A Hospital in Another World?

"Wow, it's quite lively here!"

Lord Joane Vaughn, the ruler of Hartland City, strolled in casually. Despite the tense atmosphere with drawn swords on both sides, he seemed oblivious, smiling and looking around. If he dyed his current beard white, lengthened and increased it threefold, he could easily pass for Santa Claus.

"Lord of the City."

"My Lord Baron."

The people present greeted him unevenly. Lord Joane gestured this way and nodded that way, making his way to the center of the crowd. He stopped, straightened his beard, and appraised Garrett Nordmark.

"I remember you. You're the... the disciple of Elder Elwin at the Midsummer Festival, right?"

"Garrett Nordmark, paying respects to Your Lordship." Garrett bowed. Lord Joane casually waved his hand.

"Hmm, you say there's evidence? Where is it? That bottle? Show me!"

"To see it, tools are needed." Garrett looked around. "My Lord Baron, with your permission, I'd like to find a well-lit room to present the evidence."

"What are you waiting for? Go inside!" Lord Joane Baron lifted his foot and walked towards the Fountain Temple. After a couple of steps, he turned in surprise. "What are you doing?"

Garrett lifted the hem of his robe and was leaning over the fountain, reaching out to scoop water.

"The evidence is in the fountain water, My Lord Baron." Garrett personally intervened just to capture the attention of the Lord, achieving his goal, then promptly stopped and stood up.

"Of course, for the sake of fairness, it's best if you send guards to fetch the water. Or," he smirked, restraining a laugh, "the priests of the Fountain Temple can do it too."

The bald bishop chuckled. Elder Elwin's concern prevented him from laughing out loud, and the white-bearded man trembled under the firelight. High Priest Holna, with a face as dark as the bottom of a pot, had to say to the Lord:

"Please, My Lord, send guards to fetch the water!"

"Remember to wipe the mouth of the bottle—"

Garrett, sandwiched in the crowd, walked inside, simultaneously racing against time, turned his head, and shouted...

A group of people entered the temple in a grand manner. Garrett set up a microscope, and Lord Joane Baron leaned in to take a look, his eyes brightening.

"Interesting, truly interesting..." He circled the microscope, praising it, occasionally reaching his fingers over, pulling a piece of sleeve, or plucking a hair to observe. After messing around for a quarter of an hour, he remembered the guards standing by and waved his hand.

"So, is this thing used to see things in the water? Bring it here!"

"Uh, not exactly..."

Garrett was sweating. He hadn't done anything like bacterial culture, fixation, or staining. Just visual inspection wouldn't reveal anything, fortunately, the patient Lord was patient, letting him fiddle. With a command from Garrett, priests from the Nature Church and the War God Temple rushed in, each with a password and a move.

Coupled with Elder Elwin's bacterial growth technique, soon, colored bacterial samples were sent to the Lord one by one.

High Priest Holna paced anxiously, unable to directly overturn the table and finding no reason to stop. Lord Joane Baron personally fixed the glass slide on the stage, approached with his eyes, and examined them one by one.

"This one has it!"

"This one too!"

"This one too!"

"This one doesn't... oh, this one was made with cold boiled water..."

"This one was wiped on the mouth of the fountain bottle..." As he looked, Lord Joane Baron's face gradually sank. He turned to High Priest Holna:

"Come and see for yourself!"

High Priest Holna reluctantly came over. Garrett stepped back a few steps, watching him observe one glass slide, then change to another, his brows furrowing tighter, and his movements getting faster. Beside him, Elder Elwin quietly pulled him and said with concern:

"Little Garrett, what if he says we did all this, that we harmed him? What should we do?"

"Then let him do it himself." Garrett smirked. "Teacher, you're really thoughtful... I just need a sidekick, and here you are..."

"He collects water samples himself, cultivates them, makes smears, and stains them himself. Teacher, you can rest assured; I guarantee that as long as all the steps are correct, what is produced will be exactly the same."

"Then... what about that magic..."

"No need for magic. Freeze the meat for 24 hours, and it's the same."

Bacteria, you either have it or you don't. You can see it, and others can see it. Denial is not an option. This is the principle of the repeatability of scientific experiments, bite me?

Garrett became more and more confident. High Priest Holna's face grew darker, finally tossing the glass slide in his hand down and shouting:

"So what if there is this thing? It's just a little thing. It's not needed—this—"

"Microscope." Garrett reminded him on the side. Elder Elwin nearly laughed out loud: you'd better not have mentioned it!

Sure enough, High Priest Holna glared fiercely at Garrett. After glaring, he remembered to continue shouting:

"What's the point of finding something that can't even be seen without a microscope? Even if it's found in the fountain, so what? In this drop of water, there are too many little things! Why do you say it's causing the plague? What about other things? Why is it not the poor people themselves who are sick?!"

The temple suddenly fell silent. Lord Joane, the city's ruler, was dumbfounded, the bald bishop scratched his head, and Elder Elwin instinctively wanted to answer, his mouth opened and closed, looking at Garrett:

... Yeah, why would this little thing make people sick and spread the plague?

Suddenly, Garrett laughed. In the light laughter, he confidently stepped forward and raised his head high:

"I certainly have a way to prove it."

At his request, Lord Joane's guards turned and left, bringing back ten rabbits. Eight healthy ones and two with diarrhea. High Priest Holna, the bald bishop, and Elder Elwin, the leaders of the three sects, took turns using healing spells on the healthy rabbits, brushing them over and over until they were sure there were no problems. Then, under Garrett's guidance, they began the experiment step by step.

—Taking feces from healthy and sick rabbits, placing them on the frozen meat, Elder Elwin used a growth spell. After the magic, bacterial culture was done, and unsurprisingly, in the feces of the sick rabbit, those short rod-shaped things were found.

"There shouldn't be these little things on the healthy rabbits, right?"

Garrett smiled leisurely. The eight petri dishes lined up in a row, and there was nothing resembling rod-shaped objects in the feces of the healthy rabbits. Looking at his sharp smile, High Priest Holna resisted for a while before throwing the rabbit droppings at him:

"No! So what?"

"It doesn't matter." Garrett shrugged and continued to the next step. From the culture

 dish of the sick rabbit, he picked up a bit of bacteria from the gray-white circular colonies, applied them to a new, never-used culture dish—

"Teacher, I'll trouble you again."

The second growth spell was cast. On the translucent frozen meat, circular colonies quickly spread. Cultivate the bacterial community, verify the purity of the colonies, mix the bacteria with cold boiled water, feed it to the healthy rabbits, patiently wait a few hours until they begin to get sick—

The newly sick rabbits, in their feces, indeed cultured the same rod-shaped microorganisms.

After everyone verified it in turn, Garrett smiled and spread his hands towards High Priest Holna.

"Sick rabbits have them; healthy rabbits don't. What we obtained from sick rabbits, when injected into healthy rabbits, caused exactly the same condition. From the second batch of sick rabbits, the same things were isolated. Do you need any more evidence?"

The famous Koch's postulates, you can refute them on the spot unless the Water Goddess immediately descends!

"Impossible!" The high priest's face turned ashen. He turned and rushed to the main hall, kneeling in front of the idol, clasping the goddess's robe with both hands:

"It's really the Holy Spring... it's really the Holy Spring causing the plague... Oh, Goddess! Are you punishing us?!"

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