The men, steadying their helmets, scrambled up the ladders, while the officer pushed her, urging her to climb out of the trench and onto the ground above.Barbed wire crisscrossed the landscape, shell craters stretched endlessly, and scars marred the earth before her, painting a desolate scene akin to the surface of the moon.
‘They can’t hit me, they can’t hit me, they can’t hit me…’
Clutching her rifle, she ran forward with her head bowed, countless bullets whistling past her ears, until she tripped over a corpse and plunged headfirst into the muddy water of a shell crater.
After choking violently on several mouthfuls of foul-smelling muddy water, Lin Yu struggled to grasp a relatively firm mud slope, gasping for breath as she flipped onto her back.The terrain here was lower, preventing stray bullets and shrapnel from reaching her. ‘What if I just lie here, playing dead, and survive the attack…’ she mused.
While still plotting how to survive, her peripheral vision caught an uninvited guest on the opposite side of the water-filled crater.
‘By the logic of first come, first served, wasn’t she the one who arrived first?’
Regardless, the ‘foreign devil’ in the red tunic stared intently at Lin Yu, then, in the next instant, drew a dagger and lunged towards her.
“No—!”
As the sharp dagger plunged straight towards her chest, Lin Yu quickly rolled on the ground, tumbling two or three times before successfully evading the attack.
Half the dagger sank into the soft, wet earth, illustrating the grim outcome had she been struck.
‘She would surely die; with the current medical standards, there would be no saving her!’
“I surrender, I surrender—!”
Uncomprehending, the ‘foreign devil’ pulled out his dagger and continued his pursuit.Lin Yu, knowing her strength was no match for a direct confrontation, could only turn and splash into the muddy water, using the spray to obstruct his vision, and then…
…wait for death.
Her rifle had sunk into the mud pit, beyond retrieval in under two minutes, and aside from that, she possessed no other weapons on her person.She had no knife, no entrenching tool.Her fists were weak and powerless.Her teeth… frequent gnawing on hard ‘wo wotou,’ a type of coarse corn bread, had given her impressive biting strength, but they were clearly no match for the gleaming dagger in his hand.
This particular shell crater was quite deep; anyone passing by would surely miss her presence within, and she couldn’t possibly hope for assistance from any friendly forces that might rush in later.
‘Was she truly doomed to simply wait for death?’
Lin Yu scrambled and clawed her way to the opposite side, twisting her body to observe her enemy’s movements.
He held the dagger high, wading through the water-filled crater with an almost comical gait, ever ready to end Lin Yu’s young life.
Faced with such a desperate situation, she decided to try a long shot (TL Note: A Chinese idiom, ‘si ma dang huo ma yi,’ meaning to try anything in a desperate situation, like treating a dead horse as if it were alive), raising both hands and shouting the English phrase she had practiced most proficiently in her previous life: [I surrender!]
The ‘foreign devil’ froze, and so did she.
[What?]
“Huh?”
The Ranforce soldier was astonished that she spoke his language; she, too, was astonished that she spoke ‘Ranforce’ tongue.
‘These red-coated Ranforce soldiers, were they truly the British Empire’s Redcoats?!’
Lin Yu immediately realized this was part of her transmigration benefit.
The rigorous College English Tests she had painstakingly passed in her previous life finally found their purpose.Someone fluent in the enemy’s language could easily serve as a commander’s translator, avoiding the need to crouch in this miserable trench, facing bullets and bombs.
However, the immediate priority was not to fantasize about the future, but to calm the Ranforce soldier before her, preventing him from spontaneously stabbing her.
Lin Yu, dredging up every scrap of English she had ever learned, rummaged through her mind for a few potentially useful phrases and blurted them out.
[I won’t hurt you, so please don’t kill me…]
[Why do you speak Ranforce?]
The two mud-splattered figures conversed in the shell crater, exchanging phrases.When the red-coated soldier asked why she understood Ranforce, Lin Yu’s mind seemed to ‘upgrade,’ and she blurted out a fabricated story.
[My mother is Ranforce.]
[… ]
‘It seemed to have worked.’
Lin Yu’s mother, who had lived most of her life in a mountain village in this current existence, was certainly not Ranforce; after shouting ‘surrender,’ every word that followed from her mouth was a lie.
‘If it helps you survive, then keep fabricating.’
‘Pretend to have half of their blood, and they might spare you out of kinship…’
“[Friend, that truly is tragic,]” he said, sheathing his dagger as he walked towards Lin Yu, who was still half-lying on the ground.He picked up her rifle, which was almost buried in the wet earth. “[We are at war, and who knows how your Emperor will treat her.]”
As he wiped the mud from the rifle’s surface with his uniform, Lin Yu remained huddled nearby, timid and wary.
