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

That hand, within its bottomless net, had prepared a deadly trap for Yang Hu.

This move was faster and more ruthless than a poisoned arrow.

In the latter half of the night, the wounded soldiers' camp was deathly quiet.

Yang Hu, who was on night duty, had just changed the dressing of a seriously wounded soldier and returned to the medical officer's tent. Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, stood guard in the corner of the tent, wiping her dagger, which she never parted with, by the dim light of an oil lamp.

The wind outside the tent suddenly stopped.

Qin Ying's hand, which was wiping the dagger, suddenly stopped.

The moment the wind stopped, a tiny slit silently appeared at the bottom of the tent flap. A dark figure, like a venomous snake, slipped in unnoticed under the cover of darkness.

It was a masked assassin, clutching a short knife gleaming with a dark luster, the tip of which was aimed straight at Yang Hu, who had his back to the tent door.

"Be careful!"

At the critical moment, Qin Ying shouted and lunged forward like an arrow. She slashed diagonally at the assassin's blade with her dagger, which she had been polishing all night.

With a crisp clang, sparks flew everywhere.

The assassin hadn't expected that such an unassuming medicine boy would possess such swift movements and such ruthless killing moves. His strike, which should have been a sure kill, was deflected by the medicine boy.

Yang Hu turned around upon hearing the sound, his eyes instantly turning cold.

coming.

That hand was about to silence them. It had discovered that the three were investigating the fake accounts on the northern front and the allocation of the poison, and it wanted to eliminate the person who had brought it into this world.

Inside the tent, Qin Ying was locked in combat with the assassin.

She was raised as a military talent in the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion from a young age, and had fought in the bloody battlefields of the border. Her martial arts skills were more than enough to deal with an ordinary assassin. But she couldn't reveal her true abilities, so she had to suppress her military bearing and pretend to be a medicine boy with some martial arts skills to fight the assassin.

Seeing that his first attack had failed, the assassin became even more ferocious, aiming every strike at Yang Hu's vitals. He had clearly received a death order and would not rest until he had taken the physician's life tonight.

Yang Hu remained calm.

Having practiced medicine for many years, he had witnessed countless deaths. The knife aimed at his vital organs was no different to him from the blood-spurting wounds on the city wall. Panic would not save lives; only calmness could find a glimmer of hope in that split second.

His gaze swept quickly across the tent. There were no suitable weapons in the doctor's tent, but for a physician, everything was useful.

He grabbed a copper pestle for grinding herbs and a porcelain bowl of powdered medicine from the table. Taking advantage of the moment when the assassin was entangled by Qin Ying and turned to the side, he flicked his wrist and splashed a handful of powdered medicine made from spicy eggplant and quinoa over the assassin's head.

That's a pungent, eye-irritating drug.

Caught off guard, the assassin was blinded by the powder, his sword strike faltered, and his vision blurred with a stinging pain.

That's the stagnation.

Qin Ying flicked her wrist, and the back of the short knife slammed heavily against the assassin's wrist. The assassin lost his grip on the knife, and the poisoned dagger clattered to the ground.

Before he could move again, Qin Ying lunged forward and delivered a precise chop to his neck.

The assassin groaned and collapsed limply to the ground.

They've captured them.

More importantly, while subduing him, Qin Ying dislocated his jaw and then pressed the acupoint under his tongue to silence him.

"Don't let him bite his tongue or the poison pill," Qin Ying said in a deep voice, her eyes cold. "Last time, Wu Yong committed suicide by biting into a poison pill. This one, I need to leave him alive."

A glint of light flashed in Yang Hu's eyes.

Exactly.

The claws on that hand each had a poison pill hidden in their mouths. But this time, Qin Ying dislocated their jaws and silenced them with acupressure, so even if the assassin wanted to bite the poison pill to commit suicide, they couldn't bite it or move.

One survivor.

A living witness who can identify that hand.

This was the first time they had ever held that hand's claws and teeth in their own hands, alive and well.

Qin Ying, holding down the assassin, glanced at Yang Hu, a strange light flashing in his cold eyes. In that moment of danger, this physician had remained perfectly calm and composed, handling the copper pestle, medicine powder, and porcelain bowl with ease, sharper than a knife.

"Thanks to your powder," she whispered.

"Thanks to your excellent skills." Yang Hu looked at her, a faint warmth in his eyes. "If it weren't for you tonight, I'm afraid I would have really lost my life in this tent."

Qin Ying turned her face away and didn't say anything more, but her ears secretly turned red.

Yang Hu crouched down and, by the light of the lamp, carefully searched the assassin. The assassin had nothing on him that could identify him; he was clean and tidy, which was standard practice for assassins.

"Interrogate him." Yang Hu's voice was soft, but every word was firm. "Since he's alive, there's always a way to pry him open. Follow him, and investigate the head of that hand."

Qin Ying escorted the assassin, while Yang Hu guarded the tent entrance.

That night, the three guarded the assassin tightly, waiting for dawn to report the assassination attempt, along with the survivor, to Deputy Commander Zhou.

With this survivor, the hiding place of the hand can be lifted out along this line in one fell swoop.

But before dawn, another unexpected event occurred.

In the middle of the night, a troop of fully armed soldiers suddenly arrived at the camp. The leader was an unfamiliar military judge. He held a document in his hand and had a cold, hard expression.

"By order of the Central Army," the military judge said with a forced smile, "the assassin who attempted to assassinate the medical officer at night is a matter of military law and must be escorted to the Central Army for trial by the Military Law Department."

Yang Hu's heart sank suddenly.

Central Army.

That hand was hidden in the center of the army.

It had absolute power, and could directly use the name of the military law department to legitimately take this only survivor from their hands.

"This man was captured by us, and it is only right that Vice Commander Zhou should handle the matter," Qin Ying argued, keeping her voice low.

"The military court is handling this personally; it's an order from the central army," the military judge said coldly. "You, a mere apprentice, dare to question a military order?"

Military orders are absolute.

Yang Hu and Qin Ying exchanged a glance, both seeing a trace of powerless coldness in each other's eyes.

The prisoners they held in their hands were thus taken away openly and legitimately by that hand, under the guise of the military law department.

The assassin was led out of the tent and disappeared into the deep night.

Yang Hu gazed at the departing torches, his eyes filled with an unyielding solemnity.

That hand, hidden in the central command position, was higher and deeper than he had imagined. It could instigate assassins, directly mobilize the military law department, and casually take away the only survivor to silence them. The power that hand held was unfathomable.

As Yang Hu had predicted, things went exactly as he had.

At daybreak, Su Heng used the pretext of copying documents to inquire about the news.

The soldier who was taken away, on the way to the central army, "feared punishment and struck a pillar, dying on the spot."

Again.

From the lowly military clerk who committed suicide out of fear of punishment, to Wu Yong who crushed a poison pill, to the assassin who poisoned the food and drink, and then to this assassin who ran into a pillar halfway through his journey, every time that hand was forced to take a step closer, it would hastily extinguish a mouth that could identify it.

Another survivor who could identify that hand was severed at the point closest to it.

The hand, within its net, slowly withdrew its claw that had just been extended to kill. It silenced the assassins, severed the thread, but it couldn't sever the three men's will to continue the pursuit.

"The more eager it is to kill and silence witnesses," Yang Hu gazed in the direction of the central command tent, a brighter fire igniting in his calm eyes, "the more it shows that we are getting closer and closer to it."

Its ability to mobilize the military law department indicates that it holds an extremely high position in the central army.

This is yet another line to follow.