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

Those two men were brought into the camp on the night of June 14th.

One was in his forties, with a silver-inlaid belt around his waist. The other was in his early twenties, leaning on a wooden crutch, his right leg below the knee missing.

Yang Hu first asked about the illness.

What color is your urine?

"It was dark red at first, then brown," the messenger said, "and now it's gone."

Can you feel a hard lump on your stomach?

"I don't know. Nobody dares to touch it."

"Do you have a fever? Do you sweat at night? How many times a day do you vomit?"

The messenger could not answer.

Yang Hu changed his question.

How many bowls of water does he drink a day?

"About three bowls," the messenger replied quickly. "He drank one bowl and vomited half of it."

Are your eyelids puffy in the morning?

"The swelling should subside by half by noon."

"How could you answer both of those questions?"

"These two things are visible to the eye," the messenger said. "The rest are with the princess."

"Princess, remember this," he said again.

"Where should I write it down?"

"On that pillar inside the tent," the messenger said, "she carved it. One carving a day, and each time she vomited, she carved another pit. She said that if the general were willing to come, she would tell him each one."

On the morning of June 15th, a military meeting was held.

Nineteen people arrived. Yang Hu finished reading the few lines of text he had obtained the previous night and put the paper down.

"explain."

Captain Pang was the first to stand up.

"No saving them."

"Go on."

"Four hundred and seventeen people," Captain Pang said. "General, I went to that scorched earth. I carried three bodies burned to ashes. He was the one who ordered the burning, and now he's lying here on his own. Isn't this Heaven's will to take him?"

"That's one. Any others?"

"There's something even more important," Captain Pang said. "With the Khan dead, the forty-three tribes will immediately scatter." Captain Pang continued, "Once they scatter, they'll all return to their own pastures, and this winter they won't be able to raid our borders. We'll reunite next spring, but whether we can even reunite is another matter. This only happens once every thirty years. We've been fighting beyond the Great Wall for two years, and what we couldn't get today, he delivered to us just because he fell ill. General, this isn't about saving lives; this is about winning a battle."

Half of the people inside the tent nodded in agreement.

"General Choi."

"I have something else to say," Cui Ting said. "During the prisoner exchange, I said eight words. This time, it's not eight words. The commander-in-chief personally entered the enemy's court to rescue the enemy's king. There's no record of this, no signature to keep, and it can't be sent to the capital first. If it were sent, the Ministry of War would have someone draft a memorial the very next day."

"Willow leaf".

"The general is a hostage once he enters the royal court," Liu Ye said. "Their eldest prince is waiting for his father to die. The general's arrival is like a gift delivered right to their doorstep."

Yang Hu turned his gaze to Su Heng.

"Su Heng, tell me about medicine."

When Su Heng stood up, her palms were covered in sweat.

"General, I must first tell you the truth," she said. "The illness those two men mentioned last night is something we have in our register. It was the grain officer from Qing Shi Kou last winter. He had two hard lumps on his waist, he was urinating blood, and eventually died from the swelling."

"Is it cured yet?"

"No," Su Heng said. "That grain official fell ill in the twelfth lunar month. For the first month, he only complained of back pain; for the second month, his feet swelled; and for the third month, his urine output decreased day by day. For the last seven days, he urinated not at all. His stomach swelled up, but he remained conscious until he died. The general tried to release him once, using a bamboo tube, but it didn't work."

"Why didn't it succeed?" Captain Pang asked.

"The bamboo tube is too stiff and too straight," Su Heng said. "The part on a person's body is curved."

She turned to Yang Hu.

"This disease is not curable; it's something that can only be prolonged. Even if the general were to pass away, it wouldn't cure him. The best we can do is let him urinate this time, so he can live for another year or two."

When Su Heng sat down, all nineteen people in the tent looked at the paper on the table.

"That's it," Captain Pang said. "Even treatment can't cure him. What's the point of the general risking his life for half a year?"

"General," Qin Ying spoke.

She always sat in the last seat.

