Works fine by him.
In all his life, what Yu Feichen did best was minding himself. Further, his curiosity was as lacking as his memory; he wouldn’t harp on a certain question.
He didn’t say a word. In the cell, aside from breathing, the only sound was the slender, delicate ticking of a pocket watch.
The glass oil lamp was extinguished. Five minutes later, at midnight, it was lit up again. Anfield was the sole person not blindfolded because no matter how the logic went, an esteemed captain from Tin Cloud wouldn’t die in a cell purposed to hold prisoners.
Yu Feichen spoke. “What do you see?”
It was only after a short silence that Anfield replied to him.
Stripped of his vision, his sense of hearing was magnified manifold. Anfield’s frosty voice sounded both distant and disembodied, like a voice pronouncing judgement.
“You have all died.”
This was rather beyond what Yu Feichen had expected. He assumed that at least he wouldn’t be among them.
He affirmed once. “All?”
Anfield’s answer was succinct. “All.”
—In other words, on the 22nd that pointed towards the 30th, all of them had died in the cell.
Yu Feichen reached out in rough estimation of the cell gate, but Anfield caught hold of his wrist. The grip was firm.
Yu Feichen immediately understood what Anfield meant. If he wasn’t stopped, he might touch his own corpse in the very next second!
And the consequence of touching their own corpse was perhaps no better than seeing it.
“The door is locked from the outside.” Anfield moved his hand back to its original position, getting up.
The voice was also accompanied by the rustling of clothes—he was inspecting the corpses.
“You were locked in here,” Anfield’s indifferent voice carried over. “The toxic gas dispersed from bottom up. Everyone wanted to get to higher ground, so you stepped on each other and ended up grabbing and stacked together at the iron gate, all killed by the smiling gas.”
The brawny blonde, dead for the second time, swore. Yu Feichen could understand how he felt, because the scene described by this senior officer was, in truth, a tad excessively vivid, especially after they had witnessed for themselves other smiling corpses last night.
The dull sounds of corpses being dragged echoed. The scene in his imagination was already queer enough; when adding Anfield in snow-white gloves, impassively dealing with the corpses, the mental image turned even more bizarre.
Yu Feichen inadvertently recalled the formula for the toxic gas he had read at the chemical plant.
In the work log, it was formally named Purification Water. But before its name was formalised, it was casually recorded as the Smiling Gas.
In the past, missions that he received from the Tower of Creation could be very unorthodox at times, and he had thus been exposed to many branches of science. As such, it was possible for him to surmise the process by which this gas worked from the experimental records.
It was simple, formed from a mixture of a toxic reagent and some kind of anaesthetic in a defined ratio. The toxic reagent paralysed the entire person’s physiological system, stripping them of all functionality, eventually dying from asphyxiation due to the inability to intake oxygen. The other component paralysed the nerve centres, transmitting a certain type of neurotransmitter that induced euphoria or hallucinations, causing the involuntary surfacing of a smile on the victim’s face.
After inhaling this toxic gas, as a result of being poisoned, one would suffocate, experiencing an unimaginable pain akin to drowning, desperately clambering towards higher ground to take in fresh air, whilst submerging helplessly in a disorientating dream, finally struggling as one crumbled towards death.
In this world that was prophesied, he had also died like this. However, he didn’t believe that he would die off like this—at the very least, he wouldn’t be stacked together with the rest.
But what was the feeling of actually dying? Yu Feichen found that he was, unexpectedly, seriously pondering this question.
The sound of the lock being picked rang out, and the iron gate opened.
Anfield pulled Yu Feichen, guiding him outside, then going back in to lead the others out.
With the tragic demise of the short-statured man, none of them glanced back this time, only removing their blindfolds and looking at the other cells. Tonight, the moonlight cast down like snow; it wasn’t necessary to use the glass lamp for them to take in their surroundings.
Without a single exception, each cell had around a dozen people, stacked in contorted postures at the gates or the corners.
“What happened?” Bai Song breathed in deeply. After experiencing yesterday’s horror, everyone fared somewhat better today.
