The Name of the Disease Is Han (1)
"What conversation could possibly warrant lecturing a child with that much heat?"
Zhang Jue came into the room smiling.
He shook his head at Hua Tuo, who clicked his tongue and looked away.
"From what I overheard outside, the Xiongnu prince was wrestling with concerns worthy of a prince. You went too far, Yuanhua. It isn't as if five-mineral powder or mafeisan are so easily abused."
"Once a formula starts circulating, counterfeits can be whipped up given enough time. Do you have any idea how many more people will die because of that, Elder Brother?"
"What money would starving commoners have to buy such things?"
"They buy it to forget the agony of hunger. Not because they have money! And besides...!"
"Yes, yes — you're saying it's even worse if the ones with money start buying it."
From the way Zhang Jue said it, this was clearly not the first time Hua Tuo had made that argument.
"That's right! Imagine those moneyed types babbling nonsense and stripping their clothes off in the street! And then someone will go and appoint them as officials, calling them filial sons!"
"It shouldn't happen. It truly shouldn't... but is that a worry to unload on a Xiongnu prince?"
"...Tch."
"Yuanhua, you've been cooped up brewing decoctions and tending the prince for too long. Go get some air."
Hua Tuo flapped a dismissive hand and shuffled out.
Zhang Jue sat down beside me with a wry smile.
"Let's have a look..."
His hand settled on my forehead. Then he gently drew my arm toward him and took my pulse. I never imagined I would feel such warmth in the hands of the man who would one day lead the Yellow Turban Rebellion.
Zhang Jue sank into thought for a moment, then smiled at me with genuine kindness.
"The Xiongnu prince may take a little fresh air now. I'll help you up."
We stepped out into the courtyard.
Looking back, it was just as I had expected — a modest thatched cottage. Even so, Zhang Jue and Hua Tuo had apparently arranged a separate room out of consideration for the young lady, Du Ying. Huchuquan, who had been jammed in with Wei Xu and Zhang Liao and slept poorly for it, was full of complaints — and yet the moment he saw me, the three of them spoke at once.
"Bao!"
"Nephew!"
"You all right now?"
I nodded and looked to Zhang Jue. He nodded in turn.
"In a day or two, you should be well enough to take the road again. But do not expose yourself to overly cold winds, and do not ride without rest."
Zhang Jue and I walked alone toward a corner of the courtyard.
"I apologize on Hua Yuanhua's behalf for the way he pressed you earlier."
When Zhang Jue spoke first, I waved it off.
"There's no need. Anyone who practices medicine might think as he does. More importantly..."
I watched Zhang Jue's face carefully as I asked. I wanted to know his mind as much as Hua Tuo's — no, even more.
"Honored elder... are you not a Daoist?"
"Haha..."
Zhang Jue broke into laughter.
"Some do call me that. I've studied the Way deeply enough in my own fashion that I suppose I am half a Daoist. And when common folk marvel at my medicine, I sometimes wave it off as Daoist arts."
"In the first place," he went on, "whether it is medicine or Daoist arts, from a Confucian's standpoint they are all the same technical crafts. Not so different, really."
I didn't know how to answer, so I simply listened. I was devoted to the faith of Tengri, which stood entirely outside the Hundred Schools of Thought to begin with — and it would have been strange for a Xiongnu like me to weigh in on Daoism or Confucianism.
"But there is truth in what Hua Yuanhua said. That is why I tend to gloss even simple prescriptions as Daoist arts."
"Because you fear the common people will imitate a wrong prescription?"
"That, and... just as mafeisan is medicine when it saves a critical patient and poison when it is abused, every medicinal herb has another face. Behind the medicine lies the toxin."
Zhang Jue went on, saying there had been a case once.
"I once had to use a potent herb. The patient was an old woman, so the dosage absolutely could not be exceeded. I portioned out each day's measure with great care and left it with her son..."
I didn't need to hear the rest. People who, if something seemed good for the body, would pour it down the throat without a second thought. That habit had not vanished even in the modern age.
"...The son's filial wish to use the good medicine on his mother 'without stinting' turned him instead into an unfilial wretch who killed her."
"So that is why you call it 'Daoist arts' and never disclose the actual prescription."
"That was part of it. But my thinking reached somewhere more fundamental."
Somewhere more fundamental.
"If medicine that follows a proper prescription saves a life as a matter of course, then was that poor son's act not 'artifice' — a violation of nature...?"
Wuwei ziran. Non-action in accordance with nature. Was that how Zhang Jue had fallen into Daoism?
A bitterness settled over his face.
"And that is far from the only tragic story. When you trace a disease to its cause, you often find it is not a disease at all."
"Not a disease?"
"Not a disease, but hunger. Far, far too often..."
Zhang Jue's eyes grew red.
"...there have been far too many such cases."
I had heard something like this before: that many revolutionaries began as physicians. Treat the poor, the powerless, and the wretched long enough, and you come to feel that something is fundamentally wrong — somewhere in society, somewhere in the state. Was Zhang Jue one of those?
He pressed his lips together, mastered himself, and spoke again.
"Give a starving man food at once and his stomach rebels and he dies. The physicians know the cause of the illness, yet they kill the patient by prescribing wrongly. They assume that food will make him well."
You had to soothe the stomach first with nothing but water or thin gruel, Zhang Jue said, then carefully gauge, patient by patient, the rate at which the esophagus, stomach, liver, and intestines recovered, and treat accordingly.
"I have heard there is a certain Daoist on Qingcheng Mountain in Yizhou. Someone like myself, I expect. He treats the sick with water, and in cases that seem beyond saving, he burns a talisman and mixes the ashes in. That is to save the patient through faith. Even those who look as if they will never rise again... often stand up on the strength of believing they will recover."