"I'm talking about the war," she said. "Commander Pang's account only covers half the story. The Khan is dead, and the forty-three tribes have disbanded. But it's the tribes that have disbanded, not the soldiers."

Captain Pang turned his head.

"The scattered troops will reunite next spring," Qin Ying said. "Who will summon them then? It will be the eldest prince who sealed off his tent and led his father's horse behind it. He is thirty-four years old this year, a proponent of war, and has been waiting for his father to die for a year. As long as the older one lives, he will have to keep waiting."

No one inside the tent responded to that sentence.

"There's another point," Qin Ying said. "If he dies at the hands of his son, there will always be people in the forty-three departments who will be dissatisfied. If he dies because we refuse to save our superiors, then all forty-three departments will hate us. These two things are different."

"I've settled the score for the war," she said. "As for whether or not to save them, that's not up to me."

Yang Hu stood up and walked to the desk.

"General Cui, take the pen. There are two columns. I'll say a sentence, and you write it down. Read it aloud to everyone."

Cui Ting spread out the paper.

"The downsides of rescuing them: the commander-in-chief has been away from the camp for ten days, leaving the camp without a leader; the commander-in-chief may not be able to return; there is no record of the crime of treason in the court; if the rescue is not successful, it will be in vain; if the rescue is successful, it is equivalent to protecting a Khan who can suppress the eldest prince, but this Khan is also the one who ordered the burning of 417 people."

After Cui Ting finished writing, he read this section aloud from the beginning. When he got to the third sentence, two people inside the tent lowered their heads.

"What are the downsides of not saving them?"

"There's only one downside to not saving it," Yang Hu said, "but it's big enough."

He placed his hand on the table.

"There are now 9,400 people on Willow Beach. They don't believe in my fighting ability, but in a promise I made: I will heal anyone who lies down. I told this to the young men digging for otters, to their wounded soldiers, and to the 147 who crawled out of the ashes. Today, there's a man lying in the north, unable to urinate, swollen like a drum. I said I wouldn't treat him, and that promise is no longer valid. After that, whatever I say on this grassland means nothing."

"But he is the Khan!" said Captain Pang.

"He is the Khan," Yang Hu said. "But half of the people I rescued in the past two years have tried to kill me. Of the 839 people I released at Qingshikou, many of them shot arrows at us from below the city walls the following year. I knew about this from the beginning."

He took the pen from Cui Ting's hand.

"My rules for treating patients don't include the concept of 'enemy versus friend.' What does include the concept of 'enemy versus friend' is the orders I give, the formations I set up, and the battles I fight," Yang Hu said. "Today I enter the royal court to save him, and tomorrow if he recovers and brings his troops back, I will still fight him. These two things don't conflict."

Captain Pang opened his mouth, but couldn't find the words.

"Let me tell you something else," Yang Hu said. "It's the custom of the barbarians that a life debt must be repaid. If I saved his life, he has to remember this debt. I'll need it for what I need to do on this grassland in the future."

Cui Ting put his pen down on the paper.

"The general means that we still have to go."

"go."

"What if they don't come back within ten days?"

"Then what if we can't get it back?" Yang Hu said. "What should we do? I'll write it down for you tonight."

After the tents were closed, the young man with the broken leg waited outside.

"General," he said, leaning on his cane, "I'll lead the way."

"Your leg."

"Tie him to the horse," he said. "I've traveled from our department to the royal court more than a dozen times; I remember which section had the most pitfalls."

Yang Hu looked at him for a while.

"You led the way for them, what did your department say about you?"

"There are thirty-one people in our department who are still breathing, and they all came from your department," the young man said. "They won't say anything about me."

That night, Yang Hu summoned the envoy to his tent and asked only one question.

"Can your princess even understand the carvings on those pillars?"

"I can understand it," the messenger said. "She also divided it into two categories: the one she vomited several times to carve the pit, and the one she carved the deeper on the day she didn't take the medicine."

Yang Hu's hand stopped on the table.

Why did she etch the day she didn't take her medicine so vividly into her memory?

She said her father was able to sleep well those few days.