Shentu Yang was wildly defiant by nature, and ever since he led eight hundred brave warriors to crush the Xiongnu, he had been completely unstoppable, winning every battle he fought. How could a man like him tolerate a tiny, insignificant country like Goguryeo mobilizing a hundred thousand troops to raid his borders and then getting away scot-free? Never mind the tens of thousands of Goguryeo soldiers already lying dead outside Liaoyang County.

By leading fifty thousand elite cavalry on a deep march into Goguryeo this time, he not only wanted to teach a lesson to the barbarians who dared invade the borders of Yan, but he also wanted to make up for every single loss his side had suffered.

Hearing his words, the fifty thousand elite soldiers who had followed Shentu Yang to crush the rebellion grew ecstatic. They immediately raised their weapons and shouted at the top of their lungs, “Whoever offends our mighty Yin, no matter how far away, will be destroyed!”

“Invaide Goguryeo!”

“Capture the King of Goguryeo alive!”

Seeing this scene, Liang Anguo, the governor of Xuantu Commandery, reported, “The reason Goguryeo gathered a massive army to launch a surprise attack on our borders is that a severe blizzard struck them this winter, freezing countless livestock to death. Furthermore, they heard that the court had just moved its capital to Jixian and that the various commanderies of Youzhou were overflowing with money and grain. That is why they mobilized a hundred thousand troops to march south and plunder…” They just never expected to suffer such a devastating blow here.

Even the governor of Xuantu Commandery could not understand why they would rush over to throw their lives away when they were already in such a pathetic state!

While everyone was talking, a crowd of white-robed messengers carrying stretchers flooded into the battlefield. They dug the severely wounded soldiers out from the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, transferring them into the city in an orderly fashion.

“Quick! Quick! Quick! Keep the ‘first five, last five’ principle firmly in mind! Clear the field before treating, prioritize the severe over the mild, the urgent over the routine, the wounded over the sick, and our own troops before the prisoners of war…”

An imperial physician from the Imperial Medical Bureau, his beard stark white, shouted instructions at the top of his lungs, “Stop the bleeding, dress the wounds, splint the fractures, transport the patient… watch the sequence and do not make a mistake!”

“This man’s intestines are spilling out, quick, bring me a bowl!” A white-robed female medical soldier moved rapidly, taking out a clean small bowl and handing it over. The female medical soldier who had spoken was quick of eye and deft of hand; she took the bowl, gently and carefully covered the soldier’s exposed intestines with it, and then bound and secured it with a triangular bandage. Only then did she signal the transport team to carry the stretcher, sending the wounded soldier into the field hospital inside the city, which had just been cleaned up and disinfected with hot water and quicklime.

A full three hundred doctors specializing in treating battlefield trauma had been standing by for a long time. The moment the wounded arrived, they immediately took their pulses and administered treatment, while trained first-aid nurses cleaned the patients’ wounds, dressed them, and brewed medicinal decoctions.

When the clear, distilled liquor was poured onto the bloody, mangled wounds, the intense pain made the wounded soldiers scream like stuck pigs: “Ahhhhhh…”

Yet some managed a flattering smile and said, “Splashing such excellent wine onto a wound is a total waste, isn’t it? Why not give me a sip instead?”

“If I can drink a mouthful of such fine wine before I die, I will die with no regrets!”

“Drink? Drink what! This is for washing your wounds and disinfecting them. It’s to save your lives!” The female medical soldier binding the soldier’s wound scolded him with a look of annoyance, “This is ‘medical alcohol,’ which the Emperor specially ordered the master craftsmen of the Palace Directorate to develop. It is precisely so the warriors of our Great Yin do not get infected after being wounded, giving you a better chance at survival. Do not let His Majesty’s painstaking care go to waste.”

The wounded soldiers had never expected that this strong liquor, which smelled incredibly potent, would actually be a life-saving tool developed by the Palace Directorate on the Emperor’s orders. Could fine wine really save lives?

Whether it could save lives was still up in the air, but either way, the soldiers in the field hospital who loved to drink were already salivating from the scent of alcohol filling the air!

“Medical alcohol,” the very essence of wine it sounded absolutely delicious just from the name. Unfortunately, the medical soldiers of the team refused to give them even a single sip.

