The first arrow struck the sentry in the throat. He fell with a wet gurgle, the alarm dying on his lips. The second arrow took the young medic, Fen's replacement, in the thigh as he scrambled for a bandage chest. Chaos, cold and silent, erupted in the hidden gully.
"Ambush! They've found us!" Ox Li's roar filled the cramped space of the Bug-Out Station—not a tent, but a shallow cave system behind a waterfall, its entrance now choked with screaming wounded and panicked medics.
Lin Wei, stitching a gut wound, didn't look up. His hands finished the suture, precise and steady. "Green cords off. Now. Ox, bottleneck the entrance. Liu, get the wounded to the rear tunnel." His voice was a calm knife through the panic. The system in his mind was a storm of alerts:
"[Location Compromised]. [Hostile Engagment Imminent]. [Egress Route: 70% viability]."
They had been so careful. No red armbands. No fixed location. The Mender Teams operated like ghosts, treating men on the move. The Bug-Out Stations were temporary, never used twice. Yet the Jin were here, not stumbling upon them, but hunting.
As Ox Li and a handful of his enforcers barricaded the cave mouth with supply crates, a memory, sharp and recent, flashed in Lin Wei's mind.
Two weeks ago.
The man from the Ministry of War was called Commissioner Deng. He had the pale, soft hands of a scribe and the unblinking eyes of a viper. He did not sit in Lin Wei's command tent; he inspected it, his fingernail tracing a line of dust on a medicine chest.
"Your requisitions are unprecedented, Surgeon-General," Deng had said, his tone neutral. "One thousand bolts of linen? Five hundred gallons of distilled spirits? The Imperial Medical Bureau finds these quantities curious. They wonder if such volume is truly for the men, or for other… enterprises."
Lin Wei had stood, feeling the walls of the tent close in tighter than any stockade. "The quantities are based on projected casualty rates for the army's current strength. The calculations are documented." He gestured to Scholar Zhang, who stood rigid with a ledger.
"Documented by your own man," Deng sniffed. "The Bureau prefers independent verification. And this new… 'covert designation' for your medical personnel. No armbands? Only these… knots?" He held up a green cord, his lip curled. "It creates confusion. It lacks proper imperial authority. It looks, to some, like you are building a private force. Loyal to you, not to the Emperor."
The accusation hung in the air, sharper than any sword. It was a political poison, slow-acting and fatal. Lin Wei had forced his voice to remain flat. "The covert designation is a tactical response to Jin targeting. Their archers shoot for the red. We remove the target."
"A tactical response," Deng echoed, making a note on a scroll. "And who approved this tactical response? Where is the order from the Bureau of Military Affairs? From the Imperial Physician? You operate, Surgeon-General, in a haze of your own authority. Shadows are for spies, not for healers." He had left then, taking the ledger "for review," leaving behind a chill that no stove could touch.
...
A Jin soldier, face smeared with mud, tried to push past the barricade. Ox Li's axe took him in the shoulder, not with a clean kill, but with brutal, shattering force. The man went down, screaming. The sound was terrible in the close dark.
"They're not trying to storm us," Sly Liu hissed, appearing at Lin Wei's side, a bloody dagger in his hand. "They're pinning us. I saw one of them break off, running back. He's going for their artillery."
The words turned Lin Wei's blood to ice. Artillery. The Bug-Out Station wasn't just discovered; it was targeted. This was the next step in the Jin adaptation. Not just hunting medics, but destroying the system itself.
Another memory, this one from just days ago, surfaced.
Sly Liu had come to him in the dead of night. "They're watching, Doc. Not just scouts. Someone smarter. They're not following the medics. They're following the wounded."
He'd laid out a crude map drawn in the dirt. "See? Skirmish here, at Blackwood Creek. Our boys fell back to Bug-Out Station Three. Next day, Station Three was scouted by Jin cavalry. Skirmish at the ridge, withdrawal to Station Seven. Scouts found Station Seven within hours. They're using our own wounded as bait. Letting a few bleed, then tracking the trail right to our door."
It was a trap of chilling elegance. It exploited the corps' core principle: never leave a man behind. The Jin were using their compassion as a weapon.
