The vast parade ground was a sea of packed earth, silent and waiting. Lin Wei stood with his small team—Ox Li, Sly Liu, Scholar Zhang, and a handpicked squad of his best medics—a tiny island in the center of that immense space.
The air was cold and still, heavy with a tension thicker than the river fog on the frontier. On the raised dais opposite, a row of Yue Fei's senior staff sat in stern judgment, their faces carved from the same unyielding stone. They were the elite of the Song war machine, and their gazes were like scalpels, dissecting every twitch, every breath.
Then, without fanfare, the air in the courtyard changed.
It was not a sound, but a shift in pressure, as if the atmosphere itself had drawn a breath and held it. The officers on the dais, who had been murmuring among themselves, fell utterly silent, their postures snapping to a rigid, respectful attention. A man emerged from the shadows of the command pavilion and walked to the central seat.
He was not exceptionally tall, but he was built on a different scale from other men. His shoulders were impossibly broad, stretching the dark fabric of his commander's tunic, and his chest was a barrel of muscle and bone.
He moved with a predator's vibe, each step deliberate and balanced, the gait of a man who had spent a lifetime in the saddle and in heavy armor. His face was broad and square, with a strong, uncompromising jaw. But it was his eyes that captured and held the light.
They were set deep under a strong brow, and they did not merely see; they assessed, calculated, and weighed the soul of everything they fell upon. This was not the bloated arrogance of a court general; this was the focused, patient intensity of a tiger watching from the edge of the forest. This was Yue Fei.
Lin Wei felt the legend solidify into terrifying reality. This was the man whose mother had supposedly etched loyalty into his very skin. The Iron-Faced General. The undefeated patriot. The living symbol of the Song resistance. The weight of that presence was a physical force, pressing down on Lin Wei's shoulders. The system in his mind, usually a stream of data, offered a single, stark assessment:
"[Subject: Yue Fei. Threat Level: Unquantifiable. Authority: Absolute.]"
Yue Fei did not speak. He simply nodded, a minute dip of his chin, and the demonstration began.
The challenges were orchestrated by the Chief Physician of the headquarters, a man named An, whose silken robes and long, manicured nails spoke of a life in courts, not camps.
He was every bit the elite, his movements precise, his knowledge encyclopedic. He was not a fool; he was the guardian of an ancient, revered tradition.
The first test involved a goat, its hind leg sliced to simulate a catastrophic arterial bleed. Physician An's junior physicians moved with calm expertise, diagnosing the "imbalance of humors" and applying a poultice. The bleeding stopped. It was effective, clean, and had taken nearly three minutes. Lin Wei's team moved next. They didn't diagnose. They applied a tourniquet. The bleeding stopped in fifteen seconds. The contrast was not between failure and success, but between deliberation and speed.
The second test was a group of a dozen "wounded" soldiers. Physician An's team began a methodical, individual assessment, prioritizing based on the perceived severity of the "qi" disruption.
Lin Wei's medics swarmed the group. They tagged each man with colored cords in seconds and treated them in order of physiological severity. In the time it took the traditionalists to assess three men, Lin Wei's team had stabilized the entire group. They had treated a crowd, not a series of individuals.
The final challenge was a real soldier with a festering arrow wound, the stench of rot carrying on the air. Physician An approached the dais. "General, this is a classic case of corrupted damp-heat. It requires a poultice for three days to draw out the evil." Lin Wei stepped forward. He looked at Yue Fei. "With respect, General, the poison is not in his meridians. It is in the wound. It is rotting flesh."
Without waiting for permission, Lin Wei nodded to his medics. They held the soldier down. Lin Wei took a scalpel, heated the blade in a flame, and with a series of brutal, precise cuts, scraped the dead, infected tissue from the wound.
The soldier screamed. The men on the dais recoiled. Physician An looked away, his face a mask of disgust. When it was done, the wound was clean, raw, and bleeding fresh blood. Lin Wei packed it with a clean linen and poured strong wine over it. The entire, ghastly procedure took two minutes.
"This is butchery!" Physician An spat, his composure broken. "You have wounded him further! You have weakened his vital energy!"
Lin Wei stood, his hands bloody, and faced the dais. He did not raise his voice. "My method is not about balancing humors. It is about balancing a ledger. It is about how many soldiers can live to see the next battle. On the frontier, my methods have a survival rate four times higher than the traditional ones. My only tradition is survival."
A furious debate erupted on the dais, the traditional physicians arguing theory and lineage, Lin Wei standing silently, a man of blood and results amidst a storm of words.
Then, Yue Fei moved.
It was the barest shift of his weight, a slight leaning forward. The argument ceased instantly, as if cut by a knife. The silence that followed was heavier than any shout. His deep-set eyes, which had observed the entire proceeding with the same dispassionate intensity, settled on Lin Wei.
The weight of that gaze was immense. Lin Wei felt as if the Generalissimo was looking straight through his eyes and into the data streaming in his mind.
His voice, when he finally spoke, was low, calm, and carried an absolute, unanswerable authority. It was not a question of philosophy. It was a question of logistics.
"Can you scale this?"
The question hung in the air, simple and devastating. It bypassed a thousand years of medical dogma and went straight to the heart of warfare.
Lin Wei met that gaze. "The system is designed to be taught. The protocols can be standardized. The men I brought with me were convicts and farmers. They are the proof that it can be done."
Yue Fei's eyes did not waver. He turned his head slowly, looking at Physician An and the other traditionalists. His verdict was not an endorsement of Lin Wei's ideas, but a strategic calculation.
"Your methods produce wise physicians," Yue Fei stated, his tone flat, final. "His methods produce living soldiers." He paused, letting the stark truth of the statement settle over the assembly. "I have need of soldiers."
He stood. The entire dais rose with him. He looked down at Lin Wei.
"The Field Medical Corps is hereby recognized as a formal unit of the Imperial Army. Surgeon-General Lin Wei is granted full authority to recruit, train, and implement his protocols. All commands will render him every assistance." He held Lin Wei's gaze for a moment longer, and in that moment, Lin Wei saw not approval, but the immense burden of command, and a warning. "Do not make me regret this."
With that, Yue Fei turned and walked away, his retinue flowing behind him. The examination was over.
Lin Wei stood alone on the field, the cheers of his team muffled and distant. He was not elated. He was numb. He watched the retreating back of the legend, a man who carried the fate of a dynasty on his shoulders, and now, somehow, a part of that weight had been transferred to him.
The directive in his mind, which had guided him from a prison cell to this moment, shimmered and reconfigured itself. The simple, desperate imperative that had defined his existence was gone, replaced by a new, terrifying responsibility.
"[Directive: Survive]" faded, its purpose served.
In its place, a new command glowed, searing itself into his consciousness.
"[New Directive: Win the War.]"
The battle for acceptance was over. He had the mandate of a god of war. The war for the future of the Song Dynasty had truly begun, and Lin Wei was now one of its generals.