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

Yang Hu had already laid out his plan to force that hand to make a move.

He used himself as bait, openly investigating the case with great fanfare, while secretly keeping a close watch on the wastewater ditch through which the letters were delivered, together with Qin Ying and Liu Ye.

That hand was eager to deliver a fatal blow to this border pass as the barbarian army pressed in. If it made a move, it would certainly use its most secretive henchman in the camp, and that henchman would most likely be the central army clerk who delivered military reports and communicated with Feiqu.

What Yang Hu wanted was to force it to completely expose this claw amidst the chaos of the great war.

Sure enough, that night, taking advantage of the overwhelming army pressing in and the people's panic, it made its move.

Moreover, it was a deadly strike aimed at the vital defenses of this pass.

Not long after nightfall, the brothers guarding the city walls began to run into trouble one after another.

"Strange... My eyelids feel as heavy as if they're weighed down with weights."

"My limbs feel weak and limp..."

At first, only a few soldiers were feeling sleepy and weak, which was attributed to exhaustion from days of hard fighting. But in less than half an hour, the entire garrison along the city wall collapsed one after another. Some slumped against the battlements, half asleep, while others could barely hold their swords, their eyelids too heavy to open. In an instant, the entire city defenses crumbled like a pile of loose sand.

At this critical juncture, if the defending troops on the city walls were to collapse, the barbarians could launch a night raid and break through the pass in one fell swoop.

At that moment, the entire border region would become an undefended ghost town, and the thousands of fertile fields and countless lives within the border would all be reduced to dust under the iron hooves of the barbarians.

"Oh no! It's that hand in the central command tent that's acting up!" Captain Chen, supporting his injured body, was sweating profusely and momentarily lost his composure. "But all the brothers in the city, why are they all suddenly so weak? What... what evil has possessed them?"

Yang Hu remained completely calm.

He grabbed the wrist of a limp soldier, took his pulse, examined his eyelids, and smelled his breath. He understood everything perfectly.

"It's not possession by evil spirits, it's drugging," Yang Hu said decisively, his expression cold. "Look at them, their eyelids are heavy, their limbs are weak, but they don't have the vomiting and diarrhea of ​​dysentery, nor the bleeding from the seven orifices of poisoning. Someone has put a drug in their food or water tonight to make them weak and dizzy. This is to make the entire city's garrison collapse on the city walls before the barbarians launch their night attack."

Such insidious methods of administering medicine were exactly what a time traveler, with his far superior knowledge of this era, could see through at a glance.

With the help of both inside and outside forces, what that hand wanted was this moment when all the city's defenders would collapse in exhaustion.

"There's no time to investigate who poisoned him right now." Yang Hu made a decisive decision, rattling off a series of military orders: "Save the people first! Lieutenant Chen, immediately have the kitchen set up all the large pots and boil water! Add as much mung bean and licorice root as you can, and simmer it into a concentrated detoxifying soup! Also, prepare plenty of salt water!"

"Mung bean and licorice soup?" Captain Chen was taken aback.

"This medicine targets the spleen and stomach; mung beans and licorice are the best counteracting agents," Yang Hu explained, already lunging at the nearest soldier. "Induce vomiting in those who can, get rid of any undigested medicine from their stomachs! Then force-feed them the antidote soup to gradually flush out the hypnotic effect!"

This method of detoxification and replenishing strength was unheard of by others, but in Yang Hu's mind, it was as clear as a pre-written prescription. What medicine entered which meridian, and what to use to counteract it—it was all perfectly precise.

Military orders were relayed throughout the entire camp through the guise of the medical officer.

This time, no one questioned the young doctor's abilities. From Captain Chen to the ordinary cooks, everyone followed his instructions swiftly and decisively.

Pot after pot of piping hot mung bean and licorice soup was quickly boiled and poured into the mouths of the limp soldiers.

Yang Hu personally oversaw operations from the city wall, tirelessly inducing vomiting, administering acupuncture, and feeding medicine to those brothers who were deeply affected by the Chinese medicine and were on the verge of unconsciousness.

He crouched on the cold city bricks, waking the limp soldiers from their drowsiness, one by one. Sweat soaked his back, but his hands remained steady without trembling.

Qin Ying, disguised as a young apprentice, stood silently by, offering medicine and helping people with practiced ease. Liu Ye, meanwhile, led her men, quickly distributing buckets of antidote soup to various sections of the city wall.

Miracles began to appear little by little under his method.

Those soldiers who were originally as weak as rag dolls, after drinking the antidote soup, first vomited profusely, emptying their stomachs of the sleeping pills. Then, their heavy eyelids and weak limbs gradually regained their strength.

In the short time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the city defenses, which had been so loose as to be practically non-existent, were actually restored by Yang Hu using a pot of mung bean soup.

The defenders, swaying unsteadily, gripped their swords again and returned to their positions on the battlements.

Just as the city defenses were being re-erected, the barbarian cavalry from outside the pass launched a night raid and arrived.

They were convinced that the defenders on the city walls had already given up and that the city would be breached with a single charge.

But what awaited them was a barrage of swords and spears standing upright again, and a dense rain of arrows.

That meticulously planned inside-outside attack, that potentially fatal pincer movement, that hidden hand lurking in the shadows, intending to use the barbarian sword to break through the pass—all were miraculously neutralized by Yang Hu with a pot of unassuming antidote soup.

That night, not just one or two wounded soldiers were saved, but an entire garrison on the city walls, a border fortress destined to fall due to the machinations of an internal traitor. This was medicine, and also the real, decisive advantage Yang Hu had earned on the battlefield through his exceptional skills.

What should have been a swift and easy night raid turned into a resounding defeat. The barbarians left behind a trail of corpses and retreated in disarray.

This border post, which was almost breached by an internal traitor, was once again held.

"Quick! Check the kitchen and well tonight!" With the crisis averted, Yang Hu's eyes suddenly turned cold. "The person who drugged me can't have gone far!"

Sure enough, following the trail of the poison, Liu Ye quickly found a cook hiding in the kitchen, looking flustered.

Yang Hu pressed two fingers on the cook's pressure points, and the unbearable pain, worse than being branded with a hot iron, made him tremble like a leaf. Before he could even drink half a cup of tea, he confessed everything like beans spilling from a bamboo tube. He admitted that he had been instructed by the military clerk who delivered the military report to receive a sum of money, and that he had put the deadly sleeping potion in the cook's drinking water that night.

The evidence against the central military clerk for instigating the poisoning, colluding with outsiders, and attempting to kill the entire city's defenders was now irrefutable.

Both witness testimony and physical evidence are available.

The military clerk who had been hiding beneath the surface and repeatedly stirring up trouble was finally nailed to the ironclad case of treason and collusion with the enemy.

But when Yang Hu escorted the cook who had confessed the truth to the central command tent to retrieve the document, he found nothing.

The military clerk, as if he had gotten wind of the plot the moment the operation failed, fled in fear of punishment and disappeared without a trace, taking his family with him.

But what weighed even more heavily on Yang Hu's mind than the absconding of the documents was something else entirely.

The true mastermind, hiding deep within the central command tent and directing all of this, has yet to reveal even a trace of his true form.

It abandoned the document as a chess piece, cut off its tail to survive, and once again retreated into its bottomless shell.