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

The chieftain didn't sleep a wink all night.

The archers arrived at dusk, eight riders, from the north, wearing royal leather armor. The leader, seated on horseback, uttered three sentences: those who exchange milk are traitors, those who follow the Da Cheng people are traitors, and those who drink Da Cheng salt are also traitors.

He then released the arrow.

The arrows weren't fired into the crowd, but rather along the fence where onlookers were standing. Eleven people were hit by the arrows, all with bone fragments.

His youngest son had a one-inch-long cut on his right arm, but the bleeding stopped quickly.

When it got light, the child said that his arm felt numb.

The shaman of the tribe came to see him and said it was an arrow from the Eternal Heaven, a person whom Heaven wanted to take and could not save. After he finished speaking, he left, pulling out the pole that was stuck outside the tent as he left.

The chieftain chased after them and asked: Why is it that Heaven is taking it away?

The witch doctor said it was because you drank the salt from the people of the south.

That night, he was thinking about something else: of the eleven people who had been shot, not one of them had gone to change the milk. He was the one who went to change the milk, while they were the ones standing by the fence watching the spectacle.

At dawn on April 29th, more than thirty riders came from the south.

The sound of horses' hooves came from the mist, and the men of the department grabbed lassoes and surrounded the tent. Once they could see who it was, they lowered the lassoes one by one.

Among the people who came were the woman who always brought salt and the young man who translated for them.

The last to dismount was a young man, not very tall, and not wearing armor. The chieftain recognized him. He had seen him once before last month when the chieftain was driving cattle south to exchange for salt; people had said he was a general of the Great Cheng.

The young man dismounted and went into the tent. He squatted down in front of the child, rolled up his sleeve, and looked at the arm.

"The exact time?"

The translator translated it, and the chief replied: Yesterday at the hour of You (5-7 PM).

"Are all eleven people here?"

"exist."

"Does anyone experience tightness in their jaw?"

The chieftain paused, startled. Before he could speak, a voice came from behind the tent. It was his sister's young man, who had been gritting his teeth since midnight, his speech slurred. The young man had been shot twice.

The young man stood up and said three words.

"There's still time."

The translator translated the following sentences one by one, very slowly, because he was running around while translating.

The eleven men were divided into two groups based on whether or not the outer layer of skin remained on their wounds. The nine men with the outer skin were carried to the east side, and the two men without the outer skin were carried to the west side. All the tents had their felt curtains drawn to block out the light.

Then they carried in a pot.

It was an old, blackened iron pot belonging to the Da Cheng army, with a thick layer of rust on the bottom. Two Da Cheng soldiers squatted on the grass, scraping the pot with the back of their knives.

The people in the department gathered around to watch, but no one understood what they were doing.

Grind the scraped rust into powder and pour it into a bowl.

Then the young man said something, which the translator translated twice: "Bring your yogurt."

The chieftain's hands clenched tightly inside his sleeves.

The yogurt was their own. Last month they traded 120 bladders of yogurt for salt and iron from the south, and for that, 11 men were shot with arrows last night.

He still had the milk brought over.

The milk was poured into the bowl, soaking the rust. Fifteen minutes later, the water in the bowl turned a pale reddish-brown.

The young man picked up the bowl and walked over to his youngest son.

"It needs to be cut open to wash. The knife is made of iron," the interpreter said. "The general is asking if you have permission."

Someone in the department cried out. Cutting human flesh with an iron knife—this was not customary on the grasslands, and witch doctors never touched iron.

The chieftain's throat was dry.

Just then, a man stepped out from among Da Cheng's thirty-odd riders.

He was an elderly man in his fifties, with one eye cloudy.

People in the department recognized him. During last year's epidemic, his department disbanded, and everyone said he died in the south.

The old man spoke in their own language, very slowly.

"The witch doctor forbids you from touching metal," the old man said. "Have you asked why?"

No one answered.

"Because the thing on the arrow is afraid of iron," the old man said. "He knows it's afraid of iron, so he forbids you from having iron in your house. He's not showing reverence for heaven; he's protecting his own medicine."

The young man didn't wait for the translator to finish translating the passage; he simply raised the bowl once.

"If you agree, then wash now. If not, we'll keep watch, and see whichever we can hold out the longest," the interpreter said. "The general said that this was his own word, not a request."

The chieftain looked at the pale red water in the bowl, then at his son's arm.

"wash."

That day, I washed from 5 AM to 3 PM.

The knife was heated, and the cut was three-tenths of an inch deep. First, it had to be made to bleed; only after the blood came out could the bowl of water be poured in. The translator said that the general said this thing wouldn't act without blood, and only blood could bring it out.

It took fifteen minutes to wash one spot, and after washing, a cloth soaked in the water was applied. Nine people, each of them was washed twice.

Those two tents on the west side were being filled with acidic liquid before they could be washed. The liquid was diluted with water and applied three times a day. They were kept in the dark, with wooden planks underneath, and two senior military doctors took turns guarding them, writing on paper according to the appointed time.

The young man remained there. He had kept watch all night, sitting at the entrance of the tent on the west side, his left sleeve rolled up, revealing a cut on his forearm surrounded by a pale purple stain.

The chieftain asked the interpreter, "What happened to the general's arm?"

The translator said that he tested the poison on himself six days ago.

The chieftain turned his head to look at the tent on the west side.

On the third day at the hour of Yin (3-5 AM), two people died, both from the tent on the west side.

On the fifth day, two more died.

Seven survived.

His youngest son was able to sit up on the fourth day, and on the sixth day he went outside the tent to urinate and came back saying he was hungry.

The families of the seven survivors knelt down one by one. The young man didn't accept any of their prayers. He had the translator relay a message: "This method was written on Miss Su's stack of papers, and the old man also has a copy."

On the seventh day, Da Chengren was about to leave.

The chieftain took out something wrapped in a piece of leather.

Inside were four arrows, taken from the bodies of four dead men; they were bone clusters, still covered with a layer of dark brown shell.

"These weren't our arrows," the chieftain said. "They were fired by people from the royal court. A tribe only gets about twenty of those kinds of arrows a year."

The young man carefully collected the four arrows.

"There's one more thing," the chieftain said. "Forty miles to the north, there are three tents with bare poles. The people inside didn't die from arrows, they died of illness. The shaman says it's Heaven watching to see if we're sincere enough."

"How many died?"

"Nineteen. As of yesterday."

The young man looked up and gazed north for a moment, then, without saying a word, mounted his horse.

When the Da Cheng people had gone far away, the chieftain realized that no one had ever asked them for a bag of milk or a sheep.

The next day, he moved his troops twenty miles south.

On the third day, a line of people formed on the road heading south.

Some were leading sheep, some were carrying children, and some had ridden horses for two days and two nights from other tribes. When they reached a hundred paces outside the gate, they stopped and squatted on the grass to wait.

By noon, there were over 140 people squatting a hundred paces away.

The soldiers guarding the gate didn't understand what they were saying, so they went to call an interpreter.

The translator listened for a while, and his expression changed.

"They say that the one who can pull people back from the clutches of the Eternal Heaven is here."

"Are they looking for the general?"

"Not a general," the translator said. "Their word isn't the same as the word for witch doctor."

He thought for a moment and translated the word into two characters.

"Miracle doctor".