Invasion - Chapter 1
Chapter 1
It hadn’t rained for many days. The scorching sun hung high in the sky, its bright light shining on the rammed earth walls, baking a thin layer of loose sand on their ochre surface. A breeze stirred the powdery fine sand, which swirled and coated the skin of passersby.
“It smells of sentinel’s sweat.” Roy covered his nose with a silk handkerchief, and ducked through the arched doorway, complaining, "This place is too dirty. That's why I hate coming to the military administration office."
A worn-out plaque of the military administration office hung over the ochre-colored archway. Passing under the plaque, a large, gray training field came into view. Many sentinels were walking back and forth. On one side, something was playing on an electronic screen, attracting many onlookers.
Roy walked along the boardwalk on the other side, explaining to the person beside him, “We just need to go through the process, get the formalities done, and leave. If they make any requests you don’t like, you don’t have to pay attention to them.”
The person behind him responded with a soft hum.
It was a very young girl, wearing the exquisite uniform of the White Tower Guide Academy: an ivory brocade long skirt and a white silk shirt embroidered with gold thread. Layers of lace peeked out from under the hem of the skirt, swaying with her every step.
She walked quietly in the sunlight, with a delicate face, a slender figure, and skin as smooth as porcelain, like a flower dusted with morning dew. Her appearance at the edge of this sand-filled training field was quite out of place.
She was a guide who had been carefully nurtured within the tall White Tower.
The passing sentinels seemed to become awkward upon seeing her.
They pushed and nudged each other, whispering and secretly glancing at her. The loud-mouthed ones instinctively lowered their voices, and the bare-chested soldiers casually pulled on their jackets hanging on their waists.
Bits of conversation floated over.
“Did you hear? That’s her… the guide.”
“The one whose engagement was called off by her matched sentinel?”
“Do you think... do I have a chance...hehe…”
“Don’t be stupid. What’s your rank? Are you a noble? Guides are so rare now.”
“Can’t a guy dream... anyways, nobody wants her…”
“…”
Roy felt a surge of anger upon hearing these words.
"That Jiang Yangshuo is a piece of crap to reject a guide like her; his brain must be mutated." Thinking this, his gaze fell on Lin Yuan, and he couldn't help but feel a tinge of sympathy. "Poor girl, she must have been hit hard to apply for such a grueling job exploring the contaminated zone. How pitiful."
However, the girl named Lin Yuan, following behind, seemed completely oblivious to the surrounding chatter and did not notice the sympathetic gaze of her companion.
She looked calm, almost expressionless, her focus on a spot in the distance, as if she was looking at the other side of the training field.
Roy followed her gaze.
On the other side of the training field, there was a row of grim, iron racks. One end of these crude iron frames was buried deep in the earth, and the exposed parts were covered in rust, as if stained with blood that could never be washed away.
At this moment, a man was hanging on the rack. The prisoner was shirtless, his hands tightly bound and hoisted above his head. He had clearly been hanging there for several days.
Black, clotted blood covered half of his face, making it impossible to see his features. However, from his taut muscles, lean physique, and numerous old scars covering his skin, it was clear that he was a young sentinel.
A young but battle-scarred sentinel. It was unclear what serious crime he had committed to be publicly tortured here.
Roy knew that public trials were customary in military camps.
Sentinels were the strongest warriors, but also the most troublesome group.
They were constantly entering the nightmare-like contaminated zones, seizing resources from the mutated monsters, living with their heads metaphorically hanging by a thread.
Overloaded senses and repressed manic emotions, the fate of relying on channeling or drugs just to survive, turned these powerful men into monsters at times.
Those who turned into monsters, committed crimes, or did wrong would be hung on these racks for public execution.
As punishment, but also as a deterrent.
Of course, with the corruption that permeated the bones of imperial officials, no matter how serious the crime, as long as you had enough money or could find a powerful enough backer, the matter could be handled leniently. Conversely, if you were a poor wretch from a remote outpost, with nothing to your name, even the slightest infraction of the hundreds of military regulations could result in being hung on this iron rack, repeatedly humiliated, and even tortured to death.
Roy asked Lin Yuan, "What's wrong? Is it someone you know?"
