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

The wind direction changed on the first day of the U-turn.

The wind was blowing from the south the day before, but today it came down from the north, so strong it was hard to open one's eyes. The three carts, covered with two layers of felt and secured with four ropes, were moving in the center of the army.

At noon, the scout returned.

"General, there are cavalry units to the northeast."

"How many?"

"I can't see clearly. There are at least three groups, each with around a hundred riders, all heading southwest."

Cui Ting's face darkened: "Three groups? In these six days, we haven't even encountered a single intact group."

"We've run into them now," Yang Hu said.

Captain Pang, who was listening nearby, suddenly understood.

"They came by storming the car."

"They came by rushing in."

Cui Ting immediately reined in his horse: "General, abandon the carts. Three carts of broken pots and rags are not worth risking our brothers' lives for. We'll travel light now and cover forty li before nightfall."

"We can abandon the car," Yang Hu said, "but we can't abandon the things."

He dismounted, walked to the third cart, untied a rope, and took out the bundle of arrows wrapped in oilcloth.

"Disassemble the arrows."

Cui Ting didn't understand.

"One hundred and seventeen arrows." Yang Hu lifted the oilcloth. "Select one hundred and seventeen men, one arrow each, and put them in their quiver to mix with their own arrows."

Cui Ting then understood and gasped.

"General, you mean..."

"The carts are gone, but the arrows are still here," Yang Hu said. "They ransacked the carts, and they ransacked three carts full of junk. I also divided up the dregs of the medicine and strips of cloth, giving each of them a small packet to carry in their pockets."

"What if it were a person too..."

"One hundred and seventeen people, they won't all die at the same time."

The distribution of supplies took less than half an hour. The men personally selected by Commandant Pang were the most stable riders and the fastest runners. Each person received an arrow, glanced at the three-edged, grooved tip, and then inserted it into their quiver.

A young soldier tried twice before he could insert it. His hand was trembling.

"Afraid?" Captain Pang asked.

"Don't be afraid," the soldier said. "It's just... these are our arrows."

After the distribution was complete, the cart continued to travel covered with felt as usual. The ropes were tightened again, and stones were placed on the corners of the felt.

From the outside, none of the three vehicles appeared to have moved.

At 1-3 PM, the barbarian attacked.

They weren't the kind of group of forty or fifty riders that would scatter in a flash. This time, they came straight in from the northeast, merging into two groups from three, following closely behind and relentlessly pursuing the rear of the column.

Yang Hu issued three orders.

First step: Move all the wounded and stretchers to the front of the column, and use the fastest horses to carry those who cannot be carried. Second step: The rearguard is rotated every hour, and those who are replaced must immediately go into the column to boil water and warm their feet; they are not allowed to mount horses directly. Third step: No carts may be lost or protected.

Captain Pang was stunned: "You're not allowed to protect him?"

"Don't protect it," Yang Hu said. "If they want to take it, let them take it. The tighter you protect it, the more they'll believe there's something inside."

That battle never lasted until the sun was setting.

The barbarian pounced four times.

The first attack was the fiercest, charging straight at the center of the army from the rear. Covering the rear was Captain Pang's battalion, which held out for half an hour, but retreated with nine men missing.

The first thing the demobilized batch did upon entering the unit wasn't to rest, but to line up in front of the water-boiling pot. One centurion, finding it too troublesome, tried to mount his horse directly, only to be whipped on the back by Colonel Pang.

"The general's order."

The centurion cursed, then dismounted and took off his boots.

The cloth he took off was wet. He glanced at it himself and said nothing more.

The second and third attempts were both thwarted. On the fourth attempt, the barbarians split their forces, with half flanking the front and the other half pressing the rear, tearing a gap in the rear of their ranks.

Su Heng's medical team was at the front of the column. She moved more than twenty stretchers behind a embankment on the side, and halfway there, a group of barbarian cavalry circled around.

Commandant Pang dispatched thirty cavalrymen to turn back and block them.

It's blocked.

Afterwards, a headcount revealed that only four people were injured in that area, and none died. When Captain Pang came over to report, he wiped the dirt off his face.

