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

The moment the knife made its cut, Qin Ying's body tensed, but she didn't utter a sound.

When the pus gushed out, several people in the crowd turned their faces away. The smell, mixed with the sandy odor of the riverbed, was so strong that it made it hard to open one's eyes. Yang Hu pressed down on the surrounding flesh with one hand to squeeze it out, and with the other hand used a boiled cloth to wipe away the pus layer by layer. Only after wiping it all away could he see the pus inside.

One of my ribs broke, and the broken piece got stuck in the flesh; that's where the pus started.

This rib was left from the fight in the valley forty-five days ago. It wasn't set after it broke, and she carried it for seven or eight miles up the slope, then lay under that earthen embankment for who knows how many days.

"Take it." He reached out, palm up, his eyes never leaving the opening.

Physician Liu handed over the tweezers, his hands trembling violently. Yang Hu took them and carefully removed the broken bone piece by piece, which was about the length of his little finger.

The procedure involved cleaning, rinsing, drainage, and suturing. By the time it was finished, it was completely dark.

The drainage tube was a section of reed that Old Cui had cut by the riverbed. Yang Hu left the tube in the wound, loosely wrapped it with boiled cloth, and instructed Physician Liu to check on it every two hours, and to remove it only when the pus had stopped flowing.

After the wound was stitched up, Yang Hu took her pulse for a long time. The pulse was extremely thin, but still there. When he withdrew his hand, he realized that both of his arms were so sore he could hardly lift them.

They didn't leave that night. The riverbed was sheltered from the wind, and Old Cui's pot boiled water all night, with more than a hundred people taking turns guarding it. Qin Ying boiled water for half the night, and in the latter half of the night, she broke out in a sweat before her fever subsided a little.

Three others survived: one lost an arm, one lost an eye, and the other was simply emaciated from starvation. Including Qin Ying, there were four.

Of the thirty-four people who left the city, four returned.

The soldier who had lost an eye later said that they broke out from the west gate on the third night, seventeen of them in total. They marched northeast for two days, then encountered a cavalry raiding party, and lost six more. After that, they carried and lifted their loads forward, those who couldn't walk left behind, and those who stayed tied strips of cloth to trees so that those behind would know there were still people ahead.

"Who tied the cloth strip?" Yang Hu asked.

The soldier paused for a moment, then said, "...It's her. It's always been her. The one walking at the very back."

The group set off the following afternoon. The four seriously injured were carried on stretchers, walking extremely slowly. What would normally be a day and a night's journey took them two days this time.

The incident occurred early on the third day.

The pass south of Xueling is the only way back to Qingshikou. As soon as the group entered the pass, rocks rolled down the slopes on both sides.

"There's an ambush!"

When Yang Hu turned around, he saw about a hundred people emerging from the slope.

They weren't the regular barbarian army. Their clothing was a jumbled mess; some wore barbarian fur robes, others large armor, clearly stragglers who had fallen into the area after the siege collapsed. They had come to loot, but what they saw now was a slow-moving column carrying wounded soldiers.

Of the more than one hundred people, less than seventy could wield a knife. There were four stretchers, but the stretcher bearers were unarmed.

This was the worst of times. After two days of travel, everyone was exhausted; the four seriously injured were unable to move; and less than 30% of the medicine remained.

As Su Heng drew her sword, Yang Hu had already pushed Qin Ying's stretcher to the very back of the line.

"Form a circle, with the stretcher in the middle," he shouted. "Don't split up!"

That was the tune he'd been shouting from the city wall for two months. More than a hundred people moved instinctively, but this time it was different: there were no city walls, no ramparts, and nowhere to retreat.

The first volley of arrows felled seven people.

In the second round, eleven players were eliminated.

The people on the slope began to rush downhill.

Just then, someone propped themselves up on the stretcher in the middle of the line.

Qin Ying propped herself up with one hand. Her legs were bound with wooden strips, her ribs were wrapped in thick cloth, and the right side of her body was almost completely immobile. Yet she managed to sit up on the stretcher, facing the slope, and uttered a single sentence.

The sentence was short and quiet. But after she finished speaking, the first row of the hundred or so people rushing down the slope stopped abruptly.

I wasn't scared.

It was that tune.

That was a command. It was a tune that had been passed down in the army for decades, a tune only those who had led troops could shout. It wasn't for the enemy to hear, but for their own people. And of the hundred or so stragglers on the slope, half were deserters from the Western Camp and various border camps.

They'd listened to that tune for half their lives.

The first row stopped, and the ones behind couldn't stop and bumped into each other, instantly disrupting the formation.

Su Heng reacted the fastest. She stepped to the stretcher, took the rolled-up tattered flag from Qin Ying, unfurled it, and stuck it into a crack in the stone at her feet.

Only a small piece of the flag remained, about the size of a palm, still attached to the pole. The background color was blue. The characters on it were half-smeared with blood.

But it stood up.

A voice trembled as someone shouted from the hillside, "That's...that's the flag from Qing Shi Kou!"

"Wasn't Qing Shi Kou broken?"

"Bullshit!" From the ranks below the slope, the soldier with two missing fingers roared back, "Qingshikou was besieged for forty-five days, and those thirty thousand barbarians collapsed on their own! We came from the city!"

None of the people on the slope rushed downhill anymore.

Several men lowered their knives. Several men took a half step back. One young man grabbed the sleeve of the veteran next to him and asked what words were written on the flag.

The stalemate lasted for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

Later, an old soldier with a white beard on the slope was the first to throw down his knife. He came down the slope, walked all the way to the stretcher, looked at Qin Ying for a long time, and suddenly knelt down with a thud.

"...little princess."

After uttering those three words, he froze, as if he couldn't believe he had said them.

Then, a few more people came down the slope and knelt down as well.

Four years have passed. The entire Qin family, the Duke of Zhenguo, was executed, and no one in the border army dared to mention those three words again. But these soldiers who had fled from various camps were not young, and most of them had served under her father.

The white-bearded old soldier knelt on the ground, his shoulders trembling violently. He raised his head, his face covered in tears and mud: "Back in Hulukou, the old general pulled me out of a pile of corpses. In these four years, I... I haven't even dared to offer him a stick of incense."

Qin Ying sat on the stretcher without saying a word.

She simply raised the hand that could still move and pressed it down lightly.

That means they should get up.

Yang Hu stood beside the stretcher, watching this scene without moving.

He knew what this moment meant.

For the past four years, she hadn't even dared to reveal her name. Today, at this pass, she only uttered half a command, and the hundred or so people on the slope stopped in their tracks and knelt down.

This matter cannot be suppressed.

From that moment on, the name that should have been buried in Yehuling four years ago returned to the lips of the border troops.

And the hand that wrote her as dead in the capital will soon hear it.

Yang Hu lowered his head and glanced at the person on the stretcher. She had fainted again, her brows furrowed, and the hand that had been used to urge someone to get up was still resting on the edge of the stretcher.

When the group set off again, the few dozen people who had come down the slope followed at the very back. No one offered to take them in, nor did anyone drive them away.

The wind blew through the pass, and the tattered flag stuck in the crack of the stone trembled twice but did not fall.

He reached out and placed the hand back beside her.