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

In early April, the army retreated to Heishiliang.

It took nine days to return. The more than four hundred people who were still unable to walk were carried back. The people who carried them were volunteers, and they were rotated along the way, with no one falling behind.

The new camp is still there. The 180 men that Captain Chang left behind have kept watch over the camp. The tents haven't collapsed, the wells haven't been buried, and the 40 tents in the wounded and sick camp have been replaced with 60.

On the day the men of the Third Battalion entered the camp, seven pots of hot water were boiled in the camp.

Yang Hu began writing the memorial on the third day.

I wrote for four days.

After he finished writing it, he didn't send it out immediately. Instead, he called Cui Ting to read it aloud.

"read."

Cui Ting unfolded the scroll and read it from beginning to end. When he finished, his palms were sweaty.

That memorial contained not a single empty word, nor a single claim for credit. It did only one thing: it put three things together.

The first item was medicine. The twelve boxes of military medicine transported from the north last October had been mixed with soil up to 60% over the first five months, but overnight in the sixth month, they were all replaced with good medicine. The seventeen packets of medicine mixed with soil were still sealed and were sent to the emperor upon presentation of the memorial.

The second item is arrows. In March, 117 standard-issue arrows of the Da Cheng Army were taken from under the 37th tent of the barbarian winter camp. They were triangular, barbed, and had a shallow groove at the tail. They had been sent to the Armory of the Ministry of War last November and had been inspected three times by the Armory.

The third item was grain. Forty grain carts, which were dispatched to the front camp beyond the Great Wall on February 24th, stopped for six days at the southern foot of Heishiliang before turning southeast towards Qingshikou. A post station receipt arrived with the four-character note: "By order of dispatch, temporarily stationed."

The three items are followed by a sentence.

"I humbly request an investigation: from which granary did the military medicine come, from which warehouse did the arrowheads come, and from whom did the grain carts receive their orders?"

Cui Ting's voice trembled as he read this sentence.

"General, this sentence...this sentence can kill."

"It's not just that one sentence that's deadly," Yang Hu said. "It's these three things together that are deadly."

He took the roll and rolled it up.

"Not a single one can be missing. If it's just medicine, he can say the quartermaster embezzled it; if it's just arrows, he can say they were picked up by barbarians on the battlefield; if it's just rations, he can say it was mismanagement."

"What about all three together?"

"When all three are combined, there is no single explanation that can encompass them all at once."

Cui Ting swallowed hard.

"General, there's one more thing," he said in a low voice, "that box."

Yang Hu did not respond to this sentence.

The box is in the border town. Last year, before he led his troops out of the city, he handed it over. Liu Da disguised himself as a porter and delivered it out of the city, hiding it in a place outside the city. In the past two years, apart from Lu Yan, Lu Rou, and two other people, no one else knows where it is.

Inside was a box of letters that had been stolen from three vehicles on a snowy night.

"Don't move."

"General, the contents of that box are harder than these three."

"It's tough," Yang Hu said. "But as soon as it moves, the other side of the city is exposed."

He placed the memorial on the table.

"These three items are what I obtained beyond the Great Wall. Moving them will only implicate the Northern Circuit and the Ministry of War. The box is different. Once that box is taken out, the entire Prefectural Magistrate's Office will be torn up. If the Prefectural Magistrate's Office is torn up, the first thing they will do is not to kill me, but to kill the few people in the city who know where the box is."

Cui Ting stopped talking.

"Wait a little longer." Yang Hu placed his hand on the scroll of memorial. "Wait until I'm able to protect them."

After saying this, he pushed the memorial to the corner of the desk.

"General Cui, I've been saving these three things on the grasslands for three months. Guess what he'll do with them?"

"barge."

"If you refute it, you have to write down your reasons," Yang Hu said. "Writing down one reason is equivalent to admitting that this happened."

"Then... pressure?"

"Can he keep it under control?" Yang Hu asked. "The arrowheads have been inspected three times at the armory, and more than one person inspected them. The medicine is still sealed. The grain cart receipts are on file at the post station. He can't possibly cover up all three."

