Early the next morning, Old Madam Si discovered that both her son and grandson had fallen ill with high fevers. With no medicinal herbs in the house to treat them, she hurried off to find her elder sister.
As it turned out, Li Dashan had also fallen ill.
Only then did she realize that more than half of the villagers had come down with fevers; they had spent the entire previous night out in the rain trying to salvage the crops. She instructed her daughter-in-law to prepare hot water to sponge down her son and grandson, then she took her second sister and several of the village elders, armed with shovels and bamboo baskets, to forage for herbs.
Chapter 429