The new authority grated before it ever gleamed. It wasn't proclaimed with a trumpet blast but with the thud of a shovel biting into hard-packed earth.
"Dig it deeper! Another three feet! And keep it straight, you lot, or you'll be drinking from the downstream end!"
Sergeant Bo's voice was a gravelly roar, accustomed to shouting over the din of battle. Now, it was wasted on a line of sullen, sweating soldiers from his own Fifth Battalion. They were digging a new latrine trench, far from the stream, on the direct orders of the convict, Lin Wei.
"This is the penal soldier's work, Sarge," grumbled a grizzled veteran, wiping sweat from his brow with a filthy forearm. "We're front-line. Let the Seventh do their own dirty work."
"Aye," another joined in, leaning on his shovel. "The Jin won't care how deep our shithole is when they come riding down on us."
Sergeant Bo, a man built like a brick wall with a face carved from granite, shot a dark look at Lin Wei, who stood observing a few paces away. "You heard the Captain's orders," Bo growled, his loyalty to Guo warring with his own deep-seated belief that this was a waste of his men's energy. "The physician says it'll keep the flux away."
Lin Wei met his gaze without flinching. "A soldier who dies of cholera in his own filth is just as dead as one killed by a Jin arrow," he said, his voice calm but carrying. "But he dies shamefully, and he takes his comrades with him. This trench is as important as sharpening your sword. A blunt sword can fail. Dirty water will kill."
The logic was sound, but it was a civilian's logic, and it didn't convince. The men muttered but kept digging, their resentment a tangible heat in the air.
The tension spilled over during a morning drill. A penal medic, a young man Lin Wei had trained named young Kuo, was shadowing the Fifth's spear practice, learning their movements to better anticipate injuries. A burly soldier, still smarting from the latrine duty, "accidentally" let his practice spear swing wide, the shaft cracking hard against Young Kuo's shoulder, sending him stumbling into the dirt.
A hush fell. The penal troops nearby froze. The soldiers of the Fifth looked on, some guilty, some amused.
Young Kuo clutched his shoulder, his face white with pain. But instead of crying out or retaliating, he pushed himself to his feet. He looked the burly soldier dead in the eye, his voice tight but clear. "If you swing like that in a real fight," he hissed, "you'll dislocate your own shoulder and get disemboweled by a Jin saber. Don't worry. I know how to set it when you do, but not so sure if you'll survive with your intestines out."
A few nervous chuckles escaped the Fifth Battalion ranks. It wasn't a victory, but it was a standoff. The penal medic had shown a courage that wasn't about fighting back, but about enduring. The dynamic had subtly shifted.
The real test came that afternoon during archery practice. A bowstring, frayed and old, snapped with a sound like a whip crack. The loose end lashed back across the forearm of the archer. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a cry of agony as blood welled from a deep, ugly gash that laid open the muscle down to the bone.
Panic erupted. Men crowded around their fallen comrade. Sergeant Bo pushed through, his face pale. "Get a rag! Stop the bleeding!" he barked, his battlefield medicine utterly inadequate for the pumping arterial blood.
Through the chaos, Lin Wei moved with a preternatural calm. He didn't run; he walked, his two medics falling in behind him. "Tourniquet! High and tight!" he ordered, his voice cutting through the noise. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the blood. "You, boil water now! Sergeant Bo, clear these men back! Give me light!"
The authority in his voice was absolute. The soldiers, even Bo, recoiled and obeyed, creating a circle. Under the horrified and fascinated gaze of the entire unit, Lin Wei and his team worked. They cleaned the wound with vinegar and a fierce liquor, the patient screaming as they irrigated the gash. Lin Wei's hands, guided by the silent prompts of his system, sutured the deepest part of the muscle with a steady precision that seemed alien, then closed the skin. The whole brutal, efficient process took less than ten minutes.
When it was done, Lin Wei looked at the ashen, trembling soldier. "The muscle is cut. You will not draw a bow for two months," he stated, his tone clinical. "But if you do the exercises I show you, you will use this arm again. Without this, you would have bled out in this field, or lost the arm to rot within a week."
The truth of his words settled over the spectators. This was no longer about latrines or pride. This was about a man's livelihood, his life. The value of the "ditch-digger" was now irrefutable.
Sergeant Bo stared at the neatly bandaged arm, then at Lin Wei. The resentment in his eyes had been replaced by a slow, dawning, professional respect.
He gave a single, gruff nod. "Efficient," he muttered, the word a greater accolade than any flowery praise.
That evening, the new latrine trench was completed without a single complaint. The work was still dirty, but it was no longer seen as pointless.
Standing with Captain Guo as the sun set, watching the camp settle into a new, cleaner order, Lin Wei felt the change. Guo nodded toward the now-orderly rows of tents. "Sergeant Bo is a hard man to impress. You impressed him today."
Lin Wei watched the smoke from the cooking fires rise into the twilight. "I didn't do it to impress him," he replied. "I did it to save a soldier."
Guo smiled faintly. "I know. That's why it worked." His smile faded as he looked north, towards the darkening hills beyond the frontier. "The Jin, however, will not be so easily convinced. They will test these new protocols of yours soon enough. And they will not hold back."
The internal battle had been won, for now. But on the horizon, a storm was gathering. The system had passed its first trial, but the real war was coming.