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

The night raid, intended to kill someone using another's knife, was quelled.

Yang Hu looked at the spirited woman who had saved his life and asked in a deep voice, "Who are you, young lady? Why did you save me? And how did you know that someone wanted to use the barbarian's knife to kill me?"

The woman sheathed her sword, her expression serene.

"My name is Su Heng." She said each word clearly, "My father was once a lieutenant general in this army."

Su Heng. Daughter of a military family.

Yang Hu's heart stirred slightly. No wonder she possessed such heroic spirit and swordsmanship; it was the result of being raised in a military family.

"I've known for a long time that someone wanted to kill you," Su Heng said slowly, a hint of deep-seated hatred flashing in her clear eyes. "Because I've also been investigating that person. For three whole years."

"Are you also investigating that hand?" Yang Hu's expression hardened.

"Three years ago," Su Heng's voice turned cold, "my father was ordered to guard a pass on the northern front. Overnight, the pass fell, the entire army was wiped out, and my father also 'fought to his death for his country.' But what I found out was something else entirely. That night, the barbarians seemed to have known the pass's strengths and weaknesses perfectly, avoiding all the sentries and choosing the weakest point where the troop rotation was most chaotic, silently breaking through the pass. My more than a thousand brothers guarding the border didn't even have a chance to fight back before becoming victims of their blades."

"Someone sold out the truth about the pass to the barbarians."

"My father didn't die in battle," Su Heng said, her eyes filled with unyielding grief and indignation. "He was framed and killed by that traitor. A military report stating 'fighting to the death for his country' completely covered up this heinous crime of treason."

Yang Hu felt a violent jolt in his heart.

He colluded with the enemy and betrayed the country; he sent a false military report claiming that the soldiers had fought to the death; and he framed and killed loyal officials.

These incidents are remarkably similar to what Qin Ying suffered, and to the various schemes that hand engaged in at the Western Camp and Qing Shi Kou!

It's clearly the same hand.

"To find out the cause of my father's death, I changed my name and joined the army." Su Heng looked at Yang Hu and said slowly, "For three years, I disguised myself as a clerk in the army, using the pretext of copying military reports and organizing grain and fodder records for various camps to move around the camp. I secretly remembered which military report was handed out from which hand, which shortfall in grain and weapons went into whose pocket, and which officers had shady dealings with me."

"I know better than anyone the connections within the military, the networks in each battalion, and the clues hidden deep within the files." Her voice was slightly low. "But that hand is too well hidden, and its methods are too ruthless. Anyone who manages to find even a trace of it will either 'fall suddenly ill' or 'die in battle' within a few days. I investigated for three whole years, and I only managed to touch some shadows of it. I dare not make any rash moves anymore."

"Until I saw you."

Her gaze fell on Yang Hu, and became more serious.

"A military doctor, relying on his medical skills, investigated from the West Camp to Qing Shi Kou, exposed Squad Leader Zhao, uncovered the culprit behind the military medicine, and broke the poison scheme it had set up in the central command tent. Step by step, you cornered that culprit. Only when it was desperate did it resort to using the barbarians' knife to eliminate you."

"You and I," Su Heng said, enunciating each word clearly, "are investigating the same hand. We are avenging the same grudge."

Yang Hu listened quietly, his heart churning with turmoil.

He investigated that hand to save the border, clear Qin Ying's name, and sever the root of the treason. The woman before him, on the other hand, carried the blood feud of her entire family and had been investigating alone for three whole years in this den of dragons and tigers, disguised as an inconspicuous clerk.

How did she endure those three years? She watched helplessly as the man who killed her father rose through the ranks of the army unscathed, while she couldn't utter a sound. She could only swallow her deep-seated hatred, pretending to be an insignificant figure, slowly probing the hand's every move under its nose. This forbearance, this solitary courage, even Yang Hu couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

Two lines that were originally unrelated, one starting from the chaotic graveyards on the border and the other from the lost pass on the northern frontier, suddenly converged in the midst of the raging flames of war at Qing Shi Kou, because of the same hand and the same hatred.

"Do you trust me?" Su Heng looked at him frankly.

Yang Hu met her frank and sharp eyes, remained silent for a moment, and then slowly nodded.

In chaotic times, people's hearts are unpredictable. But the woman's sword strike just now truly saved his life from the hands of the assassin. And her determination to investigate her father's wrongful conviction and her hatred for that hand are not to be faked.

"I believe you," Yang Hu said in a deep voice. "The informants you've cultivated over the past three years in the army, and your understanding of that hand, are exactly what I lack. And I can tear open the wound in that medicine, that poison, that seemingly unsolvable dead end. I can taste the adulteration in military medicine; I can identify the poison in the food; and I can discern its methods from the corpses of those it has killed."

"You investigated its 'form'," he said, emphasizing each word. "I'm dealing with its 'inside'. Only by joining forces," a desperate fire ignited in his eyes, "can we hope to pull that hand out from the deepest shell of the central command tent."

A glimmer of light, a light of camaraderie that had been absent for many years, flashed across Su Heng's clear eyes.

"Okay." She nodded solemnly and stretched out her hand. "From tonight onwards, you will investigate inside, and I will investigate outside. No matter how well that hand is hidden, one of us will eventually be able to find its weak point."

Yang Hu also reached out and shook her hand firmly.

After three years of fighting alone, for the first time, she encountered someone she could trust who was investigating the same hand. Yang Hu also knew that with the informants and connections Su Heng had built up in the army over the past three years, he no longer needed to fumble around in the dark as before when investigating that hand.

Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, watched all of this from the side, her cold eyes revealing a complex and unreadable expression.

That military report of "fighting to the death for one's country," that meticulously planned "martyrdom," that blood feud that wiped out an entire family overnight. In this world, no one knew better than Qin Ying what kind of cannibalistic darkness lay behind those six words. She thought she was the only one in the world who carried such injustice and swallowed such hatred.

But now, standing before her is another person who shares her fate.

Su Heng's father, those more than a thousand brothers who guarded the border, weren't they another "Qin family," another group of loyal souls who died in the schemes of their own people? Qin Ying looked at Su Heng, and a very faint ripple of mutual appreciation flashed across his usually cold eyes.

The hand hidden deepest within would never have imagined that the young military doctor it intended to eliminate with the barbarian's knife not only survived but also gained a powerful ally that very night—a man who had investigated it for three years and harbored deep hatred for it.

Outside the tent, the drums and horns of the barbarian army pressing in grew louder day by day.

Inside the tent, three people with different backgrounds, yet all pointing to the same enemy, began to re-lay out the increasingly deadly trap. The doubts and clues, pieced together by Su Heng's network of informants accumulated over the past three years, became much clearer than before.

But that hand remained hidden in the deepest, darkest corner of the central command tent, never revealing even a glimpse of its true form. It had abandoned the documents, cut off the minor officials, and even managed to snatch the barbarian's knife, yet it still firmly held the lifeline of the western camp, issuing commands.

To truly expose it, we still need the most crucial step: a situation that can force it to emerge from its shell and poke its head out.

On the eve of the decisive battle, a net was quietly unfurled to tear that hand out from the deepest part of the central command tent.