Chapter 106: Imperial Inspector

“The cowpox vaccine cannot be ineffective.”

“I know. You should calm down first.”

The Empress gently comforted Shen Yu, signaling her not to get agitated.

If the Empress didn’t believe Shen Yu, she wouldn’t have personally come to Mu’en Hall so early in the morning.

To make this trip, the Empress had to claim she was unwell and delay the court session by a day.

Tomorrow’s court would inevitably include questions from the ministers—on the surface, they would ask if His Majesty’s dragon body was well, but in reality, they would be looking for cracks in the Empress’s story.

For this, the Empress would have to fabricate various excuses to fend them off.

There was no help for it.

With her imperial power so weak, even taking a leave required finding excuses and making up reasons.

It wasn’t much different from a schoolchild faking illness to skip class.

If she were caught pretending, that would be interesting—those censors could gossip about the Empress for three days and three nights without using a single swear word.

“Minister Shen, you rose too quickly in the court. Too many people have set their sights on you. That’s why I wanted you to lie low for a while.”

“Your Majesty! That’s not the issue!”

Shen Yu’s expression was severe.

What she had always wanted was never about clearing her name or reputation.

How outsiders saw her didn’t matter.

The vaccine’s failure leading to the fall of the entire Qingzhou City and countless civilians suffering—that was what mattered!

“Right now, the people of Qingzhou City are living in misery. You and I know best the vaccine’s effectiveness. If it was administered according to procedure, such a major plague outbreak in Qingzhou City could never have happened.”

Shen Yu practically spelled it out for the Empress.

The vaccine had undergone countless experiments by the Empress’s Fenglin Guards and other imperial physicians.

Everyone knew whether it worked or not.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been rolled out nationwide.

Even among those noble family scions who kept complaining that the vaccine was nothing good—mere exotic tricks—over sixty percent had received the cowpox vaccine.

The vaccine’s value never needed Shen Yu to defend it with her words.

“That’s why I said someone set up a scheme to deliberately target you, Minister Shen. You came from Qingzhou, and Qingzhou City is the seat of Qingzhou and an important passage from south to north.”

“If Qingzhou City falls into chaos because of your vaccine, the noble families can not only make a big deal out of it but also obstruct the maritime trade opening to some extent.”

The Empress looked at Shen Yu’s earnest eyes and felt a hint of unfamiliarity.

In her view, as long as Qingzhou City was smoothly sealed off and the plague didn’t spread further, Shen Yu would at most suffer some damage to her reputation once the dark clouds of the epidemic passed.

That was actually nothing—because when the time came, the Empress would naturally clear her name and minimize the damage.

Shen Yu’s vaccine had made an indelible contribution worthy of a place in history.

That was undisputed.

How many common people had this life-saving remedy derived from cows saved?

Without Shen Yu’s vaccine, how many would have died in this epidemic?

Before Shen Yu’s vaccine, when a city was struck by a great plague, this was the method used to resist it.

“Your Majesty, human lives are at stake! That’s the entire city’s populace—tens of thousands of people. They are living, breathing human beings!”

Hearing Shen Yu’s words, the Empress fell into a long silence, unable to speak for a while.

“I know! Do you think I don’t feel pained? But what can I do?”

The Empress lowered her head and spoke slowly.

Shen Yu couldn’t see her expression, but she could roughly guess it wasn’t pleasant.

“Qingzhou City has already passed the point of no return. The plague rages inside, and corpses pile up like mountains with nowhere to bury them.”

“Since ancient times, when a city is conquered by a great plague, there is no other way but to seal it off and pray for the best. The court’s relief grain can’t be transported in—not because I refuse to send it, but because everyone is panicked and terrified of the plague. Even if the relief orders reach the low-level officials as a death command, they have plenty of ways to stall the court.”

There was no way around it.

The Empress’s imperial power was too weak.

In relatively remote Qingzhou, even absolutely righteous decrees like disaster relief had to depend on the goodwill of local noble families and officials.

Frustrating—unfathomably frustrating!

The Empress had just used Shen Yu to experience the feeling of absolute imperial power, cutting off the heads of three noble families in one stroke.

But one thought could be heaven, another hell.

It was easy to dodge a spear in the open but hard to avoid an arrow in the dark.

