A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

The western camp was even more dilapidated than Yang Hu had imagined.

This once formidable army camp in the northern frontier, with its fluttering banners and valiant soldiers, now exudes an indescribable sense of decay.

As the cavalry led into the camp, the sight before him made his heart sink.

Although the camp was large, it exuded an air of decay. The granary doors were half-open, and the inside was empty; the soldiers' armor was worn out, and their swords were dulled and no one had repaired them.

These scenes, as Yang Hu saw them, were all evidence: military rations and equipment were being emptied bag by bag and cart by cart, fed to the barbarians beyond the Great Wall. Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, shrank behind him, watching the once mighty army she had commanded fall to this state, her hands, hidden in her sleeves, quietly clenched into fists.

The most shocking sight was the wounded soldiers' camp.

A hundred or so wounded soldiers were crammed into a few tattered tents that let in drafts from all sides. The stench of blood, pus, and an indescribable putrid smell mingled together, making it almost impossible to breathe. The seriously wounded lay on straw mats, unable to even groan, waiting to be dragged out of the camp and hastily buried after they breathed their last.

Here, a wounded soldier's life is as worthless as grass.

In the numb eyes of the wounded soldiers, not a glimmer of hope could be seen. In this place where death awaited, survival was a luxury.

"Are you the physician sent by the prefectural governor's office?"

A voice came from the side. It was an old military doctor who guarded the wounded soldiers' camp. His surname was Liu. He had served in the army for forty years. His hair and beard were gray, his eyelids drooped, and he glanced at Yang Hu's young face with disdain.

"You greenhorn," Physician Liu sneered. "Wounds on the battlefield are a completely different matter from treating those rich people's ailments in the city. Don't end up making things worse by not being able to cure them."

This was a show of force, and also the same old tune that young Zhu used. The old doctors in the east of the city viewed him the same way this Physician Liu looked at him.

Yang Hu didn't rush to argue. His gaze fell on a young wounded soldier in the corner of the barracks.

The wounded soldier had been stabbed in the leg. The wound hadn't been treated properly, and it had become infected, festering, and swollen. His entire leg was an unnatural bluish-black color, and he was delirious with fever, clearly on the verge of death.

"Um," Yang Hu pointed, "what's going on?"

Physician Liu glanced in the direction he was pointing, then curled his lip: "The poison has reached the heart; there's no saving him. Just wait for him to die. It's a waste of medicine."

Ignoring Physician Liu's sneer, Yang Hu went straight forward, squatted down, and carefully examined the wound. He flipped the eyelids over and checked the pulse. The young wounded soldier was delirious with fever, making weak "hoarse" sounds in his throat, and it was clear that he was truly about to collapse.

In Physician Liu's eyes, the festering, ulcerated wound, with poison reaching the heart, was a fatal condition. But in Yang Hu's view, it was merely a wound that hadn't been properly cleaned, with necrotic tissue accumulating pus and pathogenic toxins entering the bloodstream. Once the pus was drained, the necrotic tissue removed, the wound cleaned, medicine applied, and some heat-clearing and detoxifying decoction used, this leg and this life could still be saved.

The military doctors in the army treated wounds by simply applying some wound medicine and wrapping them with bandages. Their rough treatment of the wounds caused many people who could have been saved to slowly die from their illnesses.

"It can be saved," Yang Hu said calmly.

"Can it be saved?" Physician Liu said as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world. "Young man, you're stabbing a festering wound with a knife. Is that healing or killing? I've been practicing medicine for forty years and I've never seen anyone treat a patient like this."

Yang Hu didn't argue with him, and ordered Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy, to fetch strong liquor, a small knife, and medicine for cleaning wounds. Qin Ying handed over the tools with his head bowed and eyes downcast, his hands steady and not revealing the slightest flaw.

