First Battlefield Commander! - Chapter 188
Chapter 188: Meaning
None of them had ever thought that hearing their own breathing could bring such joy.
Before they could even catch their breath, they remembered Zhao Zhuoluo's condition.
Fang Jianchen jumped down from the vehicle roof and went to open the door. Zhao Zhuoluo weakly rested his head against the control panel.
Lian Sheng caught up from behind and pulled him out of the vehicle.
Zhao Zhuoluo glanced at the overturned vehicle nearby but didn't dare look further ahead. Pressing his lips together, he leaned against Fang Jianchen.
Lian Sheng wiped the blood from his face, careful not to press too hard, and said softly, "Well done... Zhao Zhuoluo..."
Cornell brought a medical kit from the vehicle and expertly administered an injection to his neck. Then he stuffed the remaining doses into Zhao Zhuoluo's chest pocket: "Every three hours. Find a doctor soon to clean the wounds and check for other injuries."
At that moment, the rescue shuttle arrived to pick them up.
Cornell took a deep breath and shouted to them: "Everyone board now!"
Cheng Ze and the other trainees were helping clear the battlefield.
As he moved a stone slab pinning someone's leg, blood gushed out violently. Cheng Ze forgot to blink—his entire vision turned crimson.
Tears mixed with the warm blood streaming down his face.
The pinned person grabbed his arm, crying: "Save me... please save me..."
Cheng Ze wrapped the wound with his clothes.
"You can't do anything staying here! Everyone board now! Immediately!" Seeing no one obeying, Cornell roared: "Any later and we'll be surrounded—then none of us will get out!"
Amid his shouts, mournful weeping came from nearby.
"Mom... I feel so dizzy. Why is the sky spinning?" The girl looked around, then hugged the corpse in front of her: "Mom, wake up and look at me..."
Lian Sheng glanced over—the girl had red hair just like Tina's.
Here, red was such a hopeless color.
Cheng Ze looked up and pleaded: "Take them first."
Cornell refused outright: "No."
Cheng Ze: "I'll give up my spot for them! Let them get treatment first!"
Cornell's expression remained unyielding.
Cheng Ze: "They need it more than we do! Can't I just give them my spot?"
"Do you know what soldiers must learn first?" Cornell faced him squarely. "To accept sacrifice."
Cornell: "What will get you killed is naivety."
Cheng Ze said dazedly: "I don't care. I accept it."
The two locked eyes, each seeing resolute refusal in the other's gaze.
Their positions were completely incompatible. Cornell had no intention of persuading someone like this and turned to Lian Sheng instead.
Lian Sheng said: "Forget it. You can't force them—let them choose for themselves."
Without experiencing it firsthand, they wouldn't understand. Whether bruises or bloodshed, one must experience it personally.
Right now, they were overwhelmed by impulsive emotions—impossible to reason with.
Even if they knew what was objectively correct, they couldn't maintain perfect rationality.
Cornell relented with a nod to the pilot, who lowered the hatch. Several students carried conscious refugees without life-threatening injuries onto the shuttle first.
Lian Sheng and Cornell stood by, guiding them through emergency first aid.
The evacuation was delayed several minutes due to the transport.
"We're out of time! Really out of time!" the pilot whispered into the comms. "Lieutenant Colonel! Lieutenant Colonel Cornell! We must take off now!"
Cornell crouched and signaled the shuttle, which immediately closed its hatch and lifted off.
Half the students were inside tending to the wounded; the other half were left behind.
Those students pressed against the windows, pounding on the glass and shouting:
"Lian Sheng! They're still down there! Stop!"
"What are you doing?"
The pilot said: "We're out of time! Our defenses can't withstand their artillery. If we don't leave now, we'll be surrounded—then none of you will escape! If you want us all to sink together, I'll cut power and crash right now!"
"Can't you students be rational for once? We want to save people too! Whose life isn't precious? These are our Kafa citizens, but so what?" the pilot roared. "Not all kindness is right! Not all good intentions can be fulfilled! This is a warzone!"
The group froze at his outburst. Sweat and blood from their palms smeared the windows.
