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

Yang Hu carefully kept the piece of firewood and signal flask that had been used in the attack on the Xueling outpost.

This is yet another irrefutable piece of evidence that the hand colluded with the barbarians outside the pass to kill people using others as a tool.

But he knew in his heart that this was still not enough.

Tinderboxes and signals could prove that someone in the camp was guiding the barbarians and relaying messages, but they still couldn't reveal the true face of the mastermind. It was too well hidden; each time it made a move, it only revealed a glimpse of its claws, while the mastermind's face remained concealed in the deepest darkness.

After treating the wounded and sick at the Snow Ridge outpost, and having quietly seized the irrefutable evidence of the hand's collusion with the barbarians in that blood-stained snowfield, Yang Hu and his group took advantage of a brief respite from the snowstorm to hurry back to the western camp.

He had thought that once he returned to the Western Camp, he could follow this line and get one step closer to that hand. But he didn't expect that what awaited him was an even bigger storm, one that could engulf everything.

However, on his way back, he keenly sensed that the atmosphere at the border was much more somber than when he arrived.

It was a deathly stillness, like the breathless silence before a storm.

The beacon towers along the way still glowed with smoke. Squads of scouts rushed back and forth in a panic. Even the usually desolate official road was crowded with refugees fleeing to the interior of the pass with their families.

"Something terrible has happened." Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, looked at the panicked faces, and a layer of unyielding solemnity appeared in his usually cold eyes. "The barbarians are probably going to get serious."

Back at the West Camp, the oppressive atmosphere was even more intense.

The entire camp was shrouded in a tense atmosphere, as if a storm was brewing. Officers hurried back and forth in the central command tent, their expressions increasingly grave. Soldiers were urged to train day and night, without even a moment's rest. On the city walls, newly replaced arrow slings, logs, and stones were being transported up the walls by cartload. Even the air seemed to be filled with the chilling, impending battle, a sense of steel and bloodshed.

"Dr. Yang, you're finally back!" Captain Chen said in a deep voice as soon as he saw Yang Hu, his expression solemn. "The good news is that you didn't have any trouble in the snowy mountains, the bad news is... the situation at the border is about to change."

"change of weather?"

"Scouts report that the various barbarian tribes beyond the pass are gathering in large numbers." Captain Chen spoke each word with a heavy, barely suppressed tone. "The scouts report that the assembled troops stretch for dozens of miles, a dark, endless mass. This is no ordinary raid; they are... coming out in full force to storm the pass."

Yang Hu's heart sank suddenly.

Although he had anticipated it, when the signs of this war that would threaten the entire nation were truly looming before him, the heavy weight of it still made it almost impossible to breathe.

The signs of the barbarian army's impending invasion finally materialized from scattered whispers into the imminent, towering wave before our eyes.

He recalled everything he had discovered in recent days: the leaked military equipment, the poisoned arrowheads, the confiscated cotton-padded clothes, the contaminated wells, the fire that burned the grain, and this time the murder at the snow-capped outpost...

Every calamity that hand had stirred up in the camp finally revealed its hideous true nature at this moment.

It plotted and schemed to gradually undermine the military preparedness at the border, sow discord among the troops, and murder those who were in his way. Meanwhile, the barbarian tribes outside the pass were gathering their forces, waiting for their chance to strike.

Internal troubles and external threats, these two deadly nooses that had long been intertwined, are finally about to tighten together at this moment.

But what was strangled by this noose was this border post, the millions of ordinary people within the pass, and half of the country of Dacheng.

"Once the barbarian army presses in, they will launch a coordinated attack from within and without." Yang Hu's eyes grew colder and colder. "This border pass, whose defenses have long been hollowed out by that hand, will be as precarious as a stone thrown into a trap."

As night fell, the lone lamp in Yang Hu's tent burned brightly until late into the night once again.

He laid out this increasingly dangerous deadly trap before him, facing the scrap of paper filled with clues and Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy.

"Once the barbarian army arrives, that will be the moment when the true hand reveals its true colors," Yang Hu said slowly. "At that time, as long as it quietly manipulates the city's defenses, its provisions, and its military orders, this pass will fall from the inside without a fight."

"Therefore, we must find it before its army arrives and it makes its move," Qin Ying continued, her usually cold face showing the same solemnity. "Otherwise, once this pass is breached, everything we've found will become a casualty."

Silence fell over the tent for a moment.

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

Time is running out for them.

"The clues have pushed us to the deepest part of the central command tent." Yang Hu gazed at the dimly lit central command tent outside the window, uttering each word clearly, "The clerk who delivered the military report is its henchman. The signal from the snowy mountains is irrefutable evidence of its collusion with the barbarians. I'm holding onto more and more threads, but the hand that connects all of this, that holds the main rope, is still one step away from truly uncovering it."

"And this final step," a do-or-die fire ignited in his eyes, "will likely involve risking everything in this great battle to snatch it away."

When war breaks out, everything falls into chaos. If that hand intends to seize power and overthrow the border amidst the chaos, then it must also find its most fatal weakness within that chaos. This is danger, but also the only opportunity.

Qin Ying looked at him quietly.

She knew better than anyone what Yang Hu's words meant.

With the barbarian army pressing in, that unseen force will undoubtedly use this all-out war to plot its final scheme. What they must do is, amidst the clash of swords and the near certain death on this battlefield, rescue those who have lost their way and protect the pass, while simultaneously uncovering the mastermind hidden deep within.

This was a high-stakes gamble, a gamble on the survival of this border post, and also on the lives and fortunes of the two of them.

"This battle is unavoidable," Qin Ying said softly, without a trace of fear in her voice. Instead, a long-lost edge of battlefield sharpness rekindled within her. "I was spared from that very death. This time, I'll give it back."

She paused, and her cool gaze softened for a moment as it fell on Yang Hu's face.

"But this time, I have someone by my side."

Yang Hu looked at the rekindled fire in her eyes, his heart skipped a beat, and he slowly nodded.

The night wind howled through the tents, carrying with it the unique, bone-chilling cold of the frontier, and the growing chill of impending battle.

Night had fallen, yet no one in the entire camp could sleep. Atop the city walls, the torches of the night patrols formed a winding fiery dragon, and the soldiers, their weapons at their sides, awaited the impending battle.

In the distance, the lights of the central command tent flickered in the deep night, their glow unfathomable.

Hidden deep within the lamplight, the dark hand is echoing the million-strong barbarian army pressing in from beyond the pass, quietly tightening a net to overthrow the border.

It could never have imagined that a sharp blade, about to be drawn, had already silently reached its throat amidst the wind, snow, and smoke of war.

A cataclysmic battle, one that would determine the fate of the border, the fate of the nation, and the lives of countless people, was about to erupt in the cold night of this frontier.

Yang Hu knew that when the battle horn sounded, and swords clashed and blood flowed like rivers, it would be time for him to settle things with the hand hidden deep within.