Eternal Night

The moment the gunshot rang out, a splash of crimson erupted from the senior colonel’s forehead.

His head remained cranked to the side from when he heard the madman shout. He must have heard the bullets whizzing past his body because his eyes were bulging and his face set in a look of shock.

It was the very expression the old Koroshan man had on his face on their first day at Oak Valley Concentration Camp when he was shot to death by the senior colonel because he refused to remove his clothing.

The air around them was silent for a moment. Nobody could process what they were seeing, and some did not even realize what was going on. Even the madman was taken aback. But then, he covered his head amidst the sound of gunshots, cowering.

This was followed by a heavy thud as the senior colonel’s heavy body fell to the ground. His mouth was wide open as if he were about to criticize them again, but only blood poured out of his throat, the hot fluid melting the snow piling on the ground.

—His life of sin ended at that moment.

“Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, don’t kill me!”

The shout of the madman rang out in the midst of the deathly silence.

The shrill shout woke the frozen soldiers like a crack of thunder shattering their dreams. The senior colonel’s adjutant stepped forward and shouted, “Everyone on alert!”

The sound of guns colliding rang in a continuous clink. After making his shot, Yu Feichen stuck closely to the wall of the carriage, turning into a ghostly shadow inside the connected, unlit carriages as he ran towards the fourth car, quickly reloading his gun at the same time. In just a short few seconds, he arrived by the small door of the fourth car and looked out.

The soldiers outside all had their guns drawn. Some were aiming at the madman, but others were aiming at the dark entrances of the train cars. Surprisingly, some of Oakland Valley’s soldiers were pointing their guns at the new guards from Highland who were by the train. Apparently, the gunshot from earlier had come so suddenly that nobody even realized what had happened. Nobody would even have expected that someone with a gun would be present among the defenseless prisoners.

The rest of the prisoners crouched down with their arms over their heads.

A few more seconds later, the soldiers finally made a connection between the direction where the gunshot came from and the madman’s sudden shout, and the guards beside the train gathered around the entrance to the fifth car.

At the same time, Yu Feichen pressed the muzzle of his gun to the fourth car’s door before aiming at the institute’s entrance.

There, the senior colonel’s adjutant was giving out orders.

His view was split in two, one side the dark walls of the carriage and the other the Black Badge Brigade’s adjutant colonel standing in the snow. Soon, he concentrated his vision on the adjutant.

He had always been a good shot, especially at such a close distance, but he had a habit of practicing good attitude before each shot.

The north wind was howling, but it was completely silent in his mind.

The trigger clicked softly, then another gunshot erupted in everyone’s ears.

—This time, it was the adjutant who went down with a bang.

In the next moment, the lightbulb shattered! After the blinding rain of sparks subsided, the only major source of light left was the fog lamp of the sentry building, but it could not provide a clear view.

A dimness enveloped this place with only the scattered paraffin lamps reflecting off the snow.

The guards clamored.

“Don’t move!” This time, the soldiers caught the source of the noise. Three of them moved towards the fourth carriage’s door while three others hopped up to the fifth carriage’s door, quickly making their way toward the fourth carriage.

Yu Feichen did not move.

There were a few seconds more before the soldiers surrounded him. His eyes quickly swept over the insignias on each person’s shoulder. After the senior colonel and his adjutant died, a single lieutenant became the highest-ranking soldier left in the field. The soldiers were without a leader.

A soldier saw him, then there was a shout, followed by a gunshot. Sparks flew as the bullet hit the carriage wall just after grazing his cheek.

Yu Feichen grabbed the iron door and propelled himself out of the entrance.

Then, he raised his hand and fired another shot at the nearest soldier!

As the soldier fell, Yu Feichen yanked the submachine gun off his body and fired again in front of him.

The sentry guard on top of the sentry tower was just about to blow the alarm whistle when a bullet hit him on the right shoulder. Brass whistle falling to the ground, he clutched his arm and screamed out in pain.

He immediately tossed the gun to the ground after just one shot. Countless gunshots rang out ahead of him, but Yu Feichen dragged the dead shoulder by the chest with his right hand and used him like a shield, soaking up the bullets streaming his way as he grabbed his own pistol with his left hand, firing three shots in succession into the rear carriage door.

Three soldiers with submachine guns who had just rushed out of the carriage fell to the ground.

Yu Feichen shouted towards the carriage. “Shut the door!”

The blonde inside reacted quickly and slammed the door to the fifth carriage shut, then there was the sound of running as he sprinted toward the fourth.

Once the door was shut from the inside, the soldiers had no way of running through the carriage and getting behind him.

In a barehanded fight, or even against opponents with knives, it didn’t matter if he was outnumbered or surrounded from all sides.

But in a gunfight, he always made sure his back was safe.

After the first slam of the door was heard, he immediately turned back to face the front, but the sparks from the discharged bullets were blinding in the night, burning specks into Yu Feichen’s vision that would not dissipate in a short amount of time. There were also soldiers with flashlights, but in order to avoid getting hit as much as possible, Yu Feichen constantly kept himself moving at a high intensity. With the flashlights waving about, not only did they fail to hone in on him, they were even disrupting the visibility of the other soldiers.

