Mao Ping could be counted as one of the earliest People's Party comrades to work in Wuhan. In 1905, the People's Party only had eight formal members. After Chen Ke and You Gou completed the development of the specific drug "606", Mao Ping went to Wuhan to work as a doctor in the capacity of a member of the "Whampoa Book Club". Now in April 1908, Mao Ping, who had returned to Wuhan to work again, was not just a doctor. The People's Party's financial power at this time far exceeded that of 1905. Mao Ping was ordered to open a "Wuhan Medical School" in the "Hanyang New District" created by the People's Party. According to the tradition of the medical field, the "Affiliated Hospital of Wuhan Medical School" was also built. Mao Ping served as both the principal of the medical school and the dean of the affiliated hospital, counting as a rising figure in the intellectual circles.

The Wuhan Medical School and hospital presided over by Mao Ping were located near the steel plant. Because the fees were not high and it was Western medicine, the hospital was crowded with people every day. Mao Ping also sat for consultations on ordinary days. After asking about the condition of a fever patient, Mao Ping said, "Go get a blood test."

There were many cases of infectious diseases recently. The transition between spring and summer was often when epidemics broke out. The three towns of Wuhan were a big city with a large population and many people coming and going, so the possibility of an epidemic outbreak was also greater. As a low-lying wetland, Hanyang New District had illness as a common problem. To expand its influence, the People's Party had held sanitation popularization lectures many times in the three towns of Wuhan. The effect of the lectures was naturally quite good; of course, the result was that business at the Affiliated Hospital of Wuhan Medical School was "booming".

"Dean Mao, there's been an accident at the steel plant! Six dead, four injured." A messenger rushed hurriedly into the outpatient clinic where Mao Ping was.

Mao Ping stood up immediately, "Call the comrades of the medical team, we are going right now."

The steel industry was a high-risk industry. Let alone now, even after the liberation, every large and medium-sized steel plant had a three-digit "death standard" every year. That is to say, as long as the number of deaths due to various reasons did not exceed three digits annually, the steel plant was not considered to have management problems. This wasn't disregarding human life; it was determined by the working environment of the steel plant. High temperature, high heat, high noise, and various blinding lights. Workers and technical personnel couldn't just hide in a safe place with saving their lives as the sole purpose. Workers and technical personnel had to observe and handle metal liquids at over a thousand degrees. A slight carelessness by oneself, or a slight unexpected event in the production process, would lead to injury or disability. Mao Ping had seen with his own eyes a worker on the overhead bridge directly above a blast furnace accidentally fall into the blast furnace. By the time Mao Ping got onto the bridge, there were no longer any traces of a human in the boiling molten iron below. In the high-temperature environment of over a thousand degrees, the whole person was burned into flying ash.

So death itself didn't cause any more surprise for Mao Ping. Any surprise was meaningless; this was the reality everyone faced.

As soon as he went out, Mao Ping saw the gloomy sky, and he felt inexplicably uneasy in his heart. These continuous clouds looked very much like the clouds he saw during the flood in Anhui back then. That flood gave Mao Ping memories that were too deep. Composing himself, Mao Ping took the medical team wearing white coats and rushed towards Hanyang Iron Works.

Injuries or deaths in the steel plant were not news, so the order inside the plant was orderly. Instead, those foreign technical personnel would greet Mao Ping kindly when they saw them. When these foreign devils first saw Mao Ping and the others wearing white coats with round white-background red cross symbols on their medical kits, they once thought they were doctors from foreign hospitals. When they learned that this group were local Chinese doctors, the foreign devils immediately became dismissive.

It wasn't until Mao Ping's medical team showed decisive and effective ability during treatment—once saving a foreign devil's life—that they treated Mao Ping and the others with the respectful attitude truly accorded to doctors. After all, hospitals opened by foreign devils didn't have doctors who would rush over at any time without a house call fee. In this dangerous working environment, heaven knew what one would encounter. Treating doctors well was treating oneself well.

