The Jin were gone, but the ridge was still a place of the dead. The rising sun did not bring warmth, only a pale, unforgiving light that exposed the full extent of the carnage.
The air, now still and cold, was thick with the iron-and-copper stench of old blood and the sweet, cloying smell of death beginning to bloom. Victory was not a feeling; it was a silence, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the low, exhausted sobs of men who had seen too much.
Lin Wei moved through the aftermath, his body operating on a memory of purpose. The frantic urgency of battle was gone, replaced by a grinding, soul-weary duty.
The wounds now were different. The clean, horrific gashes of steel had given way to the slow rot of infection. Men burned with fever, their skin slick and hot. Others lay too still, their eyes vacant, staring at a horror only they could see. This was the price of holding the line.
Ox Li was digging. He used a shattered shield as a shovel, his massive shoulders straining as he carved a pit from the unyielding earth. He did not speak.
With each heave of dirt, he deposited a body into the common grave, his face a mask of stone, but his eyes held a deep, weary grief. The fire that had made him a terror on the battlefield had been extinguished, quenched by the sheer volume of the dead.
Lin Wei's system provided a final, chilling audit of their triumph. The data glowed in his mind, a sterile counterpoint to the surrounding gore.
"[Post-Battle Analysis: Qiling Heights]
[7th Penal Battalion: Combat Effective Strength: 31%. Fatalities: 59%]
[5th Battalion: Combat Effective Strength: 44%. Fatalities: 52%]
[Total Combined Casualty Rate: 68%]
[Assessment: Tactical Victory. Strategic Depletion: Catastrophic.]"
They had held. But they were a shattered sword, the hilt was all that remained.
The arrival of the messenger from the main camp was a jolt. The man's horse was sleek, its coat unblemished. His uniform was clean, his boots only dusty from the road.
He held a cloth to his nose against the stench, his eyes wide with a mixture of revulsion and awe as he took in the hellscape. He presented a scroll to Captain Guo with a hand that trembled slightly.
"Commander Xin's compliments. You are to attend a debriefing at headquarters. Immediately."
The journey down from the ridge was a descent into a different world. The further they got from the heights, the more the war felt like a story. They passed supply trains, fresh troops drilling, the sounds of a functioning army.
The celebration of the victory at Xiangyang was already beginning. The contrast was a physical blow. They had been in the belly of the beast, and here, people were already singing songs about it.
The ceremony in Commander Xin's command tent was brief and devoid of pomp. The air was thick with the smell of ink and polished leather, a world away from mud and blood. Xin stood before them, his expression not proud, but analytical, like a man assessing a tool that had survived unexpected stress.
"The ridge was held," Xin stated, his voice flat and carrying. "The Jin offensive is broken. You have done your duty." He turned to Captain Guo. "Your leadership preserved the core of your battalion under impossible conditions. Effective immediately, you are promoted to Commander of the Reformed Vanguard Regiment. You will have your pick of the new recruits."
Guo saluted sharply, but his eyes were hollow. The promotion felt like an exchange for the lives of his men.
Then Xin's gaze fell on Lin Wei. It was not a look of gratitude, but of cold assessment. "The data is irrefutable," he said, as if commenting on a supply report. "The units under your medical care had a survival and return-to-duty rate four times higher than the army average. Your methods, however… unorthodox… preserve fighting strength. That is the only currency that matters on this frontier."
He paused, letting the words hang in the silent tent. "Therefore, you are hereby appointed Acting Surgeon-General of the Northern Frontier Army. Your mandate is to dissolve the existing medical corps and implement your protocols across all battalions. You will report directly to me."
The title landed not as an honor, but as a sentence. Surgeon-General. It meant authority, resources, the power to save thousands. But it also meant painting a target on his own back.
He was a convict being ordered to tear down an institution built on generations of tradition and patronage. Physician Wang's allies would not take this lying down. This was not a reward; it was Commander Xin making him the tip of the spear for a reform that would ignite a war within the army itself.
As they filed out of the tent, the atmosphere shifted. The respectful nods from soldiers were replaced by the cold, calculating stares of staff officers and court officials. He was no longer just the "convict doctor"; he was a political actor, a disruptor.
He had taken only a few steps when Clerk Zhao materialized at his elbow, his face arranged into an unctuous smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"A great honor, Surgeon-General! Truly, a meteoric rise," Zhao simpered, bowing slightly. "Such a vast new responsibility will, of course, require a significant expansion of resources. Your requisition authority is now… considerable. We must speak soon about streamlining the supply process. There are efficiencies to be found that can benefit us all."
The implication was clear as glass. Zhao saw Lin Wei's new power not as a tool for healing, but as a golden opportunity for corruption on an unprecedented scale.
Lin Wei walked away, the weight of the new title feeling heavier than any set of manacles. His fight was no longer against Jin steel and infection. It was against corruption, bureaucracy, and the entrenched pride of the entire medical establishment.
Seeking a moment of quiet, he found himself at the edge of the main camp's medical compound. Under large, clean tents, the followers of Physician Wang's traditional methods worked with a slow, ritualized pace.
He watched as a physician spent long, careful minutes reading a soldier's pulse, diagnosing an imbalance of humors, while the arrowhead still lodged in the man's leg was ignored. The resignation in the patients' eyes was palpable; death was an accepted outcome here.
He thought of the men on the ridge—the ones who lived because a tourniquet was applied in sixty seconds, because a wound was cleaned with vinegar, because someone fought for every breath.
The directive in his mind, which had for so long been the simple, desperate
"[Survive]", shimmered and evolved. New lines of text etched themselves beneath it, a colder, more complex mission statement.
"[Primary Directive: Survive.]
[New Operational Parameters Accepted.]
[Objective: Reform System. Improve Systemic Survival Rate.]
[Threat Assessment Updated: Political, Bureaucratic, Ideological.]"
Lin Wei turned his back on the slow, resigned pace of the old guards. He had survived the battle. Now, he had to survive the peace. He walked toward the empty tent that would serve as his new headquarters, ready to begin a different kind of war.