Chapter 58: Rain Leaking Through a Roof on a Night of Continuous Storms

"Your servant believes Grand Secretary Fan's memorial is quite clear — time waits for no one. If Li Zicheng enters Beijing first and seizes the initiative, our Qing will find it doubly difficult to take the Central Plains."

With that, Dorgon, along with the majority of the Beiles and ministers in the hall, knelt and pleaded:

"We propose gathering the forces of the Eight Banners, uniting the strength of the entire nation, to advance and besiege Shanhai Pass!"

With words having reached this point, Xiaozhuang could no longer say much more. She turned and signaled to Fulin, who nodded timidly and spoke in a babbling, childlike voice:

"I shall on a chosen day, at the Grand Administration Hall, appoint the Prince Regent as Grand General, commanding our Eight Banners' great army southward to take the Central Plains!"

"Your servant Dorgon accepts the command!"

Though Fulin was but a six-year-old brat, he was nonetheless the emperor of the Qing. Words spoken from the dragon throne were final. No matter how dissatisfied Hooge and Daišan were, they could not openly defy the emperor before the assembly, and could only follow Dorgon in kowtowing.

The Grand Administration Hall was known in later ages as the Dugong Hall — yet another building in the Shenyang Qing Palace modeled after the Great Ming's Forbidden City.

Truth be told, ever since the Jianzhou barbarians had usurped Liaodong, they had always harbored a sense of inferiority. Especially after seeing the towering walls of Beijing, this feeling clung stubbornly to their minds.

Perhaps because their own palace was too paltry by comparison, the Jianzhou barbarians forced skilled craftsmen from among the Liaodong Han Chinese to help them build their own 'Forbidden City' in Shengjing.

And it didn't end there — to praise and glorify themselves, the Jianzhou barbarians even went so far as to proclaim the Shengjing palace a treasure combining the architectural cultures of both Manchu and Han.

If Chongzhen were to see this so-called 'treasure' of the Jianzhou barbarians, he would likely be unable to restrain himself from laughing on the spot.

Whether in layout, scale, or total area, the Jianzhou barbarians' palace exuded a petty, small-minded air in every respect — utterly incomparable to the Great Ming's Forbidden City.

At this moment, the Chongzhen Emperor in the Forbidden City had fallen into yet another trouble — plague had broken out in the capital.

This truly was 'rain leaking through a roof on a night of continuous storms' — heaven was determined to destroy the Great Ming. Li Zicheng repeatedly hammered at the gates, trying to force him onto a crooked-neck tree to hang himself; Zhou Yuji was so valiant, and Bai Guangen had not disappointed expectations either.

Having finally caught a glimpse of dawn, the Chongzhen Emperor was preparing to spread his wings — who could have expected this to happen? It was like a bucket of cold water dumped over his head.

Plague is a type of pestilence, and at this critical juncture, for it to suddenly erupt in the capital was truly a matter of life and death.

If it couldn't be cured, it wouldn't just be Chongzhen's own life at stake — it would be the lives of everyone in the entire capital.

The Chongzhen Emperor did indeed know that a plague had historically broken out in Beijing, but he had simply forgotten amid all the recent bustle. Upon hearing the secret report from the spies, he took the matter extremely seriously — even more seriously than building the new army.

After all, Zhang Shize and Zhou Jingwu had also said that if this weren't cured, the new army couldn't even be drilled properly — before Li Zicheng even came to attack, there would barely be anyone left who could lift a blade.

By all rights, the Great Ming's Imperial Academy of Medicine had gathered the finest physicians in the realm, so the Chongzhen Emperor immediately placed his hopes there, sending several imperial physicians one after another to deal specifically with the plague.

But this method had been tried by the historical Chongzhen — and it hadn't worked.

The current Chongzhen Emperor tried it once more with the same result. Whether it cured anyone was beside the point — in the end, several physicians even caught the plague and died, and panic gripped the hearts of Beijing's populace.

