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

That extremely dangerous incident, which nearly destroyed a border pharmacy, was ultimately resolved.

Yang Hu used a pot of mung bean and licorice soup to snatch back a border post from the hands of an insider.

The military clerk who delivered the report and drugged the enemy fled after the plot failed, thus confirming his guilt of colluding with the enemy.

This great achievement—using medicine to defeat the enemy, expose the traitors and their henchmen, and protect a border post—was once again recorded in great detail in the military report sent to the commander's tent.

"The military medical officer, Zuo Yanghu, uncovered the traitor's poisoning plot on the night of the barbarian attack. He used medicine to detoxify the poison, turned the tide of the crisis, protected the city's defenses, and exposed the traitor. His contributions were of great value to the nation."

This short line, seemingly understated, carries immense weight. It represents a real military achievement earned at the cost of the survival of a border post and the lives of countless soldiers.

A young, inexperienced doctor in his early twenties, relying on his medical skills, gradually rose from a despised itinerant doctor to achieve remarkable feats that even veteran generals might not attain in this perilous border region.

He earned these military merits bit by bit, through countless pots of medicinal soup and countless silver needles, from piles of corpses and from the schemes of traitors.

Throughout the entire camp, from Captain Chen down to the lowest-ranking cook, not a single person dared to use the phrase "a greenhorn" to assess the abilities of this young medical officer.

Those old military doctors and soldiers who used to look down on him and scoff at him for saying that "battlefield wounds and curing rich people's diseases are two different things" now all speak of "Yang the Medical Officer" with complete respect.

But Yang Hu felt no sense of relief at his success.

"He escaped." As night fell, he looked at the scrap of paper filled with clues and said in a deep voice to Qin Ying, who was disguised as a medicine boy. "That clerk in the central army was just a pawn floating on the surface. The real hand that held the reins, hidden deep within the central army tent, saw that things had failed and cut its losses to survive. It abandoned this pawn and retreated back into the shadows, unharmed."

Despite his best efforts, all he managed to find was a piece of something that could be discarded at any time.

"Every single thing we've uncovered these past few days—the missing weapons, the poisoned arrows, the burned grain, the borrowed knife in the snowy mountains, tonight's pharmacy—is a capital offense," Yang Hu said, his fingertip tracing a heavy line on the scrap paper. "They all converge on the central command tent, the place that commands documents, suppresses military reports, and mobilizes officers. I can see its outline, but I can never grasp its true form."

Qin Ying's cold eyes held an unyielding solemnity.

"The waters deep within this military camp run deeper than you and I can imagine," she said slowly. "The officer who could control the entire central army and orchestrate these treasonous schemes was no ordinary general. Behind him, there are probably something even deeper and darker."

Something deeper and darker.

These four words, like a block of ice, weighed heavily on Yang Hu's heart.

Yang Hu's mind drifted back to that long-buried old case. Qin Ying was ordered to patrol the border, but was ambushed by barbarians and ended up "fighting to the death for his country"; how was the Zhenguo Duke's lineage pushed step by step into the abyss of no return amidst the infighting in the court?

Behind all this, is the hand that holds absolute power on the border, and the shadow that manipulates events in the court, all connected by the same thread?

He still couldn't grasp the answer. But he knew that this path of exposing traitors, clearing the names of the innocent, and protecting the border would never end. The henchman he had uncovered tonight was merely the tip of the iceberg.

The deeper you wade into the water in this military camp, the more unfathomable it becomes.

Just as the two were silently facing the increasingly deadly game, a series of rapid hoofbeats suddenly came from outside the tent.

A disheveled messenger stumbled into the camp, holding aloft an urgent military report with a chicken feather stuck in it and sealed with wax.

"Urgent dispatch! Urgent dispatch!"

The messenger's hoarse voice pierced the deep, cold night of the border, carrying a chilling sense of dread that instantly spread throughout the entire camp.

"The barbarian army, with its entire force, has pressed on to our borders! The Qing Shi Kou camp to the north is besieged, and urgent petitions sent in blood are arriving three times a day! The commander has ordered the western camp to immediately muster its troops and march north to reinforce us in this decisive battle! All accompanying medical officers will also depart with the main force!"

Inside the tent, there was a deathly silence.

Yang Hu and Qin Ying exchanged a glance.

The mastermind hidden deep within the central command tent has not yet been exposed, and the major case of traitorous collusion with the enemy has not yet been solved, yet a national war that will determine the survival of the Great Cheng Kingdom has already reached the city gates.

Investigating the case and guarding the pass, two lines that were already intertwined, were now completely twisted into one by this urgent order from the commander.

This order from the commander would drag him, a lowly medical officer, and the unfinished deadly game into an even bigger and more devastating storm.

Upon hearing the commander's order to "assemble the army and march north to reinforce the decisive battle," Qin Ying slowly stood up. The sharpness that had been hidden for so long by coarse cloth and dust, and the battlefield bearing that had been dormant for too long, suddenly shone brightly in the flickering candlelight.

That was the sharpness that belonged to the battlefield, to the military family, and to a female general who once commanded thousands of troops.

"Head north," she said softly, her voice carrying a long-lost, battlefield-like resolve. "That pass, that battle, and that hand hidden deep within... it's time to put an end to it all."

She looked at Yang Hu, and a hint of warmth, which only he could understand, flashed across his cool eyes.

"This time, I am not alone."

Silently, Yang Hu shouldered his medicine chest that had accompanied him all the way and looked up at the heavy sky to the north, shrouded in smoke and murderous intent.

There, there is a pass waiting for him to save, a battle waiting for him to fight, and a dark hand hidden deep within waiting for him to expose.

With exceptional medical skills, he has experienced half a lifetime of ups and downs. From a down-on-his-luck doctor who treated Qin Ying's wounds by a mass grave, to Doctor Yang who saved countless lives in the village, and then to a military medical officer who moved an entire army and was recorded in the military newspaper, he relied on his skills from his time travel to gradually make his way to the center of the storm in this border region where life and death were almost inevitable.

Ahead lay the barbarian army stretching for hundreds of miles beyond Qing Shi Kou, the precarious border pass, the lurking shadows waiting for their chance, Qin Ying's unjust death, and a long, blood-soaked road paved with blood and fire leading to the "General" and the "Young Marquis".

He knew that all his skills, all his hands that could snatch people from the jaws of death, would eventually stir up a world-shaking storm on a larger battlefield.

She is the granddaughter of the Duke of Zhenguo, the princess who was ordered to patrol the border, and the female general who has commanded thousands of troops. After being silent for so long, she is finally about to step onto her battlefield again.

Yang Hu knew that this order to march north would not only drag him into an even bigger storm, but also push him onto the real path leading to the title of "General" and "Young Marquis".

The bugle call has sounded in the north.

The surging tide of the army was carrying this young medical officer, who was carrying a medicine chest, towards the most dangerous and glorious moment that would determine the fate of the Great Cheng Kingdom.

The legend of this young physician has only just begun.