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

At daybreak, those on the city wall could see clearly how many more tents the barbarians had added the previous night.

Originally, they only camped on the north and east sides, but now even the gentle slope on the west side is covered with banners. One after another, the banners completely surround Qing Shi Kou on three sides, leaving only the old road on the south side leading to the neighboring town open.

"Reinforcements!" Captain Chen leaned against the battlements, his voice hoarse. "The barbarian reinforcements have arrived."

Yang Hu stood beside him without saying a word.

He wasn't looking at the tent; he was looking at the smoke.

Yesterday, over thirty plumes of smoke rose from the chimneys; today, I counted over seventy. The barbarians weren't just putting on a show of an empty camp; they were real people.

"Medical Officer Yang," Captain Chen turned around, "how much medicine is left in the wounded soldiers' camp?"

"We have enough wound medicine for three days," Yang Hu said. "Two days' worth for stopping bleeding and reducing fever. We ran out of anesthetic powder last night."

Captain Chen's hand slowly tightened around the blood-stained brick on the battlement.

Three days.

Every time a batch of wounded soldiers were carried down, a batch of medicine was used up. Three days later, removing arrows required pressing down on the wounds, cleaning them with cold water, and amputating broken legs while the person was still conscious.

"The road to the south is still passable," Yang Hu said.

"We can still travel today," Captain Chen said with a wry smile, "but not necessarily tomorrow. The barbarians have also occupied the western slope; they're trying to cut off this route bit by bit. Once they surround the south side as well, Qing Shi Kou will be a sealed jar."

In the afternoon, Captain Chen held a meeting in the central command tent.

Yang Hu was summoned as a medical officer. He stood at the very end of the tent, watching a group of officers argue in front of the sand table.

Some advocated holding the city. The walls of Qingshikou were thick, and the food supplies could last for another month. If they held out until autumn, the barbarians would have to retreat on their own.

Someone immediately refuted this. Food supplies would last a month, medicine three days. The defense of a city rests on its people; if the people fall, even the thickest walls are useless.

In the end, Captain Chen slammed his fist on the table.

"Send men out of the city," Commander Chen said. "To the neighboring town of Heishuibao for reinforcements. It's three hundred li, a two-day, one-night journey by fast horse. The men don't need to be many, but they need to be skilled and capable of traversing the area."

There was a moment of silence inside the tent.

Go through. Surrounded on three sides, the southern route could be cut off at any moment, and nine out of ten people who go out will not return.

"How should we allocate manpower?"

"Each battalion should send thirty men," Captain Chen said. "And one more who knows the trade route through the Snow Ridge. The main road is impassable; we have to go around the mountains."

After these words were spoken, no one inside the tent responded.

The soldiers at Qingshikou were mostly conscripted locally; they were skilled at defending the city and fighting, but the trade route through Xueling was only used by merchants from beyond the Great Wall. There wasn't a single soldier in the army who knew how to use it.

Yang Hu's heart suddenly sank.

He didn't need to turn around to know what expression the "medicine boy" standing outside the tent, with his eyes downcast and shoulders hunched, had at that moment.

She had walked that road through the snowy mountains more than once when she led troops on patrols along the border.

"I have one here."

It was Physician Liu who spoke. He was usually silent in the central command tent, but this time he stepped forward. "Physician Yang has a herbalist under his command who previously went into the mountains with the medicine team. He said he passed through the Snow Ridge area."

Yang Hu suddenly turned his head.

Physician Liu avoided his gaze.

That wasn't a malicious intention. Physician Liu genuinely believed that once this group of men went out, Qing Shi Kou would have a better chance of survival. He spent his days in the wounded soldiers' camp, watching as the medicine dwindled day by day.

"Summon them," Commander Chen ordered.

When Qin Ying entered the tent, his steps were slow and his back was hunched, looking exactly like a country boy trying to make a living in the army.

"Will you travel along the Snow Ridge trade route?"

"...I've been there twice."

"Do you remember the way?"

"Remember."

Captain Chen sized her up, frowning slightly, clearly finding the young apprentice too thin. But no one else in the tent responded, so he finally waved his hand.

"We will leave the city with the troop at midnight tonight."

Yang Hu took half a step forward.

"Captain Chen—"

"Medical Officer Yang," Captain Chen interrupted him, "I know what you're trying to say. But the people of Qing Shi Kou are all waiting for this reinforcement. You can save those carried down from the city walls, but you can't save them when there's no medicine left in three days."