Out of options, the Chongzhen Emperor dispatched his veteran imperial physician Weng Bingshi — who had twice cured him — as his trump card, placing his hopes on him once more. But unexpectedly, within less than two days of going out, this fellow caught the plague and rode the crane west.

When this news spread, not to mention the Weng household donning mourning white and wailing to the heavens, the Chongzhen Emperor himself was thoroughly shaken. He specially ordered the Directorate of Imperial Meals to adjust his dietary regimen, strictly planning three meals a day, favoring light and nourishing fare — no oil, no meat, no spice whatsoever.

Of course, the Chongzhen Emperor would not forget the loyal minister who had sacrificed himself for the Great Ming. He issued an edict posthumously conferring upon Imperial Physician Weng Bingshi of the Imperial Academy of Medicine the title of Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, with the posthumous name 'Zhongke' — a small comfort to the wounded hearts of the Weng household.

Now, every morning at dawn, Chongzhen had even begun consciously running laps to exercise his body and strengthen his resistance — all to avoid catching the plague himself.

If the emperor himself had been reduced to such a state, one could well imagine how severe the plague in Beijing had become.

There was not a single civil or military official who wasn't terrified. According to reports from Eastern Depot spies, within half a month, the wealthy households and high officials of the capital had basically cleaned out every pharmacy — whether or not the medicine treated plague, they bought whatever they saw and took whatever they had. The price of all sorts of herbs had skyrocketed.

Upon hearing this news, the Chongzhen Emperor was helpless, but also utterly without recourse. After several days, one could say worry had turned his youthful hair white — all for naught!

In fact, as early as the Wanli era, plague had already appeared in Shanxi.

Since the sixth year of Chongzhen, Shanxi had suffered a province-wide epidemic for ten consecutive years, accompanied by a once-in-a-century drought and locust plague. The rat plague had reached its peak in the past year and this year, with no sign of stopping.

Add to that the Little Ice Age — all these calamities arriving at once was beyond what any normal dynasty could manage. Even a flourishing age would be badly crippled by such a convergence, let alone the late Ming.

Henan and Jiangsu provinces also saw major epidemics multiple times between the thirteenth and seventeenth years of Chongzhen. The historical Chongzhen Emperor had repeatedly released imperial funds for disaster relief, and the capital region was not spared either.

As early as the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, the Prefects of Shunde Prefecture and Hejian Prefecture had reported major epidemics. At that time, the Chongzhen Emperor did nothing — in truth, he had no money to manage it and no one to send.

By the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Tongzhou, Changping Prefecture, and Baoding Prefecture again reported major epidemics, and from the second month to the ninth month, the disease briefly entered the capital itself — this was the first small-scale appearance of plague in Beijing.

As luck would have it, precisely during these third and fourth months — at this deadly juncture of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen — the capital's epidemic reached its peak. The saying 'Rats die in the east, rats die in the west; men see dead rats and fear them like tigers' described exactly the current situation in the capital.

After learning of all these wretched matters, the Chongzhen Emperor suddenly began to understand — how Li Zicheng had so easily entered Beijing in history, and why the city had surrendered within days of being besieged without much of a fight. The plague must have played a part in that too.

Judging by the current situation, the plague had never been resolved in history.

But then, on this very morning, just after the Chongzhen Emperor finished his run and returned to the warm chamber, he heard heartening news — someone had actually cured a plague patient.

This time, the credit went to a spy of the Western Depot responsible for intelligence in the Western Quarter. He reported that a wandering physician surnamed Wu had used an incomprehensible prescription to treat his own wife — and at least for now, she truly seemed to be recovering.

The Western Depot spies had overheard this matter by chance. Quick as they were, to prevent the news from spreading, they immediately detained this wandering physician surnamed Wu, bringing him and his wife together to a courtyard compound, awaiting the Chongzhen Emperor's decree.