“No matter how delicious a fine wine is, it cannot save your lives, but the ‘medical alcohol’ His Majesty ordered the Palace Directorate to develop can! Do you want to live, or do you want to drink?”

“His Majesty truly loves his people like his own children…” Looking at the young woman who had lowered her head to carefully bind his wound, a wounded soldier blurted out as if possessed, “This alcohol must be incredibly expensive, right?”

“But of course,” another young eunuch dressing a wound nearby said in a thin, shrill voice. “This alcohol is purified from fine wine. It is priceless, worth a thousand pieces of gold a jar.”

“That expensive?” The wounded soldiers listening to the gossip clicked their tongues in secret, unable to resist mocking themselves, “You shouldn’t waste such a precious item on the likes of us. We are already broken men. Rather than”

“What absolute nonsense!” Before the soldier could finish his sentence, the female medical soldier who had spoken first glared with wide, round eyes, snapping angrily, “You are all warriors of our Yin Dynasty, great heroes who protect our homes and defend our country. How can you look down on yourselves like this?”

“The Emperor said that no matter how precious this alcohol is, it is not as valuable as the lives of our Yin Dynasty boys”

Before she could finish her sentence, her voice was drowned out by the rising and falling shrieks of agony echoing throughout the field hospital. It turned out that the doctors specializing in trauma were using small knives to pare away rotting flesh before applying medicine and binding the wounds. For a time, the field hospital was filled with a chorus of ghostly wails and howling wolves. The sound carried for miles, and no one who heard it could fail to be moved.

The physician from the Imperial Medical Bureau stroked his beard and sighed with emotion, “His Majesty mentioned before that there is a miraculous medicine in the folk world called anesthetic powder, which can make patients lose all sense of pain when used. It is just a pity that the Imperial Medical Bureau has not managed to replicate it yet. If we could develop that anesthetic powder, the soldiers would not have to suffer such agony when we disinfect their wounds or scrape their bones to treat them.”

“Anesthetic powder?” Huo Quan, who had just entered the field hospital planning to visit the wounded soldiers, asked out of curiosity. “I wonder which divine physician among the common people created this prescription? We should send people to track them down and bring them to the capital.”

The physician shook his head; the Emperor had not given a name.

Shentu Yang thoughtfully noted down these words, just as he noticed the governor of Xuantu Commandery studying the field hospital with a look of utter amazement.

Liaoyang County had been fighting the invading Goguryeo forces for more than a month. To accommodate the wounded soldiers, Liang Anguo had specially allocated a massive compound to take them in.

As a high and mighty commandery governor, Liang Anguo would personally visit the field hospital to check on the wounded every time the drums sounded a retreat. In the past, the most common sights and sounds in the hospital were the agonizing wails and groans of the soldiers, accompanied by the pungent, sickening stench of blood, sweat, and waste. Liang Anguo had grown used to field hospitals that were thick with the air of despair and decay, but today was entirely different

The rooms that used to be covered in bloodstains and filth had become clean and orderly, and the foul, bloody stench had been replaced by a heavy aroma of wine. Quicklime had been sprinkled in the corners, and the underfloor heating flues in the rooms had already been lit. Rows of beds were neatly arranged on the floor, and lying upon them were wounded soldiers who had changed into clean inner garments, their wounds immaculately bound.

Listening to the energetic groans of his soldiers, the governor of Xuantu Commandery felt a wave of emotion, sensing that this field hospital seemed to possess far more vitality and life than ever before.

Shentu Yang was equally stunned by everything he saw in the field hospital. He did not say anything, but simply observed the clean, orderly, and vibrant hospital with a thoughtful expression. Looking at the soldiers who were clearly covered in wounds but could still find the spirit to laugh and joke with the medical staff, Shentu Yang seemed to understand at this very moment why the Emperor had insisted on making him bring the wartime emergency medical team along to the battlefield.

Emergency medical care did not just heal the physical wounds of the soldiers.

Shentu Yang walked forward, carefully examining the wounded soldiers whose bandages were tied in all sorts of strange ways, and he quickly recognized the benefits of these dressing techniques. He turned his head, addressing a medical soldier who was staunching a patient’s bleeding, “Are these emergency bandaging methods hard to learn?”

