After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

Xie Chaoyun grabbed Ji Wanwan by the neck: "Where did the Marquis go? When did he leave the Marquis's residence?"

Ji Wanwan was shocked and frightened, her face pale and speechless.

The noise outside grew increasingly chaotic, frightening to behold. Old Madam Lu panicked, grabbing Xie Chaoyun's arm. "You are Huai'er's wife! No matter what happens outside, you must bring him back. Xie Chaoyun, if anything happens to my son, I will never forgive you!"

In the past, Xie Chaoyun might have felt a little guilty upon hearing the old lady's words. Now, she merely glanced at the old lady with annoyance and continued to press Ji Wanwan, "Tell me, where did the Marquis go?"

Ji Wanwan was so frightened that she cried. With red eyes, she said that Lu Huai had gone to the west gate, but she didn't know exactly what he was doing.

The troop deployment did not go smoothly. Wu Shoubei's garrison had been stationed in the capital for a long time, and they were all seasoned soldiers. When they saw that it was a young girl, none of them took her seriously.

Lu Zhiyuan did not argue with him, but chose the one who talked the most and killed him with a single sword strike.

A horse trampled the corpse. A little girl in red, sitting on horseback, held a token and bent down to look at them: "Look carefully, this is the black-lettered token of the garrison. Seeing this token is like seeing the garrison commander. Anyone who disobeys will be beheaded!"

The soldiers, who had already drawn their swords, looked at each other, frozen in place.

“My surname is Lu, Lu Zhiyuan. My father is Lu Huai, the Marquis of Pingnan. My mother is Xie Chaoyun, a female general personally appointed by the Emperor and a third-rank imperial consort. My maternal grandfather is Xie Yuandao, a pillar of the state. My eldest maternal uncle is a wealthy merchant, and my second maternal uncle is the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue. Whether you want to obey my orders or not, you can weigh the options. I will only give you three numbers of time to think.”

She, Lu Zhiyuan, could bully others with her power and oppress others with her wealth.

The garrison troops split into three groups and converged on the direction of the palace along Zhuque Street, Xuanwu Street, and Baihu Street. At the same time, the Commandant's Office and Xie Yubai were also taking action.

Lu Zhiyuan, Xie Yubai, and Commander Ma met on Xuanwu Street. The Commander's mansion had suffered heavy losses; of the twenty-odd brothers, only seven or eight remained. Two of them were injured, but not badly bitten, and had not yet shown any unusual behavior. Commander Ma couldn't bear to kill them, but fearing they might suddenly go berserk, he tied them up with ropes and took them with him wherever he went.

Lu Zhiyuan had examined the young beggar's pulse. Those infested by the strange insects all showed signs of impending death in their pulse, but these two had normal pulses, and there were no signs of insect activity in their wounds. Just to be on the safe side, she gave them some deworming medicine.

"Did Miss give them the antidote?"

Captain Ma looked at the small, dark pill with great excitement. If he had had this medicine earlier, his brothers might not have died.

Lu Zhiyuan couldn't bear to see him sad, but she didn't want to lie to him either, so she told him the truth: "These are just ordinary deworming medicines, they may not be effective."

"As long as it kills the insects, that's fine. What if it works?" Captain Ma scratched his head. "We'll try anything, even if it's a dead horse. My brothers and I are willing to do it. If I get bitten by that strange man, Miss, don't hesitate to give me this pill. What if it works? What if it can save the people of this city?"

Beheading and burning the bodies might solve the crisis in the capital, but what about their families? Death ends the problem, but how will the survivors continue to live?

"Insects, I need live insects." Lu Zhiyuan looked at the street: "Only by seeing live insects can we determine what they are and how to treat them."

Commander Ma gritted his teeth and said he would go to the street and catch a strange man, determined to get Lu Zhiyuan a live worm no matter what. Lu Yun stopped him, saying he had already tried that method. The worm inside the strange man would die if it left his body, unless it entered another person's body through a wound.

