–Before you even sought the truth, you already knew it; you merely wished to choose between acceptance and denial.
April, New Era 215. Heting City, northern Cloud Mountain Peninsula.
The thunder of cannons had echoed for an entire day. As the sun dipped below the horizon, Vega’s armored forces ripped open a breach in the southwestern defense line, prompting Xuanji Star to swiftly deploy its reserves to seal the gap.
The Cloud Mountain Peninsula salient, with Heting City as its critical nexus, now found itself encircled, teetering precariously on the brink of annihilation. Should reinforcements fail to arrive promptly, Heting would inevitably fall to Vega, and with it, the entire salient would collapse.
Within the city walls, the entrenched Xuanji Star forces waged a desperate, final stand—a cornered beast’s struggle, even as they understood their fate was no longer their own to command.
At the stroke of midnight, the western defense line crumbled. Vega’s 89th and 81st Divisions surged into Heting from the west. Just hours later, at dawn, their 29th and 27th Divisions breached the eastern defenses, tightening the pocket around the salient. Heting, the linchpin of the entire protrusion, now hung by a thread; its fall was merely a matter of time. Once Heting capitulated, the trap would be sprung, leaving no escape for those within.
The Lieutenant was leading his soldiers in a frantic effort to destroy classified documents, ensuring they would not fall into Vega’s hands. Among these were extensive records detailing war crimes—photographs of massacres, witness testimonies, and other damning evidence.
Time truly flew. Earlier that year, he had been promoted from Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant, stepping into the shoes of Lieutenant Gao, who had been killed by an aerial bomb.
Though their official duty was to arrest and court-martial Xuanji Star soldiers who violated military discipline, Vega’s forces would make no such distinctions. Anyone bearing the Xuanji Star insignia was their enemy.
The 144th Home Guard Division, a recently formed unit with limited combat experience, had already begun its retreat. While it possessed a small core of veterans, these were but a drop in the ocean compared to the vast number of raw recruits. The command post, under the cover of the guard battalion, had already broken north, leaving only a skeleton crew of support staff to handle the aftermath.
Unfortunately, the Lieutenant, despite being a member of the ‘Field Military Tribunal,’ was also stranded. His designated escape vehicle had been destroyed barely half an hour prior, and two of his three companions had perished instantly. He had no choice but to fall back to a nearby bunker, awaiting a lull in the bombardment to make another break for it. Seizing the opportunity, he began assisting the remaining personnel with the clean-up operations, as he was also the highest-ranking officer present.
The entire division was now in disarray, each man for himself; no one spared a thought for how an outsider like him should retreat. As the saying went, a defeated army crumbles like a mountain. A significant number of soldiers had already begun to scatter, their resolve wavering due to the protracted absence of reinforcements. Such was the nature of green recruits, after all; the mere sight of shells landing nearby could send them into prolonged fits of terrified screams.
“Sir, Vega’s tanks are charging up the right street!”
The Lieutenant watched as a soldier, blinded in one eye by an explosion, stumbled and crawled into their position. He hastily moved to the edge of the bunker to observe, discerning the faint silhouette of tank tracks in the distance—‘Jiedushi’ tanks, supplied to Vega by Southern Dipper Star.
“How many more files are left?” the Lieutenant bellowed over his shoulder.
“Just these! Almost done!”
Turning back, the Lieutenant saw several stacks of documents still unburnt; there was no more time.
“Abandon all files! Torch the bunker! Everyone, evacuate immediately!”
The group scrambled out, one after another, jostling to retreat north through the rubble-strewn streets and skeletal remains of buildings.
Yet, the last few soldiers could not escape death’s relentless pursuit. Just as they were about to leap into a pile of rubble, a rocket propelled grenade screamed after them.
When the Lieutenant glanced back, he clearly saw one soldier instantly torn to pieces by the blast. Two other fallen soldiers desperately clawed at the ground, one of them ceasing to move after only a few desperate attempts. Another soldier turned back, intending to pull the survivor to safety, but the moment he emerged from behind a section of the ruins, a hail of machine gun bullets ripped him in half at the waist.
Vega’s soldiers closed in, raising their rifles to fire upon the Xuanji Star soldier still crawling on the ground. After a few shots, the man was riddled with bullets, resembling a sieve.
The Lieutenant witnessed it all with chilling clarity, yet his feet would not stop. ‘My strength as a player is formidable, but how many could I truly face in my current state? Retreat is the wisest course of action.’
The soldiers moved swiftly through the ruins, desperate to find an escape route.
The Lieutenant took the lead, scaling a broken wall. After finding cover behind another, and seeing the street clear, he urgently waved his hand, signaling his soldiers to advance.
“Go!”
One soldier stood guard with his rifle, while another vaulted over the broken wall, then hunched low, moving along the sandbag defenses in the street. Then came the second… the third…
As the fifth soldier crossed the cover, a shot rang out.
Though the cacophony of gunfire and explosions was constant, this single shot was starkly distinct—and it was accompanied by the sight of the soldier whose head burst open in a spray of blood.
The alert soldier immediately returned fire towards the elevated position, covering the retreat of the others.
The Lieutenant cast a glance upward, at a ruined clock tower. He knew there was a sniper concealed within, but there was no time for further thought. He swiftly dashed through the cover and into the ruins across the street.
He looked back once more, seeing Vega’s tanks now closing in. The soldier who had returned fire, along with the broken wall, was crushed beneath the tank’s treads.