Facing the covert retaliation of the noble families now, the Empress was helpless.

“Qingzhou is thousands of miles from the capital. We can only mobilize manpower and resources from surrounding areas. But… that’s an entire city. What my decree can mobilize is a drop in the bucket for the whole of Qingzhou City.”

“Minister Shen, am I not incompetent?”

The Empress’s tone was cold and resentful.

She was unwilling and angry.

Looking at Shen Yu’s bewildered eyes, she felt like she was sitting on pins and needles.

It seemed as if the silent Shen Yu was pointing at her nose and cursing her as a fatuous ruler.

But she had no other choice.

That was reality.

She had sufficient control over the two capitals and the surrounding prefectures, but by the time relief resources were gathered and transported here, Qingzhou would already be lost.

And even if relief arrived, what then?

This wasn’t a flood, drought, or foreign invasion—problems that could be solved by spending money, sending grain, or deploying troops.

This was a confrontation with an invisible, intangible plague.

The Hundred-Year Sore killed without drawing blood.

Even the elite troops of Jingying could only stand by helplessly.

Moreover, Shen Yu’s vaccine had just been rolled out.

The vaccination rate wasn’t up to standard.

Although the people believed in the vaccine’s effectiveness, their fear of the plague wouldn’t change for at least a decade.

Once Qingzhou City was sealed, it became a dead city that no one dared approach.

“Your Majesty, I… I beg Your Majesty to forgive my offense.”

Shen Yu also understood the Empress’s plight and knew that the current state of affairs was not what the Empress wanted.

It was those traitorous ministers who had lost all humanity.

It was those noble families who sought to reclaim control of discourse.

It was these parasites of the empire who were putting pressure on the Empress and Shen Yu.

They found that they couldn’t directly touch Shen Yu—it might even bring destruction to their families—so they chose a more insidious method to drag Shen Yu down.

Admittedly, they had skills.

No wonder they were noble families.

They had done such a clean job, just to drag Shen Yu down with them, just to prove that the vaccine was nothing but exotic tricks.

Now it was Shen Yu’s turn to stand at the same crossroads of choice as her grandfather had.

If she did well, she could buy the empire enough time for the benefits of maritime trade to reach every common citizen.

If she didn’t…

If she didn’t, it was fine.

Shen Yu wasn’t without a blade.

If necessary, she could ask the old man to come out of retirement and stage another Dragon Wu Incident to slaughter those damned nobles again.

Shen Yu had no illusions about the dog emperor.

She held nothing but contempt for those parasitic noble families that sucked blood from both the dog emperor and the common people.

If they had used such schemes for the right path, would the empire have fallen into such deep-rooted problems today?

Unfortunately, they had chosen the wrong opponent.

Thirty years ago, Shen Yu’s grandfather, Shen Qingtian, relied on his blade to cut and kill his way through those damned nobles, forcibly extending the empire’s life by nearly fifty years.

“Tomorrow, I will definitely attend the morning court. I request permission to personally go to Qingzhou City for disaster relief.”

“Now that the great plague is raging in Qingzhou City, this is the time for me to serve the country. I eat the ruler’s salary and should share the ruler’s worries. I may only know a little about other matters, but I can save the people of Qingzhou City.”

A city conquered by a great plague.

A place where every hour counted countless deaths.

A city everyone in their right mind would try to stay away from.

As Shen Yu stood amid the whispers around her, it was amusing.

“His Majesty has issued a decree. Summon Seventh-Rank Inner Court Physician Shen Yu to answer.”

Eunuch Li’s voice rang out across the Hall of Supreme Harmony square.

The wind and snow nearly scattered his voice, but everyone heard it clearly.

The murmurs against Shen Yu grew louder.

In the eyes of other officials, Shen Yu was about to be punished by His Majesty.

After all, Qingzhou City had received the vaccine from the court.

It was the fastest to be vaccinated and had the widest coverage.

Yet the plague still broke out.

The corpses of vaccinated commoners piled up in heaps in the city—a horrifying sight.

Did the vaccine work or not?

Other prefectures hadn’t seen plague outbreaks.

Was it because of the vaccine?

Or because the reaper’s scythe hadn’t fallen on those prefectures yet?

The court had expended so much effort promoting the vaccine, only to end up with such an absurd result.

Where was the court’s face?

