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

The dust rose very quickly.

From the moment it was raised to the moment it became clear what it was, less than ten breaths had passed.

Not three hundred, not five hundred. Behind the grassy slope outside the ditch to the west, cavalrymen surged out in layers, covering the entire slope.

Liu Ye didn't have time to report any of the three things she wanted to report.

The horses were behind the slope. Twenty thousand horses remained behind the slope.

Those three hundred-odd riders on the beach were the first to perish.

They had just dismounted to drink water, half of the soldiers still squatting by the water's edge. By the time they looked up, the cavalry on the slope had already charged halfway up. More than three hundred men were swept in from the side and rear before they could even form a proper formation.

Yang Hu was in the middle and could see everything clearly.

"Sound the retreat."

At the sound of the bell, the vanguard retreated. But there was only one way to cross that ditch. It took more than half an incense stick to cross it, and it would take much longer to retreat.

The ditch entrance is blocked.

The barbarian cavalry didn't chase those on this side of the ditch; they specifically targeted those blocking the way on the other side.

"Captain Pang."

"Your subordinate is here."

"Take your battalion to the mouth of the gully. Don't cross the gully. Pick up the people right here," Yang Hu said. "They'll cross one by one. Don't go down into the gully if you can't pick them up."

"General, on the other side of that ditch..."

"Those on the other side of the ditch can't be brought back."

Captain Pang's face twitched, but he said nothing more and rode away.

The second cavalry force pressed down from the due north.

They came from the direction of the main camp. Not many people came out of the 1,200 tents, but they were not the main force; they were the nails: pinning down the front of the army so that the western force could sweep in from the flank.

Only then did Yang Hu finish watching the entire game.

Those 1,200 tents—the tents were real, but the people were empty. The horses weren't in the camp because they were on the west slope. The thin layer of horse manure that Liu Ye counted wasn't because they had penned the horses up in the camp; it was because this camp was never intended for habitation in the first place.

It's used to count accounts.

"General Choi."

"Your subordinate is here."

"Send word to the Third Battalion to retreat southeast and form ranks behind that earthen ridge."

"General, where are the supplies?"

Yang Hu glanced at the long line of vehicles behind the central army: grain carts, medicine carts, well-digging equipment, and over seventy cooking pots.

"abandoned."

Cui Ting did not move.

"General! There's nine days' worth of horse feed and medicine for the whole army inside."

"abandoned."

"General..."

"Cui Ting," Yang Hu called him by his full name for the first time, "It takes an incense stick to burn for a carriage to travel one mile. How many steps does it take for a person to run one mile?"

Cui Ting's lips moved slightly, then he mounted his horse and rode away.

As the messengers scattered, the third wave of barbarians had already circled around to the east.

That force was small, only two or three thousand cavalry, but its positioning was extremely precise: it was positioned precisely between the main army and the earthen ridge.

To retreat behind the earthen ridge, they would have to pass in front of these two or three thousand cavalry.

When they crossed over, Yue Chong's right flank was on the outside.

This veteran general, who had spent nineteen years in the frontier, did not wait for orders. He stretched the two thousand eight hundred men of the right battalion into a horizontal wall, facing west, and forcefully embedded himself between the barbarians and the retreating troops.

"Right Battalion, do not retreat!"

When he shouted, the soldiers of the right wing hadn't fully reacted yet. But what they saw was that the commander's flag was standing on the outermost edge, without moving an inch.

The barbarian cavalry charged at us three times.

The first attempt to break through was blocked by the right flank with spears. The second attempt was to flank from the side, with Yue Chong personally leading his personal guards to block it. When he returned, an arrow was stuck in his left arm, the shaft of which he had broken off himself. The third attack was the fiercest, forcing the right flank's transverse wall back seventy or eighty paces, but it did not break.

The front and left battalions passed through behind this wall.

Su Heng later said that the last thing she saw when she looked out through the gap in the carriage was the flag of the Right Battalion.

The flag has always been there.

Lieutenant Pang did not retreat either. The ditch was narrow, so he arranged his men into two rows: the front row used shields to catch the men, while the back row used ropes to lower them into the ditch. From afternoon until the sun began to set, they pulled 176 men back from the other side of the ditch.

The distance across the ditch is over three hundred.

