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

Liu Ye returned on the third day.

None of the three things they brought back were good news.

“Firstly, those tents over there don’t house soldiers.” She placed a flattened piece of wood on the table, on which were carved three crooked marks. “They’re for the old and young. There are women, children, and livestock sheds.”

"The entire outer ring is like that?"

"I touched the east and south sides, and the outer three layers were all covered. I didn't dare go any further in, because the tents inside were very close together, and there were people every few steps."

Cui Ting's face darkened: "The family is out there, and the soldiers are inside."

"It's not about protecting the elderly and children," Qin Ying interjected from the side. "It's that the elderly and children are surrounding the soldiers. In a formation like this, whoever attacks from the outside will trample the women and children first."

No one responded from inside the tent for a moment.

"Secondly," Liu Ye continued, "we couldn't find the herd of horses."

"Didn't find it?"

"We searched sixty li to the east and sixty li to the west, but there were no large herds of horses," Liu Ye said. "There are quite a few horses tethered in that area, but they are all owned by individual families and scattered in their pens, not gathered in one place."

Yang Hu's hand stopped on the table.

Last year, he was able to drive away 20,000 horses overnight by separating the herd from the human camp and by focusing only on the lead horse.

There are no horses to herd right now. Dozens of units, each with its own horses, are scattered in their respective enclosures.

"They've learned their lesson," Cui Ting said.

"It's not that they've learned to be clever," Yang Hu said. "It's just how they're supposed to be. Last year, those 20,000 horses were for an entire army, so they were kept together for better care. This area has dozens of divisions, and each family manages its own horses, so they're scattered as they always were."

He raised his hand.

"And the third one?"

Liu Ye paused for a moment.

"There are patients," she said, "but I can't say for sure what kind of illness it is."

"Why can't you say it's accurate?"

"In the southeast corner, there are three tents that have been moved out separately, about forty or fifty paces away from the others, with poles stuck in the side," Liu Ye said. "There are no sheep heads hanging on the poles."

"What's hanging there?"

"There's nothing hanging on it, it's just a bare pole."

Yang Hu remained silent for a while.

"It's separated, but there's no label indicating what it is."

"The general means..."

"They themselves don't even understand what kind of disease it is," Yang Hu said. "If they did understand, they would either dig a hole and fill it with stones like we did, or hang a sheep's head like they did. Hanging nothing at all means they don't know what to hang."

The army pushed north for twenty miles and set up camp in a water-filled depression at the northern foot of Baisha Ridge.

The water was found by Liu Ye; it was a small pool formed by a spring, with clear water and no animal carcasses, no pits where stones had been pressed down, and no poles.

Yang Hu followed the old routine: filter three times, boil, and divide into individual pouches.

On March 22nd, something happened.

The incident occurred in the vanguard battalion.

The vanguard consisted of two thousand men led by Colonel Pang, who were stationed on a high ground eight miles north of the depression. It was far from the main camp, and they fetched water from nearby sources.

That night, Captain Pang sent someone back to report that more than seventy people had collapsed in the camp.

Su Heng arrived in the middle of the night.

By noon the next day, the number of people lying down had increased to four hundred and sixteen.

On the third day, there were over eight hundred.

When Yang Hu arrived at the vanguard battalion, the two-thousand-strong camp on the high ground was in complete disarray. People were squatting, lying down, and running everywhere. The air smelled terrible.

"Diarrhea." Su Heng greeted him at the camp gate, her face deathly pale. "Vomiting and diarrhea, unlike the one in March."

"Why is it different?"

"That time there were sixty-seven, scattered. This time there are over eight hundred, almost the entire battalion," Su Heng said. "And no one died."

Yang Hu raised his eyes.

"Immortal?"

"Of the more than 800 who collapsed, two have died today, both of whom had pre-existing conditions," Su Heng said. "The others had diarrhea so badly they couldn't stand, but they were still mentally alert, able to speak and drink water."

Yang Hu entered the camp.

He looked at each tent one by one, and stopped at the fifth one, squatting down next to a soldier.

The soldier was in his early twenties, with a sallow complexion and chapped lips, but his eyes were bright.

"How many days has it been? How many times have you had diarrhea?"

"Reporting to the general, it's been two days. The number of times he's had diarrhea is countless."