Killing Shen Yu wouldn’t even be enough!

Shen Yu slowly raised her head, as if she had been waiting for a long time, and walked steadily toward the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

The moment she entered the hall, countless eyes fell on her like knives.

In this hall, facing these civil and military officials, Shen Yu could almost feel every human emotion in their gazes simultaneously.

Anger, hatred, suspicion, unease, schadenfreude.

Only Minister of Personnel Wen Zheng, Marquis Wuding, and Marquis Dingyuan looked at her with a hint of pity and reluctance.

Especially Wen Zheng.

Having climbed to his current position, he had seen everything.

He knew exactly why Shen Yu was suffering today.

He genuinely felt sorry for her.

Shen Yu was the embodiment of a physician’s benevolent heart.

But she was too young, from a humble background with no connections, and didn’t know how to curry favor.

In the end, she would only end up battered and broken.

“Sigh, I’ll help her out.”

“Your Majesty! I have a memorial to present.”

“All officials within the city are to obey your orders. Those who refuse to follow epidemic prevention orders—below the fifth rank, execute them on the spot; above the fifth rank, arrest and send them to the capital. I will back you.”

“All granary funds and grain are at your disposal. I allow you to exempt the disaster area from taxes for three years with a single word.”

“All military camps and garrisons are under your command. If there are civilian uprisings or military mutinies, I allow you to mobilize troops to maintain order.”

The Empress’s chips kept piling up, and the expressions of the civil officials began to sour.

The Empress had given Shen Yu too many chips.

To send her to the provinces for epidemic prevention, simply appointing her as an imperial envoy would have sufficed.

But the Empress deliberately didn’t grant her that title; instead, she conferred the title of Imperial Inspector representing the Emperor—the highest standard treatment among imperial envoys.

An imperial envoy outranks officials by one grade, but an Imperial Inspector…

This wasn’t a matter of “outranking by one grade.”

It was “I am the emperor’s shadow.”

The holder of this authority was theoretically regarded as the emperor personally conducting the inspection.

When the golden tablet was raised, Shen Yu no longer represented her own seventh-rank official rank, but the person sitting on the dragon throne.

With so much power vested in Shen Yu, even the grand secretaries would have to address her as “subordinate.”

This naturally made the civil officials begin to worry.

If Shen Yu returned alive, it would amount to a political earthquake for the civil official group.

If she could come back alive, just her standing in court would be a silent accusation: “All of you have read the sages’ books and claim to speak for the people. Why was none of you daring enough to go?”

Moreover, a triumphant Shen Yu would have to share the already scarce power in court.

She was a supporter of imperial power.

The more power she held, the better for the Empress.

That was definitely not what the civil official group, which wanted to treat the Empress as a puppet, wanted to see.

But these were only pessimistic predictions from a few.

In reality, the vast majority believed Shen Yu would definitely die in Qingzhou City.

Qingzhou City had become a dead city.

Could Shen Yu really have some miraculous method to save the people inside?

Don’t joke—absolutely impossible!

So they raised both hands and feet in favor of the emperor recklessly piling power onto her, loudly praising His Majesty’s wisdom, just to send this plague god out of the capital as soon as possible.

And at this moment, Shen Yu looked at the golden tablet in her hand engraved with “As if I myself were present” and couldn’t help the corners of her mouth lifting.

A city where the death toll each hour was incalculable.

A city everyone in their right mind had already given up on.

Everyone talked of it with fear, their first thought to stay as far away as possible.

Across the entire empire, Shen Yu was probably the only one who dared to volunteer and go against the current.

“But the danger level of Qingzhou City…”

The Empress certainly hated to send Shen Yu to such a dangerous place.

But looking across the entire court, she really couldn’t find a second suitable candidate.

Those with ability lacked Shen Yu’s loyalty, and those with the same loyalty had the courage to face death but lacked the skill to cure the great plague in Qingzhou City.

“Your Majesty, I have confidence in my vaccine. What the noble families want to see is you in a panic and me hiding behind you like a coward.”

“Precisely because of that, I absolutely cannot let them have their way.”

On the morning of the second day’s court session, the capital was still falling with small snow like salt crystals.

The wind blew rather forcefully, blowing the snowflakes onto the court robes of the officials outside the hall, making a crisp sound.