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

The sheepskin map taken from the scout's arms was right.

At dawn on the third day, before the sky was fully light, a deafening bugle call suddenly sounded across the wilderness outside Qing Shi Kou Pass.

The barbarian army from beyond the pass came out in full force.

A dense mass of cavalry and infantry, like a flood bursting its banks, surged out from several passes outside the pass, heading straight for the city walls of Qing Shi Kou. Shouts of battle, the sound of horses' hooves, and the clatter of drums and horns blended together, shaking the bricks and stones of the city walls.

The border soldiers defending the city rushed to the top of the city wall in haste, and unleashed a barrage of arrows, logs, and stones.

A bloody battle to defend Qingshikou City erupted in the crimson light of dawn.

Yang Hu stood in front of the wounded soldiers' camp, gazing at the billowing smoke from the city walls, his eyes darkening.

The sheepskin map that the scouts risked their lives to bring back, and the passes marked on the map where the barbarian army was assembled, have now all become the directions in which the barbarians are launching their fierce attacks.

The barbarians arrived swiftly and fiercely, attacking precisely the weakest points in the city's defenses marked on the scroll map. They knew exactly which sections of the wall had collapsed and not been repaired, and when each troop would rotate shifts; they targeted only the most vulnerable areas. Such familiarity meant that the barbarians could not have attacked so cunningly unless someone inside the city had leaked the city's defenses to those outside the pass.

"It really was a coordinated attack from within and without," Yang Hu whispered. "That hand revealed the true state of the city's defenses to the barbarians, which is why they dared to attack so directly. The knife outside the city and the hand inside are in cahoots."

He didn't have time to think much.

The fighting on the city walls lasted less than half an hour, and the first batch of wounded soldiers were carried into the wounded soldiers' camp like a tide.

Arms severed, chests pierced, legs broken by rolling stones, faces cleaved open by scimitars—one after another, their blood and flesh mangled, they poured in, quickly filling half the tent. The cries of agony and groans were heart-wrenching.

The doctors accompanying the army were so frightened by the scene that they were in a panic, clutching their wound medicine, unsure which patient to treat first.

"Listen to me!"

Yang Hu's sharp shout quelled the chaos in the camp.

In a life-or-death situation, there is no room for panic. There are too many wounded soldiers and too few people. If we try to save them one by one, those who are slow to act will die before it's their turn.

This is a system of rules that far surpasses the standards of this era.

Wounded soldiers rushed in, and to save as many as possible, we had to prioritize them. Those who could walk in on their own were lightly wounded and were put aside to wait; those bleeding profusely and wounded in vital areas were treated first; those who had already lost their breath and were beyond saving were moved aside to avoid taking up manpower.

"Those who can walk on their own, move to the left, cover your wounds and wait!" Yang Hu commanded decisively. "Those who are bleeding profusely, those wounded in the chest or neck, bring them to me, treat them first! The rest, you few, split up and keep an eye on them, don't let minor injuries turn into serious ones!"

At his command, the previously chaotic wounded soldiers' camp instantly became organized. Captain Zhou, Physician Liu, and several accompanying doctors all followed his orders, each fulfilling their duties. No one had expected that amidst the chaos of the camp, the one truly making decisions and issuing commands would be this young physician, who had only been there a few days prior and was barely in his early twenties. Yet, once he established his system, the disorganized wounded soldiers' camp immediately gained a leader, and no one dared to question his inexperience.

Yang Hu himself guarded the most dangerous spot, specializing in treating those seriously wounded who were bleeding profusely and whose lives hung by a thread.

Hemostasis, ligation, wound cleaning, suturing, and medication—one technique after another flowed smoothly from his hands. Severed blood vessels were ligated; piercing wounds were sutured; arrowheads embedded in flesh were removed; ruptured intestines were cleaned and repositioned. Qin Ying, disguised as a medicine boy, stood guard beside him, handing him instruments, restraining him, and preparing medicine, his hands as steady as a rock.

A corporal covered in blood was carried in; his thigh had been cleaved open by a curved blade, blood spurting high into the air. Yang Hu pressed on the vital artery, tightened a tourniquet, and applied a needle, stopping the bleeding in the blink of an eye. Just as he put this one down, another wounded soldier, wounded in the chest and struggling to breathe, was brought in. Yang Hu lifted his armor and saw that the arrowhead was embedded in his chest, causing him to suffocate. He immediately took a hollow reed tube, inserted it into the wounded man's ribs, and released the trapped air from his chest. The wounded soldier immediately recovered.

One after another, critically wounded soldiers on the verge of death were pulled back from the brink by his hands. The army doctor assisting him watched in astonishment, feeling that there was no injury that this young physician could not save.

As dawn broke, the barbarians on the city walls were driven back time and again.

In the wounded soldiers' camp, most of the seriously wounded soldiers who were thought to be dead actually survived.

This was unprecedented in Xidaying.

Physician Liu stood by, assisting, watching the wounded soldiers being pulled back from the brink of death. His face, etched with shock after forty years of medical experience, was filled with astonishment. He had witnessed countless siege battles in his life, each time leaving the wounded soldiers' camps a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood. For every ten brought in, seven or eight were buried. Whether a wounded soldier survived depended entirely on their luck. But this time, Yang Hu's triage and emergency treatment methods had managed to retain far more life from the piles of dead bodies.

"So this is how battles can be fought," Physician Liu murmured to himself as he handed Yang Hu a silk thread. He had practiced medicine for most of his life, and for the first time, he understood that the lives saved in this wounded soldiers' camp were directly related to whether the city walls could be held. The wounded soldiers weren't just useless cripples waiting to die; they were fighting forces capable of returning to the city walls once they recovered. He had only vaguely grasped this concept after forty years, but this young physician had already mastered it, his every action revealing his understanding.

"Saving one life means one more spear on the city wall," Yang Hu said in a deep voice as he stitched up the wound.

This statement perfectly describes the relationship between medicine and the military.

In this bloody battle to defend the isolated city, every seriously wounded soldier saved and healed could return to the city walls. With each additional spear and bow on the walls, the chances of holding Qing Shi Kou increased. Every life Yang Hu saved in this camp of wounded soldiers was a real contribution to the fighting force on the city walls.

The barbarians finally retreated.

But this was only the first wave of the attack.

Yang Hu straightened up and wiped the blood from his face. He had been fighting from before dawn until daybreak, without even a sip of water, his body covered in the blood of others. But he couldn't rest; he only looked towards the pass. On the open plains, the barbarian army hadn't retreated far, only rested temporarily, a dark mass pressing down on the horizon, ready to return at any moment.

Meanwhile, the hand that had breached the city's defenses and colluded with the barbarians was hidden deep within the central command tent, coldly watching this bloody battle, watching border soldiers bleed and die in vain on the city walls for its crime of treason, their corpses piled up at the base of the walls.

Yang Hu clenched his fist, his eyes filled with an unyielding coldness.

The barbarians outside the city will come again, and the hand inside the city has not yet been caught. Batch after batch of military rations and weapons fed to the barbarians are still being sent out of the pass. This bloody battle has only just begun.

And just as the camp was filled with bloodshed and everyone was preoccupied with their own survival, a hand hidden in the shadows was waiting for this once-in-a-lifetime chaos to quietly extend its claws towards the clerk who was investigating it most closely.

A deadly threat, even more insidious than the battle on the city walls, is quietly approaching amidst the chaos of the army.