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

Yang Hu watched those forty tents from afternoon until the lamps were lit.

Eleven people lay in the first tent. The ground was covered with dry straw, which was so flattened that it had turned black, and dampness rose from it when it was lifted. Of the eleven people, seven had leg injuries, three had arrow wounds, and one had been coughing all the way from the innermost part of the tent, his whole body curled up in a ball.

Yang Hu first looked at the one who was coughing.

He examined the person's eyes, tongue, and pulse, then loosened their clothing to look at their back. Patches of red rashes covered their back, already scabbed over.

"This one can't be squeezed in with the others." Yang Hu stood up. "They'll move out tonight."

"General," an old military doctor who followed him in whispered, "he just has typhoid fever. He had a high fever a few days ago, but he seems to be getting better these past two days..."

"It's not typhoid fever."

Yang Hu walked to the tent entrance and turned around to scan the eleven people in the tent.

"Write down all eleven. Within three days, report to me who develops a fever or a rash on their back."

When the first tent came out, Yang Hu stood at the door for a while.

The dry straw used as a mat for the tent was from last year. The soil beneath the straw was damp; you could wring water out of it with a single step. The forty tents were pitched in this area, right under the black stone beams, in a shady spot where the sun couldn't reach and the wind couldn't get through.

"This area needs to be moved," he said.

He stayed longer in the second tent.

There lay a soldier with a broken lower leg, the severed leg held together by two pieces of wood, the cloth binding the wood so black it was unrecognizable. Yang Hu untied the cloth, and a stench wafted out, causing the two medics following him to take a half-step back.

The edges of the wound were black, extending upwards for three inches, and pressing it made a crackling sound like twisting hair.

"This leg is beyond saving," Yang Hu said.

The soldier was still awake. Upon hearing this, he suddenly opened his eyes: "General... the other day, someone in the camp said that with half a month of rest, I'd be able to walk again..."

Yang Hu did not lie to him.

"You won't recover properly," he said. "If you delay three more days, you won't just lose your leg, you'll die."

The soldier stared blankly at the top of the tent, tears streaming down his face and into his ears.

Yang Hu squatted down beside his bed.

"How old are you?"

"……nineteen."

"Where are you from?"

"...From Blackwater Fortress."

Yang Hu was silent for a while: "If you saw this section off, you can still walk, pull a cart, and farm. If you don't saw it off, you won't be able to do anything in three days."

The soldier gritted his teeth and, after a long while, nodded very slightly.

Yang Hu helped him rewrap the black cloth around his leg, and when he stood up, his knee left a wet mark on the grass.

From the third tent onwards, the accompanying medic fell silent.

Yang Hu examined everything very slowly. He entered each tent, first looking at the ground, the grass, and the water; then he looked at the people, examining their eyelids, tongues, and clothes one by one. By the time he reached the teenth tent, seven or eight military doctors were following him, each holding a piece of paper and writing down his words.

By the time the lamps were lit, all forty tents had been inspected.

Yang Hu sat down on the open ground outside the gate, had someone bring him paper and pen, and wrote down what he had seen that day by the light of a torch.

Five hundred and seventy-three people were injured or sick.

Among them, 106 cases involved broken bones that were not set properly or were set incorrectly.

Two hundred and thirty-one wounds were so festering that they required immediate debridement.

Nineteen cases that had already developed gangrene and required amputation.

Forty-two cases involved fever lasting more than three days with unclear symptoms.

Nine cases are suspected of involving the spread of disease through rash.

These 573 people were divided into 40 tents, living together, sharing a water source and a batch of cloth, with one military doctor in charge of 80 people.

Su Heng looked at the paper from the side, and the more she looked at it, the tighter she gripped her hand.

"How much of this could have been better?"

Yang Hu put down his pen.

"At least three hundred."

He spoke those three words in a very flat voice. But Su Heng noticed that his fingers, gripping the pen, had turned white from the pressure.

