On the eve of the fall of Liaodong, he led his troops in a remonstrance against the young marshal.

Night fell as dark as ink, pressing heavily on the desolate plains north of Fengcheng.

It was past midnight, and the world was pitch black, with only a few torches flickering in the cold wind in the prisoner camp.

The firelight shone on the potholed ground and on the muddy, swaying figures, casting long, distorted shadows.

Thirty large pits.

Each one is three zhang long, two zhang wide, and one and a half zhang deep.

The battle has been going on since morning, and it has now been a full ten hours.

More than 10,000 prisoners, without a drop of water or a grain of rice, dug for eight hours straight in the frozen soil of Northeast China in September, their stomachs empty and their throats parched.

The permafrost layer of the black soil is as hard as iron. A shovel can only leave a white mark when you dig in.

With another shovel strike, my hand went numb from the shock, but the frozen soil remained completely still.

The prisoners could only use pickaxes to chisel out a crack, and then use shovels to pry and dig little by little.

My palms were blistered and bleeding. When the blisters burst, the blood mixed with dirt stuck to the shovel handle and froze into ice shards.

My shoulders ached like they were filled with lead, my back hurt like it was about to break, and my knees were sore from kneeling on the frozen ground, even through my cotton pants.

But no one dared to stop.

Because those assassins with guns were standing by the pit, watching them expressionlessly.

Anyone who is slow will have their rifle butt smashed down.

If anyone stops, the bayonet is pressed against their back.

The living devil Chang Yuchun sat on an ammunition box not far away, legs crossed, smoking one cigarette after another. The glow of the cigarette butts flickered in the darkness, like a malevolent eye.

So no one dared to stop.

More than 10,000 people gritted their teeth, bled, and gasped for breath, digging from dusk till late at night, and from late at night till midnight.

Thirty large pits were neatly arranged on the wasteland, like thirty gaping black mouths waiting to devour everything.

Chang Yuchun finally stood up from the ammunition box.

He stretched, his bones cracking, then flicked the cigarette butt into the darkness, the sparks tracing an arc before disappearing into the frozen ground.

He slowly walked to the nearest large pit, looked down into it, and then walked to the edge of another pit to look inside.

He inspected each of the thirty pits one by one, as meticulously as a foreman inspecting a project.

After finishing examining the last pit, he nodded in satisfaction.

"good."

Chang Yuchun turned around and faced the emaciated prisoners. The corners of his mouth slowly turned up. "The pit was dug quite neatly. It seems there are quite a few good laborers among you."

None of the prisoners dared to speak.

They stood hunched over in the cold wind, their breath billowing in the firelight, their eyes filled with numbness and exhaustion.

Some people were already unsteady on their feet, swaying and leaning against the people next to them.

Some people's hands were covered in frostbite and their fingers were swollen like radishes.

Several weaker individuals collapsed to the ground, their chests rising and falling slightly, a testament to their continued existence.

Chang Yuchun glanced at them, his smile unchanged, but suddenly said something that sent chills down everyone's spines.

"Whether the pit is dug well or not can't be judged by looking at it. You guys go down and try it out to see if it meets the standards."

Should we go down and give it a try?

Everyone's brain felt like it had been hit hard with a hammer.

The prisoners looked at each other, their faces filled with fear and disbelief.

No one moved, no one spoke, and even breathing seemed to have stopped.

The cold wind howled across the wasteland, causing the torch flames to sway wildly, and the shadows cast on the ground to twist and turn wildly, like a group of menacing monsters.

"What's wrong?"

Chang Yuchun raised an eyebrow and his voice rose half an inch, "Are you all deaf? I'm telling you to get out of here!"

Still, no one moved.

One of the prisoners took a half-step back, trembling, and his heel hit a stone, making a slight sound.

In the silent wilderness, the sound was particularly jarring.

The smile on Chang Yuchun's face vanished instantly.

