The Council of Cures

The laboratory within the Imperial Medical College was a strange fusion of centuries. Polished mahogany cabinets filled with neatly labeled jars of dried herbs and exotic animal parts stood against one wall, representing millennia of traditional Chinese medicine. Against the other wall stood gleaming German microscopes, autoclaves, and racks of chemical-filled test tubes, symbols of the new, aggressive science of the West. In the center of this ideological battleground, a council of desperate men had been convened. The air was thick with the scent of bitter herbs, carbolic acid, and fear.

At the head of a long table sat Qin Shi Huang. He was not on a throne, but his presence dominated the room completely, his silent intensity a palpable force. Before him were the greatest medical minds of his empire. On his right sat the traditionalists, old, bearded physicians in fine silk robes who saw the world as a delicate balance of energies. On his left sat the modernists, young, Western-trained doctors in starched collars, led by the brilliant but arrogant Dr. Lin, who saw the world as a battlefield of germs and chemicals.

Dr. Lin stood before a magic lantern, which projected a magnified, squirming image of the anthrax bacillus onto a white screen. "Your Majesty, gentlemen," he began, his voice crisp and confident. "This is the enemy. Bacillus anthracis. A resilient, spore-forming bacterium. Under the microscope, we can see it. We can identify it. We have classified its nature. But," his confidence faltered slightly, "we are powerless against it. We have tried every antiseptic agent known to modern science. Carbolic acid, mercury salts, even the new formaldehyde solutions. Nothing stops its growth in a living host without also killing the host."

An old physician on the other side of the table, Master Guo, shook his head, his long, thin beard trembling with disapproval. "You try to kill a shadow with a sword, Doctor Lin. This is not a mere pathogen; a child with a fever has a pathogen. This is a malignant qi, a cold, rapacious poison that has entered the very lifeblood of the land. It is a profound imbalance. We must treat it with balancing herbs of a 'hot' nature, with fire-needle acupuncture to stimulate the body's protective energy, with ginseng and ginger to restore the flow of life."

Dr. Lin barely concealed a scoff. "With all due respect, Master Physician, your herbal tea will not stop a bacterium that reproduces every twenty minutes. This requires science, not superstition. We need a chemical that can target the bacterium's cell wall, not a potion to rebalance a mythical energy."

The two factions began to bicker, their argument a perfect microcosm of the struggle raging within China itself—the battle between its ancient, profound wisdom and the ruthless, compelling logic of the new age. Qin Shi Huang let them argue, his face a mask of stone, his eyes distant. He was listening not to their proposed solutions, which he knew were inadequate, but to the core philosophies they represented.

The debate was interrupted by the sound of the laboratory doors opening. Two hulking Imperial Guardsmen entered, and between them, looking small and frail, was an old man in simple grey prisoner's robes. His face was a web of deep lines, his eyes cynical but glittering with a sharp, undimmed intelligence. It was Old Wu, the disgraced poison master of the former Empress Dowager Cixi. He had been a living specimen in this very college, a breathing encyclopedia of toxins for the students to study. Now, he was a consultant.

He looked around the state-of-the-art laboratory with a sneer. "So," he rasped, his voice a dry, dusty sound, "the Son of Heaven requires the services of a humble poisoner. Has the food in the palace become so bland that you require new, exotic flavors?"

QSH ignored the jibe. His voice was as cold and sharp as a shard of ice. "You are a master of toxins, both natural and man-made. You understand the hidden wars that nature wages against itself. Look at this." He gestured to the magnified image wriggling on the screen.

Old Wu shuffled forward, his leg irons clinking softly on the stone floor. He peered at the image, his eyes narrowing. He then walked over to the petri dishes, not looking through the microscopes, but simply sniffing the air above them, his nostrils twitching like a bloodhound's.

"Ah," he said after a long moment. "The Black Blood Blight. An old, old evil. I have read of it in ancient texts. The legends say it was a curse breathed from the lungs of steppe demons. But it is no demon." He gestured at the bacteria on the screen. "It is simply a very hungry little beast." He looked at Dr. Lin's neat rows of chemical bottles. "And you cannot kill a beast by poisoning its food supply when the beast is the poison. A fool's errand."

