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

At dawn the next day, Cui Ting delivered four items to the central command tent.

The roster, the wounded and sick register, the inflow and outflow of military supplies over the past three months, and the battle losses over the past six months—everything was there, piled up on the table to a height of half a foot.

Yang Hu did not look at it immediately.

He pushed the four stacks of books to the corner of the table and said, "Let's move the camp first."

Cui Ting was stunned: "Move what camp?"

"The wounded and sick camp".

Cui Ting snapped the booklet shut in his hand.

Cui Ting slammed the booklet shut in his hand. In his five years in this camp, he had always seen new officers check accounts, muster troops, and establish their authority as their first task; he had never seen one who first moved tents.

"General, that area has been under construction for five years."

"I've been under the spell for five years, and I've been living in darkness for five years." Yang Hu stood up and walked outside. "The Black Stone Beam blocks the southeast, and that area doesn't get more than two hours of sunlight a year. The ground is damp, the grass is rotten, and the wind doesn't get through. If you lie there, your wounds won't heal."

Cui Ting followed him out, quickening his pace. "General," he said, "moving the camp will require 600 men and the rebuilding of 40 tents. Autumn is deep, and we don't have enough tent cloth, so we need to spare some soldiers for work. Of the 6,300 men in the camp, less than 4,000 can be deployed for training. And then we need to spare more to set up tents..."

"Draw a thousand."

"one thousand?"

"One day is enough." Yang Hu stopped at the gate of the camp, raised his hand and pointed southwest, "Look at that slope. The sun can shine on it from Chenshi (7-9 AM) to Shenshi (3-5 PM), there is a ridge behind it to block the north wind, and the ditch at the bottom of the slope can drain water. Let's move there."

Cui Ting followed his hand and looked over, remaining silent for a long while.

He looked at that slope every day for five years, but he never thought that he could set up camp on it.

"We don't have enough tent fabric," he said again.

"Take down the old tents," Yang Hu said. "If we don't have enough old tent fabric, we'll use cart awnings; if we don't have enough cart awnings, we'll use burlap sacks. We don't need to set up all forty tents; set up twenty first, and move the two hundred heaviest ones over there first."

"And the remaining three hundred or so..."

"The rest will be moved in three batches, and completed within three days."

"General," Cui Ting still wanted to argue, "where does the water come from at the new camp? There are no wells on the slope."

"Thirty paces down from that ditch at the bottom of the slope, there's a crack in the rock where water seeps in," Yang Hu said. "I saw it yesterday; the water is flowing. Dig down two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters), and you'll find a well. The person digging the well should be someone from the wounded and sick camp who can still lift a shovel."

Cui Ting stared at him for a while: "General, you inspected forty tents yesterday, and also checked out the rock crevices along the way?"

Whether the wounded soldiers' camp can be moved or not depends first and foremost on the water.

Before Cui Ting could say anything more, Yang Hu had already started walking towards the slope.

The resistance came in the afternoon.

Captain Pang led two men up the slope to find him, and he got straight to the point from the start.

"General, I have something to say."

"speak."

"These thousand men were drawn from the training camp," Captain Pang said. "It's late September now, and the barbarians' horses are at their fattest. In previous years, this was the time when they would come down to forage for hay. The front camp should have been training and repairing barricades every day for the past month, but now they've drawn a thousand men to set up tents for three days. If the barbarians really come down during these three days, who will stop them?"

That's a tough question, but it's absolutely true.

Yang Hu stuck the wooden stake in his hand into the ground and straightened up.

"Captain Pang."

"Your subordinate is here."

"The vanguard has 6,300 men on the roster. How many are ready for battle?"

Captain Pang paused for a moment: "...Five thousand seven."

"I inspected forty tents yesterday," Yang Hu said. "There were 573 people lying there, and at least 300 of them could have been cured, but their condition was ruined by neglect. If these 300 recover, there will be 6,000 available for battle."

"But how long will that take?"

"If we continue with the current method, it won't be better for a year," Yang Hu said. "If we move the camp, divide the sheds, boil water, and cook cloth, it will take at least twenty days, and at most two months."

Captain Pang remained silent for a while.

"General, you've calculated things clearly," he finally said, his anger lessening slightly, though his brow remained furrowed. "But you're calculating two months from now. What I'm worried about are these three days."

