Eternal Night

The truck wove through the entire concentration camp, moving from the north gate to the south gate. By then, the twilight glow had emerged, hanging over the ravine as fog curled over the horizon, turning the distant mountains into looming shadows. The electric lamps kept thrashing around amidst the fierce gales, striking the shadows of the senior colonel and his squad against the carriages of the black train that quietly slithered like a long snake on the tracks.

Even if the senior colonel didn’t seem to be an intelligent man, Yu Feichen didn’t believe that he would fail to recognise prisoners that he had seen a mere three or so days before. As such, after subduing the sentry, he and the brawny blonde changed uniforms again to wear the clothes of an ordinary prisoner.

When the truck drove to the gate, he slammed on the brakes and got down from the truck, going up to the senior colonel. “Sir, the Sergeant got us to come first.”

The slightly bulging eyes of the senior colonel, still suffused with blood vessels from neuroticism, looked towards their truck, growling lowly, “Where are the others?”

“Report,” The flatness of Yu Feichen’s tone made him appear to be telling the truth, “the other trucks have broken down.”

A muscle twitched on the senior colonel’s face; he flew off the handle. “Do you only have two trucks? Get those bastards and mongrels over!”

“We have four trucks, sir,” Yu Feichen said, “but only the drivers know how to fix them. They’re working on fixing those trucks now and will bring everyone over when they’re done.”

“Bloody hell.” The senior colonel pulled his gun and pointed it at his head, roaring, “Those motherfucking worthless Koroshan trucks—”

Yu Feichen put forth a submissive attitude, dropping his gaze.

In his peripheral vision, the senior colonel viciously lowered his gun and roared again, “Get everyone on the truck to come down!”

Yu Feichen opened the door at the back. Apart from the two holding guns, who Yu Feichen instructed to hide further inside instead of coming out this time, his companions got down the truck again.

“Bloody fuck!” The senior colonel saw that only a dozen or so had come and a smothering flame once again licked the insides of his guts. His thunderous voice echoed through the empty valley, even stirring a horrifying echo in its wake.

“They’ll be over soon,” Yu Feichen said.

“By the time those bastards fix their scraps, this hearse is going to stink!” The senior colonel yelled a soldier’s name and said, “Get those pussies over too!”

After yelling, he commanded another soldier to bring a mechanic to the lumber yard to find those “bastard and mongrels”.

Yu Feichen didn’t bat an eyelid.

The brawny blonde whispered in his ears, “James, what should we do?”

Yu Feichen reached up and undid the top two buttons of his shirt collar, letting the cold breeze bore in and clear his head.

He said, “Soon, not yet.”

His eyebrows creased slightly as he looked towards the train veiled by the fog.

If he wasn’t mistaken, the senior colonel had said a word earlier.

He said—”This hearse”.

In what situation would a train be termed a hearse?

While he pondered this, the senior colonel waved his hand, indicating for them to move upfront.

A soldier carrying a dim kerosene lamp led them to the first carriage, then opened the door.

The light shone into a compartment packed with weak prisoners that raised their heads blankly at the light. They were driven down the train. Yu Feichen watched them, not missing a single detail.

All these men had their heads hung low, their eyes frightened and confused, and their lips pressed tight, not uttering a single word. They formed a long line of their own accord without the soldiers telling them to, heading out of the door.

Most prominently, they were all wearing a free-size grey prisoner uniform. Other than that, they were all men between youth and young adulthood. They walked silently with their heads bowed in this manner, like a procession of living zombies.

The soldier opened the second carriage. Similarly, prisoners woodenly filed down the train.

By all logic, these prisoners were also free labour. But now their gazes made them appear like the most ghastly of dead men walking, stumbling and faltering, with many strenuously dragging their fainting companions along with them. Others trembled as they walked and fell to their knees, muttering words along the lines of “don’t kill me”.

Yu Feichen couldn’t help but speculate that the senior colonel, after finding out that these prisoners were utterly useless, thought of calling back the prisoners from the lumber yard.

These prisoners didn’t seem like newly captured Koroshan citizens, but rather resembled prisoners having come from a long-running concentration camp. Now, a single concentration camp could only hold two thousand people. The Black Badge Army must have set up more than one.

Then, the third carriage.

“New prisoners,” the brawny blonde mumbled. “What did they call us over for, then?”

Yu Feichen didn’t speak.

This lawyer’s body had an average build and sense of smell. Yu Feichen could only outperform with sheer force of will. Fortunately, his will was of use.

When the soldier opened the fourth carriage, he had completely affirmed his suspicions.

This train most definitely didn’t hold only these silent prisoners.

He said in a low voice, “Have you smelled it yet?”

“What?” The brawny blonde was beyond bewildered at first, but he struggled to sniff the air after hearing those words. His expression abruptly changed. “A really strong smell of blood.”

That was right. Blood. An unremitting reek of blood was being blown over by the cold wind.

