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

After the group on the slope left, the wind direction on the grassland changed.

It's not the wind from the sky, it's the wind from the ground.

The first change was in the scouts. For the past ten days or so, the barbarian scouts had been swarming around the army's flanks like mosquitoes, impossible to drive away or engage. Liu Ye divided his sixty-two men into four groups and changed their tactics: instead of pursuing, they would guard the waterways. If the barbarian scouts needed to travel long distances, they would have to water their horses; with waterways secured everywhere, each wave of scouts would be one less to deal with.

After the fifth day, both wings were clean.

The second thing that changed was what Liu Ye touched in the northeast direction.

"General, they are burying themselves too."

She spread the drawing she had brought back on the table; it was a flattened wooden board with several circles drawn in charcoal on it.

"One hundred and twenty li to the northeast, there is an old camp. There are three pits outside the camp, and the openings of the pits are all covered with stones," Liu Ye said. "The soil around the pits was recently turned over, but on different days. The first pit was turned over earlier, and the third pit was turned over seven or eight days later."

Cui Ting leaned closer to look: "What's buried in the pit?"

"We didn't dig," Liu Ye said. "Brother Yang said we weren't allowed to dig, so we didn't."

Yang Hu picked up the wooden board.

Three pits were dug, and stones were placed in them, with a gap of seven or eight days between them.

"They are doing it our way."

"How did the general know?"

"When livestock die on the grasslands, the old custom of the herdsmen is to drag them far away, leave them there, and not care about them." Yang Hu put the wooden board back on the table. "Digging a pit and weighing it down with stones is something we did by the water's edge over there. They saw it and learned it."

The tent fell silent.

Cui Ting was the first to react, and his expression changed instantly.

"General, they want to learn it because things have really gotten out of hand over there."

"Um."

"They were buried three times, each time later than the last, which means it wasn't just one or two that died."

"That means they've been dying for the past seven or eight days," Yang Hu said.

Su Heng, who had been listening the whole time, finally spoke up.

"General, they may not have buried livestock."

Everyone inside the tent turned their heads.

"We bury sick animals by covering them with stones. But they turned over the soil early at the first pit, and then later at each subsequent one," Su Heng said. "If they were just sick animals, they could have buried dozens at once. Why do it in three separate batches, with seven or eight days between each batch?"

"You mean...?"

"It's in three phases because the dead come out in batches," Su Heng said, tucking her hands into her sleeves. "Livestock dies on the way, a whole group dies at once. Humans are different. They fall one by one."

No one answered from inside the tent.

Yang Hu picked up the wooden board again.

"Su Heng".

"exist."

"In your opinion, if it were a person, with seven or eight days separating the first and third pits, what kind of chaos would that cause?"

"That time at Qing Shi Kou, it took five days from the first patient to sealing the well," Su Heng said. "More than forty people fell ill during those five days. They were still burying the dead seven or eight days later, and since they didn't have a way to seal the well and divide the camps, they could only resort to shamanistic rituals."

She looked up.

"General, those aren't dead animals over there. They're dead people."

On the afternoon of the seventh day, the scouts returned and reported back to the main force.

Sixty li to the north lay a large camp. The tents were arranged in four directions, with a ring of wagons in the middle, and a shallow moat surrounding the camp. Liu Ye led his men to search the outer perimeter for half a day, counting around 1,200 tents.

"Twelve hundred." Cui Ting calculated it. "At ten people per rooftop, that's twelve thousand."

That night's military council was the most heated since we left the border.

Anyone can say they want to fight, and every word they say is true.

Shao Qi spoke first: "General, this humble general has settled three accounts."

"speak."

"First, the grain," Shao Qi said. "The army has only enough dry rations for twelve days left. The next batch of grain will take the Black Stone Ridge route, which will take at least another six days. We can't waste these six days; if we run out, we'll have to turn back."

"The second one?"

"The second thing is manpower," Shao Qi said. "Of the 8,700 men who could fight when we left the border, we still have 8,500 today. Along the way, we circumvented waterways, dug wells, and traveled at night, and less than 200 were lost. Those blind men that the general cured can now join the troops at night. I haven't seen this number in my fourteen years of leading troops."

"The third stroke."

