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

After the night raid, Yang Hu's reputation in the Western Camp became widely known.

The wounded soldiers all gave him a thumbs up when they spoke of him. The officers looked at him with more respect. Every wounded soldier who recovered meant one more sword ready to fight on the city wall—everyone understood this.

What Yang Hu wanted was precisely this convenience of moving around the camp.

With this reputation and prestige, he could legitimately move around the camp and inquire without arousing suspicion. To trace the secret canal, he had to start from these inconspicuous movements, little by little.

On this day, the wounded soldiers' camp was running out of wound medicine and hemostatic drugs, so Yang Hu went to the quartermaster department to collect the medicine himself.

The quartermaster was a weasel-faced sergeant surnamed Zhao. Yang Hu had heard of him before. The soldiers in the camp all secretly cursed him as a shrew who would skim off every last drop of profit from a passing goose.

When Yang Hu reported the medicinal herbs he needed, the squad leader Zhao sized him up. Seeing that he was a young, inexperienced doctor, Zhao immediately showed some disdain. Zhao rolled his eyes and began to plead poverty: "Doctor Yang, it's not that I don't want to give them to you. The warehouse only has this much stock. After the war, everyone was asking for more. I'm just the warehouse manager; even a skilled cook can't cook without rice. Please, you're a new doctor, have some understanding."

That tone was half evasive and half pretentious.

He ordered ten life-saving medicinal herbs, but Zhao, the sergeant, rummaged through his belongings and dawdled for a long time before finally giving him only three. He claimed that the warehouse didn't have the rest.

So many brothers in the wounded soldiers' camp were struggling on the brink of death, waiting for these medicines to save their lives, yet this Squad Leader Zhao had the face of a scoundrel who would rather take a life than give a penny. Yang Hu sneered inwardly, but remained outwardly calm.

Yang Hu didn't argue with him, but simply responded with a faint sound. His gaze, seemingly casual but actually careful, swept over the open warehouse.

His skills in observation, auscultation, inquiry, and palpation, when applied to treating illnesses, are used for pulse diagnosis and questioning; when applied to this warehouse, they are used to see through the truth at a glance.

The storeroom was large, but it was empty and covered in dust. Several bags of military rations were piled in the corner, and upon closer inspection, they were found to be moldy. Most of the swords on the shelves were dull and rusted; the arrowheads were missing more than half of their length, scattered sparsely.

This is hardly the kind of military supplies a border camp guarding a strategic pass should have.

At the gateway to the northern frontier of Dacheng, a fierce battle was raging. The warehouses of this large camp should have been filled with provisions, weapons, arrows, and medicine. But the empty, moldy scene before them clearly indicated that it was an empty shell that had been hollowed out from the inside out.

No wonder the soldiers on the city wall had dulled swords and rotten arrows, and even wounded soldiers couldn't get a decent dose of medicine. It turns out the root of all this was piled up in this dusty storeroom.

"Squad Leader Zhao," Yang Hu said calmly, "how come all the military rations in this warehouse are moldy? And these swords and arrows are all unusable."

Squad Leader Zhao's expression changed, but he forced a smile and said, "The border is bitterly cold. If things are left out for too long, they'll spoil, won't they? Doctor Yang, you should just take care of your wounded soldiers' camp. The affairs of military supplies are a complicated matter. As a doctor, you'd better not ask too many questions."

These words carried a blatant warning.

Yang Hu didn't ask any more questions, took the medicinal herbs, and turned to leave. But inside, he was in turmoil.

After receiving the meager amount of medicine, Yang Hu returned to the wounded soldiers' camp. He dismissed his attendants and whispered to Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy, everything he had seen in the general's medicine storeroom.

Upon hearing this, Qin Ying slowly clenched her fist, her hand hidden in her sleeve. Although she couldn't show herself, her eyes, which had led troops and commanded this large camp, saw through the intricacies of the situation with just one listen. She knew better than anyone what the logistics of a border army camp should be like; and she also knew better than anyone how much audacity and how deep a foundation it would take to hollow out those regulations.

"It wasn't that it went bad from being stored for too long." Her voice was extremely low, and her eyes were chillingly cold. "It was emptied out of this warehouse, bag by bag, cart by cart. The military rations and weapons were diverted halfway and fed to the barbarians beyond the Great Wall. On the books, it was recorded as 'loss' or 'spoiled,' done flawlessly."

She paused, then continued, "Back when I guarded this pass, supplies were plentiful; swords were swords, arrows were arrows. In just over a year, it's been eaten away and turned into this state. This hand, so greedy."

Yang Hu nodded slowly.

When he was in the city, he went to great lengths but only managed to find a few nails at the end of that blood-sucking underground channel. He followed the trail from the general store, the hidden stakes, and the old post station outside the city, but the connection always ended at the high wall of the border army camp.

Now, he finally stepped into this wall and saw with his own eyes the source of the underground canal. It lurked in the heart of this formidable pass, its gaping maw churning out the flesh and blood of the border fortress and the lives of the soldiers of the city, day after day, to feed the wolves beyond the pass.

This Zhao platoon leader with his pointed face and monkey-like features was merely a henchman in the operation. A mere platoon leader in charge of supplies wouldn't dare to so blatantly empty the lifeblood of an entire border army camp, even if he had ten lives. Above him, there must be someone who issues orders and controls everything, covering up the accounts and silencing the gossip.

From Section Chief Zhao of the Quartermaster Department to the unseen hand in the central command tent, this line runs deep, layer upon layer. And each link is subtly connected to the old case of Qin Ying's ambush and the blood feud of the entire Lu family.

In the Jishetang pharmacy, he had been constrained by the bloodsucking underground canal, only able to pick a few nails at its end in the city. Now, stepping into this large camp, he has finally stood in the place closest to the source.

"Investigate." Yang Hu's eyes were as cold as ice. "Layer by layer, we'll eventually find our way to the end."

What he wanted to do was never just to expose a corrupt quartermaster. If one sergeant Zhao fell, another hand could be replaced at any time. What he wanted was to follow this hidden channel all the way to the hand that was hiding deep within the camp, leaking supplies, harming Qin Ying, and implicating the entire Lu family, and uproot it so that it could never harm anyone again.

This was the real reason he stepped into this military camp.

However, the waters here were far deeper than he had imagined. Since that hand could hollow out an entire camp without anyone daring to speak out, there must be eyes and ears everywhere within the camp. He, an outsider doctor who had just begun to make a name for himself, was going to investigate such a deadly affair. If he was not careful, he would be doomed.

At night, Yang Hu stood outside the tent, gazing at the brightly lit central command tent deep within the camp.

The answer to all of this lies there.

It also concealed a terrifying danger that could engulf him and Qin Ying, along with their ambition to seek justice and redress grievances.

But the more dangerous it is, the closer he gets to the heart of that hand.

He clenched his fist.

He laid out each of the several wound medicines mixed with soil on a piece of paper and examined them for a long time by the lamplight. The grains of sand in the powder gleamed finely under the lamplight, each one clearly visible. Such medicine, if given to a brother and applied to a cut, would be a death sentence.

The half-packet of medicine that Liu Ye brought out from the warehouse was spread out under the lamp. Yang Hu only touched it once before stopping.

"This medicine," he said, picking up the paper and shaking it, the sand falling onto the table, "will make the wound fester even faster than if it weren't applied."

He rewrapped the herbs and placed them at the bottom of the medicine box. He couldn't throw them away—if he did, he'd have no other evidence to back up his claims.

There's plenty of time ahead. He will trace this line inch by inch, all the way to the end.