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

The barbarian invasions on the border grew fiercer day by day.

Since winter began, the barbarian cavalry from beyond the pass have been acting like madmen, attacking the city walls every few days with increasingly fierce assaults. The number of corpses piled up layer upon layer beneath the walls, and the number of wounded soldiers carried into the wounded camps grew day by day.

This time, they used a ruthless tactic, a vicious and chilling move.

As night fell, after a fierce battle on the city walls, those carried into the wounded soldiers' camp included not only ordinary sword and arrow wounds, but also a dozen or so soldiers with strange symptoms. Most of them had been hit by arrows. At first, the wounds didn't look serious, but within half a day, the skin and flesh around the arrow wounds gradually turned black, swelled, and ulcerated. Their entire arms and legs turned blue and purple, and they began to have high fevers and talk nonsense, clearly on the verge of death.

The accompanying physician and Doctor Liu applied wound medicine and bandaged the wound properly, following the usual method for treating wounds.

But it was completely useless. The dark purple color didn't fade; instead, it visibly worsened, spreading deeper and deeper, climbing up the blood vessels. The screams of those hit by the arrow gradually turned into delirious babbling in a high fever, and one after another, they fainted.

"Strange, really strange." Physician Liu stroked his beard, his brows furrowed. "How could a perfectly good arrow wound fester so quickly? This... this must be some kind of miasma."

Yang Hu squatted down and carefully examined the wound.

The flesh around the wound was blackish-purple and ulcerated, emitting a faint, fishy smell. The soldier who had been shot had bluish lips and dilated pupils. He reached out and pressed the swollen wound, then examined the soldier's eyelids.

His heart sank.

This is neither miasma nor a common festering wound.

This is poisoning.

The bluish-black tinge around the arrow wound, the dark color of the lips, the unfocused pupils—all these were signs of poisoning. He had practiced medicine for many years and had seen far too many patients bitten by venomous insects and snakes.

The barbarians coated their arrowheads with poison. Ordinary arrow wounds are external injuries, but with poisoned arrows, the poison travels throughout the body via the bloodstream as soon as it enters the flesh. Simply applying wound medicine to the wound is futile.

"It's arrow poison," Yang Hu said in a deep voice. "The arrowhead was poisoned, and now that the poison has entered the bloodstream, treating the wound alone won't help."

"Poisoned arrows?" Physician Liu gasped. "When did these barbarians acquire such insidious methods? This... this poison, once it enters the bloodstream, is beyond saving even by a god!"

"It can be saved," Yang Hu said calmly, without the slightest hint of panic.

His confident composure stood in stark contrast to the bewildered and helpless military doctor beside him. The soldiers watching, who had been filled with anxiety, found their hearts calming down somewhat.

The poisons commonly used by barbarians are mostly plant and insect poisons, which, although potent, are not incurable.

The crucial thing is to do three things as quickly as possible before the poison travels through the blood vessels and reaches the heart: first, release the toxic blood accumulated in the wound to stop the spread of the poison; second, use antidotes to attack from both inside and outside to neutralize the remaining poison; and finally, protect the heart and keep the patient alive.

These steps are all interconnected; neglecting even one step will lead to disaster. If one is even a moment too slow, the poison will attack the heart, and even a celestial being would be powerless to save the patient.

He made a quick decision and ordered Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy, to assist him.

Yang Hu's movements were quick and steady.

First, he disinfected the knife with strong liquor. This meticulous disinfection technique was a rule he established, and although the soldiers did not understand its meaning, they were all used to it.

Then, with a swift motion, he cut open the arrow wound, squeezed, and let the blood flow. The blood that came out was a dark purple, thick and viscous. The army physician watching from the side was horrified: "Why are you letting blood out of nowhere... isn't this going to kill someone?"

"What we're releasing is poisoned blood." Yang Hu didn't even look up. "The poison follows the blood; releasing the rotten blood will slow down the poison's effects."

After draining the poisonous blood, Yang Hu took some boiled and cooled herbal water and repeatedly rinsed the festering wound to wash away the remaining poison and rotten flesh. Then he applied the antidote herbs he had prepared himself.

Inside, they pried open the soldiers' teeth and forced them to drink a bowl of strong detoxifying medicine to protect their hearts.

External application, external washing, external application; internal administration, internal protection—attacking from both inside and outside, without any disorder.

This method was unheard of. The soldiers and doctors watching were all dumbfounded.

After doing all this, Yang Hu straightened up, a thin layer of sweat beading on his forehead. He stood guard beside the soldier who had been hit the hardest by the arrow, watching his complexion closely, not daring to relax for even a second.

Qin Ying assisted him from the side, handing over weapons and restraining people; her hands, accustomed to holding knives, were remarkably steady. The two worked together seamlessly, neither uttering a single word.

An hour later, the soldier who had been most severely wounded by the arrow gradually regained color in his lips, which had turned bluish. His high fever subsided, and he gradually regained consciousness.

The bluish-black, festering wound stopped spreading, and the swelling at the edges gradually subsided.

Immediately afterwards, the second, the third... soldiers who had been given poisoned blood and antidote also recovered one after another.

The entire camp was in uproar.

Physician Liu had practiced medicine for forty years and had never seen such a miraculous way of bringing the dead back to life. His hand, which was stroking his beard, froze in mid-air, and he couldn't utter a word for a long time.

"Amazing... Absolutely amazing..."

"He can even cure poison from arrows! Doctor Yang is practically snatching people from the jaws of death!"

Those soldiers who had been sentenced to death by Physician Liu and the army doctor and were left to die were pulled back from the brink of death by Yang Hu, one after another.

More and more soldiers gathered around, chattering amongst themselves. Those who had previously been skeptical of the young medical officer's abilities now fell silent, their eyes filled with pure awe.

Liu, the medical officer, stood to the side, opened his mouth, but ultimately said nothing. In recent days, this veteran military doctor with forty years of experience had had his knowledge and understanding repeatedly challenged by this young man in his early twenties.

A healer saves lives. But in this large camp, every life Yang Hu saved meant a soldier could once again stand atop the city walls. The poisoned arrows were meant to kill the defenders of Da Cheng, to cripple the defenses of this pass. Yet, his skill in detoxifying the arrows miraculously restored these lost troops.

But Yang Hu himself was not happy at all.

He held the poisoned arrowhead that had been taken from the soldier and examined it closely by the light of the oil lamp.

The poison was applied with extreme evenness and ruthlessness, far beyond the crude and unskilled methods of ordinary barbarians. Barbarians have always only known how to hack and slash with knives; when did they acquire such refined and insidious poisoning techniques?

Behind all this, there's probably another hand at work.

Qin Ying leaned closer, looking at the arrowhead, a hint of coldness flashing in her clear, cold eyes.

"The design of these arrowheads..." she said in a very low voice, "is the standard design of my Dacheng border army."

Yang Hu's pupils suddenly contracted.

The arrows of the Da Cheng army fell into the hands of the barbarians, were coated with deadly poison, and then turned around and shot back at the Da Cheng defenders themselves.

What this means is self-evident.

Leaking weapons to the barbarians is already a capital offense of treason. But now, these leaked weapons have become weapons used to slaughter their own soldiers.

The poison seeped from the barbs of the arrowhead; it was dark blue-green and clung to the crevices, requiring the tip of a knife to scrape it off bit by bit. The small amount that was scraped off, placed on a porcelain plate, resembled a tiny black pebble.

This bloodsucking ditch was a hundred times more vicious than he had imagined.