He turned around abruptly, snatched a Type 95 automatic rifle from the hand of the assassin beside him, raised it above his head with one hand, and pulled the trigger into the dark night sky.

"Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!"

The gun muzzle spewed out long tongues of fire, and the bullets tore through the night sky with a sharp whistling sound.

He emptied a magazine of thirty bullets in three seconds.

Gunshots echoed across the empty wasteland, startling crows in the distant, withered trees, which cawed and flew into the darkness.

Chang Yuchun threw the gun back into the arms of the assassin, turned his head, stared at the prisoners, and spat out a single word through gritted teeth.

"Get out of here."

His voice wasn't loud, but to the prisoners it sounded like thunder.

The prisoners had long lost all courage, and now, exhausted, they dared not resist. They could only hope that Chang Yuchun would have a little bit of sympathy and pity.

The first person moved.

He was a middle-aged man in his forties, with a full beard, and his hands were so swollen that he could barely hold a shovel, which dragged on the ground with a screeching sound.

The first one reached the edge of the pit, glanced back at his companions, and his eyes were filled with despair.

Then he closed his eyes and jumped.

Once there's a first one, there's bound to be a second.

The second one was a tall, thin man whose legs were shaking so much that he could barely stand when he reached the edge of the pit.

He crouched down, trembling, and slid down the edge of the pit little by little, gripping it with his hands.

Then came the third... the tenth... the hundredth...

One by one, the prisoners walked to the edge of the pit and jumped in.

Someone was crying, tears streaming down their face, leaving two white streaks.

Someone was shivering, shaking like a leaf.

Someone was muttering to themselves, but it was unclear who they were talking to or what they were saying.

More than 10,000 people lined up like a flock of sheep being driven, heads bowed, backs hunched, step by step toward those thirty dark, gaping mouths.

When the last prisoner jumped into the pit, Chang Yuchun walked to the edge of the largest pit and looked down.

The pit was filled with a dark mass of heads, all crammed together, looking up at him.

Some faces were crying, some were trembling, and some were silently opening their mouths, like a group of rats thrown into a well.

Chang Yuchun smiled.

"Fill in the soil."

These two words, falling lightly into the pit, felt like a massive boulder crashing into the water.

The prisoners in the pit understood instantly.

This is not an acceptance inspection, and it never has been.

From the moment the shovels were handed out, from the moment the first shovelful of earth was dug, that living devil had no intention of letting them leave alive.

All that talk about getting released and going home if you dig fast, about redeeming yourself through merit, about my promises—it's all lies! It's all nonsense to trick them into willingly digging their own graves!

"Liar! You liar!"

"Didn't you say you wouldn't kill us? You said you wouldn't kill us!"

"You'll die a horrible death! You'll die a horrible death!"

"Brothers! Climb up! We're going to die anyway, let's fight them to the death!"

Thirty large pits exploded at the same time.

The prisoners roared, cursed, and wailed as they desperately climbed up the edge of the pit.

Some people used both hands and feet, digging their fingernails into the frozen soil, and didn't even feel pain when they broke off their nails.

Some people climb over others by stepping on their shoulders, and those being stepped on do not resist. Instead, they push upwards with all their might, because as long as they can send one person out, they have a better chance of survival.

Some people were stacking themselves on the pit wall, seven or eight people piled on top of each other, and the person on top had already grabbed the edge of the pit with their hands.

Chang Yuchun took a step back and waved his hand behind him.

"You greenhorns of the First Brigade, hold this position for me! Anyone who tries to climb up here, I'll shove them down."

Yu Zhishan's troops were mostly raw recruits who had never seen blood, which was a good opportunity to toughen them up.

The new recruits, holding their Liaoning 13 rifles, stood trembling at the edge of the pit.

Their bayonets were fixed, but their guns trembled more violently than the prisoners in the pit.

The torchlight shone on their faces, revealing pale, childlike faces filled with fear.