Tossing aside the bloodied corpse in his hands, he quickly moved to the right, swapping his gun back to his right hand as he moved, firing rapidly at two separate points.

The pressure from the opposing side decreased as their two best shooters were taken down.

Another gunshot suddenly sounded from the other side of the darkness.

Instincts acting faster than his consciousness, Yu Feichen turned his body sideways and took a shot in that direction, but a round of gunshots rang out at his front, and the dense barrage of bullets hit the soldier who was shooting from the side.

Yu Feichen looked over and from the shape of the vague outline, it was the two fellow hunters who were hiding in the truck with guns. They had gotten out and were now firing from the cover of the wheels’ shadows.

The snow fell even heavier, covering the blood splattered on the ground in barely a moment. Only endless pools of crimson continued to spill out underneath the dead bodies. A moment later, Yue Feichan was surprised to catch another gunshot from behind him.

However, the bullets were not aimed at him, but at the Black Badges in front of him—It was the blonde who shut the door to the fourth carriage earlier. He had arrived at the third carriage and picked up the guns of the dead soldiers inside, joining the fray.

Gunshots broke out from three directions simultaneously. The Black Badge Brigade, now without a leader to command them, couldn’t figure out where the enemy was, which disrupted their rhythm.

It was then that Yu Feichen suddenly appeared like a specter in the densest thicket of soldiers.

He raised his foot and kicked the back of the knee of the soldier nearest to him, who stumbled back and crushed another soldier beneath him. Someone shouted, and the soldiers in the vicinity turned their guns over.

However, their guns were too long to be of any use in this range. Even a wooden stick would’ve been more useful.

The soldier slightly off to the side of him had just raised his gun when he was dispatched with a sidearm. At the same time, another stocky soldier lunged over from behind, grabbing Yu Feichen’s gun-arm by the wrist with his bare hands.

A silver glint appeared in Yu Feichen’s left hand, reflected from the sharp silver dagger he had hidden on his body for a long time. Without even glancing at the stocky soldier behind him, Yu Feichen threw his hand back, and the silver dagger pierced right into the soldier’s throat.

He quickly flung the body away from himself so as to avoid being stained with his blood. Then, the lieutenant’s insignia that he had been watching for a while gleamed in the snowlight. He raised his hand and fired two shots at two soldiers lunging toward him, throwing his left arm over the lieutenant’s shoulders from behind and pressing the muzzle of his gun against the man’s temple.

“No, don’t! Please…” This was probably the first time in the lieutenant’s life that he had been held at gunpoint. That fear was compounded by the bodies constantly piling up around him, which made him whimper as soon as he was restrained.

Immediately afterward, he shouted without any prompt from Yu Feichen, “Nobody open fire!”

He was very self-conscious as a hostage, but Yu Feichen had no intention of letting him go.

With one dull sound, the bullet pierced through his head.

The gunshot was like a terrifying finale, gradually dissipating into the wind. It was unclear whether the soldiers were merely obeying the lieutenant’s orders or because the death of their companion had come too suddenly, but nobody dared to fire their guns.

Yu Feichen tossed the lieutenant’s body aside and looked to the center of the field.

There, women, the elderly, and even children were crouched on the ground, cowering in fear, trembling as if they were the ones being shot at by the Black Badge Brigade. They were all terrified, and everything happened so suddenly that they were given no opportunity to process what had happened. Some of them might even believe that the Black Badge Brigade were just shooting at random prisoners.

The broken prisoners brought in from Highland Concentration Camp were all taken aback by what they saw.

—This was what life in the concentration camps taught them.

Yu Feichen took a deep breath and turned to them.

A loud shot suddenly rang out from underneath the truck, shouting the exact thing he wanted to say.

The thick and powerful voice echoed through the snowfield.

“Run!”

The first to react were the women who looked around them in surprise at hearing the Koroshan accent. They were shocked at first, then amazed. Then, helping up the elderly and the children, all of them saw a shocking sight—the corpses of the cruel Black Badges who reveled in their cruelty and murder were now strewn all across the ground.

A second man repeated the words of the first man nearby the truck.

“Run!”

The door to the third carriage opened and the blonde tumbled out with the corpse of a Black Badge before running toward the clearing in front of the locomotive with the body in tow.

Shouting as he ran, “Run—”

Watching him run motivated the first woman to scream as she ran in that direction, followed by a mother with her child locked tight in her arms, running southwards through the snow.

The surviving Black Badges shouted, “Stop them!”

The gunfire resumed. As the one who stood at the frontmost, the blonde was the most obvious target, but he learned to shield himself using a corpse by watching Yu Feichen earlier, blocking a fatal shot.

Gunshots rang unceasingly, but things were no longer the same. Practically everyone had begun running south. Some slipped in the snow, but they crawled back up and continued to run. Those who were hit by stray bullets in the darkness also gritted their teeth and pushed forward.

