Grand Marshal Xu did not dare to think further down that path. To suspect the Crown Prince without evidence was something that could cost him his head. For now, he had to think about how to best utilize the Wei Commander to win this battle beautifully.
After a night of strategizing, Grand Marshal Xu decided to take the initiative and attack the Barbarians by surprise. He had the Wei Commander send the Barbarians false information claiming that the Daling army was preparing to retreat 100 li due to lack of provisions.
He expected that the Barbarian forces would surely not let this opportunity pass and would take advantage to launch an assault. In the meantime, the Daling side had prepared its forces in advance, ready to carry out an ambush.
For large-scale battles like this, Li Yao could not interfere, so she did not inquire further. Her carriage had arrived with many gadgets that still needed some assembly, so she had remained in her camp tent.
With battle imminent, the entire army was armed and on standby.
Even in the smoothest battle, there would still be men who would remain on these grasslands forever, so the atmosphere before departure was exceptionally solemn.
After bidding Li Yao farewell, Wang San'er led his men and set off under the vast night sky.
Although she had only given him a simple reminder, Li Yao still could not help feeling vaguely worried in her heart.
Strictly speaking, she was not even a stepmother to him, yet she still felt such concern. If it had been his own parents seeing their child fighting for his life on the battlefield, how much more anxious would they feel?
The fathers and mothers who lost their children this way must be utterly heartbroken.
After the troops had departed, Grand Marshal Xu also stayed up all night in the main tent waiting for any news.
It was not until the second half of the night before messages started coming in one by one. Some were good news, some were bad.
The situation on the battlefield changed constantly like one's shifting expressions, with the fighting intensely deadlocked.
Li Yao had originally fallen asleep when she was woken up again by the constant clamor outside. Going out for a look, she saw a large number of wounded soldiers being sent back and assisted by two thousand Yi Prefecture troops.
Most had suffered arrow wounds. A small portion had been slashed by the Barbarians’ curved blades, with flesh split open and bloody scenes that made one’s scalp tingle. The smell of blood permeated the air, practically shrouding the entire camp.
The army doctors were even busier, rushing around ceaselessly. They were likely already numb to these sights.
With the army’s limited medical capabilities and medicinal resources, they could only perform the most basic wound treatment, hardly any sterilization at all, simply using white cloth to wrap wounds to stanch bleeding.
Whether these injured soldiers lived or died would be up to fate now.
“What you’re doing is no good,” Li Yao finally could not stand to keep watching. Most of these wounded were just over ten years old, still having a long bright future ahead. To die from infected wounds would be too great a pity.
“Lady Li,” one army doctor said, “We have little herbal medicine in the army and can only make do.”
“It doesn’t matter if there’s no herbal medicine. But the wounds must be sterilized first, along with the dressing cloth,” Li Yao said.
“Sterilize? What’s that?”
Seeing this, Li Yao could only demonstrate personally.
She boiled the instruments in hot water before starting to clean the wounds: “Tools cannot be shared. They must be reboiled after cleaning each patient’s wounds.”
After clearing out necrotic flesh and clotted blood from the wounds, Li Yao took out a jar of high-proof liquor and a jar of white powder from the camp tent.
She soaked cotton wadding in liquor to disinfect the wounds and surrounding skin.
The searing pain as liquor met their wounds made the injured soldiers grit their teeth violently to keep from passing out. But they knew Li Yao was trying to save their lives, so not one of them cried out.
After disinfecting, Li Yao also sprinkled a little of the white medicinal powder onto the wounds. This was a powder medicine she had personally formulated.
Finally, she carefully wrapped up the wounds with sterilized cotton wadding and dressing.
“All wounds should undergo this treatment,” Li Yao said. “For penetrative wounds affecting internal organs, the flesh must be cut open first to treat the internal injuries before suturing the flesh closed.”
The army doctors with them were shocked speechless.
For those with wounds penetrating internal organs, even if they made it back by some fluke, these doctors had always been helpless, only able leave it up to fate for them to wait for death.
Yet now this Lady Li said she would cut open their flesh to treat internal injuries?
Li Yao did not blame these doctors for being stuck in their limited understanding and lacking knowledge of surgery, given the constraints of the times.
So she had several tents prepared specifically for the severely injured. She demonstrated personally, letting some younger army doctors follow her lead and learn. These doctors had been mentally prepared, but how could they have ever witnessed disemboweling a living person before? The moment they saw the bloody viscera, they could not help rushing out of the tent to retch violently outside.
Fortunately such grievous cases were not many. Li Yao worked busily with them for a day, basically handling all the hurt soldiers.
Those doctors who followed her also basically grasped the concept of surgery, learning the simplest emergency response methods.
Before they realized, the deadlocked fighting had persisted into its third day. The situation was not as ideal as Grand Marshal Xu had planned. After the initial ambush, the Barbarians quickly dispersed into smaller teams, leveraging what they did best - cavalry skirmishing tactics to harass the Daling forces over the grasslands.
There was no going back now. Grand Marshal Xu decisively ordered the Daling army to likewise split up and engage the Barbarians in guerrilla warfare on the plains.
His plan was to hold out until the first snowfall. Once heavy snow blanketed the land the Barbarian horses would have no grass forage left and be forced to retreat to the Royal Court Camp on their own.
“Lady Li, bad news,” a young army doctor hurried to Li Yao’s tent. “Patient #3 in Tent A has developed a fever since last night and is now delirious.”
Li Yao rushed over to see the patient burning with high fever, frighteningly hot to the touch.
The wound had become severely inflamed and purulent - clear signs of infection.
Li Yao distributed some prepared herbal medicines. She also called over an army doctor to advise them on cleaning wound dressings properly and using disinfectants. Afterwards, she let the doctors handle it on their own.
As time passed, the weather grew colder but there was still no sign of the snow Grand Marshal Xu had hoped for.
After carefully reassessing multiple times, he decided they had to pull out. Continuing to fight was meaningless when provisions were already over halfway depleted. They had to regroup and resupply.
Yet the Barbarians did not retreat. Even after the full Daling army had withdrawn back to base, Barbarian contingents of a few hundred continued loitering nearby. They still carried out nighttime tent raids, sending harassment attacks from afar before escaping. Their mastery of guerrilla tactics remained peerless.
“Curse these damned Barbarians!”
Inside Li Yao’s tent, Wang San'er was ready to crush his own fists. He had personally sustained only superficial wounds this time leading troops into battle, but over ten brothers would never return. Over thirty more had suffered varying degrees of injury.
“Mother, it seems your military treatises have no counter to this situation?” Wang San'er said.
“And why wouldn’t they?” Li Yao said. “When facing endless harassment from the enemy, we can respond to their myriad changes with constancy. They will tire eventually and retreat on their own.”
“But we are not so easy to defend,” Wang San’er said. “With open grasslands around and not a city or fortress for shelter.”
“Then we build one if none exists.”
“Huh?” Wang San’er was confused.