage of death and disaster, the 62-year-old Cao Cao was forced to confront his own mortality. He began to seriously plan for the aftermath of his death.
The long-standing, bitterly contested issue of appointing a formal heir to the Co Wei was finally placed at the very top of his agenda.
During this critical year of plague and death, Cao Pi executed his political strategy flawlessly. Following the cynical advice of the master strategist Jia Xu, Cao Pi played the role of the ultimate, perfect son. He was diligent from dawn until dusk. He never violated a single rule of filial piety. He carefully curated every single word he spoke, masking his true ambitions behind a veil of flawless virtue.
Meanwhile, his greatest rival, his younger brother Cao Zhi, continued to act like a reckless, arrogant poet. Relying entirely on his father's immense favor, Cao Zhi partied wildly. In a catastrophic lapse of judgment fueled by alcohol, Cao Zhi drove his chariot directly through the central lane of the Sima Gate, a sacred pathway strictly reserved for the Emperor alone. He blatantly shattered imperial law.
The final result of this intense political war requires no further explanation. Cao Pi emerged victorious and was officially crowned the Crown Prince of Wei.
Because Cao Zhi had arrogantly relied on his noble status to drunkenly crash his way through the palace gates, Cao Cao flew into a rage and executed the commander of the palace guards for failing to stop him. With that single, disastrous joyride, Cao Zhi was permanently kicked out of the succession war. His grand political dreams were shattered into dust.
The tragedy surrounding Cao Zhi only accelerated. The year before the Great Plague hit, Cao Zhi's powerful father-in-law, Cui Yan, was falsely accused of treason and executed by a paranoid Cao Cao.
During the year of the Great Plague, Cao Zhi's wife, Lady Cui, made the fatal mistake of wearing overly extravagant clothing. Cao Cao, demanding strict austerity, ordered her to commit suicide.
As if that were not enough, Cao Zhi's two deeply beloved young daughters both died prematurely, likely victims of the sprawling epidemic.
Drowning in an ocean of grief, Cao Zhi poured his shattered heart onto paper, composing the agonizingly beautiful Jin Hu Ai Ci-Elegy for the Golden Gourd, and Xing Nu Ai Ci-Elegy for a Lost Daughter.
From that cursed year onward, the fiercely ambitious Cao Zhi who had once proudly declared his intention to build eternal empires and carve his merits into gold and stone vanished from the face of the earth.
His poetry remained beautiful, but the soaring, heroic ambition was gone. It was replaced by a deep, suffocating sense of despair, bitterness, and political depression.
On the other side of the coin, the political victor, Cao Pi, was enduring his own unique psychological hell.
During the year of the Great Plague, Cao Pi attended 5 separate funerals for his closest literary friends. He watched the Seven Scholars of Jian'an get systematically wiped out. He personally witnessed the horrific suffering as the plague ravaged the capital of Yecheng.
Just like the wealthy young nobles in Europe who fled to the countryside to indulge in wild, hedonistic parties while the Black Death raged around them, Cao Pi underwent a psychological shift. The sheer trauma of mass death fundamentally broke his worldview.
Gaming, extravagant banquets, the pursuit of exotic foods, and surrounding himself with beautiful women. Once Cao Pi ascended the throne and became the Emperor of Wei, he mastered every form of earthly pleasure.
His personality changed. After taking the throne, his speech became famously flippant, cynical, and severely lacking in imperial dignity.
For instance, when his loyal ministers formally petitioned him to begin constructing his grand imperial mausoleum, Cao Pi, who was literally the sitting Emperor, actively discouraged them with a brutally nihilistic argument.
He laughed and told his court: From ancient times to the present day, there has never been a kingdom that did not eventually collapse, nor a tomb that was not eventually robbed. Why bother?
Even during his own grand coronation ceremony, an event that was officially billed as a peaceful, voluntary Zenrang abdication by the Han Emperor but was in reality a violent military coup, Cao Pi sat upon the dragon throne and casually uttered a sentence that made his entire court break out in a cold sweat.
He smirked at his ministers and said: The ancient legends of Emperor Shun and Emperor Yu peacefully passing the throne to one another... I finally understand exactly how that worked.