He tried using vases, pipes, and cloth, but the result was the same.

Captain Ma stretched out his arm: "That's easy. Let that strange man bite me, and before the worm crawls in, seal the acupoint with silver needles. Miss's acupuncture skills are superb; she will surely be able to keep the worm inside the wound."

"Captain Ma has never seen a live insect before. The insect is extremely small, and my silver needles may not be able to seal it."

"We have to try, no matter what, just in case it works." Captain Ma stretched his shoulders. "If it really doesn't work, I'll trouble Brother Lu to chop off my head. My brothers can't bring themselves to do it. Make sure the fire is big when you burn me, I'm afraid of pain, the sooner I die, the better."

As Captain Ma was about to rush into the group of strange people, he was stopped by Lu Zhiyuan.

She came up with a plan to catch the strange insect.

The garrison, facing unarmed civilians, even those who had mutated, were virtually powerless against overwhelming force. They didn't follow Lu Zhiyuan's advice to only kill the mutated civilians; instead, they preferred to kill a hundred innocent civilians rather than let one guilty person escape.

They shot them with arrows, hurled fireballs, and stabbed any that escaped with spears. To protect themselves from the strange insects, they used shields to keep the monsters away from them.

This action, though somewhat cruel, brought the upheaval in the capital under control in the shortest possible time. By evening, almost every street in the city was ablaze with fire. This catastrophe had killed at least a thousand people, and the only smell that could be heard was the acrid stench of burning corpses.

As predicted, the Emperor entrusted the matter to Xie Yubai. To prevent the Southern Chu people from making a comeback, the Emperor ordered all the people in the city to stay at home and not go out. In addition to the garrison, the Imperial Guards were also placed under Xie Yubai's command.

The Commandant's Office was responsible for inspecting every household to ensure that there were no more strange people or strange insects in the city.

At four-quarters past dawn, Commandant Ma brought back a man. This man was dressed in the clothes of Xie, a shopkeeper, and had the face of someone from Southern Chu. He had been bitten by a strange person and was hiding in an abandoned house near Grain Shop No. 8. When he was found, he was applying wood ash to his wound. The wound was tightly bound with strips of cloth, and his arm was bluish-purple. There were worms inside the wound, but they hadn't changed anything and didn't seem to be about to bite anyone.

Because of the garrison's offensive, they failed to capture the strange man. When they encountered this person, they treated him like a treasure and quickly sent him to Lu Zhiyuan.

Judging from the mud stains on the man's feet, it must be the fake Xie San who sneaked into his uncle's house. His pulse was normal, and there were indeed no signs of anything amiss, but considering the extent of his bite wounds, it was impossible for him to remain conscious. His gaze fell on the ashes and strips of cloth, and he instantly understood.

The strips of cloth served the same purpose as the silver needles, as Captain Ma had hypothesized: to block the strange insects. The ashes applied to the wounds must have been the withered grass the young beggar had mentioned before his death. Since they could lure the strange insects to the beggars by burning them, they must have found a way to draw them out.

Brushing away the ashes from the wound, a wriggling worm was indeed found.

With the dagger pointed at the wound, Lu Zhiyuan asked coolly, "What kind of insect is this?"

Fake Xie San shook his head, saying they didn't know what kind of insect it was either. They only knew that it originally parasitized a strange fish, and it was discovered by a villager from Nan Chu who accidentally ate it. In Nan Chu, there had also been extremely serious cases of villages being wiped out, and the culprit was this insect in the wound.

Lu Zhiyuan pressed him for the antidote, and he looked at his wounds and smiled coldly: "There is no antidote. There are only two ways to stop the parasitic worms from infesting you. One is to die, like what you did on the street, beheading and burning. The other is to do what I did and force the worms out."

Fake Xie San pulled out the insect and threw it at Lu Zhiyuan.