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

On the fifth day after the camp was moved, Yang Hu began to look at the four stacks of books.

He read very slowly. He read through the four stacks of books from the time the lamp was lit until the fourth watch of the night, changing the lamp only twice in between.

Su Heng took notes for him from across the table. He would say a sentence, and she would write it down.

She wrote until late into the night, filling two pages of her notebook. At one point, she paused, looked up at him, and stopped writing. He had only slept twice in the past few days, during the breaks between camp moves; he was barely hanging on.

The reported casualties for the vanguard battalion over the past six months were 411 men.

The list of wounded and sick shows that 1,376 people were carried into the wounded and sick camp in the past six months.

When these two numbers are placed together, trouble ensues.

One number was reported to the Ministry of War, and the other was kept by the battalion itself. The handwriting in both books was neat, but they were not about the same thing.

1,376 people were carried in, and 411 reported casualties. Of the remaining 900-plus, some recovered and returned to their units, while others died without being reported.

Yang Hu flipped through the list of wounded and sick, checking each page one by one. The list recorded the date of entry into the camp and the location of the injury, but the column for returning to the unit was mostly empty.

"Nobody remembers," Su Heng said.

"It's not that nobody's taking notes." Yang Hu pushed the booklet forward, pointing to a page. "Look at this line."

On that page, a total of nineteen people entered the camp on April 17th, and the column for returning to the unit was completely blank. But if you turn thirty pages further, on the roster of May 20th, six of those nineteen people appear again, and their entry into the camp is recorded again.

"The same person was recorded twice."

Su Heng was stunned: "That means... they were carried back in because they weren't fully recovered from their serious injuries, and then carried back down again?"

"It's possible that he didn't return to the unit the first time, and the booklet got mixed up," Yang Hu said. "But that's not the important thing. The important thing is that the numbers in this booklet are the numbers used to report to the Ministry of War and to collect medicine and cotton."

He opened the supply tent.

The battalion received 400 catties of medicine for injuries and illnesses per year, allocated quarterly, 100 catties per quarter. The account book clearly states: 100 catties this quarter, to be stored on the third day of the fourth month.

"One hundred catties," Yang Hu said. "Divided among five hundred and seventy-three people, that's less than three ounces per person."

He had calculated what "three liang of medicine" meant in Qing Shi Kou. A medium-sized knife wound, from cleaning to healing, would require at least half a jin of wound medicine. Three liang wasn't even enough to treat one person's first wound.

"But you said yesterday that the standard rate in the military is 400 catties a year, and 7 liang per person."

"That's based on the 1,376 registered personnel," Yang Hu said. "The Ministry of War allocates medicine by personnel, while the vanguard distributes it by headcount. The difference in the middle isn't visible in the accounts."

Su Heng stopped writing.

"Of those 100 jin, how much is still medicine after it goes into storage?"

Yang Hu did not answer.

He pulled a wooden box from under the table and opened it. Inside were the things he had collected from various accounts over the past few days: seventeen paper packets of wound medicine, each with the account number and date written on it in charcoal.

He laid the packages out on the table one by one, then pushed the last package under the lamp.

"This package was sent on April 5th, good medicine." He then pointed to the fifth package, "This package was sent on May 11th, mixed with soil, 30%." His finger moved forward, "June 2nd, 40%. July 15th, 50%. August 20th," he paused, "60%."

Su Heng gasped.

"It gets worse as time goes on."

"It gets worse as you go on." Yang Hu laid out the seventeen packets in a row. From left to right, the color of each packet was lighter than the last. The last three packets were almost unrecognizable as medicine, just a grayish-white color. "This isn't because someone stole it once. It's because someone is testing it little by little. At what point will someone investigate, and at what point will no one care?"

"I tried for five months, but nobody cared."

"So now it's 60%," Yang Hu said. "At this rate, by this time next year, all we'll be handing out will be a bag of stove ash."

At the fourth watch of the night, footsteps could be heard outside the tent.

