Chapter 38
Before the morning mist had even dissipated, Su Zhelan stepped through the frosty gravel and entered the military camp's medical tent.
The canvas tent swelled in the cold wind, and the stench of blood mixed with the bitter smell of inferior herbs made his throat tighten—the smell was ten times stronger than that in the pharmacy, carrying the savagery and haste unique to the battlefield.
A wounded soldier lay on a haystack against the wall, his right leg deformed from a blunt object, bone piercing through flesh and sticking out, blood dripping from his trouser leg into the mud. In a corner, three burned cooks groaned in pain, their charred flesh clinging to their tattered clothes, ready to fall off at the slightest touch. Most distressing was a scout on a wooden plank in the center, a caltrop embedded in his collarbone, its barbs hooking at his tendons, pulling at his flesh with every breath, causing him to turn purple with pain.
A military doctor in a gray cloth coat was rinsing barbed wire with strong liquor. Gu Linzhao squatted beside a stone mortar, grinding medicine. The pestle pounded against the ground with a "thud," and sweat mixed with dust streamed down his forehead—he had barely slept a wink last night after receiving this batch of wounded soldiers who had retreated from the front lines.
"New here?" The doctor glanced up at Su Zhelan, his tone impatient. "Treat the burns first, or the flesh will rot if you delay any longer." He clearly didn't take this thin-looking boy seriously.
Su Zhelan didn't respond, but her fingertips paused as she opened the medicine box. Burns, blunt force injuries, caltrops—these injuries were more severe than those she had seen in the pharmacy, and their treatment required more skill.
He took a deep breath, first taking a boiled linen cloth, dipping it in a prepared Coptis chinensis water solution, and gently wiping the charred skin from the burn. His movements were extremely light, as if afraid of shattering glass, until the reddish new flesh underneath was exposed, before sprinkling on a skin-regenerating powder mixed with pearl powder.
"Bear with it," he whispered to the cook who was in the most pain, while lighting a moxa stick and holding it a few inches above the wound to warm it.
As the smoke from the mugwort swirled, the cook's convulsing body gradually calmed down, and his groans subsided.
The doctor, who was treating the barbed wire, stopped when he saw this. The young man's method of using moxa sticks for pain relief was very special. The moxa ash, when placed on the wound, did not burn the area but instead brought a strange warmth, which was much more effective than the strong liquor he used.
After treating the burns, Su Zhelan turned and walked towards the wounded soldier with the broken leg. The leg bone was severely dislocated, and the joint was swollen like a steamed bun.
Instead of acting directly, he first rubbed the wound with a slice of ginger, then took three silver needles and quickly inserted them into the "Huantiao" and "Weizhong" acupoints. As he twisted them, the wounded soldier's tense muscles gradually relaxed.
"Relax." He pressed down on the wounded soldier's knee, and taking advantage of the moment when the soldier was distracted, he suddenly pushed and twisted with both hands—a soft "click" was heard, the dislocated bone was put back in place, the wounded soldier groaned, but the cold sweat on his forehead was reduced by more than half.
“Use this.” Su Zhelan took out an oil paper packet from his medicine box. Inside was dried elderberry powder, mixed with yellow wine to form a paste. “Apply it and fix it with a wooden board. Change it every three days.” This was a method he had figured out in the mountains and forests when he was traveling as a doctor. Elderberry’s toughness was more suitable for fixing broken bones than ordinary herbs.
The doctor had put down the barbed wire he was holding and came over to watch Su Zhelan treat it. The barbs were deeply embedded, but Su Zhelan didn't pull them out directly. Instead, he first used a small scalpel to cut half an inch of skin along the tip of the barb, then used tweezers to locate the base of the barb, and with a sudden tug as the wounded soldier gasped for air, he pulled it out completely—the bloody barbed wire was pulled out intact. He immediately sprinkled on some hemostatic "blood powder" and quickly sutured it with burnt thread. The stitches were so dense they looked like a spider web, yet hardly any blood seeped out.
Just as Su Zhelan finished wrapping the last piece of bandage, she heard a sneer from the corner of the tent—it was the old physician Wen Anke, who was washing the broken arrow with strong liquor, the blood in the copper basin foaming. "Kid, who are you trying to impress with all that stitching? There's no time for embroidery on the battlefield."
