The pork butcher is smoother than a pig butcher!

Chapter 382 All in Vain
Without the toad plague, is it impossible to test the medicinal effects of cactus?

Just as the imperial physician Huang was racking his brains for a solution, General Gan delivered just in time.

"I have heard of the medicinal effects of cactus, but I don't know if it's true or not. Could you help me verify the prescription, Elder Huang?"

"General, please speak quickly!"

"Prescription 1: Wash the cactus, remove the thorns, slice it thinly, soak it in water and drink it. This can clear heat and detoxify, and help the intestines and stomach to relieve constipation."

Prescription 2: Stew two qian of cactus root with pork stomach and consume; this can cure chronic stomach pain.
Prescription 3: Use one mace of cactus palm, add water and decoct to make a soup to treat acute dysentery.
Scrape off the outer skin of the cactus with a knife, mash it, apply it to the wound, and wrap it with a sterilized cloth. This can treat not only toad plague but also burns.

Gan Minglan spoke eloquently, reciting more than a dozen prescriptions in one breath.

The old imperial physician was overjoyed to hear this.

At seventy years old, he was sharp of hearing and sight, and after listening to the prescriptions only once, he memorized them firmly.

He immediately began his research on cacti.

One pot isn't enough.

They also took the opportunity to steal several more pots.

Gan Minglan: Here, give me as much as you want!

Just like that, a single herb completely subdued the old imperial physician Huang, who was obsessed with medicine.

By the time the five-courtyard clinic and the neighboring Huang residence were completed, spring was already coming to an end.

Spring comes late and is short in the Kansai region.

The temperature rises sharply at midday, and the wheat seedlings in the field change every day.

Farmers with extensive farming experience have given this year's new wheat variety extremely high praise.

The wheat stalks are thick enough and have excellent drought resistance.

I've been dreaming about the autumn harvest.

Unexpectedly, a strange wind suddenly arose that night.

"Ooh, ooh"

The wind howled, sending chills down one's spine.

The roofs of the thatched houses built by the local nomadic tribes in Hami were all ripped off by the evil wind.

The livestock huddled together.

However, the strange wind was just the beginning.

As dawn broke, a sandstorm unlike any seen in the Kansai region in decades swept in with devastating force.

"Shalala"

"Clang, clang."

The wind blew incessantly until dawn the next day, when it finally quieted down completely.

Ganluchuan, Andingwei, Aduanwei, and Quxianwei, located in the basin area, are fortunate to be protected from sandstorms by the surrounding high mountains.

If we were to use injuries as a metaphor, these four garrisons only suffered minor superficial wounds.

However, Hamiwei, Shazhouwei, Chijinwei, and Huozhouwei, which are adjacent to the desert, suffered extensive damage.

Can't sleep.

Can't sleep at all.

For a whole day and night, General Xiong and his men stayed up for twelve hours straight without closing their eyes.

The Guan troops outside the city rushed to the General's Mansion to report as soon as the sandstorm receded:
"The 90,000 mu of newly reclaimed wheat fields and more than 10,000 mu of melons in Hamiwei this year are gone, all gone!"

It's not that the land is gone!
Instead, these farmlands were filled in by sand walls!
On the wheat seedlings and melon fields that had just grown to the height of chopsticks, the sand was piled up several inches higher than an adult's knee.

Two days ago, the fields were lush and green, but now they have turned into a desert.

It seemed to be mocking the fact that the land reclamation efforts of tens of thousands of people in Hamiwei, which had been painstakingly carried out for more than a month, had all gone to waste.

Not to mention how much manpower and animal power was consumed in land reclamation.

Let's talk about this kind of wheat seed!
Ninety thousand mu, and nearly twenty thousand shi of wheat seeds were used.

That's enough to feed more than 70,000 people for a month! The generals hadn't even recovered from the shock of this devastating news.

Immediately afterwards, another messenger came to report:
"The Hami River, the Yiwu River, and the karez well reservoirs and open channels are all blocked by sand."

God!
Is this a pattern of letting them die of thirst here after their crops have been destroyed?

It's important to know that Huozhou and Hamiwei have extremely low annual rainfall.

The people also have water to irrigate their farmland and orchards, relying on underground irrigation canals that were dug during the Western Han Dynasty.

Karez well.

The principle is to divert the meltwater from the snow-capped mountains into artificially excavated underground water channels.

Without the karez irrigation system, there would be no grapes from Huozhou or melons from Hami.

However, most of the underground irrigation canals left over from the Western Han Dynasty had dried up due to years of disrepair. It was only after the Guan army arrived in Guanzhong that they were able to dredge a few of them.

Now, the water channel that was finally cleared has been blocked by silt!

The atmosphere in the meeting room was so heavy it felt like ice.

Upon hearing hurried footsteps again, the generals' masks of anguish deepened.

As the door opened, a report came: "Report! The outer fence of Horse Ranch No. 1 was blown down by a strong wind, and more than three thousand warhorses are missing! We are sending people to search everywhere."

good good!
At this critical juncture, even the horse turned against them.

Before a cup of tea could be brewed, another person arrived:

"Report! The sheep in the sheepfold have been buried in the sand; more than five thousand pregnant ewes have died."

This is terrible!
There are only about 20,000 pregnant ewes in Hami this year.

A quarter of them died instantly!

The quartermaster inwardly groaned:
His lambskin! He's even planning to make his own snow boots this year! Gan Luchuan really made a fortune at the end of last year, I'm so envious!

The losses were considerable.

The last straw that broke the camel's back was:

"Report! Most of the dugouts where the soldiers and their families live outside the city have been buried by sandstorms!"

No one dared to harbor even the slightest bit of wishful thinking anymore.

General Xiong, leaning on the table, swayed precariously. Before collapsing, he gritted his teeth and swiftly issued a military order:
"Save lives, save lives at all costs!"

An urgent message was sent to Ganluchuan, Andingwei, Aduanwei, and Quxianwei, requesting that each commander lead two thousand soldiers to Shazhouwei, Chijinwei, and Huozhouwei to provide assistance.

More than 70% of the military dependents and immigrants in the garrison lived in dugouts.

I can't even imagine how many people have been buried under the sand this time.
The military order was issued in less than an hour.

Gan Minglan then brought the Rat King and 1,500 vanguard battalion members to Hamiwei.

Even in Ganluchuan, which was least affected, the sky was shrouded in a yellow veil when Hamiwei was washed by the sandstorm, like the smog most common in the apocalypse.

Visibility is no more than 500 meters.

Even someone as powerful as Gan Minglan is powerless to do anything during such a large-scale natural disaster.

They had no choice but to hold their temper and wait until the sandstorm ended before bringing people to help.

Upon their arrival, they witnessed tens of thousands of people digging sand outside Hami City.

Without hesitation, they quickly joined the rescue efforts.

The work of clearing sand and dust from the surface of dugouts is not something to be done blindly or haphazardly.

You need to confirm the location before you can dig.

And you also have to be careful not to fall into quicksand.

Under the leadership of their king, the gerbil army of Hamiwei played a more capable role than humans in this search and rescue operation of the dugouts.

There was a human scent there.

They burrow into that area.

The rescue team followed behind, digging and finding the right target every time.
(End of this chapter)