And it wasn’t only the stench of fresh blood. It was the muddy, odious reek of blood that had been fermenting for more than a day. Only slaughterhouses that had been slewing pigs for years would reek like this.

The stench was too strong, such that it completely masked all other smells. It took three minutes for Yu Feichen to pick up another scent amidst the foul reek of blood.

The miasma of corpses.

It was in the deep of the night. Because of the fierce winds, the stench of blood and corpses gradually grew more pronounced.

“Creak—” The soldier opened the fifth carriage.

About three hundred prisoners had walked down from the first four carriages. They formed a long monotonous line of grey, slowly entering the south gate.

However, when the carriage was opened this time, no one came down.

The soldier waved at them, saying loudly, “Carry them there.”

He pointed at the cylindrical greyish white tower near the south gate. Yu Feichen had scouted that place before and was aware that it was a large furnace.

The soldier handed the kerosene lamp to him. He led the brawny blonde and the rest up.

The dim amber light pierced through the greyish white fog. At the exact moment that they stepped into the compartment, the smell of blood billowed into their faces, denser than anything else.

An ashen white corpse lay right in front of Yu Feichen, sandwiched between the joint connecting the fourth and fifth carriages. It carried a fuzzy bullet wound on its head, where the bullet had bored through. Blood matted the hair on its head, and blood had pooled under the body.

To the right was the fourth carriage. Several silhouettes were lying inside, still breathing, seemingly people who had passed out.

As for the left side—

He shone the light in his hand over.

Corpses. Hands, feet, knees, heads… all limbs could be scavenged from this pile. At first glance, he’d thought it was a myriad of broken body parts. But when he fixed his eyes on it, he saw that it was dense layers of intact corpses piled layer upon layer on top of each other in the carriage. The arrangement of corpses was disorderly and bloody, with mottled, pale arms and legs drooping down limply. Black, bloodied heads were tangled in the limbs of others, each with a bullet wound in its head, the blood so pervasive that it permeated everything.

Constrained by reality, it was impossible for the corpses to fill the entire compartment without leaving a gap. When Yu Feichen raised the light, there was a distance of twenty centimetres between the pile of corpses and the top of the compartment. So, a deep, wide gap extended towards the carriages behind, jutting and caving with the shapes of corpses. The light was only able to illuminate the front, and it was only a blur of black shadows further back.

One could only imagine that this would be a sight prevalent in all the later carriages. This was, indeed, a hearse full of corpses.

Seeing this purgatory, everyone was stunned, unable to react. Then, the senior colonel’s voice reverberated like a demon from behind.

“What are you standing there for?” He thundered, “Hurry up and move them!”

Move.

Move the corpses.

Move the corpses to the furnace—

Yu Feichen gave a harsh exhale in the turbid air.

The senior colonel wasn’t wrong. Even though it was in the depths of winter, if these bodies weren’t disposed of, they would fester and stink up the train, turning into pus that could never be cleared.

A Koroshan behind him vomited. Another person burst into tears. The brawny blonde began to shudder.

After all—these corpses were their Koroshan compatriots.

And now, each of their compatriots bore a bullet wound to the head, piled without dignity in a train like discarded pig entrails from a slaughterhouse. It was hard to imagine what they had been through.

The senior colonel’s thunderous voice was still echoing through the compartment. Of the people passed out in the fourth carriage, two of them stirred.

Yu Feichen walked over and patted them.

One of them snapped his eyes open in fright, gasping violently. Another one woke up as well, but his eyes were slack, and the irises were trembling uncontrollably.

He’s lost his mind, Yu Feichen thought.

“I’m Koroshan.” Yu Feichen spoke to the lucid one. “Where are you from? What happened?”

“From…” That man caught the hem of his clothes in a death’s grip, muttering, “Highland Concentration Camp… They said… they wanted to send us to… to Oak Valley Concentration Camp.”

“This is Oak Valley Concentration Camp,” Yu Feichen said. “What happened to the group of you?”

The man’s pupils shrank, like he had seen the worst horrors on this earth.

“Our… our camp… someone wanted to escape. He blew up… blew up the furnace… and he was discovered.” He continued, stuttering, “The others didn’t do anything at all… but they still wanted to put us… all to death… The others… have all died.”

Yu Feichen asked, “Then what about you?”

The corners of that man’s lips twitched into a contorted smile. “They used up the bullets.”

The bullets were depleted. The remaining people weren’t executed.

The furnace had been blown up, so there wasn’t any way to manage the corpses.

So, everyone, no matter whether dead or not yet dead, was transported to Oak Valley Concentration Camp.

Next to him, the man who had gone insane suddenly burst into tears.

“I’ve urged him to give up thoughts of escape.” His voice was hoarse. “It’s all fine now, it’s all fine now…”

Yu Feichen sighed, casting his eyes downwards.

He wasn’t a Koroshan; he was merely a traveller passing through this world. But despite this, what he witnessed and experienced over the past few days in Oak Valley Concentration Camp still shrouded him like a dense gloom. Even the lives of those in the last world, living amidst zombies, were far less suffocating than this.