The medical soldier froze upon hearing this, then shook his head with some hesitation, “They shouldn’t be considered hard, I suppose…”

What was truly hard was digging wounded soldiers out from a mountain of corpses and sea of blood; it was cradling a soldier’s spilled intestines with bare hands; it was the horrifying shock of carving out mangled, bloody flesh along with wood splinters and iron rust; it was watching helplessly as soldiers bled to death right before their eyes, failing to save them even after applying every single method to stop the bleeding…

“Since it isn’t hard, I will assign three hundred men to you tonight, and you must make sure they learn it.” Shentu Yang made a split-second decision, calling over the captain of the wartime emergency medical team. He had underestimated the role of the medical team before. Seeing them today, with these one thousand medical members saving lives on the battlefield, the army’s casualties could be cut by at least half.

In reality, when two armies clashed, the soldiers who actually died on the spot were a minority. The vast majority of people bled to death because they were wounded on the battlefield and could not receive timely treatment. The number of deaths and permanent disabilities from this actually accounted for the lion’s share of total casualties.

Now that Yin Shuhuai had trained this wartime emergency medical team, even if the force only numbered a thousand people at the moment, their appearance on the battlefield played an incalculable role in raising the survival rate of wounded and disabled soldiers. It was no exaggeration to say that their efforts could practically turn around the fates of most wounded soldiers.

This was something Shentu Yang had realized in a very tangible way.

The following morning, Shentu Yang marshaled his troops and pointed out his generals, leading fifty thousand men to advance toward Goguryeo. However, he left all one thousand wartime emergency medical soldiers behind in Xuantu Commandery.

The physician from the Imperial Medical Bureau leading the team expressed a slight disagreement, to which Shentu Yang replied, “Our march into Goguryeo is a cavalry surprise attack; it is not convenient to bring you along.”

“But if the army suffers casualties..”

“Your medical team’s horsemanship is far too poor,” Shentu Yang said. “If we bring you along, it will seriously drag down the advancing speed of the army. If any soldiers are wounded, I will do my best to send them back.”

As for those who truly could not be sent back, they could only leave things to fate.

As the saying goes, a clay pot is bound to break at the well, and a general is bound to fall in battle. From the very first day he set foot on a battlefield, Shentu Yang had already prepared himself to return home wrapped in a horsehide. Besides, when he went to visit the soldiers in the field hospital last night, he had noticed the unique methods the medical team used to stop bleeding and dress wounds, and he had already dispatched three hundred cavalrymen to learn them. If the army suffered casualties during the campaign in Goguryeo, those soldiers could dress the wounds of the others.

Furthermore, the members of the wartime emergency medical team were mostly palace maids, eunuchs, and physicians from the Imperial Medical Bureau whose physical strength left much to be desired. Setting aside their mounted archery skills and fighting capacity, just the composition of this crowd made them entirely unsuited to follow them deep into Goguryeo.

Remaining in Xuantu Commandery to care for the wounded was far more useful than following them onto the battlefield.

Pure prejudice!

When the members of the wartime emergency medical team learned that the Duke of Yan looked down on them this much, they could not help but argue back, “We followed the army all the way from the capital, rushing to reinforce Xuantu Commandery, and we rode horses the entire way. Did we ever hold the army back?”

To ensure that this wartime emergency medical team possessed high-intensity mobility, the Emperor had specially trained them in mounted archery. Paired with the new cantle saddles and double stirrups developed by the Palace Directorate, their horsemanship was second to none.

However, how could galloping at full speed through one’s own territory be the same as launching guerrilla warfare deep inside enemy lines? Shentu Yang’s mind was made up, and he simply used his military authority to overrule them.

The physician from the Imperial Medical Bureau was no match for Shentu Yang in an argument. Besides, before setting out, he had received an imperial decree from the Emperor, commanding all of them to follow the military orders of the Duke of Yan, Shentu Yang, without question on the battlefield. If anyone refused to obey, the Duke of Yan was authorized to execute them by military law.

Since things had come to this, the physician could only let out a long sigh, “We have no choice but to do so, then.”

The mature and prudent physician watched in silence as the Duke of Yan led fifty thousand elite troops deep into Goguryeo. The moment he turned around, he went straight ahead to file a secret complaint directly to the Emperor.