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

Yang Hu kept the poisoned arrow in his personal pouch.

The barbarians were unfamiliar with such insidious poisoning techniques. The only person who could teach them such meticulous poisoning techniques and continuously supply the poison to the barbarian camp was the hand hidden in the central command tent.

This arrow marks another thread that leads us to follow it.

As night fell, in a secluded corner of the wounded soldiers' camp, Yang Hu, Su Heng, and Qin Ying gathered together once again.

"I've smelled this poison before," Yang Hu said in a deep voice, placing the arrowhead between the three of them. "I took note when I pulled it out. The arrowhead was coated with a potent poison called 'arsenic,' combined with some bone-numbing herbs. Arsenic is lethal upon contact with blood, and bone-numbing herbs can cause numbness and paralysis throughout the body. When combined and coated evenly and deeply, the poison travels through the blood vessels to the heart, and even a miracle would be impossible to save someone."

He paused, his eyes darkening.

"Ordinary barbarians wouldn't even know the names of these medicinal herbs, let alone be able to concoct such a sophisticated poison. The person who could concoct this poison and then coat the arrowhead with it must be someone knowledgeable in medicine, who prepared it personally."

"He understands medicine and can also deliver poison to the barbarian camp." Su Heng's eyes were calm and sharp. "The number of people who can accomplish this by combining these two skills can be counted on one hand throughout the entire border region."

"With such poisoned arrows, the barbarians will die many more brothers on the city walls for no reason." Yang Hu's voice turned cold. "Follow this poison and investigate further. Find out where this batch of poison came from, and who delivered it to the barbarian camp. If we catch this thread, we'll catch a part of the hand that's behind it."

"The military's poisons and paralyzing herbs are all regulated," Su Heng said in a low voice, recounting the details she had uncovered from the piles of documents over the past few days. "How much went into storage, how much was used, how much was lost—every single one had to be recorded and signed. Under the guise of copying documents, I went through the Ordnance Department's records of herbs for the past three years, book by book. Others just thought I was a dull clerk buried in books, but no one noticed that I wasn't looking at the books; I was looking at the footprints left by that hand."

As she spoke, she took out a piece of paper that she had secretly copied from her sleeve and laid it between the three of them.

"I checked the old military inventory book on the northern front. There was an inconspicuous allocation of medicinal materials in it. It was arsenic and hemp bone. The amount was small and hidden among a dozen or so ordinary medicinal materials. You wouldn't notice it if you didn't look closely."

"The destination of this batch of medicinal herbs is recorded as 'for preparing wound medicine'," Su Heng sneered. "But arsenic is a potent poison, and it would never be used in wound medicine. This is clearly using the pretext of preparing medicine to steal the poison, temper arrows, and send them to the barbarians."

Yang Hu and Qin Ying exchanged a glance, both seeing a cold glint in each other's eyes.

The line then continued upwards along the arrow.

"Whose hand signed off on this transfer?" Yang Hu asked.

Su Heng paused, then spoke slowly and deliberately.

"He was a military advisor in charge of the armory, surnamed Sun. In that hand's henchmen, he was a level above Wu Yong, who committed suicide out of fear of punishment. All the military equipment and medicines entering and leaving the army had to pass through his hands."

"I've been watching this Military Advisor Sun for more than just a day." Su Heng's voice held a chill that had been suppressed for a long time. "On the surface, he's a meticulous and capable official with clear accounts, but in private, he's been balancing the accounts for the army's rations and weapons under the guise of 'losses' and 'allocation to other camps.' That fake account book for the northern front, that allocation of poison, were all signed by him. The year my father's pass fell, the weapons that disappeared into thin air and ended up in the hands of the barbarians, were also signed by him on the allocation documents."

Yang Hu looked at her, and his heart skipped a beat.

This seemingly delicate female official, in this den of dragons and tigers, swallowed a deep-seated hatred and single-handedly kept an eye on the henchmen of that hand for three whole years.

"Military Advisor Sun." Yang Hu memorized this name.

A military officer in charge of the entire battalion's weapons and medicines used his position to smuggle military rations, weapons, and poison, bag by bag, batch by batch, to the barbarians beyond the Great Wall. It was with these supplies that the barbarians dared to launch repeated fierce attacks on Qing Shi Kou.

This wasn't barbarians attacking the city; it was clearly someone inside the city handing a knife to a barbarian, then watching helplessly as that knife plunged into the chest of their own man.

Yang Hu felt a chill rise from the bottom of his heart. The barbarians outside the city were fierce as they were, but they were enemies in the open; it was the hand hidden in the city, smiling while concealing a knife, that was the real deadly festering sore.

"He's a level above Wu Yong, but he might not be the true mastermind behind that operation," Yang Hu pondered, careful not to make any definitive statements. "He handles weaponry, making him the most powerful member of that operation. But whether he has someone else above him is still unclear."

"Regardless of whether he is the real person or not," Qin Ying's cold voice carried a hatred that had been suppressed for three years, "the fact that he handled this drug trafficking is irrefutable evidence. If we trace it back along his trail, we will eventually find the person behind it."

"But Military Advisor Sun is a henchman of that hand, so he must be heavily guarded." Yang Hu's eyes were calm and cold. "If we investigate him forcefully, we'll alert the enemy; if we interrogate him too forcefully, the hand behind him will immediately silence him, just like it did with Wu Yong."

Inside the tent, there was a moment of silence.

They had already witnessed the method of silencing witnesses. Wu Yong was captured, and in the blink of an eye, he bit into a poison pill and committed suicide. This Military Advisor Sun was probably hiding the same thing in his mouth.

"We can't take him by force," Yang Hu said slowly. "We need to have some irrefutable evidence that he can't deny and that the other side can't cover up for him."

"That fake account book from the northern front, that transfer of poison, that poisoned arrowhead," Su Heng listed one by one, "These irrefutable pieces of evidence, when put together, can firmly pin down Military Advisor Sun and the crimes of treason he handled."

"But these pieces of evidence are currently scattered in various places," Qin Ying said in a deep voice. "The fake accounts are locked in the secret archives, the transfer records are in the Ordnance Department, and the arrowhead is in our hands. It will take a lot of effort to piece them together and connect them into a conclusive evidence."

The three of them surrounded the poisoned arrow, meticulously going over every step of the game. Who would retrieve the fake account locked in the secret archives, who would copy the ordnance department's allocation records, when to make their move, and how to secure the irrefutable evidence without alerting the authorities—every detail was meticulously planned.

The net that was specially woven for Military Advisor Sun is slowly unfolding.

But they didn't expect that while they were secretly investigating, the hand hidden deep within the central command tent had already silently noticed the unusual activity in the camp.

It was discovered that someone was checking the old accounts of the northern front and the military supplies that had been smuggled out.

That hand, within its bottomless web, slowly turned its head.

Its gaze fell upon the young medical officer, the newest member of the West Camp, who had revitalized the wounded soldiers' camp.

This young doctor, barely in his early twenties and still very young, had only been there a short time, but he had already revitalized the stagnant wounded soldiers' camp. Under the pretext of taking stock of all the camp's medicines, he had also slipped his fingers into the accounts of weapons, casualties, and supplies. Having operated on the frontier for many years, he was the best at sensing what kind of people were after him.

Without making a sound, it had already quietly prepared a deadly move for this troublesome young physician within that bottomless net.

A deadly plot, more insidious than a poisoned arrow, was brewing silently in the unseen shadows.