Such that, when placed next to the institutionalisation of concentration camps, the zombie world even appeared innocent and pure.

He took a few steps in and turned back to look out of the door.

The senior colonel was smoking a cigar outside at the south gate. As he took a drag, he stomped his foot neurotically, like an impatient overseer.

Yu Feichen stared at him dead-on. There was a hint of agitation and tenseness in the ferocity of this fleshy face. Did these mountains upon mountains of corpses spark a trace of anxiety and nervousness in the senior colonel’s heart? Yu Feichen didn’t know. He didn’t care to fathom the heart and soul of this senior colonel.

He simply crouched down next to the piled corpses, peering out. The narrow train door blocked everything inside, but when he gazed out from inside, he had an unobstructed view of everything.

It wasn’t a high vantage, but it was a perfect position for a sniper, especially when the target was the senior colonel’s head.

He didn’t have a sniper rifle. But the short distance of sixty metres was well within the shooting range of a pistol.

Outside, cold winds moaned. The senior colonel started to howl and bellow again, this time firing a shot into the sky. Obviously, he was very dissatisfied that they hadn’t started moving.

Inside, the depressive reek of blood almost curdled in the air. This was the moment that Yu Feichen was most tempted to end it all.

But it wasn’t yet time.

He said in a low voice. “Move them.”

Then, he hauled a first corpse by its shoulders. The brawny blonde silently grabbed its feet, and they lifted this heavy corpse, carrying it out.

The senior colonel muttered agitatedly as they passed by.

“Fuck this, fuck it all.” He spat out a hazy smoke ring. “I just argued with that fucking uppity Tin Cloud poser in the afternoon, and at night Highland sent trash over to me. Bloody hell, does anyone still have any respect left for me.”

Yu Feichen inadvertently glanced at him again.

From the looks of it, a large part of the senior colonel’s anxiety and nervousness stemmed from life not going the way he wanted it to.

From what he said, he had even argued with Anfield earlier in the afternoon.

Yu Feichen couldn’t imagine Anfield arguing with this senior colonel. Perhaps this senior colonel was exaggerating it to some degree, and they merely had a discussion.

However, Anfield’s mode of resolving problems was in line with his appearance; gentle and refined.

While deep in thought, he passed by the grey line of prisoners and neared the furnace. A soldier was in front of the furnace to take the corpse.

Like setting down a heavy burden, the brawny blonde let out a long exhale. But he involuntarily shuddered again when he saw the soldier move the corpse into the furnace, forever lost. Yu Feichen patted his shoulder and they headed out.

The buildings in the area of the chemical plant were densely packed. The small two-storied building wasn’t far from the furnace. The ground floor of the building was illuminated by an eerie white light, and a dark shadow was leaning against the window. From the silhouette, he appeared to be gazing over.

Yu Feichen recognised this silhouette to be the ‘doctor’ of the concentration camp. A man who lived next to the furnace on the upper floor of the building containing the gas canisters, the same man who was researching the smiling gas and conducting human experiments.

While other concentration camps executed prisoners by firing squad, he had invented an efficient system of gassing them en masse and incinerating them on the spot.

The scenes from the previous nights naturally emerged before his mind’s eye.

Immediately after, the brawny blonde’s steps faltered and he bowed over, vomiting.

Regardless, they still had to go on.

Only, when he was done vomiting, the brawny blonde buried his face into his wide palms.

“James.” A vulnerable tremor was exposed in his voice. “If we fail, will our kin become like this as well?”

Yu Feichen pursed his lips.

After gazing upon that abysmal scene, even the strong-willed blonde was shaken. It was no wonder that the big-nosed man had snitched in last night’s future.

He said, aloof, “Then do you want to see the smiling gas being used in all concentration camps?”

The brawny blonde gave a start.

A long time later, he clenched his fists, uttering lowly, “For Korosha.”

As they returned to the south gate, a sound came from behind them. It was those soldiers who had, per the senior colonel’s command, come with two hundred women and elderly. The situation was urgent and other men were nowhere to be seen, so the elderly, the weak, and the crippled were naturally brought to fill the ranks of the labourers.

They were obviously unaware of what was happening outside. A faint commotion carried over.

Something cold landed on Yu Feichen’s face. He lifted his head. Under the light, pure white particles were fluttering about. It had started to snow.

The corpses, the living. The Black Badge Army, the prisoners. The senior colonel, the doctor.

The train, the furnace. Men, women, elderly.

The northern wind, the heavy snow.

It was like the will of Heaven. On this final night, all that should be present had come.

He inhaled deeply, climbing back into the train.

In the silence, those motionless corpses seemed to be staring at him.

He checked his bulletproof vest and took the gun. Load, cock, aim.

There was a hurried clatter as the Koroshan who had lost his mind from fright suddenly crawled, tumbling from the carriage.

He cried out, his voice hoarse and shrill, breaking the silence of the night.

“Someone’s trying to escape—”

Yu Feichen abruptly pulled the trigger.