Cui Ting lifted the curtain and came in, looking exhausted. He had been moving camps these past few days, and he had lost so much weight that his eyes were sunken.

"General, you haven't rested yet?"

Yang Hu pointed to the row of paper packets on the table.

Cui Ting walked over and looked down at her for a long time.

He had observed things much longer and understood them much better than Su Heng. He had been in the front camp for five years, and he knew exactly what those paper packages were.

"Whatever the general wishes to ask, this humble general will answer." He finally spoke, his voice hoarse, "There is one thing I must say first: in these five years, this humble general has not lent a single penny."

"I know."

Cui Ting raised his head.

"If you really had taken it, you wouldn't have brought these four items yesterday," Yang Hu said. "You handle the military supplies accounts yourself; by bringing them here, you're putting yourself on the spot as well."

Cui Ting's shoulders slowly relaxed.

"Then let me speak."

The supplies for the vanguard camp were transported via the northern route. Medicinal herbs, cotton clothing, charcoal, and grain were all sent north from Qingshikou, passing through Heishuibao, before reaching the vanguard camp. This route involved passing through three checkpoints, where the boxes had to be opened and the quantities verified.

"We're checking the quantity, not the goods," Cui Ting said. "If a hundred catties of medicine comes in and it weighs exactly a hundred catties, who cares how much of that hundred catties is medicine and how much is soil?"

"Who mixed it in?"

"It's hard to say," Cui Ting shook his head. "Any of the three checkpoints could have made a move. But after observing this for the past five years, I don't think it was done by the people at the checkpoints."

Why?

"If the people at the checkpoints wanted to be greedy, they would take whole boxes and packages, ten or twenty pounds at a time, and balance it out on the books," Cui Ting said. "But this is different. This is mixed in little by little, until it reaches 60% in five months, not a single pound is missing, and the weight is exactly the same."

Yang Hu tapped his fingers lightly on the table.

"The person who does this isn't short of money for the medicine."

"Yes," Cui Ting said, "What he lacks is the ability to hide it from others."

After saying this, Cui Ting paused for a moment, as if it were the first time he had spoken aloud the doubts that had been lingering in his mind for the past five years.

"I used to think it was just some underlings who were dishonest," he said slowly. "But after you laid out these seventeen packages, I finally understood: a dishonest person wouldn't have this kind of patience. Five months, with each month adding 10%. Someone is using soldiers from the front camp to test the waters."

The tent remained quiet for a long time.

Yang Hu slowly put the seventeen paper packages back into the wooden box one by one.

"General Cui, starting tomorrow, I will no longer collect medicine from the northern route for the vanguard camp."

Cui Ting was startled: "Not taking it? What about the medicine for over five hundred people...?"

"The military medical team brought two months' worth of medicine from Qingshikou." Yang Hu closed the box. "Within two months, I'm going to grow the medicine myself under this black stone beam."

"Grow medicinal herbs? In this place, it's already frozen over in autumn..."

"Buy the few herbs that can't be grown with the money." Yang Hu got up, walked to the tent entrance, and lifted the curtain.

The oil in the lamp on the table was almost gone, and the flame had dimmed. Su Heng reached out and adjusted the wick.

It was almost dawn outside. On the southwest slope, the outlines of twenty new tents stood one by one in the gray-white light of the day.

"I don't want to sever this connection," he said. "If I cut it off, what will I use to save people when the barbarians come? I want the people on this connection to know one thing: from now on, the medicine in the front camp will be readily available."

Standing behind him, Cui Ting looked at the row of new tents and suddenly asked a question.

"Has the general considered what that person would do if they knew someone was counting?"

"We'll stop for now," Yang Hu said. "We'll stop for three to six months, and then we'll resume after I leave."

"Then the general is still investigating?"

"Investigate." Yang Hu lowered the curtain. "If he stops for a day, fewer people will die in the front camp. If he stops for three months, I'll have three more months to establish the rules and regulations in this camp. Once the rules are established, whoever becomes the general in the future will have to follow them."