Yang Hu's words stuck in his throat.

He really couldn't say anything else.

He could say the young apprentice was weak, that she knew nothing of military affairs, or that there were other capable people in the army. But these words couldn't withstand scrutiny. Ask him, "Then who do you suggest we send?" He couldn't answer. In Qing Shi Kou, there was truly no one else who had traversed the Snow Ridge trade route.

He couldn't say that it wasn't a medicine boy. He couldn't say that it was the granddaughter of the Duke of Zhenguo, the woman who should have died four years ago at Yehuling, the only name in the army whose mere mention would lead to someone's death.

Not a single word can be said.

After the tent was closed, the two walked back to the wounded soldiers' camp one after the other.

Su Heng waited outside the tent. She had already heard about it.

"I'll go in her place," she said as soon as she opened her mouth. "My father also traveled that path through the snowy mountains back then."

"Have you been there?" Yang Hu asked.

Su Heng fell silent.

"That won't work," Qin Ying answered for him. "Three hundred miles around the mountains, if we take a wrong turn at one point, all thirty of us will be trapped inside."

Su Heng didn't argue anymore. She had been investigating that hand for three years, and she knew better than anyone what it meant to take a dangerous path.

No one spoke the whole way.

Once inside the tent, Qin Ying took off the medicine pouch and placed it on the table.

"It's past midnight," she said.

"I know."

"I've traveled that road to Blackwater Fort twice," she said as she packed her things. "Once to protect grain supplies, and once to patrol the border. The second time was about half a month before Wild Fox Ridge."

Yang Hu's hand stopped.

"I know every possible hiding place along that road." Qin Ying stuffed a small packet of medicine into his pocket. "So if the barbarians want to ambush us along the way, I know exactly where they'll choose."

She spoke very calmly, as if describing tomorrow's weather.

Yang Hu suddenly realized: she agreed so quickly not because she couldn't avoid it.

She wanted to go.

That road, those two weeks, that ambush that plunged her, her father, and the entire Zhenguo Duke's family into a deadly trap. In those four years, she had walked every mountain pass, every bend in her path countless times in her mind. Now that someone had put her back on that road, how could she possibly let it go?

"I'll go with you," Yang Hu said.

"no."

Yang Hu opened his mouth.

"You're the one carrying the burden of all the wounded soldiers in this city." Qin Ying raised her eyes. "If I leave, you'll still be there in Qing Shi Kou. If you leave, this battalion will be waiting to die in three days."

Yang Hu looked at her.

Four years have passed. In this army, she didn't even dare to reveal her own name. The dangerous mission of delivering a message outside the city was only suggested to her by an unsuspecting medical officer.

"Yang Hu".

She suddenly called his name.

"Um."

"Keep that roll of military report," she said, "and that statement safe. If I don't come back—don't come looking for me. Those two things you have are more valuable than my life."

Yang Hu did not answer.

Before leaving, she gathered her faded prison vest tighter, lowered her eyes, hunched her shoulders, and in the blink of an eye, she was back to being that country boy who was just trying to make a living in the army.

"Young Master," she called out, following the custom of the past four years, "I've tidied up the bottom layer of the medicine chest."

At midnight, a sliver of light appeared at the south gate.

About thirty riders, gagged and with their hooves wrapped in cloth, galloped along the southern road and disappeared into the night in the blink of an eye.

Yang Hu stood on the city wall until the sound of horses' hooves faded completely from the sound.

The south gate closed again, and the dull thud of the bolt hitting the door echoed for a long time in the empty barbican. The old soldier guarding the gate, leaning against the door, glanced back at him but asked nothing.

On the first day, there was no news.

Yang Hu stood on the city wall for half the night. Below the city, the barbarians' torches stretched from the north all the way to the west slope, like a fiery dragon that refused to sleep.

The next day, there was no news.

Forty-one wounded soldiers were carried in. With their wound medicine running low, Su Heng led her men to gather all the available Artemisia argyi, Sanguisorba officinalis, and Bletilla striata from the city, setting up three pots on the back stove and simmering them from dawn till dusk.

On the afternoon of the third day, the barbarians also surrounded the road to the south.

From that day on, Qing Shi Kou became a sealed jar. And those thirty or so riders, along with the boy in the group with downcast eyes and hunched shoulders, were never heard from again.