Su Zhelan's fingertips paused on the wounded soldier's elbow, the silver needles piercing the flesh without stopping, her voice calm: "The denser the stitches, the less likely it is to leave a scar after healing, and the less likely it is to be infected by the Gu poison."
Wen Anke snorted and threw the broken arrow onto the table, the iron arrowhead clanging against the porcelain bottle: "A scar? We should be grateful to have crawled back from that hellhole alive, who cares what the scar looks like?"
He glanced at the wound that Su Zhelan had just treated; the stitches were so fine they looked like a spider web, standing out starkly against the bloody mess. "Back in the Southern Frontier, when I encountered the cult's 'Gu poison,' cutting away the rotten flesh with a single stroke was far more effective than anything else. Why would I need your slow and tedious method?"
The other two old physicians in the tent nodded in agreement. Fu Zhi, who was branding the arrow wound with a hot iron, clicked his tongue and said, "Wen Anke is right. You are young and probably haven't seen how powerful the evil Gu is."
Su Zhelan didn't argue anymore. He simply threw the used silver needle into the boiling water. As the white steam rose, he saw his reflection in the water—thin, yet with an unyielding spirit.
He recalled Su Yan's words before he left: "There is no new or old in medicine; any method that can save lives is a good method."
The wind outside the tent whipped up sand and gravel that rustled against the canvas.
As the sun climbed to the top of the tent, the stench of blood in the medical tent finally faded, replaced by the bitter fragrance of herbs.
Su Zhelan had just finished treating the third wounded soldier afflicted by the Gu poison. When she pulled out the silver needle, it brought with it a thin wisp of black blood. The cook's convulsing limbs finally calmed down, and the black foam at the corner of his mouth gradually solidified.
He straightened up, the old injury on his right leg aggravated by the movement—from dawn to noon, he had barely moved, his knees were marked with red welts from kneeling on the grass mat, his fingertips were stained green by herbs, and even his breath carried the astringent taste of atractylodes and realgar.
"Take a break." Gu Linzhao walked over with a bowl of brown rice, some medicine residue still stuck to the rim of the bowl. "The army doctor had the cook make purslane soup, you need to have something to eat."
Su Zhelan shook her head, her gaze sweeping over the young soldiers who had just been carried in from the corner.
The child was only fifteen or sixteen years old, with half an arrow protruding from his chest, the arrowhead piercing his shoulder blade, his breathing as faint as a candle flickering in the wind. The most troublesome thing was that the strips of cloth wrapped around the arrow shaft had an eerie purplish-black hue, with a few shriveled insect eggs stuck to the edges—a special "poison" made by a cult, which would come to life upon contact with blood and could corrode through the heart in half an hour.
"This arrow cannot be pulled out." Su Zhelan's voice was a little hoarse. She walked over quickly, and as soon as her fingertips touched the arrow fletching, the young soldier suddenly convulsed. Several blue lines instantly bulged under his skin, as if insects were crawling under his skin.
Wen Anke was the first to rush forward, taking out the realgar powder he carried with him and sprinkling it on the wound. But the black threads not only did not recede, but instead, like an enraged snake, they darted even faster.
The child let out a heart-wrenching scream, his whole body convulsing, "It feels like there are worms gnawing at my bones!"
Fu Zhi raised the red-hot branding iron, ready to press it down, "Burn it to death!"
“Do not puncture the ‘heart’ point, as the parasites will burrow into the heart when exposed to cold.”
Su Zhelan pulled out a small porcelain bottle from his medicine box. Inside was a dark red ointment, which he had made by boiling cinnabar, arsenic, and aged mugwort into a "Gu-repelling ointment." The smell was so strong it was pungent. "You have to apply this first to force the Gu worms to retreat towards the arrow shaft."
He used a silver spoon to scoop out the ointment and carefully applied it around the arrow fletching. When his fingertips touched the boy's burning skin, the boy's teeth chattered in pain, but he bit his lip tightly and didn't make a sound.
Thin white smoke rose from where the ointment touched the skin, and sure enough, the blue lines under the boy soldier's skin began to wriggle towards the arrow shaft, moving as slowly as a snail.
"How long will it take?" Gu Linzhao stared at the blue line, his tone tinged with urgency.
