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

There were sixty-seven at dawn.

The nineteen who couldn't get up at night became sixty-seven by dawn, and the four who couldn't get up became nine.

Su Heng led the remaining forty-one members of the military medical team to mark out a piece of land on the east side of the depression and move the people lying down into it. When they had moved about thirtieth of them, she herself squatted down and dry heaved for a while.

When Yang Hu arrived, she was wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

"It's not that I'm sick," she said first. "It's the smell."

The smell on that patch of ground was indeed awful. Sixty-seven people were vomiting and had diarrhea; there were no tents, no extra cloth.

"How long has it been going on?"

"The first one was last night at Hai hour," Su Heng said. "By Mao hour this morning, it's sixty-seven."

"Nine hours, sixty-seven minutes." Yang Hu squatted down, not looking at the people, but at the filth on the ground. "They all got sick together, it wasn't one person passing it on to another."

"How did the general know?"

"The disease spread in patches, first in one tent, then in the next." Yang Hu stood up. "Where did these sixty-seven people sleep?"

Su Heng was taken aback for a moment: "...They're scattered. There are about twenty on the east side, a dozen on the west side, and some in the middle."

"right."

He looked around the depression.

Six thousand three hundred people were crammed into a depression, sleeping haphazardly. If the virus had spread from person to person, it would have been a dark mass. But right now, it wasn't a mass; it was scattered.

"If it spreads, it's not just human-to-human transmission; it's about what people ate and drank together."

"We guard the spring," Su Heng said. "We filter and boil the water before it ferments. We only produce two loads a day, and that's not enough for anyone. We also mix it with snow water."

"What if it's melted snow?"

"I cooked it too."

Yang Hu ruled out these two options.

"What did you eat yesterday?"

"One serving of dry rations and one serving of horse meat."

"Which batch of horse meat is this?"

Su Heng's expression changed.

The meat from the sixty horses slaughtered on the first day couldn't be distributed all at once. The salt was in the baggage train, but the baggage was lost, so there was no salt to cure it. The remaining half of the meat was hung to dry on the low trees by the depression, to be distributed on the third day.

In March, the daytime sun is enough to thaw the frozen soil on the grasslands.

"Stop feeding everyone who hasn't eaten yet," Yang Hu said. "Now."

When the messenger ran out, several fires had already been lit and meat was being roasted.

Within the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, the entire army stopped eating.

Yang Hu led Su Heng to the base of those low trees.

Forty or so loads of meat hung on ropes, strips of meat of varying shades. He reached out and pinched the outermost strip, pressing his fingertip against it, and a layer of shine rose from the surface. He lifted his finger, and there was a sticky residue on his fingertip that could be pulled into strands.

"General, this one is broken."

"That's not the only one."

He pinched each one from the first to the last. The ones hanging on the outer circle, exposed to the sun, were so soft that his fingertips were stretched with silk; the ones hanging on the inner circle, in the shade, were still hard.

"Which batch was distributed yesterday?"

The old cook guarding the meat answered in a very low voice, "Reporting to the general, it's the outer batch. The outer batch was dried first, and since it dried earlier, I thought... I thought we should allocate this batch first."

Yang Hu didn't respond immediately. He turned and called over Cui Ting.

"How many camps were divided up the meat yesterday?"

"The front camp and the left camp," Cui Ting said. "The right camp was on duty guarding the northern slope yesterday. Their meal was served late, and they didn't get any meat; they only ate dry rations."

"Not a single soldier in the right flank is lying down?"

Cui Ting was stunned for a moment, then turned around and ran eastward.

He ran back after an incense stick had burned, panting so much he could barely speak.

"General... out of the sixty-seven, the front camp has forty-one, the left camp has twenty-six. The right camp... there are none in the right camp."

Everyone on the edge of the depression stopped moving.

Yang Hu put down the stringy piece of meat he was holding.

"One more question. How many soldiers in the front and left flanks didn't get to eat meat yesterday?"

"Yes," Cui Ting said. "Yesterday there wasn't enough meat, and several hundred men in each of the two battalions only received dry rations."

"Are any of them lying down?"

Cui Ting went to ask. This time it took him half an hour.

When he came back, his face was pale.

"Not a single one."

Three sentences, three points for comparison.

