Ye Tang did not divorce. Nominally, she was still Hans’s wife.
A few days after Daisy informed Ye Tang of Hans’s death, the magistrate finally sluggishly verified Hans’s identity and notified Ye Tang to go to the city hall morgue to claim the body.
Claudia was still ill, and Gloria and Cinderella had only just recovered from their colds. Ye Tang did not let the girls go with her to see their father for the last time. After claiming the body, she immediately ordered people to transport it to the outskirts, where she burned Hans’s corpse along with the clothes of the men who carried it.
Osnabrock was a country that firmly believed in “fallen leaves return to their roots” and practiced burial. As long as there was a body, the deceased would be placed in a coffin and buried in a cemetery. People believed that the soul of the buried person would be purified by the crucifixes in the cemetery, and after reflecting on their sins, they would be guided by angels to heaven.
Ye Tang’s act of cremating Hans was interpreted as disgust toward her husband and condemning him to burn in the flames of hell forever without salvation. Afterward, Mrs. Hedelin was branded as a rare wicked woman and a peerless venomous wife, becoming the talk of the streets.
In response, Ye Tang offered no explanation.
Could she say that a dead body was a petri dish for bacteria, a breeding ground for all poisons? She could not.
Could she say that in winter, rodents like rats became particularly active due to food scarcity, and burying the dead was equivalent to providing a buffet for those rodents and the bloodsucking parasites on them, giving countless viruses new hosts? She could not.
The silver lining was that everyone in the Soho District knew about Hans bringing back a thirteen-year-old illegitimate daughter, so no one thought there was anything wrong with Ye Tang burning her late husband’s body. Be they noblewomen or commoners, all the women who heard what Ye Tang’s ex-husband had done applauded her actions.
Street singers even composed a short song and sang it repeatedly: “My dear husband, may you rest in the flames. Your deeds have chilled me to the bone; now I use these flames to warm your heart of stone. Don’t ask when we’ll meet again—we never will. You go to your hell, and I’ll go to my heaven.”
The song was short and the lyrics easy to remember. Every time a singer performed it, several women memorized it. A few days later, whether it was the prostitutes in low-end brothels or the bards entertaining salons for noblewomen, everyone could sing this short song laced with a threat toward philandering husbands.
A playwright heard the short song, learned the gossip about Mrs. Hedelin, and used it as the basis for a play called The Lady’s Revenge.
This was not the copyright-conscious future era. Ye Tang had no particular feelings about the various fan works based on her. She neither got angry at plays that vilified her image nor had time to care if playwrights were vindicating her name.
To prove the existence of bacteria, she wrote a letter to a scholar researching microorganisms, offering to fund his research and hoping he could create a microscope with higher magnification. At the same time, Ye Tang worked her connections to find better doctors and more effective medicines for Claudia’s treatment.
But communication in this damned era was so slow.
Osnabrock was always several steps behind those top great powers. Not only were telephones not widespread here, but even telegraphs were extremely rare. Railroad construction halted in winter, and trains had to wait for sea routes to reopen in spring before being shipped over piece by piece.
Yes, Osnabrock, this grain-producing agricultural nation, still lacked the ability to build its own trains.
Waiting was always torment. Claudia was like a rose cut from its branch; every day, H1N1 ate away at her vitality. There was pitifully little Ye Tang could do for her.
Gloria and Cinderella’s mental states were not great either. With their sister’s condition fluctuating, their moods swung up and down. Ye Tang had to comfort the two children that none of this was their fault and persuade them not to ruin their own health while caring for Claudia.
On top of that, after Hans’s death, the people he owed money to came knocking one after another, and the caravan demanded an explanation from Ye Tang. The shop she and Daisy ran on Queen Road also needed to keep launching new products and someone to steer the trends behind the scenes. Ye Tang was utterly exhausted.
To put it bluntly, supervising the porters in the outskirts to properly burn Hans’s body to ashes was the most relaxing thing Ye Tang had done lately.
Daisy saw the hidden fatigue on her friend’s face and could not bear to add to her burdens. But Duke Wilson’s patience was not infinite. He said he wanted to see Ye Tang, so whether she was ready or not, she had to go.
Taking her friend’s hand and leading Ye Tang out of the clothing store on Queen Road, Daisy said softly, “Anna, I know you’re very tired, but there’s one more thing you must do—”
Hearing that Duke Wilson had summoned her, Ye Tang was stunned for a moment— so Daisy’s “investor” was him. But wasn’t he in such poor health that he might drop dead at any moment? Daisy with him… Platonic love was torment for ordinary women. Was Daisy alright?
Unaware that Ye Tang’s daze was out of worry for her, Daisy thought she was nervous and turned to hug her.
“Relax, Anna. That one is a very gentle person. Even us commoners are not lowly in his eyes. Just stay calm and talk to him as you normally would.”
Oh… Since he could earn such defense from Daisy, that duke must be someone she deeply loved. Even if they could not unite physically, a meeting of hearts could make Daisy happy.
Ye Tang relaxed. She hugged Daisy back and nodded on her shoulder.
The road to the duke’s residence was quite far. To conceal both parties’ identities, they had to take detours, change coachmen and horses, remove obvious markings from the carriage, and cover the body with black velvet to hide its shape.
The ground was slippery in winter, so the carriage could not go fast. Ye Tang bounced along in the carriage and soon grew drowsy.