"General, thank goodness the stretchers were at the front. If we had followed the usual practice, the wounded would have been left until the end. With all of the more than one hundred people lying in the ward, none of them would have escaped."

"Remember this," Yang Hu said. "Go back and write the order to advance."

After the gash was torn open, a car overturned.

The felt cloth was spread out, broken pottery jars rolled all over the ground, and burlap sacks tore open, spilling the medicinal herbs inside onto the grass.

Seven or eight barbarians jumped off their horses and began searching. After searching for a while, one of them grabbed a handful of medicinal herbs and shouted something to the people behind him.

It's too far away to hear clearly.

But after that shout, the two cavalry groups turned around and left. They left as quickly as they had in the past six days.

All that remained on the grass was the overturned car and the scattered items.

Cui Ting reined in his horse and stood on the slope, gazing in the direction the barbarians had retreated, remaining motionless for a long time.

"General," he finally spoke, "that's really why they came."

"Yes."

"But these are just broken pots and rags."

"Not for them," Yang Hu said. "Six hundred men have been holed up there all winter, taking our medicine and using our arrows. If these things are left on the grasslands, they'll just rot and go. But if they fall into my hands and I take them back to the interior, that's a different story."

He paused.

"They dispersed on the way there because they didn't care about the eighty miles of grassland. They gathered on the way back because the car was loaded with things they couldn't let me take back."

Cui Ting's Adam's apple bobbed slightly.

"General, they're attacking this time..."

"This time, their testimony is the second one," Yang Hu said. "The first one was under the ashes, when the person was dead. This one they brought up themselves."

The inventory was completed by the time the sun set.

Cui Ting delivered the booklet to the central command tent, his voice slightly hoarse.

"General, in this battle, there were thirty-eight casualties, both wounded and killed."

"Six days plus today, the total?"

One hundred and nineteen.

The flame inside the tent tilted slightly.

Captain Pang stood at the door, mentally going over the number again and again.

One hundred and twenty. The general said one hundred and twenty the day before setting out, but when the number was reached, he turned back, and no matter where they chased, he turned back.

The number is now 119.

He opened his mouth, but ultimately didn't ask anything.

Yang Hu took the booklet, turned to the last page, picked up his pen and added the number thirty-eight, and then wrote one hundred and nineteen next to it.

After he finished writing, he looked up.

"Captain Pang."

"Your subordinate is here."

"Those 117 arrows, not one missing?"

Captain Pang then came to his senses: "Reporting to the general, I have counted twice, there are 117 doses, not one missing. Three medicine packets are missing, they were scattered when the cart overturned."

"Three things don't matter."

That night, Yang Hu copied the battle report one last time.

Seven enemy units were captured. One hundred and nineteen were lost, with eleven killed in action. A barbarian winter camp, capable of holding six hundred men, was captured and used to garrison the area through the winter. One hundred and seventeen standard-issue wound medicines, baggage sacks, and standard-issue arrows from the Da Cheng army were also captured and will be sent to the authorities upon receipt of the report.

At the end, he added a line: On the way back, he encountered three groups of barbarian cavalry, about three hundred riders in total. They seized the baggage, but did not plunder the men or horses, nor take the provisions, but only the spoils.

After finishing writing, he started a new page and wrote down eleven names.

Watching from the side, Cui Ting couldn't help but say, "General, there are only eleven. There's no need to include them in a separate list. According to military custom, those under fifty are always included in the total number of names."

"Eleven are also included."

"But what about the Ministry of War...?"

"The Ministry of War crossed out a thousand," Yang Hu said, blowing on the page before tucking it under the battle report. "This time there are only eleven. I can keep an eye on eleven."

Cui Ting remained silent.

Yang Hu put down his pen.

The wind was strong outside the tent. He recalled the words Qin Ying had given him the night before he left.

The victory in the battle beyond the Great Wall lies in the return journey, not in the journey itself.

He had been thinking about it all the way on horseback, and he assumed she was talking about losses and bringing people back.

Only now that the battle report was on his desk did he hear the whole sentence.

The barbarians scattered on the way there because they didn't care. On the return journey, they fought fiercely because they cared. On this trip, he didn't manage to cut off many barbarians' heads.

But he brought back what that hand least wanted him to bring back.