Three days later.
The early morning sun pierced through the morning mist.
Inside the large tent near the camp gate, the wounded soldier Wang Daniu, who had lost his left arm, opened his eyes.
Wang Daniu lay flat on his back on the straw mat, staring at the light filtering through the cracks in the tent roof for a long time.
The man raised his only remaining right hand, slowly curling his five fingers, and traced up his neck to his jaw.
In the past, just opening his mouth slightly would cause bloody fluid to seep from his swollen gums and drip down his chin into his clothes.
Today, Wang Daniu probed his mouth with his index finger, pressing the pad of his finger firmly against that row of gums.
Surprisingly, no bloody fluid spilled out!?
The sensation transmitted from his fingertip was a layer of hard blood crust. Wang Daniu withdrew his finger and examined it in the morning light filtering into the tent. It was completely clean, without even a hint of red to be found.
The wounded soldier opened his mouth and clicked his upper and lower rows of teeth together forcefully twice, making a crisp sound. The agony that had tormented him for more than half a month, making even swallowing saliva painful, had subsided.
"Daniu, do you hear the birds chirping outside?" A hoarse voice came from the corner. The veteran Li Si, who suffered from night blindness, propped himself up to sit. The veteran's spot was against the light, and usually, at this hour, his eyes could only make out a blurry dark shadow.
Li Si rubbed his eye sockets, his gaze crossing over Wang Daniu's straw bed and landing squarely on an object by the tent door. The old man pointed a trembling finger in that direction. "That broken wooden water basin, it has a chip on the edge. I see it, I can see it clearly!"
Wang Daniu rolled off the bed, not even bothering to put on his shoes, and rushed out of the tent barefoot.
A good number of people were already standing scattered around the open space of the camp.
The sick soldiers who had been rolling around and wailing on their beds just a few days ago were now gathered in twos and threes, pulling at each other's lips to inspect them.
"It's scabbed over! It really scabbed over!"
"When I got up to relieve myself last night, I could even see the wooden posts of the latrine clearly!"
A chaotic buzz of conversation passed between the felt tents. The news of their cure spread throughout the wounded soldier camp.
Several army cooks walked in through the camp gate carrying wooden buckets on shoulder poles. The buckets contained today's breakfast.
It was millet cakes mixed with a large amount of wheat bran, baked dry and hard to last longer, with a yellowish-brown surface.
The cook set down his carrying pole and tapped the edge of the bucket with a long-handled wooden spoon.
"Time to eat! Line up, one per person!"
Wang Daniu was at the front of the line, reaching out his right hand to take a millet cake.
The man looked down at the dry ration in his hand, thinking that just two days ago, taking a bite of a cake this hard would have left his teeth sore and weak. Bloody water would have mixed with the wheat bran and been swallowed into his stomach, scraping painfully against his throat.
Perhaps today would be different?
Wang Daniu raised the millet cake to his mouth, opened wide, and bit down on a thick part. His teeth cut through the crust of the cake with a cracking sound.
The wounded soldier closed his eyes, his cheeks bulging as he chewed in large mouthfuls.
The wheat bran rolled around in his mouth. No bloody fluid welled up, and no sharp pain appeared. All that remained was the slightly bitter sweetness of the grain itself.
Old Zhao, the army cook, stood by his carrying pole and watched Wang Daniu eating the cake in big bites, his eyes wide with surprise.
"Daniu, eat slowly, don't choke. Can your gums handle that?" Old Zhao called out to remind him.
Wang Daniu swallowed the cake in his mouth, grinning to reveal teeth covered in cake crumbs, and replied with a smile, "Old Zhao, look, not a single drop of blood. The Imperial Envoy's medicine is miraculous!"
Old Zhao leaned in for a closer look, clicking his tongue in wonder, then turned to shout at the people lining up behind, "Line up, everyone! There are plenty of cakes today, everyone can eat their fill!"
Wang Daniu chewed the millet cake, the wheat bran grinding against his teeth.
The man used his tongue to push the chewed crumbs toward his throat and swallowed them down.
The wounded soldier ate quickly, terrified that this was all just a dream, terrified that the agony would return in the next moment.
It wasn't until more than half the cake was in his stomach and he felt full that Wang Daniu finally believed he had truly come back to life. The man swallowed that mouthful of dry ration and opened his eyes, his eye sockets already rimmed red.
Holding the remaining half of the cake in both hands, Wang Daniu turned to face the direction of the West City Ward.
He bent his knees and knelt heavily on the yellow dirt, pressing his forehead to the ground, and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Thank you for your grace, Imperial Envoy! Wang Daniu will never forget your life-saving kindness!"
This shout spread out, drawing the attention of the people around him.
The sick soldiers holding bowls and cakes put down their food one after another, following Wang Daniu's direction, and fell to their knees in droves.
"Thank you for your life-saving kindness, Imperial Envoy!"
Lao Sun walked briskly in from outside the camp gate carrying a medicine chest.
The old military doctor walked straight to a wounded soldier on the outer edge, crouched down, and extended three fingers to feel the man's pulse.
Lao Sun closed his eyes and concentrated, carefully distinguishing the throbbing beneath his fingertips. The pulse was still somewhat weak, but the original aura of death had dissipated, replaced by a steady vitality.
Lao Sun released his hand, stood up, and walked to the next sick soldier. The old military doctor walked up to Li Si and placed his fingers on Li Si's pulse.
"Elder Sun, my eyes, I can see when it's light out, and I can see the light when it's dark too," Li Si said, tilting his head up and pointing at his own eyes.
Lao Sun withdrew his hand, stroked his beard, and said, "Your night blindness was originally caused by a deficiency of qi and blood. In the Imperial Envoy's medicinal soup, the sheep kidney fat and pits consolidated your foundation and cultivated your vitality, while the aged vinegar acted as an astringent for the medicinal properties. Now that your qi and blood are abundant, your eyes naturally became bright."
Hearing this, Li Si clasped his hands together and bowed repeatedly.
For half an hour, Lao Sun moved back and forth between the tents, checking the pulses of dozens of people.
With every person he checked, the old military doctor's expression relaxed a fraction more.
It wasn't until he confirmed that this strange illness plaguing the Zhenbei Army had been cured that Lao Sun stopped in his tracks, standing in the open space in the center of the camp.
The old man placed the medicine chest at his feet, used both hands to straighten his medical officer robes, and then, with a solemn expression, faced the direction of the West City Ward. He crossed his arms and bowed deeply, performing a grand, formal disciple's bow of the Great Qian Dynasty.
The sun rose higher and higher, and although the heat in the wounded soldier camp grew heavier.
The originally lifeless wounded soldier camp, like a dead tree greeting the spring, had completely come alive.
...
The camp was thundering with cheers, filled with the joy of surviving a catastrophe.
Yet, standing in the shadows of a high platform half a drill ground away, Xu Qinghuan watched the camp full of vibrant young men, her thoughts unknown.
Beside her, Li Sheng was about to say something, but saw that the look in Xu Qinghuan's eyes had not lightened by a single fraction.
