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

After the skirmish at the sentry post subsided, the Western Camp did not find peace.

Instead, a sense of impending storm and impending doom, like leaden clouds, quietly enveloped the border town, making it hard to breathe.

The barbarian tribes beyond the Great Wall are making increasingly frequent disturbances.

Scouts moved in droves, and reconnaissance roamed back and forth. Even beyond the usually desolate border wall, the faint sounds of large-scale troop movements could be heard, and at night, unusual, scattered lights could be seen on the distant horizon.

The soldiers guarding the border all felt a heavy weight on their hearts. The sound of this wind was even more unsettling than the north wind blowing from the city walls.

"Something's not right." As night fell, Yang Hu, by the light of a solitary lamp, said in a deep voice to Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy beside him, "The barbarians' usual harassment is never so methodical. This doesn't seem like a small group of bandits coming to raid the valley; it seems... they're going to get serious."

A layer of unyielding solemnity lingered in Qin Ying's cold eyes.

She was a veteran who had led troops and fought battles, and had personally guarded this border pass. She was more sensitive than anyone else to the slightest disturbance on the battlefield.

That year, she was on this very land, ordered to patrol the border, but fell into an ambush by an internal traitor and met a tragic end, "fighting to the death for her country." Now, revisiting this place, and seeing the same calamity about to befall this pass again, her heart is filled with unspeakable hatred and anxiety.

"You're right," she said slowly, a cold glint in her eyes. "The frequent scouting is to ascertain our strength and weaknesses; the troop movements are a covert gathering. These are signs of an impending army's advance, without a doubt."

She drew a line on the simple map with her fingertip, pointing directly to the western camp from outside the border wall.

"It seems the barbarians are about to launch a major invasion of this border. Moreover, judging from their posture, this is no small matter; they intend to send out their entire force to break through the pass in one fell swoop."

Silence fell over the tent for a moment.

The flickering candlelight cast long, somber shadows of the two men onto the curtain wall.

Outside the window, the night was vast and the north wind howled. This border post was like a sleeping behemoth, completely unaware that a vast net was quietly being cast upon it from both inside and outside.

"And behind all of this," Yang Hu's fingertip tapped heavily on the piece of paper filled with clues, his voice low but each word carrying immense weight, "it all comes down to that hand hidden in the central command tent."

Those seemingly scattered misfortunes, strung together by the clues on this scrap of paper, all pointed in the same direction. Now, with the signs of the barbarians launching a massive invasion, the full picture of this game of chess finally revealed its hideous outline before his eyes.

The leaked weapons, the poisoned arrowheads, the worn-out cotton-padded clothes, the contaminated well, the fire that led the wolf into the house... every single thing was paving the way for this moment.

"It's hollowing out our military equipment and disrupting our morale inside, while the barbarians are gathering troops outside, waiting for their chance to strike." Yang Hu's eyes gradually turned cold. "Once the barbarian army presses in, working together from within and without, this border pass, whose defenses have already been hollowed out, will collapse without a fight."

At that time, the barbarian cavalry will sweep in unimpeded, and no one will be able to stop them. The fertile fields and countless lives within the pass will all fall to the barbarians' swords.

The city was engulfed in flames, and rivers of blood flowed. What a horrific scene it was! Just thinking about it sent chills down Yang Hu's spine.

He had transmigrated here, and could have found a peaceful place to live a quiet life practicing medicine. But fate pushed him to this precarious situation, forcing him to witness firsthand the decay and peril of this border region. He couldn't bear to watch it all unfold.

This is a dead end game that has been played for a long time.

That hand, meticulously scheming to erode the foundation of the border from within, was not after any petty gains. Its aim was the complete fall of this pass, the colossal achievement of treason and subversion of the nation.

That hand wanted to destroy this pass, this gateway to the country, completely, in the hands of the barbarians.

"We can't wait any longer." Qin Ying's voice carried a hint of barely suppressed urgency. "We have to find it out, the sooner the better."

She clenched her hands, which hung at her sides. This case of treason was, in a public sense, a matter of life and death for a border town and the nation; in a private sense, it involved the blood feud of the entire Duke Lu family and her own hope of clearing her name.

"Otherwise, once the barbarian army arrives and launches a coordinated attack from within and without, it will be too late. If we can't hold this pass, all the investigations and struggles we've put in these past few days will have been for nothing."

Yang Hu nodded slowly, his expression so solemn it could drip water. He remained silent for a moment, carefully analyzing the predicament, both internally and externally, in his mind once more.

He knew better than anyone that these two lines, one inside and one outside, had unknowingly twisted into a rope that would strangle this border pass. One end was held in the hand of the barbarian king outside the pass, and the other end was held in the unseen hand of the central army.

He was well aware of the urgency of the situation, and he knew it was a race against time. But that hand was hidden too deeply. The clues he held in his hand, though gradually closing in, were always missing that final, crucial link: the true face of that hand.

"All the clues point to the deepest part of the central command tent." He gazed at the dimly lit central command tent outside the window, each word spoken as if he had already considered the intricate deadlock a thousand times in his mind. "Having saved Li Chong, I can now enter and leave the central command tent. The next step is to follow the central command clerk who delivers military reports and completely expose the real hand that is holding the strings behind the scenes."

He paused, his eyes revealing a resolute determination, as if he had already committed to something.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing that the barbarians are coming out in full force. The more eager they are to act, the more their backup in the camp will have to show themselves. The more openings they reveal, the more chances I have of winning."

Qin Ying looked at him quietly. The candlelight reflected on his calm face, and in his usually gentle eyes, a flame that refused to be extinguished burned. She suddenly felt that even in the most hopeless situations, this man could always find a glimmer of hope.

"This time, it's a race against time, a race against the death, before the barbarian army can invade. If we're quick enough, we can save this pass; if we're slow, it's utter destruction."

The night wind howled through the tents, carrying with it the biting chill unique to the frontier.

In the distance, the lights of the central command tent flickered in the deep night, unfathomable, like a ferocious beast lurking in the shadows, ready to devour its prey.

Hidden deep within the darkness of the lights, the dark hand is busily weaving its vast net to subvert the border. Little does it know that a sharp blade, about to be drawn, has already silently reached its throat.

The fate of this border pass, the survival of this nation's gateway, and even the lives of millions of ordinary people within the pass, all rest on this imminent, silent struggle, on whether Yang Hu can uncover the hidden hand deep within before the army's advance.

A storm has quietly taken shape in the cold night at the border.

The barbarian's iron hooves, the dark hand lurking in the shadows, and Yang Hu's sharp blade, ready to be drawn from its sheath—the fates of all three are swept into the same impending turbulent wave.

A great battle that will determine the lives of countless people is about to unfold.