At this time, the northern lands were in utter chaos, with countless small feudal states rising and falling in quick succession. In just this vicinity, there was the Yan state established by the Murong Xianbei, the Dai state founded by the Tuoba Xianbei, and further west lay the Former Zhao and Later Zhao of the Jie Hu. West of Chang’an was the Chouchi state of the Di people and the Liang state of the Qiang people. Even farther west were the Sogdian city-states led by Kang, known as the Nine States of Shaowu, which included An, Cao, Shi, Mi, He, Shi, Mu, and Bi, among others. The rise and fall of these states happened so swiftly that, given the primitive state of communication at the time, by the time the envoy reporting the founding of a new state arrived at the other royal court, his own country might already have perished and his family destroyed.

Behind Shawn Irwin, the attendants, having finished bandaging, carefully carried the unconscious men to a dry spot. Then, they spread out to clear the corpses of the fallen. The remains of the Murong cavalry were thrown into the river, while the bodies of their own comrades were neatly arranged on the embankment. Soon after, they took out small knives and began slashing their own faces and bodies, letting the blood stain their features into fierce, demonic visages. Amidst the flowing blood, they gathered firewood and sang ancient, rustic songs.

Isaac Hall remembered that this was a northern barbarian funeral rite. In their beliefs, only blood could appease the souls of warriors at their funerals. In distant western lands, the ancient Romans once recorded a Hunnic funeral—Attila’s funeral, to be precise—and the scene was exactly the same as what he saw before him now. The Huns themselves had once been driven from these very steppes by the mighty cavalry of the Han dynasty.

Shawn Irwin still wanted to ask more, but Isaac Hall was already visibly agitated. In a daze, he approached the dozen or so corpses, unconsciously reaching out to feel the carotid arteries of several of them. For a moment, he didn’t even know what he was doing, until he felt a faint pulse beneath his fingers, which jolted him out of his trance.

Behind him, several attendants shouted and cursed incessantly. In their eyes, this act was a grave insult to the warriors. Only Shawn Irwin’s forceful restraint kept them from rushing forward to teach him a lesson. At this moment, Isaac Hall was still half-awake, half-dreaming. The tremendous upheaval before him and the uncertainty of the future filled him with helplessness. Yet, as was his habit, the more lost he felt, the more he needed to do something to distract himself. Upon realizing that the “corpse” under his hand still had a pulse, Isaac Hall regained clarity for just a few seconds, then instinctively began performing artificial respiration.

The attendants could no longer hold back. One of them, ignoring Shawn Irwin’s attempt to stop him, lunged forward and grabbed Isaac Hall by the collar, raising his fist to strike. But Isaac Hall’s hand moved slightly, as if swatting away a fly, and the man was instantly sent flying as if swept up by a whirlwind.

The other attendants, seeing this, charged forward in fury. The quickest among them had just placed his hand on Isaac Hall’s shoulder when suddenly, the “corpse” under Isaac Hall’s hand twitched slightly, and a faint groan reached everyone’s ears. Though the sound was soft, it thundered through the air like lightning. The men who had rushed forward shuddered and collapsed in all directions, rolling across the ground like gourds.

The “corpse” groaned again, just as the man who had been sent flying landed with a thud.

According to the medical knowledge of the time, those with external wounds would usually die quietly from slow blood loss. This “corpse” had already been checked by his companions and declared dead. Isaac Hall’s chest-expanding and heart-pressing movements, which looked like a dance, seemed to the ignorant warriors of the Yuwen tribe as if he were communicating with the dead. The miraculous revival of the “corpse” only confirmed their suspicions. The fallen Xianbei men scrambled to their feet, then knelt down in unison, pressing their foreheads to the ground, muttering prayers, and trembling all over.

Isaac Hall noticed nothing unusual, not even turning his head. He moved numbly from body to body, checking each one. After a flurry of activity, he managed to save three of the “corpses,” then re-bandaged all the wounded Yuwen soldiers before finally taking a break. With his arms crossed, he watched as the Xianbei men carried their comrades’ bodies onto the pyre and lit a great fire. Thick smoke billowed up to the sky, and Isaac Hall stared blankly into space.

Shawn Irwin had been standing by the riverbank the whole time. When everyone else knelt, she did not; she watched as Isaac Hall climbed up and down, fetched Yunnan Baiyao spray from the boat, sprayed each wounded soldier to stop the bleeding, and then wrapped their wounds with white gauze—none of this surprised her. When all the Yuwen warriors respectfully addressed Isaac Hall as “Great Shaman Doctor,” she made no comment. When the surviving attendants carried the bodies of the fallen onto the pyre, she did not help. When the others cut themselves in self-mortification, she remained silent. Now, as the Xianbei sang and danced by the fire to bid farewell to their warriors, the firelight flickered across her face, making her expression alternately dark and bright, but not a single tear fell.

After all this turmoil, night gradually fell. The funeral rites by the fire continued, and the surviving Xianbei warriors occasionally cast longing glances at Isaac Hall. Shawn Irwin stood behind Isaac Hall and said in a calm voice, “My attendants believe you are the most powerful Great Shaman Doctor in this world. They hope that their fallen comrades can receive your blessing. I beg you, please, show mercy and grant a blessing to the living and the dead.”

Isaac Hall did not move. Shawn Irwin sighed and traced these words into the sand on the riverbank.