Bored and lost in thought, Daisy felt a weight on her shoulder. Looking back, she found Ye Tang had fallen asleep against her. She smiled, pursed her lips, and pulled her cloak over Ye Tang.
Only when the carriage stopped at the duke’s residence did Daisy wake Ye Tang.
Upon first waking, Ye Tang’s face still held a girlish haziness. By the time she stood before Duke Wilson, she had returned to her usual composed demeanor.
This eased Daisy’s worries, and after Ye Tang stood before Duke Wilson, she quietly stepped aside.
“Good evening, Madam.”
Duke Wilson coughed twice and gestured for Ye Tang to sit.
Adrian and Jack immediately brought over a backless round chair for Ye Tang.
“Good evening, Your Highness.”
Ye Tang lifted her skirt hem, curtsied to Duke Wilson, and then sat.
Even on a backless round chair, her posture was elegant—a habit hard to form without long training.
His eyes, the same color as the king’s, held a probing intent as Duke Wilson cut straight to the topic.
His health was so poor that fainting at any moment would not be surprising. He could not afford to delay hearing everything he wanted while conscious; otherwise, it would all drag on much longer.
“Madam, you should understand why I summoned you. Didn’t you want to convince me? Then do it now, here, in front of me. Convince me.”
Seeming to feel none of the pressure Duke Wilson exuded, Ye Tang replied lightly, “Very well, Your Highness.”
Her boldness made Adrian chuckle inwardly— as expected of Little Treasure’s mother. This calm in the face of danger was like a mother leopard lurking in the grass, preparing to ambush prey three or five times her size.
“First, Your Highness, a nation runs on taxes paid by its citizens. Fewer citizens mean fewer taxes. Though the total taxes from all the poor amount to no more than a thousandth or even a ten-thousandth of a noble’s, nobles can afford such high taxes precisely because they drive citizens, including the poor, to work for them, right?”
“Losing one or two poor, or even ten or a hundred, is nothing. But what if thousands or tens of thousands of poor die? Who clears the snow from the roads? Who hauls away the daily garbage? Who buries the piling corpses?”
“Commoners could do the poor’s work, of course. But without eradicating the Spanish Flu, commoners doing the poor’s jobs would catch the Spanish Flu too. Then who does the commoners’ work? Have the infected commoners continue serving the nobles? Or do the high-blooded nobles cook, clean, and trim the garden trees themselves?”
“Protecting the poor protects the commoners. Protecting the commoners protects the nobles. Protecting the nobles protects His Majesty the King and this nation.”
She showed no fear, nor any disrespect. Ye Tang spoke to the point, quickly but clearly.
“His Majesty surely wishes to be remembered as a wise ruler for ages. I believe the nobles wish the same as His Majesty and their ancestors—to be nobles remembered for their fame, not namelessly swept away by the tide of history, leaving nothing behind.”
“Imagine: the people now face the invisible Death God’s threat, living in fear that they might be next. If the nobles then reach out, protecting the people from the invisible Death God, what would the people think?”
“—”
Duke Wilson pondered for a moment, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Ye Tang’s words.
He admitted this Mrs. Hedelin’s speech was quite persuasive; he could easily picture nobles moved by it to take some action.
But he, immersed in court affairs since birth, also knew that chasing fame was just some nobles’ hobby. Most nobles only cared about the present and would not worry about unoccurred crises. Call them itching in a coffin, oblivious to death—until the population crashed so hard that nobles could not even hire servants, they would not care how many ordinary citizens died outside.
What truly moved nobles was neither humaneness, eternal fame, nor foresight. It was—
“Next, Your Highness, don’t you think this is a good opportunity?”
Ye Tang’s voice drifted into Duke Wilson’s ears again.
A good opportunity?
Duke Wilson looked up, slightly intrigued.
“It’s a prime chance for us to sell favors to neighboring countries. Especially the Sailan Principality.”
“The Sailan Principality, with its tiny land area, is a nation that developed purely through trade. Its own grain production cannot sustain it, and other industries like textiles or heavy industry are hard for it to develop. Its fishing industry is relatively strong, but neighboring countries like our Osnabrock are no slouch in fishing either, right? So Sailan Principality’s fishing lacks real competitive edge.”
Ye Tang’s reading was not in vain. Every minute and second she spent on books had meaning.
Taking the Black Death, also known as the plague, as an example, the plague had erupted in Constantinople, a hub of frequent trade, in history. Afterward, it spread along trade routes centered on Constantinople, invading the Balkan Peninsula, North Africa, the Middle East, Jerusalem, Florence, Paris, and London via merchant ships and sailors…
Among them, Constantinople, the Balkan Peninsula, Florence, and the Genoa Republic had nearly been directly destroyed by the plague. Many villages had been completely wiped out, and in big cities, the daily death toll alone exceeded a thousand.
The Sailan Principality was merely a small island nation. Once spring arrived and sea navigation resumed, the Sailan Principality, as a relay point on trade routes, welcomed merchant ships from various countries. It became the largest source of infection on the Robro Sea and the nation most affected by the Spanish Flu on the Robro Sea.
The H1N1, which did not immediately kill its host, thus began its great voyage of discovery. At that time, H1N1 blossomed everywhere around the world. The bacteria’s rapid division and fast evolution made this Plague Knight incredibly powerful. What welcomed the catastrophe was not only humanity… poultry, livestock, pets—none could escape.