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

The fire was burning fiercely.

The armory in the rear camp was ablaze, billowing thick smoke that illuminated half the sky. The soldiers guarding the fire were in complete chaos, some carrying water, others splashing sand, but they couldn't quell the fire, which was growing ever stronger with the help of the burning oil.

In the chaos, several guards carried a man covered in charred soot and stumbled towards Yang Hu.

"Medical Officer Yang! Quickly save Captain Zhou!"

Yang Hu looked closely and his heart sank.

That was Captain Zhou, who had always obeyed his orders in the wounded soldiers' camp. Just now, in an attempt to salvage the crossbows in the armory, he rushed into the fire and was drenched in the face by a bucket of spilled oil.

At this moment, Captain Zhou's chest and arms were covered in large patches of charred, torn flesh, oozing blood—a truly gruesome sight. He was convulsing in pain, but remained conscious, emitting hoarse moans of agony.

"With burns like this, even a god couldn't save him." A military doctor glanced at him and shook his head repeatedly. "With such a large area of ​​burns, he won't survive the night."

"Who said that!" Yang Hu shouted decisively.

He quickly checked Zhou's injuries, but he knew better than anyone else what was going on.

The truly fatal aspect of such extensive burns is never the burned flesh itself. After a burn, the body's fluids continuously seep out from the damaged wounds. Before long, the body is drained of all its fluids, and the person dies from dehydration, exhaustion, and death.

For extensive burns, the first hurdle is not the burned wounds themselves, but rather "dehydration".

And so the method of saving lives came about.

"Quick! Set up a pot and boil water! Make rice porridge!" Yang Hu rattled off a series of orders. "Add salt and a tiny bit of sugar to the rice porridge! Let it cool to a warm temperature as soon as it's done, and force-feed it to him mouthful by mouthful! Keep forcing him to drink it!"

"At a time like this, why are you still feeding him rice gruel?" The army doctor looked puzzled. "What good will that do?"

"He's losing water non-stop; if we don't replenish it soon, he won't last two hours!" Yang Hu shouted sternly, allowing no room for doubt. "Salt can lock in the water, and sugar can give him a boost. These mouthfuls of salt-sugar rice porridge are like fighting against death for that last drop of life-saving water in his body! Don't stand there, go now!"

The military doctor was skeptical, but he was still overwhelmed by the man's undeniable aura and turned to make arrangements.

Yang Hu then freed his hands and carefully cleaned the large, charred wound with a clean cloth soaked in strong liquor. He cut away the curled-up charred skin and picked out the charcoal ash embedded in the flesh, each movement extremely light and steady, for fear of causing any further damage.

Team Leader Zhou was trembling with pain, his teeth clenched so tightly they were grinding together, but he stubbornly endured it and refused to utter a sound.

"Bear with it," Yang Hu said in a low voice, his hands moving without stopping. "Clean this layer of rotten flesh clean, or it will fester and kill you."

After cleaning, he applied herbs to relieve heat and pain and prevent ulceration, and then gently covered and bandaged the area with a damp cloth soaked in the herbal juice, which not only kept out the dirt from the outside but also protected the little moisture that could no longer be lost.

Bowls of warm, salty, and sugary rice porridge were poured into Zhou's mouth, one spoonful at a time.

Yang Hu stayed by his side, never leaving his side. He kept a close eye on his breathing and pulse while constantly urging him to add more soup.

Time passed little by little.

His breathing, which had been rapid and disordered due to the excruciating pain and dehydration, gradually calmed down as he was fed bowls of rice porridge. A trace of color returned to Zhou's dry, chapped lips.

A life that was on the verge of being burned dry and dehydrated to death was once again pulled back from the brink by Yang Hu.

The army doctors who had previously said that "even a god couldn't save him" were all dumbfounded when they saw that the ordinary salt and sugar rice soup that had been poured down his throat had actually saved a person who was burning up like that.

They practiced medicine their whole lives, only knowing that burns needed to be treated with medicine and pain relieved. Who would have thought that the critical moment was not in the burns themselves, but in a bowl of the most inconspicuous salt and sugar rice soup?

"Where did Physician Yang learn this skill from?" The military doctor who had questioned him earlier looked at Captain Zhou, who had recovered, opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word.

Yang Hu did not answer. He had no way of explaining the principles of rehydration to people of this era. He only knew that this method could save lives.

And the one who was saved was a captain who could command his men from the city walls.

At this critical juncture of defending the isolated city, rescuing such a person is to stabilize the crumbling morale of the army.

Captain Zhou slowly regained consciousness. Looking at Yang Hu standing beside him, he weakly opened his mouth but couldn't utter a word, only his eyes filled with gratitude. He was an old soldier who had spent half his life fighting on the city walls, and he had seen all kinds of life-and-death situations. But to survive being doused with a bucket of kerosene like that, he himself felt like he was dreaming.

"Don't move, rest." Yang Hu said calmly, "I've saved your life. Once you're well, the walls of Qing Shi Kou will still need an old man like you to hold them up."

After finishing his preparations, Yang Hu's gaze fell on the wound on Captain Zhou's body caused by the kerosene.

The marks from the burning oil were definitely not from ordinary warfare.

Burns caused by kerosene are completely different from ordinary burns from flames. The kerosene sticks to the skin and burns deeply and evenly, often spreading into large patches. The wound on Captain Zhou's body was clearly caused by someone pouring a bucket of kerosene in his face.

This was the basis of Yang Hu's conclusion. The armory was always stocked with flammable oil, but it was always tightly sealed and would never spontaneously combust, much less splash onto people. Someone had deliberately pried open the oil containers and poured out the barrels of kerosene, thus igniting this deadly fire.

That hand, with its arson marks, once again caught Yang Hu's eye.

What it wants to burn is far more than just this warehouse of weapons. What it wants is to take advantage of this national war to set this isolated city ablaze from the inside, leaving the city's defenders attacked from both sides, causing their morale to collapse and them to crumble without a fight. This is a more vicious blow than the 100,000 barbarian soldiers outside the city, piercing straight to the heart of the border.

Fortunately, it failed.

Not far away, the raging fire was gradually suppressed by Su Heng and Qin Ying with their men. Although some of the military equipment was destroyed, most of the arrowheads and gunpowder were managed to be salvaged, preserving the last teeth of the city's defenders.

But the traitor who set the fire in the chaos vanished like a drop of water into the sea, disappearing into the turmoil of the camp without a trace.

Once again, after committing a heinous crime, that hand silently retreated back into its shell.

The fighting on the city walls continued. The barbarian attacks came wave after wave, each more fierce than the last.

But this time, the scheme to coordinate with an outsider and force the isolated city to collapse on its own ultimately failed. The city still stands firmly.

Yang Hu slung his medicine box over his shoulder and looked up at the sky shrouded in thick smoke, his eyes filled with an unyielding coldness.

From the grain leak at the Western Camp to the borrowed knife at Snow Ridge, and now this coordinated attack from within and without, the evil of that hand has been one act after another. But the more hasty it is in its actions, the more flaws it leaves behind.

This score, sooner or later, will be settled with that hand hidden deep within the central command tent, one by one.