The world returned in fragments.
Smoke... Groans.... The stink of rot and iron.
Shen Liang's eyes fluttered open to canvas above him, ragged and patched, the kind of tent that spoke more of desperation than preparation. His body ached in waves, every breath a reminder of the stitches he had driven through his own flesh.
He tried to sit, but pain ripped across his side. A hand pressed him back.
"Don't move, Doctor."
It was the young archer, the boy whose bow had steadied when all else faltered. His face was smeared with grime, but his eyes held something new: respect. "You will tear the wound open again."
Shen Liang glanced around, checking the place. The tent was crowded. Wounded soldiers lay in rows, groaning, whimpering, some already beyond saving. Crude bandages stained dark with blood were the only thing keeping death at bay. The air was thick with fever and despair.
This was a battlefield triage camp. Primitive and inadequate. Yet, somehow… alive.
"How long?" Shen Liang rasped.
"Half a day since you fell." The boy's voice cracked. "We thought you were dead, but… You kept breathing."
The System stirred, clinical and unfeeling:
{ Host stabilized. Survival window extended, contingent on wound management and rest. External conditions: deteriorating. Medical intervention is required for 68% of the camp population. }
Shen Liang exhaled slowly, forcing himself upright despite the flare of pain. His gaze swept over the wounded, who had shattered limbs, seeping bellies, and crushed chests.
There were too many. Far too many....
The boy frowned, worried. "Doctor, you should rest."
Shen Liang's lips tightened. "Rest while men bleed? Impossible..... I need to work.."
He reached for a bloodied satchel at his side, filled with scavenged scraps of linen, bone needles, and fragments of steel filed into surgical tools. He began to sort them with steady hands.
The archer watched, wide-eyed. "You are going to… treat them? All of them?"
Shen Liang met his gaze, eyes dark but unwavering. "As many as I can. One life at a time. That is how you win battles the sword cannot."
The flap of the tent lifted. A cluster of surviving soldiers entered, battered, faces hollow with exhaustion. Their eyes found Shen Liang instantly, and one by one, they dropped to a knee.
"Commander…" one of them murmured. "Tell us what to do."
Shen Liang froze. He had never worn armor as a general, never commanded armies in his own world. Yet here, among the wounded and dying, his word had carried men through the night.
The System whispered again:
{ Command authority accepted. Survival probability of allied forces increases with continued leadership. }
Shen Liang's jaw clenched. He was no general. He was a surgeon. But perhaps in this world, the two were no longer so different.
"General Shen... What do we do?"
General.... The title sat strangely in Shen Liang's ears, but there was no time to protest. His gaze swept the camp. He counted blood-soaked bandages, fevered faces, wounds wrapped wrong, or not at all. They were losing more men here than in the fight.
"Water," Shen Liang rasped. "And clean cloth. Whatever can be boiled."
The soldier scrambled. Shen Liang staggered forward, swallowing the fire tearing through his gut. Later. His pain could wait.
He crouched beside the first man, a spearman whose arm had been wrapped so tightly in a filthy bandage that the flesh below had turned a mottled gray-black, swollen and lifeless.
"Cut this off," Shen Liang ordered, pointing at the makeshift tourniquet.
The attendant balked, knife trembling in his hands. "But… if we loosen it, he'll bleed out. If we cut it off, he'll lose the arm!"
"He has already lost it," Shen Liang snapped, voice sharper than the blade. "Keep that binding and the rot will spread to his heart. He'll be dead before dawn."
The man paled but obeyed. The cloth fell away, and the stench hit them like a blow, sour, gangrenous, a perfume of death clawing at the air. The spearman groaned weakly, his skin clammy.
"Archer. Hold him."
The boy scrambled closer, pinning the soldier's shoulders while Shen Liang dug into his satchel. Bone needles, a length of sinew thread, a fragment of steel ground thin against stone. Tools no surgeon should ever use, but that was all he had.
He pressed his palm against the ruined arm, mapping where to cut as his jaw clenched. "No clean saw. We'll have to do this the old way."
The attendant heavily swallowed. "The old way…?"
"By hand."
Shen Liang steadied his breath, then drew the dagger across the flesh just above the rot. Blood welled instantly, hot and bright. The soldier screamed, body thrashing, until the archer locked his grip tighter.
"Bite down on this," Shen Liang ordered, shoving a strip of leather between the man's teeth. "Or you'll shatter them."
He cut deep, swift, peeling back muscle. His hands did not falter. He had performed amputations before, back in sterile rooms of gleaming white and anesthesia, but here, there was no gas, no monitors. Only his own speed, and the thin line between agony and mercy.
The dagger reached bone. He glanced at the attendant. "Break it."
The man stared, horrified.
"Now!"
The attendant braced the limb, pushed, and twisted. There was a sickening snap and the soldier convulsed once, then went limp, mercifully unconscious.
Shen Liang worked fast, cauterizing the stump with a heated blade pulled from the campfire, the hiss of burning flesh rising like incense. The smell was revolting, but the bleeding slowed. He threaded sinew into the needle, closing what tissue he could. It was crude, ugly, but it would hold.
The boy's face was completely ashen. "Will… he live?"
Shen Liang tied the last knot, cutting it with his teeth. His hands were slick with blood. "He has a chance and that's if the fever doesn't take him. But he has a chance."
He rose, swaying, and moved to the next.
A man with a punctured belly, intestines spilling from a ragged wound. The attendants shrank back.
"Too late," one whispered.
"Not yet." Shen Liang knelt, forcing the loops of intestine gently back into place with blood-slick fingers. The soldier screamed awake, eyes bulging. Shen Liang gritted his teeth. "Hold him in place..."
He rinsed the wound with boiled water, ignoring the boy's gagging at the mess. He stitched flesh to flesh, layer by layer, in a pattern so practiced it was almost mechanical. The man's screams rattled the tent.
When it was done, Shen Liang pressed his bloodied hand to the man's forehead. His voice softened, just for a moment. "Don't waste it.... Breathe.... Keep breathing."
He moved on again to the next patient. These were shattered legs. Arrow shafts buried deep in ribs. Infections are already crawling under the skin. Each patient was another calculation... who could be saved, and who would die no matter what.
Hours bled away. His hands never stopped. His body screamed with every movement, stitches tearing in his own side, but he ignored it.
At some point, the archer whispered hoarsely, "Doctor… you're bleeding worse than them."
Shen Liang didn't look up. His dagger scraped against bone, carving out a splintered arrowhead. "I'll rest when the last man who can be saved is breathing and not before that!"
The System stirred again, voice cold as steel:
{ Host efficiency increasing. Mortality rate of treated subjects reduced from 87% → 41%. Leadership authority: consolidating. }
The boy's eyes shone, not with fear anymore, but with something like awe.
Around them, the soldiers who could still stand had stopped calling him "doctor" in whispers. A new word spread in the tent, quiet but heavy.
"Commander."