The victory over the quartermaster's depot was short-lived. Lin Wei had broken the bureaucratic siege, but a new, more insidious enemy seeped into the camp: poison on the wind, in the form of whispers.
Sly Liu brought the reports, his face unamused. "They're saying you're building a private army, Doc. That the bandages are for Jin banners, and the alcohol is for celebrating our defeat."
The rumors were grotesque, inventive, and dangerously effective. Lin Wei saw it in the sidelong glances from soldiers who had once nodded to him with respect. Trust, hard-won on the ridge, was crumbling under a torrent of lies.
Commander Xin did not summon Lin Wei to reassure him. Instead, he created a crucible. An order circulated through the camp: a full-scale, multi-battalion training exercise.
A simulated assault on a mock Jin fortification. It was meant to be grueling, a test of endurance and coordination that would inevitably produce a stream of injuries—sprains, fractures, exhaustion, minor wounds.
For Lin Wei, it was a battlefield as deliberate as Qiling Ridge. For the old guard, led by the insufferable Physician An, it was an arena. An set up a traditional field hospital in a central location, complete with banners and a team of apprentices ready to diagnose imbalances of humors. They awaited their patients with an air of academic superiority.
Lin Wei saw their mistake immediately. They planned to be reactive, to fix broken men. He would be proactive; he would prevent them from breaking.
On the morning of the exercise, as thousands of soldiers assembled on the plain, Lin Wei deployed his corps not as a single unit, but as a network. He embedded his medics in small teams directly within the exercising battalions. Their order was simple: "Stay with your unit. You are part of the formation. Your duty is to maintain its fighting strength."
The difference was instantaneous and visible to every man on the field. When a recruit from the Third Battalion turned an ankle during a rapid advance, he didn't have to wait to be carried to the rear. A medic was there instantly, stabilizing the joint and getting him back into the march before the battalion had even passed. When a soldier from the Ninth collapsed from the relentless sun, a two-man team was splashing water on his face and moving him to shade while the line reformed. Lin Wei's medics weren't healers waiting for the wounded; they were a force multiplier, keeping the spear tip sharp.
Physician An's central tent, by contrast, remained quiet, an island of irrelevance.
The climax came during the simulated storming of the mock fortress. Soldiers swarmed up scaling ladders against a hail of blunted arrows and dummy rocks. In the fierce, choreographed chaos, a section of the wooden scaffolding, overloaded with men, gave way with a sickening crack.
It was not part of the script. A dozen soldiers tumbled to the ground, screaming, the sound too real to be feigned. A real accident had erupted in the middle of the mock battle.
Panic surged. The exercise froze. Physician An and his team rushed from their tent, but they descended on the scene like academics confronted with a brawl.
They argued over which man to treat first, feeling for pulses, peering at tongues, diagnosing "shock to the ethereal soul" and "traumatic disruption of the shen."
Lin Wei's medics didn't diagnose. They triaged. A sharp whistle cut through the noise. The embedded teams converged, not as a disorganized mob, but as a coordinated unit.
They moved with a brutal, silent efficiency born on the ridge. A soldier with a compound fracture had a tourniquet applied and his leg splinted in under a minute. Another, pinned under a beam, was assessed, stabilized, and carefully extracted.
Lin Wei moved among them, his voice calm, his instructions crisp. "Priority one. Spinal precautions. Evacuate him now." There were no debates, only actions. It was a grisly ballet, and they were the masters of its steps.
The entire army watched, stunned into silence. They saw the old physicians' helpless deliberation. They saw Lin Wei's corps' life-saving speed. The slanderous rumors of dark rituals evaporated in the face of such pure, undeniable competence. This wasn't sorcery; it was the application of will, knowledge, and courage.
That evening, as the camp settled, Commander Xin addressed the assembled officers and senior sergeants on the parade ground. He held no scroll.
"The data from today's exercise is clear," he stated, his voice carrying in the cool air. "Units with embedded medics had a return-to-duty rate of nine out of ten men for minor injuries. The rate for those relying on the central facility was four out of ten. During the structural failure, twelve men sustained critical injuries. All twelve were stabilized and evacuated by Surgeon-General Lin's corps. There were zero fatalities."
He paused, his gaze sweeping the crowd, letting the numbers speak for themselves. They were more powerful than any denunciation.
"Effective immediately," Xin continued, "the experimental unit is formally recognized as the 1st Field Medical Corps, a permanent division of this army. Surgeon-General Lin Wei is granted full authority to implement his protocols camp-wide and is authorized to recruit volunteers from any battalion. Any resistance towards his orders in this aspect will be counted as insubordination"
There was no applause. Only a deep, collective exhalation, a silent acknowledgment of a truth they had all witnessed. The debate was over.
Lin Wei stood alone as the crowd dispersed. The directive in his mind,
"[Reform System]", glowed with a steady, satisfied light. He had not just won a argument; he had demonstrated an irrefutable truth.
He had earned his place not by title, but by merit. The internal war was won. As he looked towards the darkening northern horizon, he knew the next battle would not be against whispers and paper, but against steel and fire. And for the first time, he felt his army was truly ready.