"The third one is them." Shao Qi pointed north. "They're the ones who are killing people. They've buried the bodies three times, each time later than the last. Their horses drank from those waters, and their men drove those animals over there. If we don't attack now, and wait until they recover, then they'll be the ones attacking us."

Yue Chong then spoke up, "This humble general seconds it."

Captain Pang also stood up.

Yang Hu did not answer immediately.

He called Liu Ye in from outside the tent.

"How many times did you circle that camp?"

"One and a half laps," Liu Ye said. "We've circled the south and east sides completely, but the west side is separated by a ditch, so we can only see the general outline."

"Twelve hundred tents," Yang Hu said. "And the horse manure?"

Liu Ye paused for a moment.

Everyone inside the tent looked at her.

"Horse manure..." she thought for a moment, "There isn't much horse manure on the outskirts."

"How much is considered not much?"

"It's not as good as the front camp," Liu Ye said. "The front camp has 4,000 men and 1,200 horses. Overnight, the manure piles up at the hitching posts outside the camp. They have 1,200 tents, and I only saw three hitching posts outside the camp, and the manure piles weren't even that thick."

Cui Ting said, "Perhaps they've kept the horses in their camp."

"Maybe." Liu Ye nodded. "I didn't go in, so I can't say for sure."

Yang Hu lowered his head and looked at the wooden board with circles drawn on it on the table.

A camp of 12,000 men shouldn't lack horses. The barbarians are cavalry; it's common for one man to ride two or three horses. 12,000 men should have at least 20,000 horses. And with 20,000 horses tethered outside the camp, the manure piles shouldn't be too thin.

Unless the horse is not in the camp.

"General," Shao Qi said after a while, unable to hold back any longer, "Miss Liu only circled around once and a half times; there's still a ditch to the west. Horse stables are often located to the west, or within the camp. If we don't investigate based on this one suspicion, we've wasted our sixty li of travel."

That's true.

Yang Hu pushed the wooden board aside.

All three accounts are correct: supplies haven't run out, manpower hasn't been lost, and the enemy is ill. Liu Ye's statement is a doubt, not evidence. In the army, one cannot use a single doubt to override three solid facts.

And there's something else that no one has said: the deadline set by the Ministry of War for this trip is right above our heads.

He raised his head.

"beat."

The people inside the tent responded in unison.

"How do we fight?" Shao Qi asked.

"Don't rush into their camp," Yang Hu said. "Set up camp twenty li away from them, dig a well, and control the water supply. They are even more desperate for water than we are. People are dying in their camp; they won't last more than ten days."

"Does the general intend to surround them?"

"It's not about surrounding them, it's about waiting for them to make the first move," Yang Hu said. "They'll either come out to grab water or break camp and head north. If they come out to grab water, we can wait for them to tire themselves out; if they break camp and head north, they can't move fast with the sick, so we can chase after them."

Yue Chong stroked his beard: "This fighting style is reliable."

"There's one more thing," Yang Hu said. "After the army advances twenty li, the vanguard is not allowed to cross that ditch. Liu Ye, you need to thoroughly investigate the western area within a day."

"Yes."

On the morning of the eighth day, the army broke camp and marched north.

Nine thousand one hundred men marched slowly in three columns across the grassland. They had only nine days' worth of fodder left, and the pots hanging from their saddles jingled all the way. The well-diggers followed the central army, carrying their well-digging tools on their shoulders.

Yang Hu rode in the middle of the road.

Around noon, Liu Ye returned from the west, reporting the same thing: "We can't see clearly on the other side of the ditch, we have to go around again."

"Go around."

She turned her horse around to leave, but Yang Hu called her back.

"Willow leaf".

"exist."

"After you go around there, check three things: the hitching posts, the watering area, and the depth of the hoofprints," Yang Hu said. "Deep hoofprints mean the horse was carrying a person, and shallow ones mean the horse was empty. Report back whichever one is more numerous."

Liu Ye responded and spurred his horse away.

At three quarters past noon, the vanguard crossed the ditch.

It wasn't Yang Hu's order. It was a centurion from the vanguard who saw a shallow beach with water on it across the ditch and led his men there to water their horses.

By the time Cui Ting noticed and gave the order to stop, more than three hundred cavalrymen had already passed by.

Just as the three hundred-odd riders reached the beach, a cloud of dust suddenly rose from the grassy slope outside the ditch to the west.