Yu Feichen studied these. The gates were locked from the outside and there was a discarded gas mask in a corner of the corridor, proof that this was the soldiers’ handiwork. Practically every body was marred with welts, proof that they had all received punishment before their deaths. On the other hand, the tightly shut door of the barracks was to prevent toxic gas from leaking out. This was a premeditated massacre, pointing to an obvious conclusion.
“Sir,” Yu Feichen suddenly spoke. “Let’s move separately so we won’t get in your way.”
Anfield returned him a hum of acknowledgement that was without the faintest emotional inflection.
They were exploring the concentration camp in search for an opening to escape, whereas that senior officer must have had his own reason for coming back even after finding the cause of the two disappearances.
He didn’t say what he was looking for, neither did Yu Feichen reveal anything relevant to their ‘escape’ plan to him. Such being the case, they tacitly agreed that splitting up would be the best choice.
However, when the door of the barracks opened—
Yu Feichen, “……”
The senior officer’s black military vehicle was ostentatiously parked outside the door.
Then, the senior officer calmly pulled open the door to the driver’s seat. The door slammed shut, the headlights lit up, the engine revved, and the vehicle slowly drove off into the night.
Yu Feichen thought, his words of parting were mayhaps spoken too soon.
“How did this happen?” Bai Song voiced his question.
“He simply had to get his lieutenant to park the vehicle here every night,” Yu Feichen said.
—Just like how he got Bai Song to add a stroke every night.
Bai Song exhaled and returned to the very first question. “Then why did we die again this time?”
“The escape failed. They found out,” Yu Feichen said.
In actual time, from yesterday to today, only one thing of note happened. That would be, him writing the escape plan on notepad paper and distributing it to others; a portion of them had already begun to plan the escape.
The future had changed because of this. The escape failed, and everyone was executed on the spot.
“Does this mean that we’ll definitely fail?”
Yu Feichen gave no response.
“So why did we fail?” Bai Song continued to ask and answer his own questions. “Is it cause it’s too difficult?”
“Many factors can result in failure,” Yu Feichen answered him when the mood caught him. He was a cautious man; with regards to possible causes of failure, he had already run through them countless times in his mind and knew them inside out. “Everyone not moving according to the plan, or a spook snitching on us. Just these.”
“Probably… no one snitched, right? Everyone are Koroshan compatriots.” At Bai Song’s words, all of them startled, as if waking up from a dream, suddenly looking in the direction where Anfield had disappeared.
Yu Feichen, as matter of course, noticed this reaction. This was the natural opposition of different camps.
“He still isn’t aware.” He only said this, looking at a truck parked to one side. “Go drive that.”
“And what’s with this truck?” Bai Song exclaimed. “Is this your doing, Yu-ge?”
“No.” Yu Feichen was expressionless. “They used this to transport the gas canisters.”
Bai Song drove the truck. A man who had served a year in the military would be proficient in many things.
On this night, they used the truck to go through the whole concentration camp once, mapping the route. Yu Feichen paused for a long time at the drill grounds and barracks of the soldiers and foremen. The effective military strength of the concentration camp wasn’t high. There were five military officers with pistols, twenty or so soldiers, ten pistols, and ten submachine guns. These aside, there were also six sentries and thirty local foremen. The foremen were only provisional recruits from amidst the locals. None were armed, and even if they were, their guns held no ammunition.
Yu Feichen memorised the soldiers’ shifts and patrol schedules. When leaving, he saw that Anfield’s vehicle was also stopped here, but they went to different areas and didn’t run into each other. It wasn’t until 4:30 a.m. that the group of them turned back to the barracks. In light of their corpses, they automatically blindfolded themselves, going in by feeling the walls.
When Anfield returned, Yu Feichen was leaning against the wall, feigning sleep.
Predictably, once Anfield returned, the coughing would begin anew. Every night, the bulk of his hours for sleep would be stolen by the overlapping timelines. Thus, out of consideration for the preciousness of his remaining time for rest, Yu Feichen had already preemptively pushed his blanket to the senior officer’s spot.
The senior officer’s footsteps stopped in front of him for a long time.
So long that Yu Feichen thought that something was going to happen.
In the silence, he heard the soft sound of buttons being popped open, and that wool cloak landed on his body.