The medical team was cut open at this point.

In the marching order of 9,100 men, the medical team followed the central army, positioned slightly behind it, with supply wagons in front and behind. When Yang Hu ordered the abandonment of the supply wagons, all the wagons in front and behind stopped, blocking the road. The 120-strong medical team, along with more than 20 stretchers and a dozen medicine wagons, were stuck between the two rows of stopped wagons, unable to get out.

The barbarian cavalry slipped in through the gaps between the carts.

When Yang Hu turned his horse to charge back, Cui Ting and two bodyguards held the reins firmly in his hands.

"The general cannot go!"

"Let go."

"The general is gone! Who will issue orders for the Third Battalion?!" Cui Ting roared, his voice hoarse. "General! Nine thousand men await your command!"

Yang Hu gripped the reins for a long time.

A fire broke out in the gap between the cars in the distance. It was a medicine truck. The truck was loaded with alcohol and oil, and it would catch fire at any moment.

He loosened the reins.

"Order the retreat to the southeast."

The army retreated to the back of the earthen ridge, which took an hour and a half.

After it got completely dark, all the people were gathered.

The count was reported by Cui Ting. He stood ramrod straight as he reported, but the booklet in his hand trembled.

"General."

"explain."

"Of the 8,500 who could fight when we went beyond the Great Wall, we have gathered 6,147 at the moment."

Yang Hu wrote down the number.

"How badly injured are you?"

"Four hundred and three were carried back with serious injuries. There are about one thousand one hundred with minor injuries who can walk on their own, and the number is still increasing."

"Supplies?"

"Everything is lost," Cui Ting said. "Thirty-seven grain carts, fourteen medicine carts, and not a single well-digging tool was left. We managed to salvage nine cooking pots."

"Horse feed?"

"Of the thirty horses that carried the beans, eleven have returned." Cui Ting turned the page. "The remaining beans are enough to feed four thousand horses for three days."

Where is General Yue?

"The right wing has lost 640 men. General Yue has been shot in the arm with an arrow still embedded in his flesh. He refuses to pull it out, saying he will wait until the general has finished counting the men."

"Tell him to pull it out," Yang Hu said. "Tell him that if the arrowhead stays in the flesh, this arm will be useless tomorrow."

Cui Ting agreed and turned the page.

"Where is the military medical team?"

Cui Ting did not answer immediately.

There were footsteps outside the tent; Su Heng had come in.

Her left sleeve was torn in half, her hair was disheveled, and there was a streak of blood on her face—not hers. She walked to the table and stood still, not speaking at first, but waiting until her breathing had evened out before she spoke.

"General."

"explain."

"Of the 120 military medical teams, 41 returned."

Yang Hu pressed his hand on the table.

"Where's the medicine?"

"Everyone still has what they were carrying," Su Heng said. "None of the fourteen medicine carts have come out."

She paused.

"The medicine for wounds, linen, mugwort, and the batch sent from the city are all on the truck."

The brazier inside the tent had long since gone out; no one bothered to relight it.

"How many wounded soldiers were carried out on stretchers?" Yang Hu asked.

Su Heng's lips moved slightly.

"Twenty-six stretchers," she said. "Nine were carried out."

After she finished speaking, she clenched her hands together at her sides.

"General, it was my order. The traffic was completely blocked at the time, so I told those who could walk to go first, and the stretchers to stay behind."

"It wasn't your order."

"General..."

"I gave the order to abandon the baggage train," Yang Hu said. "I should have known that the road would be blocked once the trains stopped."

He stood up and lifted a corner of the tent flap.

Outside were the more than 6,100 men who had been brought back. There was no fire, and no fires were allowed; they lay darkly spread out on the slope behind the earthen ridge. The wounded soldiers were crammed into the innermost part, and some were groaning softly.

Of the more than 1,500 who did not return, 84 were from the military medical team. They wore no armor, carried no knives, and carried medicine chests.

"General Choi."

"Your subordinate is here."

"No counting tonight."

Cui Ting was taken aback: "General, the rule of counting the wounded and sick every night and reading the numbers aloud in public was established by the General himself."

"We won't light it tonight," Yang Hu said, pulling down the tent flap. "We'll light it at dawn tomorrow."

Why?

"Because they can't handle this number tonight."