‘What would happen next?’
This shell crater lay between two of her own defensive lines; if the soldiers who had jumped out of the trench with her could successfully counterattack, she might then be able to crawl back to the trench they had started from.
But if the counterattack failed, this place would become a desolate no-man’s-land between two opposing armies.Any moving object would be met with gunfire, whether from the Ranforce soldiers behind her or her own compatriots in front.
She would be trapped in the shell crater, destined either to be shot dead, to die slowly of thirst, or to succumb to dehydration after drinking the muddy water and falling gravely ill; ultimately, it was death either way.
“[This attack has failed, and I can’t retreat to my starting position either.Now I must ask a favor of you… seeing as I haven’t harmed you, please speak a good word for me when I am captured…]”
Suddenly, a figure appeared behind the Ranforce soldier.Raising a hand, they fired a shot, felling him to the ground.
Following a burst of light from a magical array, bright red blood splattered onto her face, and the bullet, having pierced the man’s body, burrowed into the wet earth beside her.
“Get up, and keep charging!”
The figure, not much taller than herself, stood at the edge of the shell crater, urging Lin Yu to pick up her rifle and continue the advance.
She, however, merely stared silently at the enemy soldier with whom she had just been conversing, now lying in the water-filled crater, the accumulated water stained crimson by the blood gushing from his wound.
“He… he clearly didn’t intend to kill me…”
The figure ignored her murmuring, leaving her to gaze at the ‘enemy’ floating in the water, their eyes wide and unseeing in death.
‘He was dead.’
‘Would I also die like him someday?’
Lin Yu herself harbored similar thoughts; if, one day, while attacking a Ranforce position, she were to encounter a young, scrawny Ranforce soldier shouting surrender in a shell crater, she might, at first, also hesitate to shoot.
‘And then be shot dead by another Ranforce soldier?’
Forcing her gaze away, she retrieved her sunken rifle from the discolored water.As if stripped of her soul, she stumbled out of the shell crater.
The area of flying bullets was now far behind her; the helmeted Diacra soldiers had already surged back in a wave to their initially lost positions.
Lin Yu, dripping with mud and water, stumbled back, almost falling into the trench from which she had started.
The junior officer who had blown the whistle earlier, upon seeing someone had snuck back without orders, immediately turned his fists and feet on her, raining words like ‘coward’ and ‘traitor’ upon her face amidst his furious curses.
Only half a minute later, when a passing lieutenant noticed the violence unfolding before him, did he intervene, stating: “Save your strength for the foreign devils, don’t take it out on your comrades!”
Called to a halt, he immediately stood at attention and saluted the lieutenant, then released the mud-covered Lin Yu.
The lieutenant then issued an order to Lin Yu: “It’s normal to retreat if you can’t break through, don’t… wait, weren’t you the one earlier…”
He recognized the slender, delicate ‘youth’ with a bruised face before him; just fifteen minutes before the shelling began, this person had sought him out to reveal she was actually a girl conscripted into service.
“It’s me, sir.”
She wondered if she would face court-martial for her unauthorized retreat.
Thankfully, she did not.
“The medics are likely busy now and can’t confirm for you just yet.If you truly don’t want to stay, I could help you on the spot… my apologies, let’s wait for her to arrive.”
He hesitated, then waved his hand, dismissing the unspoken offer and signaling Lin Yu to disregard his words.
“Not many survive a charge.Make good use of your luck.”
Just a few years prior, women in Diacra were still expected to adhere to the ‘Three Obediences and Four Virtues’ (TL Note: ‘San Cong Si De’ refers to traditional Confucian moral codes for women in ancient China), where chastity might have been considered more precious than life itself.It was only natural that the notions of peacetime had not yet fully shifted.
When the war first began a few years ago, women weren’t even allowed to enlist; now, aren’t certain positions gradually opening up for them?
As a ‘suspected female,’ Lin Yu was granted special permission to remain in this section of the trench without having to participate in the arduous work of cleaning and repairing it.
‘Honestly, the term ‘suspected female’ was far too abstract.’
At least she wouldn’t have to stand at a firing position, rifle in hand; at least she wouldn’t have to face the shattered remains of former comrades… or rather, ‘fellow soldiers,’ as they were more commonly called in the military.
‘No, I’m not a soldier; why am I calling them comrades?… How much longer until the medics arrive…’
Tears welled in Lin Yu’s eyes as she sat on a wooden crate, clutching her rifle; she was trapped in the trench, though just this morning she had been a simple village girl selling steamed buns.
She hoped to be rescued from the trench by a medic before the next shelling began, and she hoped not to be assigned to the charging party in the next attack.
She hoped with all her being.