Was he speaking of the faith that would later enter Hanzhong and become the Five Pecks of Rice Movement — the Way of the Celestial Masters?
"I have also heard he takes rice as payment for treatment."
"Until that patient recovered, he received help from those who had already been healed. Now it is his turn to fill the belly of someone else who is starving."
A world built that way — the help of the powerless gathering, little by little, into something whole. Zhang Jue's eyes seemed to be painting that world.
"Xiongnu prince, you are young, yet you are clever, and you seem to have many questions about Taiping Dao. The world Taiping Dao dreams of is nothing extraordinary. It is simply what I have been describing. The name does not matter. If someone does this on Qingcheng Mountain, I do the same in a corner of Jizhou... and someone else does it in a corner of Xuzhou, or Yangzhou, or Jingzhou."
Little by little, from the corners — if those small worlds filled up enough, would All Under Heaven one day become the same?
It was a fairy-tale dream. Even the name Taiping Dao was nothing more than a naive wish for a realm of Supreme Peace. How extraordinary, that a man who looked to be around forty could still dream a fairy tale... Knowing how brutally that dream would be shattered was not pleasant in the least.
I decided to think about it coldly. The first large-scale popular religious uprising in the history of the Central Plains: the Yellow Turban Rebellion. If Zhang Jue was to be emulated as a religious leader... had the momentum the Yellow Turbans displayed been built on nothing more than humble relief work?
Zhang Jue suddenly bent down and scooped up a handful of earth from the courtyard. Then he held it out toward me.
"Touch it."
"...It's soft earth."
"Like a mother's breast. This soil, carried here by the Yellow River — the mother's milk of the land — overflows across all of Huaxia, and it grows the grain that feeds the people."
Someone had said it, hadn't they? That the people take food as their Heaven. Was it Li Yiji, minister to the High Emperor?
Zhang Jue pointed at the sky with his other hand.
"That blue sky may not be the people's Heaven."
With his other hand, he stroked the yellow earth.
Zhang Jue's eyes were shining.
It was not the cunning, madness-lit gaze of a cult leader from some game. I had already felt it in the hands that had touched my forehead and taken my pulse. They were a farmer's hands.
Zhang Jue's medicine would have begun for the people of a single village in Julu Commandery, his hometown, a little way southeast of here. Like a farmer gazing at a barley field glowing gold on the eve of harvest, Zhang Jue's eyes shone.
Was I shaken because Zhang Jue was not the man I had imagined? Or was I coming to share his ideal? Or was I simply looking to use the great chaos he would one day unleash — the age of Three Kingdoms he would throw open?
If I allied with Zhang Jue, and Xiongnu cavalry supported the Yellow Turban infantry...?
All of it tangled together, and I found myself saying this:
"A Xiongnu never fails to repay a kindness. Should you ever need help, honored elder, come to Xihe Commandery in Bingzhou at any time. Give my name — or simply say 'the Leopard.'"
I looked Zhang Jue straight in the eye and made the promise.
"I will ride to you without fail."
Asking someone to ally for my sake is not a particularly good way to negotiate. Offering to become their ally is far more effective. It might sound as if I were simply offering one-sided help, but between people, the mere act of extending a hand establishes an unspoken contract.
Why else would the word "shame" exist? Why else would a man who takes help and then wipes his mouth clean be despised? Because he has broken that tacit contract.
And besides, listening to Zhang Jue, I found I wanted to see it. What if the rebellion that overturned the Central Plains in 184 CE had not ended the way it did. In what direction would Zhang Jue's thought, would Taiping Dao, have grown? What flower would it have bloomed?
Even if Zhang Jue had not yet resolved upon rebellion, for now it was enough to form a bond and plant a seed.
"Hahaha...!"
Zhang Jue burst out laughing.
"I doubt I shall ever be in such desperate need — but I will do as you say, Prince of the Xiongnu."
A few days later, Zhang Jue and Hua Tuo saw off the party of the Xiongnu prince Luanti Bao.
"Kaak-hat!"
Hua Tuo let out that bizarre laugh of his, looking at Zhang Jue.
"What are you laughing at, Yuanhua?"
"Elder Brother, you refused to raise an army, calling even that artifice — and yet you've gone and planted one foot among the Xiongnu, just in case?"
"Who can say when the emperor in Luoyang will change his mind? I must have the strength to protect my people."
"In a way, Elder Brother, you may be more Mohist than Daoist."
"For now... with Taiping Dao alone, All Under Heaven..."
"You mean to change it?"
"I can hold it. I can keep it from getting any worse."
"Elder Brother, the way I see it, this Taiping Dao of yours—"
Hua Tuo let the words trail off, and Zhang Jue glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
"—is like mafeisan. Or five-mineral powder."
Zhang Jue did not answer.
"Keep taking it and you'll be happy enough. But mafeisan is not meant to be used that way — to postpone pain. It should be used to cut the root of the pain."
"I do not yet wish to reach for that kind of artifice."
"A Confucian... you mean to trot out Meng Ke's words again?"
"How is that bastard Liu Hong any different from Jie and Zhou?"
"In that respect you are a Confucian through and through. A revolution to change the Mandate... what, do you mean to found a Hua dynasty?"
"A Zhang dynasty."
Zhang Jue's face crumpled. He could not refute Hua Tuo. All he could do was repeat the same words.
"Not yet. Not yet. Even if it is not Liu Hong, there is still hope."
"Ah — that child the Daoist you know is raising outside the palace?"
Hua Tuo grinned, showing his teeth.
"Waiting for the day Liu Bian takes the throne, are you?"