The sound of gunshots no longer scared them. It was as if something had been shattered or reborn.

Eventually, there were cries of pain but also joy among the Highland prisoners as dragged their exhausted bodies to keep up with the women and the children into the endless curtain of snow to the south amidst the ring and flashes of gunshots.

The footsteps of nearly a thousand men beating against the snow echoed through the dark mountains alongside the shouting.

One of the two armed hunters switched on the headlights of the truck before fleeing as well. The bright light illuminated the stretch of road that led them from the camp to freedom and a new life.

Behind them, Yu Feichen continued lurking inside the darkness. He grabbed a new gun and some ammo from the lieutenant’s body before heading toward the south gate, and from this direction, he could see the incineration tower and the small two-story building. A low-power light was lit in front of the door with a familiar figure standing in front of it—Gerold.

Remembering what he saw the other day, he understood. Turning his head, he fired his gun a few more times to ensure the safety of the fleeing Koroshans. Listening to the gunshots that were gradually fading again outside, he also pressed himself against the wall and made for the small building. The building was silent, and he crawled up from the back, stepping on the window frame and climbing up to the half-open window on the second floor.

Just then, a snowy light suddenly came on, aiming straight toward this building.

It was an extremely powerful spotlight that was so penetrating that it could illuminate everything through a distance of two hundred meters, including the fleeing prisoners.

At the same time, a gentle voice came from the radio speaker mounted on the side of the small building.

“Dear friends of Korosha, please stop in your tracks.”

The owner of the voice had once questioned the chemist’s wife, Lianna, in the same gentle tone, saying, “Dr. Silver and I will take good care of you and your children.” However, the voice held a strange dull quality to it then, as if it was separated by something.

—It was the doctor.

The distant sounds of footsteps and shouts did not cease for even a moment.

“Please stop in your tracks, I repeat.” The voice was louder now, to the point where it was deafening. Otherwise, we will release toxic gas in your direction. Gas that will reach lethal concentrations in a short amount of time and send you before your God.”

At the same time, a group of soldiers wearing gas masks ran quickly toward the south gate. The gas masks were white in color with black oval lenses covering each eye hole, and the black tube extending from the nose and mouth region was attached to canisters, which made them look like a bunch of ghosts with skulls as heads. There were also thin tubes in each of their hands that extended out from the ground.

Smiling gas.

In the blink of an eye, it could make one smile as they suffered in agony before dying.

It had finally accompanied Oak Valley Concentration Camp from the beginning to the end.

Yu Feichen tumbled in through a window from the second floor and a lab assistant in a white coat looked at him in horror, but he didn’t dare to make any noise as Yu Feichen was pointing his gun at him.

Firing the gun would alert the people below, so Yu Feichen knocked the assistant unconscious with the butt of his gun. This place was also connected to a separate storage room. Yu Feichen wanted to search for it, but after he had untied all the pregnant and disabled people who were restrained on the autopsy tables, the doctor’s voice coming from the radio had become very threatening.

—He went down the stairs. The radio unit was on the first floor, he remembered it well.

The ground floor was very dim as the tall shadow of the poison canister blocked out part of the light. The doctor in the white coat was also wearing the skull-like gas mask was speaking slowly into the microphone. “I will begin counting down now. 10, 9—”

Then, the south door opened with a clear view of the outside. From the window, he could see the Koroshans running in the snow without turning back. At this moment, their desire for freedom overshadowed their fear of death.

“8, 7, 6—”

The soldiers in gas masks activated the devices at the tips of the pipes in unison. The doctor was serious.

“5, 4—”

Yu Feichen raised his gun and pointed it at him from a distance.

“3, 2—”

A calm voice suddenly rang out from between the cluster of canisters occupying most of the room. “Doctor.”

The doctor turned his head abruptly.

A figure slowly climbed up to the top of the canisters, his hand pressing against the heavy valve on top of the largest canister in the room as he held a large brown bottle in his other hand. In this world, certain extremely corrosive and acidic liquids were required to be kept in such containers.

—It was the chemistry teacher, Gerold.

“Tell them to stop,” said Gerold, whose voice had never been so still. “Otherwise, I’ll open the valve or pour this on.”

Either opening the valve or pouring corrosive substances over the tank would instantly result in massive spillage of the toxic gas.

“Your and everyone else’s gas masks won’t filter this concentration of gas, Doctor.”

“It’s you.” The doctor’s expression was unreadable beneath the mask. “Are you truly committed to making this decision?”

Gerold looked condescendingly down at him from above. His fingers were trembling, but his gaze was firm. He enunciated, “Let. Them. Go.”

The doctor laughed.

“If I remember correctly, your wife is still upstairs. She’s still awake.” his voice grew gentler and more sincere as if he were employing some sort of placating technique on him. “Won’t you like to talk to her?”

As he said that, he slowly turned his head, gaze moving up the stairs.

—Until he paused abruptly.

There, high up on the stairs, Yu Feichen looked back at him with a smirk as he played with his handgun.