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

The secret files from that night alerted that hand. But before it could retaliate, an even greater storm struck first, pressing down on the walls of Qing Shi Kou.

As dawn broke, deafening horns blared from the barbarian camp beyond the Great Wall.

The dark, imposing barbarian army, like a flood bursting its banks, pressed down from the horizon. The dust kicked up by their horses blotted out the sun. Siege ladders, battering rams, and siege towers stretched as far as the eye could see.

This was the overwhelming force of the barbarian invasion. Qing Shi Kou, this isolated city, stood at the very forefront of this torrent. As long as the city stood, the gates of the Great Cheng Kingdom remained; if the city fell, vast undefended prefectures and counties lay behind it.

The final battle has finally arrived.

"Fire!" The hoarse roar of the defending general from the city wall echoed through the sky.

The entire camp was instantly engulfed in flames. The defenders surged onto the city walls like a tidal wave, arrows raining down, and boulders and logs cascading down. Barbarians howled as they climbed the ladders, only to be smashed to pieces, their heads bleeding, before tumbling down the walls one after another. But as one fell, another surged forward, stepping over corpses, relentlessly and fearlessly.

On and around the city walls, blood and flesh flew everywhere, severed limbs mingled with scalding molten metal, screams and shouts of battle mingled in a chaotic mess. The entire city wall had become a hellish inferno.

Yang Hu carried a medicine box and stood guard at the wounded soldiers' reception point below the city.

He was no longer the army doctor who had just entered the camp and was looked down upon by the old army doctors. After enduring one fierce battle after another, his skills as a medical officer had been honed in blood and fire, becoming more and more stable and faster.

One after another, wounded soldiers were carried down from the city wall, flowing like a river to his rendezvous point. Some had severed arms, some had chests pierced, some had their faces scalded by boiling oil—each more gruesome than the last. An ordinary person seeing this bloody, mangled scene would likely have collapsed to the ground.

But Yang Hu's gaze remained as steady as a deep pool. In his eyes, these were not frightening pieces of flesh and blood, but rather gateways to hell waiting for him to overcome.

"Triage!" Yang Hu shouted sharply, his voice drowning out the surrounding chaos. "Those who can walk on their own, step back and wait! Those who are bleeding profusely or whose pulses have stopped, bring them to me first! Those who aren't breathing, move them to the side!"

He issued a series of military orders. He brought order to the wounded soldiers' camp, making it chaotic yet not panicked.

His hands moved swiftly over the wounded soldiers. He pressed on bleeding arteries, tightened bandages to stop the bleeding, removed festering flesh, and set dislocated bones, without stopping for a moment. Sweat streamed down his forehead, soaking his clothes, but he didn't bother to wipe it away.

Beside him, Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, nimbly and skillfully handed him weapons and medicine, and restrained the struggling wounded soldiers, their movements seamless. Over the days, this "medicine boy" had become Yang Hu's most capable assistant.

Each time he revived a soldier who could still breathe, he would shout to his personal guards, "They've recovered! Take them away to rest. They can come back up to the city wall when they're fully recovered!"

In this life-or-death battle that determined the fate of the border, his hands were the last source of strength for the defending army. Every soldier who returned alive gave the city walls a greater chance of holding out.

A soldier, his thigh pierced by an arrow and bleeding profusely, was brought before Yang Hu, his face deathly pale. For anyone else, the bleeding would have been unstoppable. But Yang Hu pressed down on the bleeding groin, his fingers precisely targeting the pulsating vein, immediately slowing the bleeding. He swiftly applied ointment and bandage, and in just a few breaths, he had pulled a man on the verge of bleeding to death back from the brink.

"Take him away!" he roared, then lunged at the next one.

One, two, three, they kept rescuing people, carrying them down one by one. His hands and clothes were so stained that it was impossible to tell whether it was other people's blood or his own sweat.

But just as the bloody battle was in full swing, a chill suddenly swept through Yang Hu's heart.

After bandaging a wounded soldier, Qin Ying leaned close to him, lowered her voice, and spoke very quickly: "Something's happened. The rear camp is on fire. A huge fire has broken out in the area behind the central army where weapons and provisions are stored. The fire is raging and can't be put out."

Yang Hu's hand, which was pressing on a wounded soldier's wound, suddenly stopped, and his pupils contracted sharply.

"The armory?" He looked up at the thick smoke rising from the depths of the camp, his voice lowering. "The barbarians attacked the city walls; their fire attack from outside couldn't reach the armory deep inside the camp. This fire started from inside."

The armory was stockpiled with the most essential supplies for defending the city: arrows, boiling oil, and gunpowder. Once all of them were burned, the brothers on the city walls would become toothless tigers, left only to risk their lives to save them.

This fire was more deadly than the 100,000 barbarian soldiers outside the city.

They cooperated from within and without.

These four words struck Yang Hu's mind like a bolt of lightning.

The barbarian army was pressing in, and a fierce battle raged on the city walls. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the 100,000 barbarian soldiers outside the city. No one could have imagined that the truly fatal blow would come from the deepest part of the camp, from behind one's own men.

Taking advantage of the chaos and national turmoil of the war, that hand set fire to the city. It burned weapons and provisions, intending to cripple this already precarious city from within. This move was both ruthless and precise.

"It's it." Yang Hu gritted his teeth, uttering each word clearly, "Barbarians are attacking the city from the outside, and that hand is setting fire from the inside. It wants to work together from within and without to destroy this city today."

On one side were wounded soldiers crying for food on the city wall, being carried down in an endless stream; on the other side was a deadly fire deep within the camp.

Yang Hu's eyes turned as cold as ice in that instant.

"Miss Qin, go find Miss Su immediately." He quickly gave the order, but his hands never stopped working on saving lives. "Miss Su is a civil official and can mobilize the firefighters. You all need to figure out a way to put out the fire first and save the unburned weapons. Then keep a close eye on the arsonist. In such a chaotic situation, the person who started the fire must be nearby, watching the flames."

"And what about you?" Qin Ying asked, looking at him.

"They can't do without me here." Yang Hu looked at the rows of wounded soldiers still being carried down, his eyes resolute. "People are dying and being carried down from the city walls without stopping for a moment. If I leave, these brothers will truly be doomed. The fire can be put out again, but these lives will be lost if we are even a moment too late."

Qin Ying gave him a deep look, nodded heavily, and disappeared into the surging crowd.

On the city walls, the sounds of battle roared. Inside the city, thick smoke billowed.

The hand hidden deep within finally revealed its most vicious fangs on this day of decisive battle.

Yang Hu had to rescue the city's defenders from the brink of death while simultaneously catching the opportunistic thief.

He wiped the blood and sweat from his face, took a deep breath, and then buried his head in the next wounded soldier being carried down.

On the city walls, the defenders, with their unwavering courage, stubbornly withstood wave after wave of fierce attacks from the barbarians. Every inch of the wall was bought with the lives of their brothers. Inside the camp, Su Heng and Qin Ying led their men in a desperate battle against a raging fire.

Beset by internal and external troubles, at this moment, the noose around the border's neck tightened simultaneously.

But this city has not yet collapsed.

As long as there are still people fighting on the city walls, as long as Yang Hu's hands are still constantly saving people, and as long as the fire hasn't burned all the weapons, this isolated city still has a breath left.

This city, this battle, this hand hidden deep within—today, everything will be revealed.