‘I have to run faster… or it’s over…’
The Lieutenant led his men, fighting and fleeing, believing that once they crossed the moat to the northeast, they would soon be safe…
A burst of intense machine gun fire shattered his thoughts. He quickly sought cover, raising his binoculars, and saw that the bridge over the moat had been destroyed. Dozens of Xuanji Star soldiers had plunged into the water, swimming desperately towards the opposite bank, while from a high vantage point in the ruins on one side, a machine gun unleashed a frantic hail of bullets upon anything living in the river.
Through his binoculars, he could even discern the shooter’s expression—a furious, savage grimace.
Such an expression should not belong on a girl, yet that was precisely what he saw.
“Rifle!”
The Lieutenant took the sniper rifle. He had to save these soldiers, even if it was just one.
He raised the weapon, taking aim at the distant young female shooter. At that very moment, an artillery shell slammed into the ruins.
Amidst the deafening roar, the soldiers scattered in disarray, scrambling desperately for cover.
The Lieutenant was almost stunned senseless by the blast. He shook his head, struggling to focus his scattered thoughts, and in doing so, witnessed an unforgettable sight—human brains and bone fragments splattered across his face, as if someone had smashed a cake into him.
Vega’s soldiers rushed out from the flank, their youthful voices, many still breaking, audible amidst the shouts of battle—all of them women.
He seized the chaos as an opportunity to flee the ruins, fortunate not to have been directly hit by the shell; his body, for now, remained intact.
He sprinted towards a corner of the rubble, intent on breaking out from another direction.
The instant he rounded the corner of the ruins, a ‘Typhoon’ assault rifle was thrust towards him. As a bullet tore from the muzzle, he swiftly dropped into a slide, narrowly evading a fatal headshot. In one fluid motion, he flipped backward, his twin blades already arcing towards his assailant’s neck.
It was a dust-covered girl, appearing to have some foreign ancestry, dressed in a Vega military uniform. Through a missing button on her collar, he could faintly glimpse a red string around her neck, from which hung an amulet—a ‘Xifeng Knot,’ embroidered with the character ‘Zhang’.
A girl of her age should not be on a battlefield; she should be in a classroom, listening to lessons. Yet, the Lieutenant knew it was this very war that had forced her into such circumstances.
He would show no mercy. A single swift strike would sever her head.
‘This was war, a struggle of life and death, devoid of benevolence or morality.’
A tremendous force struck him from behind. The Lieutenant recognized it as a player’s attack. He swiftly rolled to the side, simultaneously preventing the girl from getting another shot at him. In the same motion, he discarded one of his long blades, seizing the front end of the assault rifle and wrenching it from her grasp, before flinging it into the moat.
He seized the girl by the shoulder, pressing his blade against her throat, and confronted the player before him.
“Let me go! Or I’ll kill her!”
Amidst the scattered gunfire, Vega’s soldiers began to close in.
Their faces were etched with weariness; clearly, they had not slept a wink since last night’s offensive.
‘Has Vega truly been reduced to only women…’
The Lieutenant understood why, but he refused to dwell on the morality of it. He was a soldier, bound to act according to his superiors’ orders and military regulations. He had no right to comment on such matters.
“Drop your weapon!”
The Lieutenant ignored the player’s demand. He saw several Xuanji Star soldiers in the distance, hands raised, being escorted. They were led to the riverbank, where a Vega girl picked up a rifle and shot them one by one in the back of the head.
‘Surrender means death…’
The Lieutenant tightened his grip on the blade… The edge pressed into the girl’s neck, leaving a faint red mark. The player facing him was formidable; he was unsure if he could defeat them, or if he could escape alive from so many muzzles pointed at him.
As he hesitated, a figure suddenly sprang from the moat. With a flick, the water in their hand splashed across the Lieutenant’s face, obscuring his vision. He instinctively tried to swing his blade, but his hand instantly felt empty; the girl had already been yanked away.
He executed a feigned stumble, sweeping his remaining blade horizontally to deter any approach, but it was futile. With a sharp crack, his right arm bone was crushed, and the blade flew from his hand. Immediately after, a heavy punch landed squarely on his face.
The blow was scorching hot, nearly pulverizing the lower half of his face, knocking out several teeth. Grimacing, his lower face charred and mangled, he was seized and dragged, his two leg bones then deliberately broken.
The Lieutenant struggled with all his might, but it was to no avail.
“Kill this Xuanji Star beast!”
“Xuanji Star dog!”
He was swiftly dragged to the riverbank, forced to his knees, a gun pressed against the back of his head.
He gazed at the soldiers’ bodies floating in the river…
At the prisoners executed beside him…
Recalling the corpses strewn everywhere…
The burning houses…
The desperate wails…
‘I can kill others… and others can kill me…’
‘It’s only fair…’
‘There’s nothing unjust about it…’
‘Everyone must pay the price for their actions…’
He vaguely perceived the face of death, as if the grim reaper himself beckoned.
The Lieutenant collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.
“K-kill me… I… I won’t resist anymore…”
The young girl squeezed the trigger, but the muzzle was swiftly pushed aside, sending the bullet harmlessly into the empty air.
A player stepped over, grabbed his hair, and pulled his head up, comparing his mangled face to the photo on an identification card in their hand.
“Is this you?”
He looked at the photo on the card and nodded, blood trickling from his face onto the ground.
“Field Military Tribunal, Lieutenant Li Yuyi?”
The player released his head, pressing it firmly back to the ground, and shouted to those around them.
“Don’t kill him! Keep him alive to testify to Xuanji Star’s crimes!”