"At least 35 minutes." Su Zhelan's fingertips remained pressed against the edge of the ointment, not daring to move them away even slightly. "We can't stop halfway, otherwise the Gu worms will retaliate."
The midday sun was the strongest, and the tent felt like a steamer.
Sweat beaded on Su Zhelan's forehead, dripping onto the young soldier's clothes, but he was oblivious, his eyes fixed on the slowly moving blue line.
The wounded soldiers beside him stopped crying out in pain and watched this bizarre scene with bated breath—the young doctor was not old, but his eyes were harder than the sand outside the tent, as if he was holding not ointment, but a life-saving talisman.
Fifteen minutes later, as the last bit of blue thread pierced the arrow shaft, Su Zhelan suddenly drew her dagger, ran it along the edge of the fletching, and simultaneously used tweezers to precisely grasp the arrow's fletching. Taking advantage of the moment the young soldier inhaled, she yanked it out! Sure enough, several hair-thin black worms were still wriggling and struggling on the bloodied arrow shaft.
"Fire basin!" Su Zhelan shouted, and the physician handed him a red-hot branding iron. Without hesitation, he pressed the arrow shaft onto the iron, and with a "sizzle," the black insect instantly curled into a charred ball, filling the tent with a burnt smell.
The young soldier coughed up blood, but opened his eyes and weakly said, "Thank...thank you."
Su Zhelan breathed a sigh of relief, but when she straightened up, she felt dizzy, and the pain in her right leg shot up her spine.
"Not bad." The chief medical officer wiped the blood from his hands with a cloth, a rare hint of approval in his eyes.
Su Zhelan took a bite of the biscuit, and crumbs fell onto his clothes. A cold wind seeped in through the gaps in the tent, making his neck stiff, but he didn't feel cold.
Su Zhelan's gaze swept over the mess inside the tent: overturned medicine bowls left dark brown stains on the muddy ground, blood-stained burlap was scattered all over the ground, and several young auxiliary soldiers huddled in a corner, their eyes filled with fear as they looked at the wounded soldiers poisoned by Gu.
Last night he had anticipated the difficulties, but he did not expect the injuries in the military camp to be so severe—without a gradual adaptation, he was immediately faced with a brutal and bloody battle.
He took a deep breath, a chill creeping up his boots. But when his gaze fell on the soldier most severely wounded by the caltrops, that hesitation vanished instantly. The soldier's collarbone wound was still bleeding, but he was breathing steadily and no longer convulsing in pain as he had when he arrived.
Su Zhelan suddenly understood that the hardships here were never meant to be retreated from. He lowered his head and opened his medicine box. The silver needles gleamed coldly in the morning light, as if echoing his thoughts at that moment: the harder it is, the more you must persevere. Only by calming these wounded soldiers down, only by keeping his hands busy, could he suppress the surging guilt and leave his own footprints in this mess.
He grabbed a handful of dried "bone-chasing grass," and the moment he crushed the herb with his fingertips, a bitter aroma filled the air, masking the stench of blood in the tent. This scent was more authentic than the incense at the Shuyu Academy, and more reassuring than any promise—here, every wound treated, every wounded soldier stabilized, was like laying another brick on the path to atonement.
Thinking it over, Su Zhelan grabbed a piece of rough bread and stuffed it into her mouth. The bread crumbs mixed with the astringent taste of purslane soup melted on her tongue, and she swallowed it after only a couple of chews.
The chief medical officer pointed to the newly arrived stretchers outside the tent and said in a low voice, "Three of them have been sent from the western outpost. They say they've been afflicted by 'Gu' (a type of poison), and black blood is oozing from their bones. Go and take a look."
Su Zhelan grabbed the medicine box and walked out. Her old injury on her right leg was aching, but she didn't slow down her pace.
The sand and gravel outside the canvas were scorching hot from the sun, burning the soles of the boots.
Three wounded soldiers lay on makeshift straw mats, their trouser legs soaked in blood, their bare calves covered with spiderweb-like black patterns. The slightest touch would elicit a painful hiss—it was the Bone-Eating Gu gnawing at their bone marrow, and ordinary herbs were simply no match for it.