Works fine by him.
In all his life, what Yu Feichen did best was minding himself. Further, his curiosity was as lacking as his memory; he wouldn’t harp on a certain question.
He didn’t say a word. In the cell, aside from breathing, the only sound was the slender, delicate ticking of a pocket watch.
The glass oil lamp was extinguished. Five minutes later, at midnight, it was lit up again. Anfield was the sole person not blindfolded because no matter how the logic went, an esteemed captain from Tin Cloud wouldn’t die in a cell purposed to hold prisoners.
Yu Feichen spoke. “What do you see?”
It was only after a short silence that Anfield replied to him.
Stripped of his vision, his sense of hearing was magnified manifold. Anfield’s frosty voice sounded both distant and disembodied, like a voice pronouncing judgement.
“You have all died.”
This was rather beyond what Yu Feichen had expected. He assumed that at least he wouldn’t be among them.
He affirmed once. “All?”
Anfield’s answer was succinct. “All.”
—In other words, on the 22nd that pointed towards the 30th, all of them had died in the cell.
Yu Feichen reached out in rough estimation of the cell gate, but Anfield caught hold of his wrist. The grip was firm.
Yu Feichen immediately understood what Anfield meant. If he wasn’t stopped, he might touch his own corpse in the very next second!
And the consequence of touching their own corpse was perhaps no better than seeing it.
“The door is locked from the outside.” Anfield moved his hand back to its original position, getting up.
The voice was also accompanied by the rustling of clothes—he was inspecting the corpses.
“You were locked in here,” Anfield’s indifferent voice carried over. “The toxic gas dispersed from bottom up. Everyone wanted to get to higher ground, so you stepped on each other and ended up grabbing and stacked together at the iron gate, all killed by the smiling gas.”
The brawny blonde, dead for the second time, swore. Yu Feichen could understand how he felt, because the scene described by this senior officer was, in truth, a tad excessively vivid, especially after they had witnessed for themselves other smiling corpses last night.
The dull sounds of corpses being dragged echoed. The scene in his imagination was already queer enough; when adding Anfield in snow-white gloves, impassively dealing with the corpses, the mental image turned even more bizarre.
Yu Feichen inadvertently recalled the formula for the toxic gas he had read at the chemical plant.
In the work log, it was formally named Purification Water. But before its name was formalised, it was casually recorded as the Smiling Gas.
In the past, missions that he received from the Tower of Creation could be very unorthodox at times, and he had thus been exposed to many branches of science. As such, it was possible for him to surmise the process by which this gas worked from the experimental records.
It was simple, formed from a mixture of a toxic reagent and some kind of anaesthetic in a defined ratio. The toxic reagent paralysed the entire person’s physiological system, stripping them of all functionality, eventually dying from asphyxiation due to the inability to intake oxygen. The other component paralysed the nerve centres, transmitting a certain type of neurotransmitter that induced euphoria or hallucinations, causing the involuntary surfacing of a smile on the victim’s face.
After inhaling this toxic gas, as a result of being poisoned, one would suffocate, experiencing an unimaginable pain akin to drowning, desperately clambering towards higher ground to take in fresh air, whilst submerging helplessly in a disorientating dream, finally struggling as one crumbled towards death.
In this world that was prophesied, he had also died like this. However, he didn’t believe that he would die off like this—at the very least, he wouldn’t be stacked together with the rest.
But what was the feeling of actually dying? Yu Feichen found that he was, unexpectedly, seriously pondering this question.
The sound of the lock being picked rang out, and the iron gate opened.
Anfield pulled Yu Feichen, guiding him outside, then going back in to lead the others out.
With the tragic demise of the short-statured man, none of them glanced back this time, only removing their blindfolds and looking at the other cells. Tonight, the moonlight cast down like snow; it wasn’t necessary to use the glass lamp for them to take in their surroundings.
Without a single exception, each cell had around a dozen people, stacked in contorted postures at the gates or the corners.
“What happened?” Bai Song breathed in deeply. After experiencing yesterday’s horror, everyone fared somewhat better today.