When you look ahead at how the Sima clan eventually stole the empire from the Cao clan using the exact same playbook, you have to imagine that a young Sima Yi was standing in that throne room, listening to Cao Pi's cynical joke, and taking very careful mental notes.
Finding his role as Emperor deeply boring and politically exhausting, Cao Pi desperately searched for a way to find true meaning in a chaotic, unpredictable world where anyone could die tomorrow.
He ultimately found his salvation in writing.
He famously declared: Literature is the grand foundation of governing a state, a magnificent achievement that defies death and decay.
By writing his critical masterpiece, the Dianlun, Cao Pi successfully realized his ultimate value as a literary theorist, leaving a legacy far beyond his political reign.
After becoming Emperor, he fully leveraged his power over the state treasury to launch a cultural project. He organized hundreds of scholars to compile the Huanglan, or the Imperial Review. In doing so, he invented the concept of the state-sponsored, large-scale encyclopedia.
This compilation is the granddaddy of all Chinese encyclopedias. It predates the Ming Dynasty's Yongle Dadian and the Qing Dynasty's heavily censored Siku Quanshu by many, many centuries.
However, his legacy is deeply complicated.
Cao Pi's cynical, mask-wearing political style and his deep dive into personal pleasure officially kicked off the infamous Wei-Jin era of extreme extravagance.
The powerful noble families began competing wildly over who could throw the most expensive parties. This culture of wealthy nihilism eventually mutated into the Wei-Jin Metaphysics movement, where scholars literally just sat around drinking tea and debating the concept of nothingness while the empire burned.
But on the flip side, that exact same traumatic anxiety, that deep fear of dying suddenly in a plague, pushed Cao Pi to use his imperial power to accelerate the development of literature. He left a lasting mark on cultural history, dragging the literary arts two steps forward into the future.
The catastrophic plague of the 22nd year of Jian'an pressed the fast-forward button on history, and in a bizarre, twisted way, it ultimately concluded in a dark cultural comedy.]
Inside the Ganlu Hall, the Tang Dynasty ministers digested the heavy historical breakdown.
"When you cannot guarantee you will live to see tomorrow," Du Ruhui sighed softly, shaking his head, "you have no choice but to pursue the maximum amount of joy today."
To his own surprise, the Tang strategist found himself actually sympathizing with Emperor Wen of Wei.
When modern people in the future looked back at the extravagant, wasteful hedonism of the Wei and Jin dynasties, they only saw fragments recorded in dry history books. They judged them harshly.
But for men like Du Ruhui, who had lived through the chaotic, bloody collapse of the Sui Dynasty and the brutal founding wars of the Tang, they understood trauma.
The stories of Wei-Jin extravagance and empty philosophical debates were tales they had grown up hearing.
Now, following the logical thread laid out by the host, it all made perfect sense. Cao Pi watched nearly half of his siblings die prematurely. He survived a plague that slaughtered nearly every single one of his closest friends. Under that kind of suffocating psychological pressure, a drastic shift in personality was not just understandable. It was the only logical human response.
However, Du Ruhui's moment of deep historical empathy was interrupted.
He turned his head and saw Li Shimin.
The Emperor of Tang was practically vibrating in his chair. His eyes were sparkling with an intense, burning light.
Operating purely on years of honed political instinct, Du Ruhui did not even wait for the Emperor to open his mouth. He blurted out the answer immediately.
"It is doable, Your Majesty!" Du Ruhui said loudly.
Li Shimin blinked, a look of distinct embarrassment flashing across his face. He quickly tried to smooth his expression into a mask of regal indifference.
"I have not even said what I was thinking about yet," Li Shimin muttered defensively.
Standing on the other side of the throne, Fang Xuanling burst into laughter.
He ignored protocol and jumped straight into the conversation.
"What else could everyone in this room possibly be thinking about?" Fang Xuanling chuckled, gesturing toward the light screen. "You want to copy the ancients. You want to compile a great, unprecedented encyclopedia to brag about the glory and intellectual dominance of the Great Tang."
Fang Xuanling smiled at his Emperor. "And it will simultaneously leave a flawless, majestic portrait of our dynasty for all future generations to admire. Of course it is doable. We should start immediately."