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

The day after the urgent order from the commander was delivered to the western camp, the army set off.

Before dawn, the entire camp was already in an uproar. The drums signaling roll call rose and fell in waves, supply wagons were loaded with provisions and weapons one after another, horses neighed and men shouted, and horns blared throughout the camp. This behemoth that had lingered on the border for so long finally broke camp and headed north, rushing toward the urgent Qing Shi Kou camp.

Yang Hu, carrying his medicine chest, joined the ranks of the army medical officers, becoming part of the northward-bound torrent. Medical Officer Liu, leading a group of army doctors, escorted several large carts loaded with medicine and equipment, following at the tail of the supply train.

Qin Ying was still dressed in the coarse cloth clothes of a medicine boy, her face smeared with ash, her shoulders hunched, following beside him. Her hands, calloused from holding knives, were hidden under the wrist guards that Yang Hu had found for her, without revealing a trace.

But Yang Hu knew what burned in her eyes as she gazed northward.

That fire belongs to the battlefield.

"The further north you go, the more turbulent it becomes." After traveling more than a hundred miles, she lowered her voice and whispered, her gaze sweeping over the roadside. "Look."

Yang Hu followed her gaze.

Along the official road, moving in the opposite direction from their northward-bound army, were staggering groups of defeated soldiers retreating in disarray.

The soldiers, their armor tattered and wounded, looked terrified, their eyes filled with a deathly pallor. Some limped, leaning on broken spears; others supported each other in twos and threes, their blood already dried black. A young soldier with half an arm missing was being carried by his comrades, muttering an indistinct phrase over and over, his eyes vacant as if he had lost his soul.

"Qingshikou is probably going to collapse." The old doctor accompanying the army looked at the defeated soldiers, his voice trembling.

Yang Hu's heart sank.

Qin Ying's eyes, however, were much calmer than those of the defeated soldiers.

She glanced at the defeated faces, then at the abandoned supplies, broken axles, and arrows scattered on the roadside, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper.

"It's not just the front lines that are in dire straits," she whispered. "Look at these routed soldiers, in groups of three or five, but not a single officer is trying to gather them together. Supplies are scattered all over the roads, and the ruts on the grain carts are deep and shallow, because they were packed haphazardly and rushed away. This battle hasn't even really reached its core yet, and our own side, from logistics to supply lines, has already broken down."

Having led troops, she could not hide the signs of defeat on the battlefield from her eyes.

The further north you go, the more bleak the scene becomes.

The village was charred black, with wisps of smoke still rising from its crumbling walls. Countless refugees, families in tow, fled south. An old woman, carrying a emaciated, pale-faced child on her back, staggered along the roadside; the child was too weak even to cry. On the horizon, endless plumes of smoke rose.

This land, which should have been the northern border barrier of Dacheng, is now being swallowed up inch by inch by the impending raging war.

"The words 'guarding the border'..." Qin Ying said softly, gazing at the backs of the mother and child. "Beneath them lie countless withered bones."

Yang Hu didn't reply. He simply tightened the straps of his medicine chest even more. The scorched earth and displaced people along the way made it clearer to him than any military report that if this battle was lost, how many families would be ruined?

After marching for several days, the army finally arrived at a high ground on the outskirts of Qingshikou.

The moment Yang Hu and his team reached the high ground, he was completely stunned by the sight before him.

At the edge of the wilderness stretched a vast, dark army of barbarians.

The camp stretched for dozens of miles, banners like a forest, swords and spears like a sea. The faint sound of drums and horns carried on the wind, and the oppressive atmosphere, even from miles away, still made it hard to breathe.

The isolated city of Qingshikou was surrounded by this vast, black ocean. Smoke billowed from the city walls several times a day, a desperate plea for help from all directions.

This was the largest battle formation Yang Hu had ever seen since he joined the army.

A war that will determine the fate of the Great Cheng's northern border has already opened its ferocious maw on this vast wilderness.

Since joining the army, Yang Hu had become accustomed to the sporadic border skirmishes at the Western Camp. A border incursion by three to five hundred barbarians was considered a major battle. But the black tide stretching for dozens of miles before him seemed poised to crush the entire border post, along with tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians inside and outside the city.

He subconsciously touched the medicine box on his back.

Faced with such a devastating battlefield, his medical skills and his chest full of medicinal herbs seemed as insignificant as a grain of sand thrown into a vast ocean.

But he also knew that the more desperate the situation, the more important those lives became.

"This battle concerns the nation's borders." Qin Ying gazed at the precarious, isolated city, slowly clenching his fist, his voice heavy with unyielding gravity.

A deeper chill swept through Yang Hu's heart.

The hand hidden in the central command tent of the western camp abandoned the chess piece of documents and fled. But could its treachery have already extended into the decisive battle at Qing Shi Kou?

The barbarians arrived with such precision and ruthlessness, their camps pressing in, as if they had calculated every weakness and strength of Da Cheng. Are there people inside and outside this city, secretly passing on, bit by bit, the garrison's deployment, supply lines, and the strength and weakness of reinforcements to the other side of that black, vast ocean?

He recalled the devastation he had witnessed along the way: broken axles, abandoned supplies, and routed soldiers left ungathered. That disarray was so similar to the methods of that hand operating in the Western Camp. Leaking weapons, embezzling provisions, and disorganizing resources—first hollowing out their own ranks, then allowing the barbarians beyond the pass to breach the gates in one fell swoop.

These incidents are clearly all part of the same pattern. Only this time, the hand that wants to overturn is no longer a small western camp, but the entire northern border of Dacheng, the entire national gate.

"The water deep within this military camp is even deeper than that of the western camp," he said, gazing at the smoke rising from the connected camps.

Qin Ying nodded silently.

She knew better than anyone that behind this war that threatened the entire nation, an unseen hand was lurking, waiting for its chance to strike. What it wanted was not just a defeat, but the complete destruction of this pass, the gateway to this country, under the iron hooves of the barbarians.

That night, the northward-bound army set up a series of camps in the wilderness outside Qing Shi Kou, facing off against the main force of the barbarian tribe across a desolate expanse.

At opposite ends of the wilderness, the lights resembled two starry seas gazing at each other. On one side was the barbarian army pressing in, and on the other was the Great Cheng army rushing to their aid. Neither side moved, yet the chilling atmosphere throughout the camp was more suffocating than the clash of swords and spears.

Yang Hu's medical officers' camp was set up in a low-lying area at the rear of the central army. He led Physician Liu and a group of doctors to set up tents, build stoves, boil water, and take inventory of the cartloads of medicines and equipment overnight.

Halfway through the inventory, his brow furrowed. This small amount of medicine and hemostatic and wound-cleaning supplies might be enough to handle ordinary border skirmishes, but to withstand the casualties of a major war would be like a drop in the ocean.

He had a vague premonition: the real battle was yet to begin, and the medical officer camp was about to face a fierce fight.

Before he could catch his breath, wounded soldiers from a fierce battle at the front line surged into the camp like a flood that had burst its banks.

It stretches as far as the eye can see.

Blood instantly stained the entire camp red.

A wave of death, unlike anything he had ever faced before, came crashing down on him without warning.