"What does the general think he will do?"

Yang Hu withdrew his hand from the memorial.

"I don't know," he said. "That's what bothers me the most."

The memorial was sent out on April 11th.

As usual, two routes.

The original copy went to the Ministry of War's Department of Military Affairs. The other copy of the list of the dead went to the Department of Military Affairs for compensation. As usual, a page was attached to the end of the list, which contained a copy of the spoils and losses from this trip.

After that, it was just waiting.

The camp was busy in April. The 839 prisoners were divided into two groups and held for 20 days. Sixty-one of them died in the group where they were sick, and the remaining hundred or so gradually recovered from their fevers. For the first time, Su Heng, along with the military medical team, wrote down the prescriptions for treating prisoners and the prescriptions for treating their own people in the same book.

"General, should we split this book into two parts?"

"Not distinguishable."

"But what if someone finds it..."

"If someone finds it, let them see it," Yang Hu said. "Writing it separately means you have something to hide; writing it together means it's the way it is."

At the end of April, another 217 wounded soldiers were discharged from the wounded soldiers' camp.

Yue Chong was able to get out of bed on April 20th. The arrow shaft in his chest was removed on April 3rd. He wanted to see it being removed himself, so Yang Hu let him watch. The wound was stitched up and now it has formed a shallow scar.

On the first day he was able to get out of bed, he stood for a long time under the pole at the entrance of the wounded soldiers' camp.

The notice on the pole had been changed long ago. It showed the numbers for April: 611 wounded and sick in the camp, 429 returned to the unit in April, and 17 died.

After reading it, he asked the soldier supporting him, "When was this notice erected?"

"Reporting to the general, it was already posted on the grasslands. The camp was already putting it up before the general even woke up."

Yue Chong reached out and pressed his hand on the paper, holding it there for a long time before pulling it back.

On the fourth day of the fifth month, the reply from the capital arrived.

Only one copy arrived.

It's for those receiving compensation.

The reply came incredibly quickly: the list of the dead numbered 2,341, approved, with pensions to be paid as usual, plus additional allowances. The page in the list containing the captured prisoners was also copied and filed.

The seal was from the Ministry of War's Department of Relief and Compensation.

"What about the job-related route?" Yang Hu asked.

The courier delivering the document shook his head.

"Reporting to the General, this is all the portion I brought."

Cui Ting's face gradually paled.

"General, could it be on the way...?"

"No," Yang Hu said. "Both documents were delivered on the same day, along the same road, by the same group of people. Once this pension document arrives, the official document will arrive as soon as it does."

He placed the reply on the table, then opened the book on the table, turned to the page for April 11, and wrote three words next to it.

No response.

"General, are we waiting?"

"wait."

Nineteen more days passed.

May 23rd, still nothing.

That evening, Yang Hu stood alone outside the gate for a long time. In May in the border region, the grass was already knee-high, and the wind blew warmly from the north.

Cui Ting walked over.

"General."

"Um."

"I don't understand," Cui Ting said. "If they want to refute, they should just refute it. Why not give them a single word?"

"Reject it, I can try again," Yang Hu said. "If I try three more times, someone in court will ask: Why does this person keep trying this?"

Cui Ting's heart sank.

"Neither refute nor approve." Yang Hu tucked his hands into his sleeves. "These three things will remain forever in that room of the Bureau of Personnel. No one says they are fake, and no one says they are real."

"So what do we do?"

There's no way.

Yang Hu said those three words very casually, as if he were reciting a number. He had recited too many numbers in the past two years: 3,162, 119, 2,341. This time, the response was simply that there was no way to respond.

"General Cui, remember this day," he said. "I guarded Qing Shi Kou for forty-five days, endured two months on the grasslands, beheaded four thousand seven hundred people, and handed over three things that even the imperial court itself had verified."

He turned around and looked south.

"What we got in return was complete peace and quiet."