Lin Yuan's gaze returned, and she shook her head, “I think I’ve seen him before, but I don’t remember.”
The two of them walked across the training field and up the steps of the administrative building.
They noticed an electronic screen next to the rack, playing a blurry video.
A strange-looking device was connected beneath the screen.
At the top of the device was a transparent hemisphere made of an unknown material.
From Roy's vantage point, he could see into the sphere and was horrified to discover that it contained a human brain, separated from its body.
The human brain was being stimulated by tiny electrical currents at intervals, and it even twitched slightly.
Roy stood on the steps, staring at the trembling human tissue, and thought this was incredibly creepy.
This bizarre device was called a "Brain-in-a-Jar System," a relic of the old days. It was designed to extract residual memories from the brain after a person died.
Currently, the screen was displaying the memories of the brain in the jar. The last images left in someone’s mind before death.
Roy didn't understand why so many people in this world enjoyed watching the memories of the dead. He wasn’t interested either.
Unfortunately, this device was highly sought after by the wealthy elite of the empire, even though humans today no longer had the ability to manufacture such sophisticated instruments.
They sent sentinels on dangerous missions into the contaminated zones to find them from the ancient ruins.
These people used it to watch various death memories, finding endless enjoyment. They even developed various uses for it, such that even the military administration office had one of these devices.
Numerous curious sentinels were crowded below the screen, watching.
The footage on the screen was blurry and strange, seeming to be from inside the monster-infested contaminated zone. There was an abundance of blood, bizarre shadows moving back and forth, and piercing, eerie cries.
These images were different from what one saw with their eyes. Some parts of the image were incredibly vibrant and clear, while others were blurry and chaotic.
This was the perspective of the deceased. The things that were most terrifying and memorable to the dead in their last moments were particularly clear and vivid in the picture. Conversely, other things would appear blurry.
At this time, a sentinel’s face appeared clearly in the center of the image.
Young, blood-stained, with red eyes, and seething with rage.
The sentinel looked down from above, holding a gun in his hand, his expression as dark as a demon from hell.
He held the dark barrel of the gun, unwavering, pointing directly at the screen. The image was shaking, but the gun’s color was intense, steadily pointing at the viewer.
Intermittent sounds could be heard in the background, the deceased speaking, a desperate plea mixed with distorted cries.
Repeatedly pleading, crying, and frantically begging for mercy.
From the first-person perspective, it was particularly pitiful.
It was clear that the deceased was killed by this sentinel. And this murderer was now hanging on the rack.
“I’ll give it to you, all of it.”
“It’s worth a lot of money, very, very much. I’ll give it all to you, just spare me.”
“Spare me, let me live.”
“I beg you, I beg you…呜呜.”
The deceased's hands kept rising, trembling, repeatedly offering a fist-sized, amber-like crystal.
The stone was internally radiant, and a closer look revealed a breathtaking beauty. In its center, it seemed to have a living creature writhing. He offered this priceless treasure, pleading with the grim reaper to spare his life.
However, the gun pointed at the screen was firm and cold, slowly drawing closer, suffocatingly so.
Then, the image went black.
After a snowy, static-filled screen, the image returned to the beginning.
The entire video was just this short segment, played repeatedly.
Pleading, wailing, the trembling and fearful victim.
Cold-blooded, somber, the murderous assailant.
Pitch black, slowly closing in, the despairing gun barrel.
Despair and death were played repeatedly.
The onlookers felt the same emotions, and couldn’t help but mourn for the deceased.
Some sentinels recognized the crystal and gasped, “That’s a worm jade, right?”
“Yes, an energy stone, extremely valuable.”
“Such a large, living bug jade, I’ve never seen one before. How much is it worth?”
“No wonder, murder and arson get you rich. Just for this, he callously harmed his entire team.”
The sentinels in the crowd were immediately in an uproar.
It was said that an entire team of sentinels had entered the contaminated zone. In the end, everyone in the team, including the researcher sent by the empire, died inside.
The only one who came out alive was a young and powerful captain.
Initially, no one knew what had happened. After all, team wipeouts were quite common in the contaminated zone.
However, by coincidence, another search party subsequently entered the area and found the body of the researcher, shot dead, near the exit.