"I'll calculate the next three days as well," Yang Hu said. "The thousand men who will be setting up tents will not be drawn from the training camp, but from the kitchen, stables, and supply train, plus the two hundred still able-bodied men from the wounded and sick camp. No one from the training camp will be used."

Captain Pang was taken aback.

He clearly hadn't considered this aspect. He had only glanced at the list of people to be drawn that morning, and had rushed over after seeing only 1,020 characters.

"As for the chevaux-de-frise," Yang Hu squatted down and drew something on the ground, "the wooden frames of the old tents can be dismantled and used as chevaux-de-frise posts. Forty tents can yield six hundred posts. This relocation of the camp has resulted in an extra batch of chevaux-de-frise."

Captain Pang stared at the crooked pattern on the ground for a long time.

"...This humble general misspoke." He cupped his hands in greeting and took a half step back, but the slight dissatisfaction on his face hadn't completely disappeared. "General, this humble general may ask one more question."

"ask."

"General, you went to such great lengths to pull these five hundred-plus people out of the water. But after you pull them out, they still have to climb back onto the city walls, mount their horses, and fight the barbarians. You pull them out, then fight them all down, then pull them out again. General, do you think it's worth it?"

The wind was strong on the slope, making the hems of their clothes flutter loudly.

Yang Hu stood up and looked at him.

"How many years has Captain Pang fought in battles?"

"Sixteen years."

"In those sixteen years, how many of the soldiers who died under your command perished at the hands of barbarians?"

Captain Pang opened his mouth.

"This humble general...didn't count them."

"I counted," Yang Hu said. "In the forty-five days at Qing Shi Kou, two thousand three hundred and seventeen died in battle, and another eight hundred and forty-five died from the plague or were too badly wounded to survive. Of the three who died, one was not killed by the barbarians."

Captain Pang's expression slowly changed.

"This one," Yang Hu said, "died on our side. He could have lived."

The hillside remained quiet for a long time.

"General," Captain Pang suddenly spoke, his voice lowering, "My battalion clashed with barbarian cavalry north of Black Stone Ridge two years ago. We lost sixty-seven men in that battle. But in the month that followed, another thirty-one were carried out of the wounded camp."

He paused for a moment.

"I've seen those thirty-one. Some of them had wounds that were only the length of a finger."

Yang Hu remained silent.

"This subordinate will go and fetch the men." Captain Pang turned and left, but after a few steps, he turned back. "This subordinate will go and speak to the kitchen and the supply train. General, please draw another copy of that blueprint for this subordinate. This subordinate does not understand how to make chevaux-de-frise."

It took four full days to move the camp.

The first day they set up tents, the second day they dug a well, and the third and fourth days they moved the men. The team that dug the well was chosen from the wounded and sick camp; there were thirty-seven of them, all of them wounded on the upper body but still able to walk. By the afternoon of the second day, they had dug up water, and a group of people at the bottom of the pit shouted. The shouts reached the slope, and the soldiers who were setting up tents stopped what they were doing and stood there listening.

The day the first two hundred seriously wounded were moved there happened to be a bright, sunny day. The sun shone on the newly pitched tents, the tent cloth was still old, patched upon patched, but the slope was dry, and the wind went around behind the beams and couldn't blow into the tents.

A soldier with a broken leg, who had just had it sawed off the day before, was carried to a new tent. After lying down, he inexplicably started crying.

The people carrying him asked him why he was crying.

The soldier didn't speak, but turned his face towards the tent door. The man who carried him asked again, and he finally answered in a muffled voice: "It's been five years, and this is the first time I've ever lay here in the sun."

At Shenshi (3-5 PM) that day, Yang Hu erected the first wooden sign in the new camp. The sign had only four lines of text: All water must be boiled; Cloth must be boiled after use; Wash hands before changing medicine; Seriously injured, festering wounds, and fever patients should be treated in separate sheds.

A large crowd gathered when the sign was erected. An old military doctor stood at the back and watched for a long time, then whispered to the person next to him that he had never heard of these four points in his twenty years of medical practice.

The man next to him was from the military medical team that had come from Qingshikou. He replied, "We guarded these four lines for forty-five days without missing a single day."