"Does your stomach hurt?"

The soldier thought for a moment: "It hurts for a while, but it will feel better after I relieve myself."

Yang Hu placed his hand on his stomach, pressing it from top to bottom, then opened his eyelids to look at him, and then pinched a piece of skin on the back of his hand.

The skin was pinched, and it took two breaths for it to flatten out after I let go.

"Is there enough water to drink?"

"You can drink it, but it all comes out as soon as you drink it."

"Drink it," Yang Hu said. "Drink back as much as you spit out. This is more important than any medicine."

He stood up.

"go out."

Once outside the tent, he asked Su Heng, "Where did you get the water?"

"The spring on the north side of the high ground."

"Was it filtered?"

"It was filtered and boiled," Su Heng said. "General, I've been keeping an eye on this. Lieutenant Pang checks it twice a day. Out of more than eight hundred people, not a single one has drunk unboiled water."

"How long have you been boiling it?"

"Get out of here and we'll break up."

Yang Hu stopped.

"Roll another incense stick."

Su Heng was taken aback: "General, once it's boiled, that should be enough."

"That's enough to deal with the plague." Yang Hu looked towards the spring to the north. "But this isn't the plague."

He went to see that spring.

The water was clear. He scooped up a handful, examined its color, smelled it, and then dipped a little into it with the tip of his tongue.

It has a slightly astringent taste, with an indescribable sweetness within the astringency.

He spat out the water and squatted down to look at the soil around the spring.

The soil was white. It wasn't snow, nor sand. It was a thin layer of white frost-like substance, clinging to the ground three feet below the spring, shimmering slightly in the sunlight.

He scraped a little with his fingernail, rolled it on his fingertip, and then put it on the tip of his tongue.

bitter.

It is salty at first, then bitter.

"Su Heng".

"exist."

"This is not an illness."

"Not an illness? But there are over eight hundred people..."

"It's the soil and water." Yang Hu wiped his hands clean on the corner of his robe. "This spring has alkali. The water inside the pass doesn't have this. People who are used to drinking the water inside the pass can't stand it when they come here."

Su Heng was stunned.

"General, we've come all the way from Black Stone Ridge, drinking water from over a dozen different places, how come we're all unharmed?"

"South of Liang is sandy land; the water filters through the sand," Yang Hu stood up. "After crossing Baisha Liang to the north, the land changes. Look at the grass along this route; isn't it shorter and harder than to the south?"

Su Heng turned around to look.

It is indeed short, hard, and grayish in color.

"This is what grass grows on alkaline ground."

"So boiling it won't help?"

"Boiling will kill the insects, but it won't remove the alkali," Yang Hu said. "The longer you boil it, the less water there is, and the more concentrated the alkali becomes."

He paused for a moment after saying that.

Su Heng's face turned pale instantly.

"General, you just asked me to roll another incense stick..."

"I was wrong."

Yang Hu didn't beat around the bush when he said those four words.

"Send the order. Stop boiling the water from that spring. The vanguard camp is to move immediately, eight li to the east. Liu Ye reported that there is an old river branch there."

"General, we can't move more than eight hundred people."

"We have to move them even if they have diarrhea," Yang Hu said. "If they drink for another day, the eight hundred or so will become two thousand."

"There's another rule," Yang Hu added before the messenger ran off, "After the camp is moved, anyone with diarrhea should drink two bags of water a day. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar to the water. If you have salt but not sugar, boil some roasted millet in the water."

"General, won't drinking water make someone with diarrhea worse?"

"What kills people isn't the 'poisoning,' it's the drying out," Yang Hu said. "What they're 'poisoning' is water, and you have to fill it back in. If you can't fill it back in, it'll dry up into a skin in three days."

After the messenger ran out, Su Heng remained standing in the same spot.

"General."

"speak."

"The general said that in front of the messenger," she said. "He said, 'I was wrong.'"

Yang Hu wiped his hands, which were holding water, on his clothes again.

"I was wrong, and that's that," he said. "I gave the order to 'roll another incense stick' for half an hour. In that half hour, the vanguard battalion drank an extra round of alcohol."

He took one last look at the spring.

"Record it in the book. Make it clear: March 24th, the commander-in-chief ordered another stick of incense to be burned, mistaken."