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

At 2:45 PM, Qin Ying entered the tent, carrying a knife and a clean cloth.

"Roll up your sleeves."

Give me an hour.

"No." Qin Ying placed the knife on the table. "The second rule is your own words: dig until it turns purple, dig until fresh blood comes out. There are four more words after that, and you are not allowed to ask me."

Yang Hu placed his left arm on the table without rolling up his sleeve.

The tent curtains were pushed open from the outside.

Su Heng came in carrying a stack of papers, her hair disheveled.

"General, the seventh item."

Which one?

"Calamine." She turned the paper to the middle page, pressing her finger on a line, "Tried on the second person. I wrote 'ineffective'."

"Then why are you running?"

"I also noted something else," Su Heng said. "After applying calamine, the purplish spots took half an hour to move upwards from the wound."

The three people inside the tent all looked down at that line.

Why didn't you report it then?

"Because the person still died." Su Heng's voice lowered. "I dare not say that methods that lead to death are effective."

Yang Hu read that page from beginning to end, then looked up.

"Calamari is a stone."

"So what?" Qin Ying asked.

"It's not just one medicine that's effective; it's all the same kind of stuff that can suppress the swelling," Yang Hu said. "You heard what the old man said yesterday: 'The witch doctor can't touch iron when preparing medicine; if he does, he'll die. Iron comes from stone too.'"

Qin Ying's hand remained on the hilt of the knife.

"I'm not guessing," Yang Hu said. "Su Heng wrote it down in black and white over half an hour. This isn't something I wanted to gamble on; she saved it up for me."

Qin Ying pushed the knife halfway back into its sheath, then stopped.

"One hour," she said. "I'll do it in a quarter of an hour. You don't need to say it a second time."

The oldest pot from the kitchen was brought in. The rust on the outside of the bottom of the pot was so thick that you could scratch it off with your fingernail; the scraped part was dark red, and you scraped off about half a bowl of it.

A stone mortar and pestle was used for pounding. No one touched the iron mortar and pestle in the army.

"Pound it into a fine powder and divide it into three portions," Yang Hu said. "One portion will be soaked in water, one portion in yogurt, and one portion in a strong brew made from brick tea."

"Why does the general want to brew three kinds of things?" Su Heng asked.

"I don't know which one can bite it," Yang Hu said. "Let's soak all three together and see which one breaks down the fastest in fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, three bowls were placed on the table. The bowl for soaking water was still cloudy; the bowl for soaking tea was a darker color; and the bowl for soaking yogurt had a layer of fine bubbles floating on the surface, most of the rust at the bottom had dissolved, and the liquid had turned a pale reddish color.

"Sour things can even break stones." Yang Hu picked up the bowl. "The first of the old man's three methods is yogurt. He didn't know why, and I don't know entirely either. But this bowl is faster than the other two."

"Take three sheep," he said. "Make incisions, apply powder, and wash one of each."

"It will take three days to see the outcome."

"I can't wait three days."

Su Heng raised her head.

"Three days from now, I'll either be dead or gone." Yang Hu rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. "She can examine the bruises and swellings for me, but she can't examine the clenched jaw. I said that in the tent yesterday, and now that it's my turn, it counts."

I poured the bowl of yogurt I made onto the cut on his forearm and rinsed it for a moment. After rinsing, I used a dry cloth to apply it as a compress, layer by layer.

Qin Ying stood by the table the whole time.

At dusk, Su Heng used a thin hemp thread to measure the purple patch. She drew two lines side by side on the paper: the one from yesterday afternoon was 1.2 inches long, and the one from now was 1.1 inches long.

"One point was lost."

"Apply again."

Qin Ying sheathed his knife but did not leave.

At midnight, Yang Hu sweated, but the sweat was cold.

He reported it himself first.

"Tightness on both sides of the chin, starting from below the ears. This indicates the time of day."

Su Heng's pen trembled slightly, but still fell to the ground: April 25th, the first quarter of midnight, jaw clenched.

The lampshade was covered with two layers of cloth. Liu Ye and four others stood guard outside the tent, not allowing anyone to enter.