A male student asked quietly: "Then what about them?"
The pilot snorted: "They'll find a way to survive. Haven't we all survived like this?"
With the internal armed resistance neutralized, Kafa's military abandoned the outer defensive lines. They prioritized evacuating civilians to safe zones while soldiers violently suppressed the armed factions.
Some students left with the wounded, but Cornell wouldn't abandon the rest in this danger zone.
If anything happened to these students in Kafa, the consequences would be severe.
The area was too chaotic. Cornell temporarily took command, guiding civilians to safety. Once arrangements were made, he prepared to evacuate with Lian Sheng's group. While communicating with command, his gaze suddenly fixed elsewhere, his voice cutting off.
Cornell contacted Lian Sheng: "Were all the grenades you threw earlier live?"
Lian Sheng: "Of course they were real. Did you expect Fang Jianchen to pick a dud at random?"
Cornell said: "Look ahead of you!"
A girl was sprinting forward.
Amid the focus on refugees and devastation, with the surrounding noise overwhelming, no one had noticed the small figure. In her hand was a black spherical object—clearly a live grenade.
Perhaps it had been knocked forward by the vehicle wheels during the earlier exchange, rolling out of sight before retrieval. Now it was in her grasp.
No one could tell whether her target was the armed faction ahead, Kafa's military, or both.
Lian Sheng stepped forward, alarmed: "What's she doing? What's ahead?!"
"That's where our forces are confronting the armed faction!" Cornell broke into a sprint toward them, shouting: "Stop her! Don't let her go further!"
Lian Sheng reached for her sidearm but remembered leaving it in the vehicle.
She yelled ahead: "Halt! Stop right there or we'll shoot!"
The trainees' attention snapped toward the scene.
They recognized the girl's silhouette.
Cornell: "She can't hear! She was too close to the blast earlier!"
While she'd withstood the heat wave, the pressure shockwave had likely deafened her temporarily.
Cornell ran desperately, but the distance was too great. For the first time, his voice turned urgent: "Someone! Open fire! We don't know if the enemy has unstable weapons—a blast could trigger secondary explosions! Stop her now!"
As the gap closed, time ran out.
Lian Sheng gritted her teeth: "Fire!"
"She just can't hear! Maybe she's not targeting Kafa's forces? She's just a kid!"
Fang Jianchen raised his rifle, aiming at the girl's back.
"Fire!" Lian Sheng barked. "Fang Jianchen, fire!"
Fang Jianchen squinted down the sights, but his finger trembled uncontrollably.
The distance kept shrinking.
Lian Sheng: "Now!"
A male student nearby cried out: "Stop! Hey—stop!"
Fang Jianchen clenched his jaw.
Shoot. Shoot now!
With a roar, Fang Jianchen punched his own arm: "Steady!"
Lian Sheng grabbed a soldier's weapon and charged forward.
She dropped to one knee, braced the gun, and took aim.
Her palms were slick—whether from sweat or blood, she couldn't tell. As she prepared to shoot, another bullet streaked past, striking the running girl.
The target collapsed. The live grenade slipped from her grip, its pin already pulled. A fireball erupted instantly, black smoke billowing outward as shrapnel sprayed the area.
Her body vanished into the smoke.
Everyone froze, then slowly turned toward the source of the shot.
Cornell had already holstered his weapon, his face pale from exertion. He glanced at the group and said flatly: "Prepare to evacuate. Follow the squad."
The trainees seemed not to hear.
They'd witnessed too much death today—emotions bottled up with no outlet.
Against armed insurgents, they could attack with protective fury. But facing someone who'd been weeping pitifully minutes ago, they couldn't justify it.
War had driven her mad. They were all just ordinary people suffering within it.
Cornell pulled up in a vehicle, blocking the path: "Everyone board now!"
They stood motionless, heads bowed, expressions unreadable.
Lian Sheng understood. During the 36th District incident, most had been confined to training rooms—never seeing true casualties. Today's events had shattered them.
But there was no time to adjust.
