Sister, I'm the Queen This Life (330 Chapters Left to Complete) - Chapter 197

Albani, the director of Lambouyé Orphanage, faithfully adhered to Lady Ariadne de Mare’s instructions.

From the very day they received the grain, the orphanage shut its doors and ceased all external contact. Inside, they began isolating individuals suffering from fever or muscle aches and managing meals and hygiene meticulously.

Just as expected, the very next day after the orphanage closed its doors, a patient with high fever appeared. The first patient, after suffering high fever for 24 hours, began complaining of severe pain in newly swollen lymph nodes.

“…It’s the Black Death.”

Upon receiving the written notice—delivered without any face-to-face contact—Ariadne let out a deep sigh. It was half worry, half relief. That patient would now die; there was no cure for the plague. The initial spread had been contained, but the epidemic had begun.

She took up her quill and swiftly wrote a letter.

“Lambouyé Orphanage has always been a place with minimal external contact. If the illness began spreading inside, it must have originated from a recently admitted resident or staff member.”

Sancha, standing behind Ariadne as she wrote, lamented.

“If I understand you correctly, my lady…”

“Yes… The Black Death has already become widespread within the walls of San Carlo.”

In her previous life, Lambouyé Orphanage might have merely served as a convenient scapegoat. A poorhouse was the perfect target for furious citizens seeking to blame someone for the plague ravaging the entire city.

For a brief moment, Ariadne wondered whether it had been a mistake to interfere with the orphanage at all, given that the plague was destined to spread across the whole city anyway. She shook her head. The Golden Rule must have guided her there for a reason.

Moreover, during her tenure as acting regent consort, she had already researched plans to reform Lambouyé Orphanage. Regardless of its noble founding intentions, the orphanage had now, in practice, become a place where people simply died.

The city gathered its poor like garbage into one location and provided only minimal rations within an extremely overcrowded facility. All manner of diseases periodically broke out, and corpses were regularly carried away.

Whenever space opened up in that wretched facility, yet more impoverished people were stuffed into the empty spots. San Carlo’s streets remained clean and beautiful, but corpses continued to pile up inside Lambouyé Orphanage—a horrifying method of urban cleansing.

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