The air in the large, repurposed grain shed was thick with the smell of dust, sweat, and a low thrum of skepticism. Lin Wei stood at the front, facing the first class of the newly christened Field Medic Corps. Thirty men.
A mix of grizzled penal soldiers from the Seventh and some dozens of soldiers from the regular battalions, their faces a spectrum of expressions from open curiosity to outright contempt. They sat on rough-hewn benches, a chasm of mistrust between the two groups.
Scholar Zhang, standing to the side, unrolled a scroll. "To understand the body's humors is to understand the flow of life itself," he began, his voice reedy but earnest. "An imbalance of the phlegm, or an excess of yellow bile, can lead to putrefaction in a wound. Therefore, the application of a poultice to draw out the corruptive—"
"Ach, enough with the ancient scrolls, old man!" a voice cut through the lecture. It was a hulking regular army soldier named Big Niu, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. "I've seen men with belly wounds gush yellow and green and every color in between. I don't need a philosophy lesson. I need to know how to stop the bleeding so they don't end up as crow food on the way back to camp."
A rumble of agreement, from both penal and regular sides, echoed in the shed. Scholar Zhang flinched, clutching his scroll.
Lin Wei stepped forward. He didn't chastise Big Niu. He looked at him. "You're right," Lin Wei said, his voice flat and carrying.
"Philosophy won't stop a man from bleeding out. Action will." He let his gaze sweep over the entire group. "You are not here to become scholars. You are here to learn how to keep a man alive long enough for a real physician to see him. If you're lucky, that will be me. If you're not, it will be no one. The difference will be what you do in the first sixty seconds."
The skepticism didn't vanish, but it was now mixed with a dose of cold reality. He had their attention.
"On your feet," Lin Wei commanded.
The training began. It was not gentle. He paired them up, a penal soldier with a regular. "Tourniquet drill. Your partner is bleeding from a severed artery in the leg. You have a belt and a stick. Go."
The shed descended into a chaos of grunts and fumbling. Lin Wei moved among them, his voice a constant, dispassionate correction. "Tighter. You're not fastening a saddle. Higher. The pressure must be above the wound. You're cutting off the blood from the heart, not giving it a gentle hug."
Next came suturing. Sly Liu had "acquired" a side of fresh pork from the kitchens, and the men were handed needles and tough, treated thread.
"The skin is not cloth. You are not tailors. You are closing a breach. The stitches must be close, and they must be tight. The goal is to keep the world out and the man's insides in."
The first attempts were grotesque, a mess of puckered flesh and loose ends. The stench of raw meat began to mix with the dust. But slowly, under Lin Wei's exacting eyes and the system's silent guidance on optimal angle and depth, the clumsy gestures became more deliberate.
It was during a spear drill the next day that the theory was tested in blood. The trainees were observing the Fifth Battalion's practice, learning to anticipate the kind of injuries they would see. Big Niu, over-enthusiastic, lunged forward during a mock charge. His foot caught on a rock, and with a sickening crack that cut through the air, he went down, not with a cry of pain, but a strangled gurgle. His leg was bent at an impossible angle just below the knee, a sharp, white shard of bone jutting through the skin.
Panic erupted. The drill sergeants shouted. The men around him recoiled. Big Niu, the boisterous mountain of a man, was as pale as death, his eyes wide with a terror deeper than any battle fear.
Lin Wei, who had been watching from the sidelines, did not run. He walked, his pace measured. "You two," he pointed to the nearest trainee medics, both penal soldiers. "Get a blanket. You, a straight branch, now. The rest of you, form a circle, block the wind." His voice was a cold anchor in the storm of their panic.
The trainees stood frozen for a heartbeat, then jumped to action. This was no longer a piece of pork. This was Big Niu.
Young Kuo, the penal soldier, was the first to drop to his knees. His hands were shaking, but his voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly steady. "Niu! Look at me! You're not going to die from this, you hear me?" He looked up at Lin Wei, his eyes asking the silent question.
"Stabilize the leg first," Lin Wei instructed, his tone that of a senior surgeon guiding an intern. "Traction. Gently. Align it." He didn't take over; he directed. This was the test.
Another trainee, a regular named Feng, fumbled with the branch, trying to fashion a splint. But an older penal soldier, a man named Lao, shouldered him aside. "Like this, boy. You lash it above and below, not on the break." Lao's hands, though calloused and rough, worked with a swift, sure efficiency born of a life of hard labor.
Big Niu screamed as they moved his leg, a raw, animal sound. But the bone slid back under the skin with a nauseating crunch. The immediate, grotesque wrongness of the injury was lessened. They splinted the leg, using strips torn from a tunic. The whole process took less than three minutes.
As they carefully lifted Big Niu onto the blanket stretcher, the dynamic in the training corps had shifted. The chasm between penal and regular had been bridged by a shared, gruesome task. Big Niu, through teeth gritted in pain, grunted at Young Kuo, "You... you've got steady hands, convict."
Young Kuo managed a weak grin. "Don't get used to it, you oaf."
That evening, the corps gathered again in the grain shed. The air was different. The skepticism was gone, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion and a simmering, grim pride. They were no longer just soldiers who'd been assigned a duty. They had faced a real horror and had not broken. They had, in their clumsy, terrified way, done something.
Lin Wei looked at them—at Young Kuo, at Lao, at the chastened but thoughtful face of the regular soldier Feng. He saw not a group of men, but the fragile, emerging framework of a system that could withstand the chaos of war.
"Tomorrow," he said, his voice quiet but firm in the lantern-lit space, "we wil learn how to use different herbs to treat injuries. Dismissed."
No one complained. They just nodded, their eyes already looking ahead to the next, vital, unglamorous task. The corps was born not in a moment of glory, but in the mud and blood of necessity. They were ready.