They brought back the brain of the dead researcher, which fortunately revealed the villain’s crime.
Actually, this sort of thing happened often.
The contaminated zone was a completely sealed-off area. Once someone entered, whatever happened inside, whatever they did, was hard for people on the outside to know.
The closed-off and terrifying area often resembled hell. Before going in, they were all human beings. After entering, in that distorted, dark world, some turned into monsters.
“He harmed his whole team of brothers, that’s too cruel,” an older sentinel gritted his teeth, an old soldier who had led teams and witnessed the deaths of countless brothers. He couldn’t bear to see such things.
Someone else in the crowd spat on the ground, “I used to lose to this guy. I was impressed and thought he was something. The Blade of the Ice Field, the Sword of the Empire. I used to admire him so much. Now, I just blame myself for being blind.”
“What Blade of the Ice Field? Bah!”
“I never liked him from the start. He was just a little stronger, a little higher in rank, and his personality was arrogant, irritating to the core. Look at him, he was actually hiding in the contaminated zone doing such dirty deeds, a despicable person.”
“I say, interrogator, it’s already ironclad evidence. What else is there to interrogate? Sentence him to death, let him pay for his crimes with death.”
The more the sentinels cursed, the angrier they became. As soldiers who risked their lives on the battlefield, they hated nothing more than those who stabbed their brothers in the back.
“In my opinion, death is too cheap for him,” the officer in charge of the torture said, leaning against the table where the torture devices were placed, announcing to everyone with a twisted smile.
He had been interrogating this prisoner for days and had tried every method he could think of. But this person was a tough nut. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get even a single word out of him about the matter his superiors had instructed him to ask about.
He was filled with pent-up anger.
At this moment, the watching sentinels were very excited and ready to vent their anger, so he dragged out his words with a sarcastic tone and said, “I think such a criminal should be sent to the Rose Camp to serve. Let him die for the country and atone to his death.”
The sentinel’s military camps were numbered, but there was no place actually called the Rose Camp.
But everyone there knew what this referred to.
The watching sentinels burst into laughter, and many started whistling loudly.
The favorite topic in the military camp was anything that was yellow or lewd. Especially when they could inflict such humiliation on a former powerhouse they used to look up to.
“From now on, the Blade of the Ice Field will be renamed the Rose of the Ice Field,” said a female sentinel, her tall, sturdy shoulders moving, and her eyes scanning the prisoner with undisguised lust.
“Don’t worry, brothers will take good care of you,” another strong sentinel, with rippling muscles and thick arms, said. He had lost to the prisoner in a sentinel school competition. Now that he saw his opponent in trouble and could humiliate him, he jumped up higher than anyone else.
Just as he was about to make an unreserved and scathing remark, a cold shiver ran down his spine.
A strange and hair-raising feeling washed over him.
It was as if his entire body was suddenly submerged in the coldest, darkest depths of the ocean, under tremendous pressure.
In the distant, deep blue, a huge and terrifying whale seemed to be slowly surfacing, glancing at him from afar.
Under that glance, overwhelming pressure swept over him. Like prey targeted by a predator, he felt an uncontrollable fear. His bones went soft, his legs nearly gave way, and he wanted to fall to his knees.
The muscular sentinel's face turned pale, and he was sweating profusely. He clenched his teeth, barely managing to avoid falling to his knees in front of everyone.
He warily raised his head, and he locked eyes with the prisoner hanging on the rack, who was looking down at him coldly.
That gaze pierced through the bloody veil on his face, like a bloodstained blade, cold and sharp.
He looked nothing like someone who had been hanging on the rack and tortured for days.
This… this was a high-level sentinel’s pressure?
How was it possible for it to be so oppressive? What level had he reached now?
The sentinel felt his confidence crumble. Even though he couldn’t believe it, he still shrank back, quietly withdrawing from the crowd, no longer daring to say insulting words while hidden amongst the crowd.
Lin Yuan, who had already left the training field and was climbing up the steps, suddenly seemed to hear something and turned around.
It sounded like, she had heard the familiar sound of the ocean waves.
Translators's notes: Check out the new novel I've been working one, First Battlefield Commander!.
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