Mao Ping and the others didn't stop because of others' greetings. The medical team advanced rapidly with their usual focused attitude, arriving directly at the place where the injured were under the lead of factory personnel. As usual, amidst the pungent smell of burnt flesh, the injured workers were groaning or crying.

The one crying had already lost a section of his left leg; the blackened fabric was cauterized onto the leg. Exposed outside was the black and red stump. "Let me die!" The worker was crying in despair, "What meaning is there for me to live on! Let me die!"

This was something that couldn't be helped. In the Wuhan area where employment competition was cruel, it was very hard for such disabled people to find a decent job again. This world showed no mercy to a person without the ability to support a family; there were only two choices: a slow death or a quick death.

No matter how scary the wounded's injuries were, or how miserable the wounded's wailing was, rescue work began immediately. First, simple treatment of the wounds, then wrapping the wounds with gauze. The wounded were lifted onto stretchers, and the rescue team ran towards the hospital.

"Principal Mao!" A foreman stopped Mao Ping. "Principal Mao, my relative is among them. Please take extra care."

"Don't worry. We will treat the patients well." Mao Ping replied.

"This is fate. This is fate." The foreman said it several times in a pained tone before speaking his mind, "Suffering like this, he might as well be dead."

Mao Ping knew what the foreman meant. The words the foreman didn't say were, "If the cost is too high, then don't bother saving him." Mao Ping understood the hospital's situation very well. The People's Party's hospital couldn't possibly save this kind of patient at all costs. The current hospital simply had no large income. If the People's Party wasn't aiming to accumulate enough doctors, and if the People's Party's investment in doctors wasn't small in itself, this school and hospital wouldn't have been able to sustain themselves long ago.

The three towns of Wuhan were a big city. As a thoroughfare of nine provinces, there was also a huge concession area. This place was called "Chicago of the East" by Americans. But in the deformed urban development, there was precisely a lack of a medical system, let alone any social security system. Apart from doing their best to treat the disabled personnel within their own system, the People's Party would also arrange many jobs within their capacity for them. For unmarried personnel, they would even arrange treatment like marriage for them. But that was the Base Area. The People's Party basically controlled the entire Base Area, having numerous enterprises and factories with too many employment opportunities. In Wuhan, no work for a day meant no food for a day. Too many people were waiting for too few employment opportunities. Once eliminated by the labor force because of major disability, the end was very miserable.

Even if the person was saved, what was the meaning? Mao Ping couldn't help thinking, if Hanyang Iron Works belonged to the People's Party, then the People's Party naturally wouldn't ignore these worker comrades. But in the current situation, the People's Party had neither the financial power nor the obligation to provide more help to these people beyond treatment.

"Being saved is his fate. Let him resign himself to fate." Mao Ping said to the foreman. The foreman looked at Mao Ping with understanding and grateful eyes, saying "Thank you" repeatedly.

To calm the emotions in his heart, Mao Ping couldn't help saying to himself secretly: "Exert the revolutionary humanitarian spirit of healing the wounded and rescuing the dying." Mao Ping even recalled Chen Ke saying to him with an extremely serious attitude, "Comrade Mao Ping, you've worked hard."

Thinking of this, Mao Ping felt he had recovered the courage to persist in his work, doing as much as possible for China's impoverished medical work. However, if Mao Ping could know what Chen Ke was thinking in his heart, he would probably turn pale with fright. Facing the crude public medical system he strove to establish, Chen Ke often thought that with the average patient death rate of nearly 10% for these hardworking staff, if it were in the 21st century, they would probably be blocked at the gate by medical disturbance mobs until they wanted to commit suicide.

Holding the spirit of revolutionary humanitarianism, Mao Ping took the medical team and left Hanyang Iron Works. The school and hospital were built on a large piece of open land; this was the territory of Hanyang New District.