"We need to change the protocols again," Lin Wei had said, his mind racing. "Staggered retreats. False trails. Decoy stations."
"It will take more men. More time. Slows everything down," Ox Li had grunted.
"Slower is better than dead," Lin Wei had replied, but the directive in his mind had pulsed a warning:
"[Efficiency Degradation: 22%. Counter-Tactic: Effective.]"
Now, in the cave, with the sounds of struggle at the entrance and the certain knowledge of incoming fire, the two fronts of his war collided. The Jin were at the door. And men like Commissioner Deng were at court, whispering that he was incompetent, or worse, a traitor hoarding supplies for his own ends. If this station fell, if wounded and medics were slaughtered here, Deng would use it as proof. See? His covert methods are a failure. He gets men killed in the dark.
"We can't hold this position," Ox Li growled, shoving a crate back into place as a Jin spear thrust through the gap.
"We can't move the critically wounded in time," Lin Wei countered, his eyes sweeping the groaning men on the cave floor. The system calculated survival probabilities, a grim tally flashing behind his eyes.
"[Evacuation of critical patients: Probability of success under fire: 8%.]"
"The rear tunnel," Sly Liu urged. "It's narrow. We can bottleneck them there, buy time."
"And if they have fire arrows for the entrance?" Lin Wei asked. The memory of the Jin deserter's words echoed: 'Burn the nest.'
He made a decision. It was not the decision of a surgeon, but of a soldier in a trap. "Ox, Liu, fall back to the tunnel. Prepare a collapse. We'll bury the entrance. Carry who you can. The rest…" He looked at the wounded, at the medics with their green cords now hastily discarded. "The rest, we fight here. We make them pay blood for this hole in the ground."
It was a retreat, but a bloody-minded, defiant one. They would not be slaughtered like livestock in the dark. They would make the Jin pay for every inch.
As his men scrambled, a final, piercing memory cut through him—from just that morning.
A rider from General Yue's headquarters had arrived, bypassing Commander Xin. The message was sealed, its contents brief and devastating.
'Surgeon-General Lin,' it read. 'Commissioner Deng's preliminary report questions the allocation of 'covert' resources and suggests reassignment of your authority to the Imperial Medical Bureau for 'regularization.' Your continued independent operation is under review. Substantive results required to counter allegations of waste and secrecy. – Office of the Generalissimo.'
It was not a condemnation. It was a death sentence, delayed. 'Substantive results' on a battlefield where the enemy had learned to target his every success. The political war was no longer a cold front; it was a knife at his back, poised to strike the moment he faltered.
The first fire pot arced over the barricade, shattering against the cave roof. Burning pitch spattered, lighting up the terrified faces of the wounded. The Jin weren't coming in. They were going to bake them alive.
"NOW!" Lin Wei yelled.
Ox Li and two others slammed their shoulders into a supporting timber. With a groan of rock and a cloud of dust, the rear of the cave entrance collapsed, sealing them in semi-darkness, lit only by the growing fire. The way they had come in was gone. They were in a tomb of their own making, the Jin on the other side, the only way out a narrow, unknown tunnel.
The heat was immediate and oppressive. The air grew thick with smoke and the smell of burning hair and flesh. Lin Wei grabbed a bucket of water meant for cleaning wounds and hurled it at the spreading fire. It was a futile gesture. The directive in his mind scrolled with cold, final clarity.
"[Tactical Assessment: Bug-Out Station 5 Compromised. Loss Imminent.]"
"[Political Assessment: Hostile Mandate In Effect. Position UnTenable.]"
"[Strategic Conclusion: Two-Front War Confirmed. Survival Contingent on Strategic Victory. No Margin for Error Remaining.]"
Crouching in the stifling dark, the cries of the wounded and the crackle of fire around him, Lin Wei understood. He could not just heal, and he could not just hide. The Jin had adapted to his medicine. The court was poisoning his authority. To survive, he would have to do the one thing he had avoided since arriving in this brutal world.
He would have to not just win a battle, but win a war—on a field of politics and perception, with weapons of influence and reputation. He needed a victory so dazzling, so undeniable, that not even Commissioner Deng's whispers could touch him. The cave was collapsing. He grabbed a spear and prepared for the Jin.