Lian Sheng strode to the vehicle and yanked the door open: "Anyone not boarding needs a muscle relaxant? Grow up already! You want Kafa's troops wasting more manpower protecting you? Should I dig a pit and bury you here first?!"
Fang Jianchen helped Zhao Zhuoluo into the front passenger seat.
The remaining students trudged forward one by one, boarding reluctantly.
After coordinating with command, Cornell found them a temporary safe point to restock supplies and await another evacuation shuttle.
The ride was silent. Lian Sheng could feel the simmering anger from the back seats.
At the stop, the students disembarked. Cornell designated their permitted area, warning them not to wander.
After that, the two groups kept their distance.
Cornell sat alone while the students clustered by a pillar, some sitting, some leaning.
An invisible tension stretched between them.
Lian Sheng roughly understood.
Emotion couldn't accept rational conclusions.
The rift wasn't just because Cornell had shot the girl—they knew it was necessary, but couldn't reconcile it.
Their anger erupted.
That anger was misdirected, stemming from guilt and self-blame for surviving the disaster.
Lian Sheng took a walk to survey the area.
The factory had been evacuated in haste, some machines still running. She powered down a few before returning.
After scanning the group, she approached Cornell first.
"Didn't expect the vending machines here to still work." Lian Sheng waved a drink at him. "Want one?"
Cornell pocketed his hands: "No."
Lian Sheng kept holding it out: "Already bought it."
Cornell: "Save it for tomorrow."
"..." Lian Sheng, "You win."
She sat beside him, but Cornell immediately stood and stepped away, back turned: "Don't mind me. Worry about your classmates instead."
Lian Sheng: "..."
Worry about them... She wasn't fond of counseling either. Really.
With a sigh, she stood and went to her fellow trainees.
They looked utterly dejected.
After circling them, Lian Sheng picked a male student and handed him the drink: "Take this to Lieutenant Colonel Cornell. Thank him for looking after us."
The boy turned away: "No, you do it."
Lian Sheng: "He's been guiding us to safety, and you can't even say thanks?"
The student looked up, eyes wet: "But he..."
Lian Sheng kicked him.
"Get this straight—no one enjoys killing." Lian Sheng's expression darkened. "When your hands shook too much to shoot, he pulled the trigger first. Know what that means? His composure is pain you can't comprehend. Don't make me hit you again."
The student's face twisted with anguish before tears welled anew.
"I know... I really do..." he whispered. "I just don't know what to do anymore..."
Fang Jianchen rasped: "When will this war end?"
Lian Sheng glanced at him: "I ask myself that daily."
"What's the point of war? I used to think people here were too cold, but today... I don't understand war's purpose either..." The boy covered his face. "What's our purpose? Just killing? Are those we kill all deserving? Some were forced into this..."
His quiet sobs deepened the silence.
Confusion was their first obstacle. They were still too young.
Lian Sheng sighed softly and crouched before him: "Never go to war with killing as your goal. Otherwise, you'll either break... or become a monster."
"Humans are powerless—we can do so little. Lives are brief; even the most tragic can be summarized in a few words. So everyone strives to make their actions meaningful."
"But can you define every life choice? There aren't that many meaningful things. If you have reasons to act and persevere, isn't that enough? Overthinking leads nowhere—some questions have no answers. Why torment yourself?"
"War has no inherent meaning—only reasons not to surrender.
Do they have room to retreat? What does the enemy look like?
War offers no future, but without persistence, there's even less. That's why we cling to our weapons.
Yet if peace extended a hand, we'd embrace it. Everyone awaits that day."
"No matter how faint the hope, don't waver or hesitate. Believe in yourself."
"Hope isn't something you must achieve. Even in despair, it strengthens you. Suffer if you must—hold that pain until the day you needn't bear it. Resistance and endurance stem from refusing to carry that burden forever. Hold tight to your strength."
Zhao Zhuoluo looked down at his hands, then clenched them.
"Do you hate war? Then look ahead. Defeat every enemy before you, and it will end. Until then, grow stronger."
"There's no grand meaning. This is my life's purpose—my choice. Even with my last breath, I'll see it through. That's all."
Actually, I don't think... this counts as tragedy -.-#
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