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

The more renowned the doctor, the more dangerous that disguised face becomes.

Yang Hu understood this better than anyone. But as a medical officer, with wounded soldiers right before his eyes, he couldn't stand idly by. All he could do was protect Qin Ying even more closely during each house call.

On this day, an old soldier was carried into the wounded soldiers' camp.

The old soldier, with gray hair and beard, had rolled down from the city wall. A boulder crashed down, smashing through his shin, the bone protruding from the flesh, leaving a bloody mess. He was in so much pain that he almost fainted.

The soldiers who carried him in were jumping up and down in a panic: "Doctor Yang, take a look! This is Wang Laoshuan, the old man who guards the east outpost. He's been guarding the city wall for most of his life!"

The doctor accompanying the army came over for a look and shook his head again: "The injury is too severe. The bones are all broken. The leg cannot be saved. It needs to be amputated as soon as possible, otherwise it will rot and kill you."

"Don't saw it yet." Yang Hu stepped forward, squatted down, and carefully examined the severed leg.

Although the bone is broken grotesquely, piercing through the flesh, the blood vessels and tendons are still intact, and there is no sign of blackening or ulceration around the break. This means that as long as the misaligned bone is properly set and fixed, and the wound is cleaned, treated, and ulceration prevented, the leg may still be salvageable.

Amputation, seemingly a swift and decisive action, was actually a hasty and ineffective measure taken by military doctors who disliked the trouble of setting bones and feared the consequences of future ulceration. Once a leg was amputated, a soldier who could fight became a cripple who needed crutches.

"It can be reattached," Yang Hu said calmly, without the slightest hesitation. "Why saw off a leg? A perfectly good leg can be reattached. Why make someone spend the rest of their life on crutches?"

The army physician opened his mouth, as if to say something, but seeing Yang Hu's confident and composed demeanor, he swallowed his words. No one in the camp dared to challenge the young medical officer's ability to bring the dead back to life.

He fetched splints, bandages, strong liquor and herbs for cleaning the wound, and instructed Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, to assist him.

Qin Ying handed over the instruments and held the injured person down, her hands steady. The two worked together seamlessly, one steadily applying traction to reposition the dislocated broken bone, while the other cleaned the wound, applied medication, and immobilized it with a splint.

The broken bone that had pierced through the flesh was slowly pushed back into place by Yang Hu's steady hands, accompanied by a dull "crack".

The old soldier was in excruciating pain, sweat pouring down his face, veins bulging on his cheeks, yet he gritted his teeth and didn't utter a sound. He was a tough guy who had spent half his life rolling in mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and had even seen the King of Hell a few times.

The wounded soldiers watching were both horrified and filled with admiration. Such clean and efficient bone-setting techniques were unheard of. They stared in stunned silence.

After the bone was set and the medicine was applied, the old soldier caught his breath and his cloudy old eyes fell on Qin Ying, who was handing him the medicine.

He was stunned.

The more she looked, the more surprised and suspicious she became. Eventually, tears welled up in those weathered eyes.

"Little...Little Princess?" His voice trembled uncontrollably. "You are...Little Princess Qin?"

Qin Ying's hand, which was handing over the medicine, suddenly froze.

Yang Hu's heart sank suddenly. This is bad. This old soldier is a former subordinate of Qin Ying.

The wounded soldiers' camp was a chaotic place, teeming with all sorts of people from all walks of life. Who knew if there were spies planted by that hand among them? If that address of "Little Princess" were overheard by someone with ulterior motives and reached the ears of that hand in the central army, it would be a catastrophe. Not only would Qin Ying be exposed on the spot, but his entire meticulously planned scheme, step by step, inch by inch, against that hand, would be destroyed in an instant.

In a flash, Yang Hu, without making a sound, reached out and pressed on the old soldier's shoulder. It seemed like an ordinary act of helping, but his fingertips secretly pressed on an acupoint.

"Old man," he spoke gently, his voice carrying an undeniable steadiness, "you've injured your head, you've probably mistaken someone for someone else. This is my apprentice, a country boy, what princess would you be talking about?"

It was an acupoint that could briefly distract one's mind and calm one's emotions. Yang Hu's move was both a support and a subtle way of suppressing the other person's impending cry of surprise.

The old soldier, held down by him, felt a moment of dizziness, and his earlier excitement inexplicably dissipated. He steadied himself and looked at Qin Ying again.

Qin Ying had already lowered her head and shrunk her shoulders. Her submissive and disheveled appearance was completely different from the image of the heroic and spirited princess in his memory.

"It's...it's my eyes playing tricks on me," the old soldier murmured, the sudden glimmer of light in his eyes fading little by little, turning into a long, mournful sigh. "The little princess...she fought to the death for her country long ago. It's been over a year...it's me...I've been so obsessed with her that I even mistook a country boy for the little princess."

His cloudy tears rolled down his deeply lined face and landed on the straw mat. A man of steel was crying like a child.

Yang Hu's heart softened, and he gently comforted him, urging him to take good care of his injuries. Then, he led Qin Ying away quietly.

A potentially devastating crisis was quietly averted by Yang Hu's seemingly ordinary act of helping and pressing down on someone.

But Qin Ying's hands, which were hanging in her sleeves, were trembling violently.

That cry of "Little Princess," and those eyes brimming with tears, pierced her heart like a needle, causing a dull ache in her very being.

Her soldiers still remember her. They still grieve day and night for her fabricated "martyrdom." But she, the little princess they had protected and followed with their lives, can now only stand before her closest former subordinates, her face ashen, shoulders hunched, denying everything, not daring to utter a single word of the truth.

This frustration, this resentment, this bitterness of not being able to recognize her own family, was like a dull knife cutting into her flesh, slowly ripping at her heart.

In the dead of night, in a deserted corner, Qin Ying finally couldn't hold back her tears.

"His name is Wang Laoshuan." Her voice was soft, with a suppressed sob. "He followed me for three years. During that ambush, he risked his life to carry me out of the chaos of battle... I thought he had died in that battle too."

Yang Hu listened quietly, without interrupting or offering any empty words of comfort. He simply took off his outer robe and gently draped it over her slightly trembling shoulders.

The wind was cool at the border at night. But the outer robe that still carried the warmth of her body brought a little peace to Qin Ying's heart, which was hanging on the edge of a knife and aching from the pain of past love.

"One day," he gazed at the deep, imposing central command tent, his voice as cold as iron yet as steady as a mountain, "I will make you stand before your soldiers with dignity. I will let everyone know that Qin Ying is not dead, and that the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion has been wronged."

Qin Ying raised her head, her tear-filled eyes shining brightly in the night.

She believed him.

There is no one else in this world who could make her dare to believe in "someday" even when she was on the verge of utter ruin.

The night wind howled, sweeping over the camp.

Just as his face was about to be recognized, Qin Ying simply lowered her head even further, her hand still perfectly steady as she handed him the equipment.

After that night, Qin Ying moved to an even more inconspicuous position—farther from the light and closer to the door, and when she reached out to hand something over, she pulled her sleeves down even lower.

The thread that led to the deepest depths was stretched even tighter by this terrifying encounter with an old acquaintance. Qin Ying's disguised identity was a sword hanging over her head, ready to fall at any moment. But the more this was the case, the less reason Yang Hu would loosen his grip on her hand.