Sixty-seven of those who ate the meat from the outer ring collapsed. None of the other soldiers in the same battalion got any. The entire right battalion received no meat at all.

"No need to investigate further," Yang Hu said. "It's this batch of meat."

The old cook had been standing under the tree, his legs trembling. Upon hearing this, he knelt down with a thud.

Yang Hu went over and helped him up.

"You're right."

The cook looked up, his eyes reddening.

"General, it was my fault."

"It wasn't you," Yang Hu said. "It was the order to kill Ma."

He issued the order. On the first day, food was scarce, so he ordered the slaughter of sixty packhorses that had lost weight. Slaughtering sixty horses meant the meat wouldn't last a day; without salt, it could only be dried; and dried under the March sun, it would spoil in two days.

This chain of events could only be stopped at one point: the moment he ordered the horses killed, twenty fewer were slaughtered. Thirty horses would be enough to feed the entire army for a day and a half; once they were eaten, there would be no need to dry them.

He had counted 6,300 mouths, not the two salt bags. The salt bags were on the eleventh cart, which had overturned outside Xigou.

"Su Heng".

"exist."

"How much meat is left?"

"About forty loads," Su Heng said, "enough for the whole army to eat for three days."

"How many are broken?"

Su Heng went to count. When she returned, her voice was strained.

"The outer ring of sixteen loads is all stringy. The inner ring of twenty-four loads is still hard."

Cui Ting and Shao Qi arrived at this moment. After hearing the whole story, Shao Qi spoke first.

"General, those twenty-four loads are good; keep them."

"Sixteen loads?"

"Boil it," Shao Qi said. "Won't it be fine once it's thoroughly boiled? It's the rule in the army that if the meat becomes sticky, just boil it three times in boiling water, and it's still edible. I've been eating it for fourteen years."

"Rolling three times will kill the worms," ​​Yang Hu said, "but it won't kill what's already inside the flesh."

"What is it?"

"Something unseen," Yang Hu said. "The food those sixty-seven people ate yesterday was boiled in water."

Shao Qi opened his mouth slightly.

The meat was cooked before it was distributed yesterday. It's an army rule that all meat must be cooked. All sixty-seven people ate cooked meat.

"Those sixteen loads..."

"burn."

"General!" Cui Ting strode forward. "Sixteen loads are the entire army's daily rations! We only have three days' worth of dry rations left!"

"burn."

"General, could we distribute some to the horses first?" Shao Qi asked, "Or we could save some for when there's absolutely nothing else to eat..."

"When there's absolutely nothing left to eat, people will scavenge," Yang Hu said. "If you leave a load here, someone will come and tear off a piece in the middle of the night. I can't stop them then."

He glanced at the spot where the sixty-seven people were lying.

"If we burn sixteen loads today, I'll have three days' worth of dry rations and twenty-four loads of meat left. If we don't burn them today, tomorrow it won't be sixty-seven people lying in bed."

The roast pork was cooked in a low-lying, windy spot.

A shallow pit was dug, lined with dried cow dung, and strips of meat were thrown in one by one. The fire from the dried dung was weak and burned slowly; the meat sizzled at first, then curled up at the edges, and the aroma was carried south by the north wind, drifting far away. People who had been starving for three days were captivated by this smell.

Of the 6,300 people, not one stepped forward, nor did one leave. They simply sat on the slope and watched.

When the fire was halfway through, a soldier in the crowd stood up and shouted something.

"General! That's meat!"

Yang Hu stood at the edge of the pit and turned around.

"It's meat," he said. "And it's the same sixty-seven from last night."

The soldier, mouth agape, slowly sat down again. Once seated, he buried his face in his knees.

The meat was cooked for two hours.

After the fire was lit, Yang Hu returned to the back of the earthen ridge. The commander of the Third Battalion was already waiting there.

Yue Chong's arm was still in a sling. Shao Qi and Cui Ting were both standing; neither of them sat down.

"Speak," Yang Hu said.

Shao Qi raised his head.

"General, I have something to say."

"speak."

"Three days' worth of dry rations, and twenty-four dan of meat," Shao Qi stated, "6,300 men, plus 403 seriously injured."

He stopped.

"Continue."

Shao Qi straightened his back.

"General, I request that a detachment be left to care for the wounded, while the main force breaks through lightly equipped and returns to Heishiliang."