The strong liquor was used for disinfection. A small knife was used to cut open the festering wound, squeezing out a large pool of dark red pus and blood. Then, the blackened, numb, rotten flesh was carefully removed, piece by piece, revealing the still-bloody living flesh underneath. The wound was cleaned, treated with medicine to remove necrotic tissue and promote tissue regeneration, and then properly bandaged.

The wounded soldiers and onlookers held their breath. They had never heard of such a treatment. In the army, wound treatment was usually just a matter of applying some medicine, wrapping it with a strip of cloth, and leaving it to fate. They had never seen such a meticulous procedure involving draining pus, cutting away flesh, and cleaning.

Qin Ying, the young apprentice, assisted her, handing her weapons and knives. Her hands, which had handled swords and spears before, were steady without the slightest tremor. Watching Yang Hu's hands move with ease among the pus, blood, and rotting flesh, snatching a wounded soldier, condemned to death, back from the clutches of death, she felt an inexplicable sense of peace deepen.

At first, Physician Liu observed with indifference, but as he watched, his old face gradually tightened. The more he watched the young man's surgical technique and wound cleaning method, the more he felt that they made perfect sense, even surpassing his own forty years of experience.

Five days later.

The young wounded soldier who had been sentenced to death had his fever subside, the swelling go down, and his wounds scab over. He was even able to get out of bed and walk with a limp, leaning on crutches.

The entire dreary and lifeless wounded soldiers' camp seemed to be infused with a breath of life by this miraculous recovery.

Physician Liu stroked his graying beard, his arrogant old face flushing red and then turning pale. Finally, he lowered his stance and solemnly cupped his hands in a respectful bow to Yang Hu: "It was my fault for being blind. Physician Yang... could you teach me how to clean this wound?"

The fact that a military medical officer sought medical advice from a young traditional Chinese medicine doctor was unprecedented in the Xidaying camp.

The news quickly spread throughout the wounded soldiers' camp. Those wounded soldiers who had been waiting to die heard that a miracle doctor had come who could pull those condemned to death back from the brink of death. Their cloudy eyes were filled with renewed hope for survival, and they struggled to have Dr. Yang examine them.

For the first time, the once lifeless wounded soldiers' camp had a bit of life in it.

Yang Hu has gained a firm foothold.

Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, huddled to the side, observing everything unfold. This camp, once the site of her troops and the pass she had guarded, was now sparsely populated with medicine and medical supplies, the wounded dying, morale shattered, slowly being eroded by the hand hidden deep within. Her soldiers didn't die by the barbarians' blades, but by the machinations of their own people.

Yang Hu's ability to snatch people from the jaws of death meant that every wounded soldier he saved added to the camp's defensive strength.

Gaining a foothold is only the first step.

From now on, he would use his identity as a physician to move around the camp legitimately, investigate, and gradually uncover the secret network of the bloodsucking channel. But deep within the camp, there were eyes everywhere and pitfalls at every step. If Qin Ying's disguised identity were exposed, it would be a catastrophe.

That night, Yang Hu stood alone outside the wounded soldiers' camp, gazing at the brightly lit and heavily guarded central command tent deep within the camp.

That bloodsucking ditch, that hand that controlled everything, leaked military supplies, harmed Qin Ying, and implicated the entire Lu family, was hidden deep within that great tent. It caused this formidable pass to lack medical care and medicine, to be piled high with wounded soldiers, to cause countless soldiers guarding the border to lose their lives in vain, and to cause Qin Ying, once a noblewoman from a military family, to be reduced to a "dead person" who could not see the light of day.

He will make them pay back this blood debt sooner or later, one by one, with interest.

He stepped into the military camp.

A large crack appeared in the wooden shaft at the camp gate, hastily wrapped twice with hemp rope. The soldiers guarding the gate, wearing indistinguishable vests, merely glanced at their clerks without even getting up.

The pot in the kitchen was chipped, and the rice was mixed with sand. Yang Hu scooped up a spoonful and looked at it, saying nothing, but simply told Liu Ye to take out the bag of coarse salt she carried with her and place it by the stove.

But the real contest has only just begun.