In 1905, Zhang Zhidong, then Viceroy of Liangjiang, started construction of the "Zhang Gong Dike" in Hankou, stretching from Dijiao in Hankou in the east to Duoluokou in the west. Since its completion, over a hundred thousand mu of low-lying land in the back lake area rose to become dry land, which caused the Hankou Citadel to lose its flood prevention function. Later, the Yudai River gradually silted up, so at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Hankou Citadel was demolished and rebuilt into a broad road, which is today's Zhongshan Avenue. The embryonic form of today's Hankou was thus gradually formed.

The People's Party intervening in Wuhan at this time wasn't planned in advance. Nor was it that Chen Ke's understanding of history was so detailed. It was purely stumbling into it by mistake, sticking a foot into Hankou where there was a large amount of vacant land. These hundred thousand mu of depression were originally wetlands with few inhabitants. By 1908, the groundwater level dropped, and this place could finally undergo large-scale construction.

The medical team entered the hospital, which was still crowded with people. In this era, whether in China or abroad, infectious diseases occupied the majority of hospital beds. Although the masses didn't know the principles of infectious diseases, they knew the manifestations of infectious diseases. Keeping an infectious patient at home would bring disaster to the whole family. Sending them to the hospital, firstly, fulfilled their duty to their relatives, and secondly, avoided bringing disaster to the family. If it were in the New China period, the hospital and the national health and epidemic prevention system would naturally solve these epidemic prevention problems. But now it was 1908; the Manchu Qing government had neither the will nor the ability to solve social problems. Private hospitals were opened to make money, to earn silver for their own pockets, not to spend huge amounts from their own pockets to provide services to society.

Therefore, until the People's Party intervened in Wuhan, even if there were only large-scale hygiene propaganda campaigns, the prototype of a true health and epidemic prevention system finally appeared in Wuhan.

Seeing the medical team carrying the wounded in, everyone knew the matter was serious and made way one after another. Mao Ping and the others successfully entered the operating room and began further treatment work.

This was in April 1908. Lord Zhao Erxun was still in the position of Viceroy of Huguang.

And two months later, in June 1908, when the Jiangsu Provisional Assembly was formally established, Lord Zhao Erxun had already re-assumed the post of Viceroy of Sichuan as he wished. He threw away the hot potato of Hubei and rushed hurriedly to Sichuan. He didn't even wait for his successor.

Entering summer, heavy rain fell in the Wuhan area, and water levels everywhere rose sharply. Hubei was seeing that it would encounter large-scale floods for the fifth consecutive year. And at this time, Mao Ping was mobilizing comrades in the hospital and students in the school to prepare for disaster relief and epidemic prevention.

Not only the hospital, but the comrades of the Wuhan Work Team were also making emergency mobilization. Before coming to work in Wuhan, Chen Ke had said to the Wuhan Work Team, "Comrades, the revolution can take the way of first controlling a region with military power, then unfolding the work of establishing a new system in civil administration. At the same time, the revolution can also take the mode of first unfolding work in civil administration, and finally implementing military takeover. No matter which mode, strong military power is needed as backing. But relying only on military power cannot create a new regime. The ultimate goal of the revolution is nothing more than allowing the people to labor better and live better. This is the end point of all true revolutions, and also the goal of all revolutions."

The People's Party had the ability to cope with floods; the party members and cadres had almost all struggled out of floods alive. Although the comrades of the People's Party had all studied materialism and firmly stated that there were no ghosts or gods in this world, facing the current situation, they very much doubted whether Chen Ke had the ability to predict the future. When the People's Party began to project power in Wuhan, without needing to go into battle to kill, without needing class struggle, Heaven actually used the cruel method of a flood to give a helping hand.

The messenger brought news: the work team led by Chairman Chen Ke in the Dabie Mountain area was very effective. Up to now, a team of tens of thousands had been recruited. And this team had already begun preparing to march to Wuhan. Not for military struggle, but for disaster relief work. The People's Party could now unfold its work to its heart's content in a social situation with no competitors.