“Use this.” Su Zhelan pulled out a ceramic jar from the bottom of the medicine box. Inside was a strong liquor containing centipedes and realgar, with a pungent smell. He poured out half a bowl, pierced the wounded soldier’s “Yanglingquan” acupoint with a silver needle, and dripped the liquor into the acupoint.
The black stripes shrank instantly upon contact with the alcohol, but quickly spread out again, becoming even more ferocious than before.
"It's no use!" The auxiliary soldier next to him stamped his foot in frustration. "We used three basins of realgar water before, but it only made it worse!"
Su Zhelan didn't speak, but pressed her fingertip three inches above the wounded soldier's knee. There was a hard lump under the skin there, where Gu worms had gathered.
"Here." He drew his short knife, heated it over a fire, and swiftly slashed a cross-shaped wound. Black blood gushed out instantly, carrying a putrid stench. Immediately afterward, he burned the dried "Gu-expelling vine" to ashes, mixed it with honey to form a paste, and pressed it firmly onto the wound.
"Hold him down, don't let go for half an hour," Su Zhelan instructed the auxiliary soldier, then turned to treat the next wounded soldier.
By the time he finished treating the third wounded soldier, the sun had already tilted to the west side of the tent, casting long shadows.
When Su Zhelan straightened up, the muscles in his lower back felt like they had been twisted into a pretzel. He held onto the stretcher and caught his breath, only to see Fu Zhi squatting beside him, applying the remaining ash from the exorcising vine to the wound of another wounded soldier. His movements were clumsy but earnest.
"This thing... is it really more effective than a soldering iron?" Fu Zhi didn't even look up, his voice no longer carrying the sarcasm he had before.
Su Zhelan nodded, picked up a piece of unfinished pancake, and then noticed that her fingertips were wrinkled and had an abnormal red color from being soaked in medicinal wine.
The evening breeze finally brought a touch of coolness, making the canvas tent rustle.
Most of the wounded soldiers inside the tent were asleep, their breathing much more even, with only occasional low groans coming from the corners.
Su Zhelan was sitting on the medicine box, wiping the blood off her hands with a cloth, when the military doctor walked over, carrying an oiled paper package.
"Here you go." Inside the oil paper package were two wheat cakes, still warm. "The kitchen added extra sesame seeds."
Su Zhelan was stunned for a moment. When she took the paper, her fingertips touched the warm paper, and the tension in her heart suddenly eased.
"Your method of 'drawing Gu' was personally taught to you by Su Yan?" The chief medical officer squatted opposite him, looking at the deepening twilight outside the tent.
Su Zhelan took a bite of the cake; the aroma of sesame mixed with the bitterness of herbs, yet she didn't find it unpleasant. "Master said that even Gu worms are afraid of being 'compliant'; forcibly killing them only forces them to burrow into their hearts."
"Okay." The chief medical officer responded, then suddenly stood up. "You'll be on night duty tonight. There's charcoal in the tent, so don't get cold."
When Su Zhelan looked up, she saw Fu Zhi boil his silver needles in boiling water and let them air dry on a clean wooden board. Li Shuyang, on the other hand, put the remaining "Gu-curing ointment" into his medical kit, his movements as natural as if he were packing his own things.
The auxiliary soldiers brought over hot water and whispered, "Doctor, soaking your feet in hot water will ease the pain."
The sand outside the tent was whitened by the moonlight, and the wind carried in the distant sound of horns, bringing with it the desolation unique to the frontier.
Su Zhelan dipped his feet into the hot water, the warmth creeping up his ankles and dispelling some of his fatigue. He gazed at the rising and falling breaths inside the tent; this tent, filled with the smells of blood and medicine, felt more reassuring than the incense at Shuyu Courtyard.
It turns out that being accepted is not about trying to please someone to gain their favor, but about earning a place for yourself through hard work and perseverance amidst fierce competition.
He looked down at his wrinkled fingertips, still stained with the ash of the exorcising vine, yet they brought him more peace of mind than any treasure—these hands could both save lives and atone for sins.
As night deepened, the embers of the charcoal fire flickered in the corner, illuminating Su Zhelan's young yet composed face.
He knew this was just the beginning, and the tough battles in the military camp were yet to come, but at this moment, his hand holding the silver needles was more steady than ever before.
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