He spent a long time writing on that piece of paper. By the time he finished, half of the torch had already burned away.

"Three hundred," Su Heng said in a low voice, "more than the number of people who died in the plague at Qing Shi Kou."

"That epidemic killed 317 people, all within 45 days." Yang Hu pressed the paper under a stone. "These 300 people die every year."

That night, General Cui Ting arrived.

He came alone, without any attendants. Upon entering the tent, he first glanced at the paper on the table.

"The general visited forty tents today."

They ran away.

"General, are you aware," Cui Ting said, sitting down opposite him, "that the number of 573 wounded and sick in the front camp remains the same year after year. A little more or a little less, it's the same every year."

"I know."

"General, do you know," Cui Ting's voice deepened, "that the army allocates four hundred catties of medicine per year for the wounded and sick. Four hundred catties of medicine, divided among five or six hundred people, means each person receives seven ounces per year. What can seven ounces of medicine possibly cure?"

Yang Hu raised his eyes.

"Of those four hundred jin, how much was left when they arrived at the camp?"

Cui Ting stopped moving.

There was silence in the tent for a moment, except for the snapping sound of the tent fabric being torn by the wind.

"General, are you asking me?"

"I checked the wound medicine for three tents today." Yang Hu pulled out three small paper packets from under the table and lined them up. "This packet is good. This packet is mixed with soil, about 30%. This packet," he pushed the last packet over, "is half stove ash."

Cui Ting stared at the three paper packages without saying a word for a long time.

"I've heard about the rules the general brought from Qing Shi Kou," he finally began. "Boiling water, boiling cloth, isolating people, and dividing the space into separate sheds. I don't know anything about medicine, but I've heard that the epidemic in Qing Shi Kou claimed more than three hundred lives."

"Three hundred and seventeen."

"Three hundred and seventeen." Cui Ting repeated, then suddenly raised his head. "General, this humble general has something to say."

"speak."

"What Commandant Pang said in the main hall just now wasn't just his opinion," Cui Ting said. "The vanguard of 6,300 men has been guarding this black stone beam for five years. In those five years, three commanders have come from the capital, each younger and more powerful than the last. The first stayed for eight months, the second for half a year, and the third for only three months. When they came, they all wanted to review the accounts, take inventory, and establish rules. When they left, they left nothing behind."

He paused for a moment.

"If the general is also here to stay for three months, I have a piece of advice: don't touch these forty tents. If you do, the hearts of these five hundred men will be warmed for a while. But once that warmth is gone and you leave, they will suffer even more than before."

Yang Hu looked at him.

"General Choi."

"exist."

"Will you bring the four things I requested tomorrow at Chenshi (7-9 AM)?"

Cui Ting remained silent for a long time.

"Bring it." He stood up, walked to the tent entrance, then suddenly stopped. "General, do you want those four things to investigate someone, or to punish someone?"

"Treat the person first," Yang Hu said. "As we treat them, we'll find out who they are."

Cui Ting stood by the curtain and glanced back at him.

"General, I saw a similar statement in the military report from Qing Shi Kou," he said. "The report said that Qing Shi Kou was besieged for forty-five days, and the barbarians retreated on their own. Did you change those eight characters yourself, General?"

"Yes."

Why change it?

"Because we didn't win," Yang Hu said. "They fell on their own. I'm embarrassed to take the blame for that."

Cui Ting lifted the curtain and went out.

The wind outside the tent picked up a bit. Yang Hu folded the paper with the number 573 written on it, put it in his pocket, and then walked to the tent entrance, gazing at the dark, gloomy camp of wounded soldiers to the east.

Of the forty tents, three hundred people could have been fine.

And these forty tents are the same every year.

He remembered what Cui Ting had just said: the previous three commanders all came to check the accounts, take inventory, and establish rules, but left nothing behind when they left.

Yang Hu stood in the wind and pressed the paper in his arms again.