A young recruit who looked no more than seventeen or eighteen years old, with fine downy hair on his lips, stood by the pit, his hand holding the Liao Thirteen trembling so much he could barely hold it.

He froze when he saw the desperate, distorted faces in the pit, desperately trying to climb out.

Those faces were about the same age as his father, about the same age as his uncle, and exactly the same as the tenant farmers in his village.

In that brief moment of his daze, a burly soldier climbed out from the edge of the pit.

The burly man, covered in mud and with bloodshot eyes, charged at the new recruits like a wild beast driven to the brink of despair.

The recruit stared wide-eyed in fright, his blood seemingly freezing into ice in an instant.

He tried to raise the gun, but his arm wouldn't obey him.

His mind went blank; all he could see was that increasingly close, grotesque, and distorted face.

The burly man snatched the Liao Thirteen from him, flipped the gun over, and the bayonet flashed a cold light in the firelight.

The burly man raised his gun with both hands, his face contorted with rage, and with all his might, he stabbed the new recruit in the chest.

The recruit watched helplessly as the bayonet pierced towards him, his pupils dilated to their limit, every muscle in his body seemingly frozen in place.

"Bang!"

A gunshot rang out.

A bloody hole exploded between the burly man's eyebrows. His body swayed stiffly, and the Liao Thirteen sword in his hand clattered to the ground. Then, like a piece of wood, he fell backward, splashing dust as he hit the ground.

Chang Yuchun put his pistol back into its holster and strode up to the new recruit.

The recruit remained in the same position, his eyes wide open, his lips trembling, looking completely dumbfounded.

Chang Yuchun raised his hand and slapped the new recruit hard across the face.

"waste!"

The recruit was slapped so hard he staggered, half his face instantly swelled up, and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

"Are you even a man?"

Chang Yuchun grabbed the recruit by the collar and lifted him off the ground. His fleshy face was almost touching the recruit's nose, and he spat all over the recruit's face.

"How many brothers of the Northeast Army died today? Those you knew and those you didn't, all of them died at the hands of these people!"

"When they helped the Japanese kill our brothers and our fellow villagers, no one showed any mercy!"

He gave the recruit a sudden shove, causing him to stumble back a few steps.

"You fucking don't even have the guts to avenge them?"

The recruit stood there, covering his face, his chest heaving violently.

Then, his eyes began to turn red, blood filled his pupils, and his face gradually became ferocious.

He thought of Old Li.

Old Li was the veteran who recruited him into the army. He taught him how to shoot, how to find his way, and even covered him with his own quilt in the middle of the night.

Old Li was shot in the chest today, leaving a large hole in his chest from which blood is gushing out uncontrollably.

When Old Li died, he was holding his hand, his mouth opened and closed, but he couldn't say anything before he breathed his last.

He remembered the burly man from earlier, his ferocious face, and the bayonet that had been thrust at him.

These beasts helped the Japanese kill Old Li, killed Zhao Da Gezi, killed so many brothers in the Northeast Army, and now they want to kill him too.

The new recruit scrambled to his feet and bent down to pick up the mud-covered Liao Thirteen.

His hand holding the gun was still trembling, but this time, it wasn't from fear.

"Ah! Kill!!"

He roared and rushed toward the edge of the pit like a madman.

As soon as a prisoner poked half his body out from the edge of the pit, a new recruit's bayonet was already piercing his chest.

The sensation of the knife tip piercing flesh traveled from the gun to my palm, sticky and rough, accompanied by the dull sound of bones cracking.

He pulled out the bayonet, and blood sprayed all over his face, hot and with a sweet, metallic smell.

The prisoner screamed and fell back into the pit.

The recruitment of new recruits has not stopped.

He wiped the blood from his face, his eyes even redder, as if they were about to burst.

He rushed to the edge of the pit and stabbed the next prisoner who climbed up with his knife.

Another cut, and another.

His movements were completely haphazard, driven entirely by instinct, like a cornered wolf cub that would bite and never let go.