"Then what is your solution, old man?" Dr. Lin challenged, his professional pride stung. "Chants and incense? A dragon-bone poultice?"

A sly, knowing grin crossed Old Wu's withered face. "Every poison has its predator, young scientist. Every snake has its mongoose. Every corrupt official has his assassin." He chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "You are trying to kill the wolf by poisoning the entire forest. You must find the beast that hunts the wolf. In the southern swamps, there is a fungus that devours the rot in a corpse before any other can take hold. In the high mountains, there is a lichen that consumes all other lichens from a rock. Nature is a constant, silent war. To defeat this poison, you must find this tiny beast's natural enemy."

A deep silence fell over the room. The bickering factions stopped. Old Wu's wisdom, while couched in the metaphor of an ancient naturalist, was profound.

Qin Shi Huang, who had been listening intently, stood up. A new, terrible purpose seemed to radiate from him. "You are both right," he declared, his voice cutting through the silence. "And you are both wrong. Dr. Lin, your science allows us to see the enemy with clarity. Master Wu, your wisdom reminds us that for every force in nature, there is a counterforce. But we do not have time to search the swamps and mountains for this predator. So we will create it. Here. Now."

He strode to the most powerful microscope in the room, dismissing the startled technician with a wave of his hand. He placed a fresh glass slide with a live, teeming culture of the anthrax bacillus under the lens. The other scientists watched, utterly confused by his actions.

"Silence," he commanded, his voice dropping to a low intensity. "I require absolute concentration."

He placed his hands on either side of the microscope, not touching it, but hovering inches away. He closed his eyes. He drew upon his power, the dragon's spark, but this time he did not extend it outwards to move mountains or calm seas. He focused it inwards, pulling all of his immense will and energy down to a single, microscopic point, down to the cellular level. The room grew perceptibly colder. The air crackled with static electricity. A faint, ethereal golden light began to emanate from his hands, casting his face in a divine, otherworldly glow.

"The bacteria is a living thing," he thought, his mind operating on a level beyond human comprehension. "A simple one. A machine of protein and life force. It has a structure. A key. A sequence. And any sequence can be… unwritten. Rewritten."

Peering into a secondary eyepiece connected to the main microscope, Dr. Lin gasped, a strangled sound of disbelief. Something impossible was happening on the glass slide. Some of the rod-shaped anthrax bacilli were… dissolving. But they were not just dying or disintegrating. They were being actively attacked. Tiny, even smaller entities—things that had not been there moments before—were materializing in the culture medium. They looked like infinitesimal crystalline syringes. They were latching onto the bacteria, piercing their cell walls, and injecting something into them, causing them to bloat and burst from the inside out.

"By God in Heaven…" Dr. Lin whispered, his scientific rationalism crumbling into dust. "Bacteriophages! Viruses that are specifically coded to target bacteria! But… how? They don't exist in this pure sample! It's impossible! It violates every known law of biology!"

QSH was in a state of profound concentration, his face pale, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. This was a tremendous effort, a new application of his power that was costing him dearly. He was not just destroying the bacteria; he was actively manipulating the inert organic matter in the culture medium—the proteins, the stray nucleotides—and forcing them to assemble into the complex structures of a living virus. It was a virus he was designing in his own mind, a perfect predator coded specifically for this enhanced strain of anthrax.

After a long, tense minute that stretched into an eternity, he stumbled back from the microscope, breathing heavily in great, ragged gasps. He looked drained, exhausted, hollowed-out in a way none present had ever seen him.

"There," he said, his voice strained and weak. He pointed a trembling finger at the microscope. "In that sample. The 'predator' that Master Wu spoke of. It will hunt the plague. It is self-replicating. It will not stop until its food source is gone. Isolate it, Dr. Lin. Cultivate it. You have your cure."

He swayed on his feet, and for the first time since his rebirth, he looked truly vulnerable. Li Hongzhang rushed from the side of the room to support his Emperor. Old Wu stared, his cynicism and bravado completely gone, replaced by a profound, terrifying awe. He had thought QSH was a man with a strange, powerful trick. He now realized, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that he was in the presence of something that utterly defied the laws of nature. He had just witnessed a god create life from dust to wage a microscopic war.