Chapter 396 - 394: Crossing Her Bottom Line (Second Update)

Chapter 396: Chapter 394: Crossing Her Bottom Line (Second Update)

However, for Xu Jing, there can be no other possibility; she must save everyone.

Otherwise, even if it is eventually discovered that they are not the masterminds of this incident, they will still be blamed for poor supervision.

She cannot tolerate anyone losing their life because of them.

Xu Jing quickly walked to Wei Muqing’s side, who was currently performing acupuncture on a woman whose breathing was extremely weak. The woman’s eyes were tightly shut, her body was yellowing, her limbs slightly convulsing, her lips tinged with a glaring blood-red color, with several patches of blood-mixed vomit on the ground beside her.

Beside her, a little girl of four or five tightly clutched her right sleeve, crying loudly, sobbing and screaming in a heart-wrenching manner, "Mom, don’t leave Niuniu! Niuniu doesn’t want to be alone, Mom, sob sob sob!"

Xu Jing quickly glanced at the woman and met Wei Muqing’s gaze, her voice hoarse as she said, "They are poisoned."

"That’s right."

Wei Muqing bit her lip silently and said quickly, "The patients generally experience a burning sensation in their throats, erosion occurs inside their mouths, there’s drooling, nausea and vomiting, and the vomit contains fresh blood. Some patients even pass blood, besides that, most people experience dizziness, headache, numbness in the lips and limbs, inability to stand, dilated pupils, and even blindness—these are obvious symptoms of poisoning, and the poison is..."

Almost simultaneously, Xu Jing and she exclaimed, "The poison is from Thunder God Vine."

For those of them with rich medical experience and knowledge, recognizing the poison wasn’t difficult, and treating it wasn’t hard either. The problem was that everything happened too suddenly, and there were too many patients. It was almost impossible for just a few of them to treat so many people simultaneously.

However, detoxifying is like a race against time; once the poison has entered the patients’ vital organs, not even the greatest physicians could save them.

By this time, Xu Jing had already rolled up her sleeves and said coldly, "I’ve sent people to Xinglin Hall and Tianyi Hall to bring more doctors, and also sent others to the nearest tea house to brew tea, as much as possible. Once the tea arrives, we’ll first help all the patients undergo gastric lavage. Gastric lavage is relatively simple to perform and doesn’t necessarily require a doctor. I’ll call some soldiers in a while to watch how we perform it, then they can do it for others..."

Cheng Xianbai quickly said, "On our side, we have some people who help with brewing and distributing medicinal soup, a total of six people. Although they can’t treat patients, they have been assisting in medical halls for years. Having them help with gastric lavage might be more appropriate..."

"No, you can’t let them do it."

Xu Jing said coldly.

Cheng Xianbai was startled, quickly realized, and slapped his forehead hard, almost driven to tears by his own foolishness.

In this situation, it’s evident that someone has poisoned their medicinal soup!

Their medicinal soup was brewed on the spot after arriving here, with Cheng Xianbai and Wei Muqing supervising during the initial addition of medicinal ingredients. Before the ingredients were added, they were sure that the soup was fine.

So, the poison must have been added after the ingredients were put in!

Today is their third day distributing medicinal soup, and the refugees outside the city have become familiar with their practices, lining up in front of their marquee to receive the soup almost instinctively, rarely entering the marquee.

Although Cheng Xianbai and Wei Muqing couldn’t monitor the surroundings constantly, they had a general grasp of the situation and were certain that before the incident, no one besides them had approached those pots of soup!

Thus, the only ones with the opportunity to poison the soup must be their own people. The person who poisoned it is among the six people besides him and Wei Muqing!

That’s why Miss Xu said the six shouldn’t be involved in treating the patients!

Cheng Xianbai quickly said, "I understand, I’ll have Xiao Erlang send some sharp soldiers over and teach them how to perform gastric lavage."

When Xu Jing detected that something was amiss, she sent people into the city to fetch some common detoxifying medicines. Except for some special poisons, for most poisons, the essential thing when initially ingested is to find a way to expel them from the body.

The primary methods are inducing vomiting, gastric lavage, and catharsis.

Apart from those who are severely poisoned, most people can be stabilized using this method.

Once they knew it was Thunder God Vine poisoning, the treatment method became clearer. Xu Jing, while saving the most seriously poisoned patients with Wei Muqing, also wrote a few prescriptions specifically for Thunder God Vine poisoning and had people quickly brew the decoction.

Fortunately, this time, Xiao He escorted her back to the capital with two teams of soldiers totaling more than sixty people; there was no shortage of manpower for running errands.

As Xu Jing was urgently treating the patients, she noticed that people from the Western Capital Prefecture had arrived. Fortunately, it was Mr. Yao who brought them, and with Xiao He around, they could continue saving lives without distraction.

By the time the sun set, all thirty-seven poisoned refugees had finally passed the critical stage, and Xu Jing, exhausted, leaned against a large tree.

While they were distributing the medicinal soup, although a good number of Western Capital’s residents curiously followed along to watch the commotion, most people still harbored prejudices against the refugees and were reluctant to queue with them for the soup, knowing it was primarily meant for them.

Thus, the poisoned were still the refugees, which, in some ways, reduced some of their troubles.

Xiao He, seeing this, frowned and quickly walked over, saying, "Are you alright? You’ve been busy the whole afternoon; perhaps you should rest for a while..."

But Xu Jing immediately stood up, her eyes cold and stern, her lips curling into a cold smile, "I have more important things to do than rest."

If this matter is Lin Chengzhao’s and the Jiang Family’s counterattack, their actions just happen to hit her bottom line.

Dragging so many innocent people into muddy waters just to tarnish Xinglin Hall is something she absolutely cannot tolerate.

If today, she hadn’t just returned to the Western Capital and stumbled upon this incident, who knows how many of those thirty-seven poisoned refugees could have been saved.

She looked at Cheng Xiao beside her and said coldly, "Cheng Xiao, go bring over the six people Mr. Cheng brought."

This was the first time Cheng Xiao had seen Xu Jing like this and was briefly stunned before quickly responding.

At this time, Mr. Yao also came over and bowed to Xu Jing, saying, "Miss Xu, I didn’t come over to greet you earlier seeing you were busy. Now as you know, though the poisoned have been saved, if evidence can’t be found that Mr. Cheng and his people didn’t poison them, it will be very unfavorable to them.

And because Miss Xu has a deep connection with Mr. Cheng and the others, I’m afraid you can’t intervene in this case.

Xu Jing pursed her lips slightly and nodded, "I understand, I won’t interfere; I’ll just watch from the side."

Soon, the six people were brought over, the youngest looking to be around thirteen or fourteen years old, with the oldest just over twenty. Because distributing and brewing medicinal soup are physically demanding tasks, not suitable for the very old or very young, Cheng Xianbai found a group of young and robust men.

Just now, Cheng Xianbai roughly explained these people’s backgrounds to her. Among them, four are from Xinglin Hall; Cheng Xianbai had been personally nurturing manpower, and these four had been personally nurtured by him, previously helping at the Anping County branch of Xinglin Hall.

The other two were lent by the Zhou Family. Zhou Qi has lent them many people, most of whom were trained by the Zhou Family from a young age or have worked with the family for several years.

Knowing how important the opening of the Western Capital Branch was to Xu Jing and her team, he lent them people he felt could be trusted.