Yu Feichen studied these. The gates were locked from the outside and there was a discarded gas mask in a corner of the corridor, proof that this was the soldiers’ handiwork. Practically every body was marred with welts, proof that they had all received punishment before their deaths. On the other hand, the tightly shut door of the barracks was to prevent toxic gas from leaking out. This was a premeditated massacre, pointing to an obvious conclusion.
“Sir,” Yu Feichen suddenly spoke. “Let’s move separately so we won’t get in your way.”
Anfield returned him a hum of acknowledgement that was without the faintest emotional inflection.
They were exploring the concentration camp in search for an opening to escape, whereas that senior officer must have had his own reason for coming back even after finding the cause of the two disappearances.
He didn’t say what he was looking for, neither did Yu Feichen reveal anything relevant to their ‘escape’ plan to him. Such being the case, they tacitly agreed that splitting up would be the best choice.
However, when the door of the barracks opened—
Yu Feichen, “……”
The senior officer’s black military vehicle was ostentatiously parked outside the door.
Then, the senior officer calmly pulled open the door to the driver’s seat. The door slammed shut, the headlights lit up, the engine revved, and the vehicle slowly drove off into the night.
Yu Feichen thought, his words of parting were mayhaps spoken too soon.
“How did this happen?” Bai Song voiced his question.
“He simply had to get his lieutenant to park the vehicle here every night,” Yu Feichen said.
—Just like how he got Bai Song to add a stroke every night.
Bai Song exhaled and returned to the very first question. “Then why did we die again this time?”
“The escape failed. They found out,” Yu Feichen said.
In actual time, from yesterday to today, only one thing of note happened. That would be, him writing the escape plan on notepad paper and distributing it to others; a portion of them had already begun to plan the escape.
The future had changed because of this. The escape failed, and everyone was executed on the spot.
“Does this mean that we’ll definitely fail?”
Yu Feichen gave no response.
“So why did we fail?” Bai Song continued to ask and answer his own questions. “Is it cause it’s too difficult?”
“Many factors can result in failure,” Yu Feichen answered him when the mood caught him. He was a cautious man; with regards to possible causes of failure, he had already run through them countless times in his mind and knew them inside out. “Everyone not moving according to the plan, or a spook snitching on us. Just these.”
“Probably… no one snitched, right? Everyone are Koroshan compatriots.” At Bai Song’s words, all of them startled, as if waking up from a dream, suddenly looking in the direction where Anfield had disappeared.
Yu Feichen, as matter of course, noticed this reaction. This was the natural opposition of different camps.
“He still isn’t aware.” He only said this, looking at a truck parked to one side. “Go drive that.”
“And what’s with this truck?” Bai Song exclaimed. “Is this your doing, Yu-ge?”
“No.” Yu Feichen was expressionless. “They used this to transport the gas canisters.”
Bai Song drove the truck. A man who had served a year in the military would be proficient in many things.
On this night, they used the truck to go through the whole concentration camp once, mapping the route. Yu Feichen paused for a long time at the drill grounds and barracks of the soldiers and foremen. The effective military strength of the concentration camp wasn’t high. There were five military officers with pistols, twenty or so soldiers, ten pistols, and ten submachine guns. These aside, there were also six sentries and thirty local foremen. The foremen were only provisional recruits from amidst the locals. None were armed, and even if they were, their guns held no ammunition.
Yu Feichen memorised the soldiers’ shifts and patrol schedules. When leaving, he saw that Anfield’s vehicle was also stopped here, but they went to different areas and didn’t run into each other. It wasn’t until 4:30 a.m. that the group of them turned back to the barracks. In light of their corpses, they automatically blindfolded themselves, going in by feeling the walls.
When Anfield returned, Yu Feichen was leaning against the wall, feigning sleep.
Predictably, once Anfield returned, the coughing would begin anew. Every night, the bulk of his hours for sleep would be stolen by the overlapping timelines. Thus, out of consideration for the preciousness of his remaining time for rest, Yu Feichen had already preemptively pushed his blanket to the senior officer’s spot.
The senior officer’s footsteps stopped in front of him for a long time.
So long that Yu Feichen thought that something was going to happen.
In the silence, he heard the soft sound of buttons being popped open, and that wool cloak landed on his body.