At the hour of Chou (1-3 AM), he slowed down his speech, leaving a gap between each word. He wanted Su Heng to record every half hour whether he could hold the wooden piece in his mouth or whether he would flinch when he heard a sound.

Before the hour of Yin (3-5 AM), his fingers tensed three times, each time for less than ten breaths.

Qin Ying sat in the shadows outside the lampshade, her hands resting on her knees. The third rule written in her handwriting read: "Don't touch him." Those three times, she didn't move an inch.

The hour of Yin has passed.

When it got light, his jaw relaxed.

"Of those four, which one is the hardest to write?" Qin Ying asked.

"Article Two."

At dawn that day, the scout in the tent outside the camp died. He was the fourth, twenty-one years old, and was shot by an arrow on the night of April 22nd, a full-blown massacre.

Yang Hu walked a hundred paces away and stood there for a while. He then ordered his men to burn the tent and collect the bones to take away.

Three days later, the three sheep were examined. The one washed with sour grass did not swell; the one washed with water swelled; and the one washed with tea swelled more slowly, but still swelled.

The military council on April 27th lasted only one incense stick's time.

"Three things," Yang Hu said. "First: Iron can damage the bruises and swelling, but it can't damage the jaw. Second: For the jaw, a small amount can be endured, but a large amount cannot. I had one-sixtieth of it and survived; four people had the whole cluster, and none of them survived."

"And the third one?" Cui Ting asked.

"Thirdly: The real danger of this poison isn't the poison itself, but the dosage," Yang Hu said. "If you wash away most of the dosage, what would have been certain death becomes something you can endure."

He issued three orders.

"First, each person should carry a small leather pouch filled with physalicium var. ...

Cui Ting raised his head: "General, the rule from the other day was that once you were shot with an arrow, you were not allowed to pull yourself out."

"I've changed that," Yang Hu said. "The army medic has to walk ten miles to remove it, and that's the distance. Remove it on the spot, wash it on the spot, but the arrow still needs to be brought back."

"Second, soak coarse cloth in acid syrup, dry it in the sun, and sew it into the innermost layer of the three layers of felt on the calf and forearm. The arrow must pass through this layer to reach the flesh."

"Third, the tent outside the camp will still be erected, but it will no longer be a place to wait for death. Inside, there will be shade, padding, water will be poured at regular intervals, and someone will keep watch and record. Anyone hit by a bone-piercing arrow will be washed first and then treated in a separate manner."

"Is one hundred steps enough?" Captain Pang asked.

"He won't act unless he bleeds. The hundred paces is for the camp to see, and also for himself to see," Yang Hu said. "Knowing that we're waiting for him outside to survive three days is one thing, knowing that we're waiting for him to die is another."

Cui Ting did the calculations on the spot. Eleven thousand men, one bag per person, half a pound per bag. Rust could be scraped off; old pots, scrap armor, and broken arrowheads from the camp were all useful. Milk wouldn't work.

"Based on the amount we've exchanged so far, it's enough for fourteen days," Cui Ting said. "After fourteen days, not a day more."

"Then keep changing them," Yang Hu said. "Willow Leaf, go further east."

On April 28th, another member of Liu Ye's team was injured. Left shoulder, bony protuberance.

The arrow was pulled out on the spot, the man was held down, and a whole sac of acidic fluid was poured into the wound. The two men took turns washing it for fifteen minutes. After returning to camp, he did not go inside, but lay in the tent outside the camp.

The next afternoon, his purplish discoloration was only slightly, very light. The following night, his jaw didn't clench.

At dawn on the third day, the army doctor who was guarding the tent came out and ran back to the camp.

"Still panting."

That day, Su Heng copied the stack of papers again, making two copies. She gave one copy to the military medical team and kept the other in her bosom. She paused for a long time while copying one line from the paper: Calamine, ineffective, purple movement slowed by half an hour.

Yang Hu took the pen from her hand and crossed out the two invalid ones.

"General, those two tribes in the east sent their own men, who traveled fifty li," Liu Ye said. "This evening, the royal court's men fired arrows at them."

How badly were you injured?

"Eleven," Liu Ye said. "They're all bone clusters."