The silence after a battle was a different creature from the silence before. It was not a held breath, but a slow, aching exhalation.
The screams had faded, the drums had ceased. Now, there was only the low groan of the wind through the valley, the murmur of tired men, and the relentless, buzzing drone of flies already gathering.
Lin Wei stood before the six fresh mounds of earth. No markers, just raw dirt. The pyres for the Jin dead had been lit downwind; these, for his medics, were buried. It was a quieter end. He knew their names. Fen, the farmer's son with the steady hands. Lao, the grizzled penal soldier who'd found a purpose in suturing. Four others. Six out of dozens saved. The system in his mind provided a cold, clean ratio:
"[Field Test Casualty Analysis: Medic Fatalities: 6. Estimated Soldier Lives Preserved: 87+. Net Positive: 1350% efficiency.]"
The numbers were a comfort to a general. They were ash in the mouth of a healer.
Behind him, his corps worked. There was no celebration. The victory at the valley's mouth was a strategic fact, not a feeling. They cleaned instruments in boiled water, their movements precise, automatic. They re-rolled bandages, their eyes distant.
Young Kuo, who had joked with Fen just hours before, scrubbed at a stain on a leather apron with a ferocity that spoke of tears he wouldn't shed. Ox Li stood like a carved guardian at the supply tent's entrance, his left arm bandaged where a Jin axe had bitten through the leather. The rage that had fueled his counter-charge was gone, replaced by a deeper, more dangerous silence.
The summons came as the sun began to dip. The messenger was not one of Commander Xin's men. This rider wore the stark, unadorned uniform of the Generalissimo's personal guard. His face was impassive, his bearing rigid. "The Generalissimo requests the presence of the Surgeon-General. Immediately."
The walk to Yue Fei's command tent was a journey through a different army. Here, the discipline was absolute, the silence profound.
The guards at the tent flap did not look at Lin Wei; they looked through him, their eyes fixed on some middle distance. Inside, the space was spare, functional. A map of the northern frontier dominated one wall. Yue Fei stood before it, not as a man studying a puzzle, but as a force contemplating its field of influence.
He did not turn. "Your report," he said, the word not a request but an expectation.
Lin Wei gave it, stripped of all emotion. The numbers of treated. The return-to-duty estimate. The six dead. The targeting of the red armbands.
Yue Fei was silent for a long moment, his gaze tracing a river on the map. "My vanguard commander reports his men fought with the tenacity of those who believe death is optional," he said finally, his voice low. "He credits your corps. You have altered the calculus of the engagement. You have made the preservation of my soldiers a tactical variable for the enemy. They must now spend arrows on healers instead of killers. This is to our advantage."
He turned then, and his eyes, those chips of flint, fixed on Lin Wei. "But you have also given them a new target. A strategic one. The Jin are not blind. They see a limb, they strike it. You are no longer a physician. You are a corps commander. Your medics are not healers. They are a high-value asset. The next battle will not be harder. It will be different. They will have devised a counter." He paused. "Can you evolve faster than they can adapt?"
Before Lin Wei could answer, Yue Fei gave a minute nod, as if confirming something to himself. "You will have what you need. See my quartermaster. Do not make a request. Present a requirement. The scale of your need is the scale of your success. Dismissed."
The audience was over. It was not praise. It was an allocation of resources, no different from assigning more spears or arrows. Lin Wei was a weapon that had proven effective, and was thus to be supplied.
Returning to his compound, the weight of scale descended upon him. What he needed. He needed trainers, supplies, standardized kits, a recruitment pipeline. He needed to build an institution from the bones of a battlefield experiment. The directive
"[Evolve the System]" pulsed in his mind, a demand without a blueprint.
The political attack came not with a shout, but with a rustle of silk. The next morning, two men arrived. They were not soldiers. They wore the dark, elegant robes of civil officials from the Ministry of War. Their hands were clean, their smiles thin.
"Surgeon-General Lin," the older one said, his voice smooth as oil. "We bring greetings from the Imperial Medical Bureau in Lin'an. Your… innovations… have caused quite a stir. The learned physicians are most intrigued."
The younger one, holding a scroll case, spoke. "Intrigued, and concerned. The treatments you employ, these… rapid interventions… they lack the philosophical foundation of the Inner Canon. The balance of Yin and Yang, the flow of Qi—these are not considerations in your… process." The word was a sneer. "The Bureau seeks clarification. By what authority do you deviate from established medical canon? And these 'medics' you are training—without the classical education, how can they be certified? How can they receive imperial pay, or pensions for their families?"
It was a masterstroke. They weren't attacking his results; they were attacking his legitimacy. They would strangle his corps with paperwork, starve it of official recognition, and leave his men as unpaid, illegitimate volunteers. Sly Liu, lurking at the edge of the conversation, heard the unspoken threat: We will bury you in bureaucracy.
As Lin Wei warred with this political siege, a different kind of problem was dragged into the camp. Scouts brought a shivering, half-starved Jin straggler, a camp follower with the rough hands of a bone-setter. Under Ox Li's unwavering glare and the promise of food, the man's story spilled out.
"The orders came down after the last fight," the man whispered, his eyes darting. "The red bands. The men who save the others. New orders: capture, if you can. The generals want to know their secrets." He swallowed. "But the artillery captains… they have different orders. For the next battle. They are to load the fire pots and the incendiary arrows not for the front lines, but for the rear. For the places where the red bands gather the wounded. 'Burn the nest,' they say. 'Burn the nest and the bees will die.'"
The air left the tent. The political sabotage was a poison. This was a knife to the throat. The Jin weren't just aiming for the medics anymore. They were aiming for the system itself—the aid stations, the supplies, the wounded concentrated in one place. They sought to turn Lin Wei's greatest strength—organized, centralized care—into his greatest vulnerability.
That night, Lin Wei gathered his core team: Ox Li, a statue of simmering rage; Sly Liu, his eyes calculating; Scholar Zhang, his face pale.
"The war has changed," Lin Wei said, his voice flat. "We are not just healers. We are the enemy's primary target. Our methods work, so they will try to destroy the method."
He issued new orders, his mind cold, the system offering logistical solutions to a tactical nightmare.
"The red armbands are gone. From now on, medics are identified by a green cord tied in a surgeon's knot on the left shoulder. Subtle. Seen only by our own."
"The large aid station is a death trap. We break it apart. We create mobile units—four medics, two stretcher-bearers, one supply carrier. They move with the companies, treat on the spot, and evacuate to hidden casualty collection points. We are ghosts. We do not gather."
"Liu. Your scavengers have a new priority. Find the Jin scouts watching us. Find their spies. I want to know what they know before they know it."
"Zhang. Draft the new manuals. Diagrams for the mobile units. Protocols for concealment. This is not just medicine anymore. This is fieldcraft."
As they dispersed to their tasks, Lin Wei looked at the directive in his mind. It had evolved once more, the text shifting to reflect the brutal new reality.
"[Primary Directive: Win the War.]"
"[Sub-Directive: Evolve the System.]"
"[Threat Assessment: Political Sabotage (Active). Strategic Annihilation (Imminent).]"
"[New Parameters: Survival = Deception + Mobility + Secrecy. Centralized Efficiency is a Vulnerability. Disperse.]"
He had won the right to exist. Now he had to learn how to exist in the crosshairs. The harvest of the dead had yielded a bitter fruit: the certain knowledge that his success had painted a target on everything he built. The only way forward was to become too diffuse, too adaptable, too hidden to burn.