Chapter 15 Yan Ling
Lu Mingfei and his men hid in the trenches and looked in the direction where Joseph Bem disappeared. They didn't even have the courage to climb out of the trenches to collect his body.
The artillery fire stopped again, the sun rose slowly from the horizon, and it was daybreak. Through the faint light, Lu Mingfei saw that Kaczynski, who was sitting next to him, had a tired face. His light golden pupils disappeared and turned back to their original dark blue, as if what he had just seen was just an illusion.
"Kaczynski, what happened just now?" Lu Mingfei couldn't help but ask when he remembered Kaczynski's strange behavior and his light golden pupils.
"Nothing. It's daybreak and we should go back." Kaczynski did not respond to Lu Mingfei's question. He stood up shakily and asked others to go back.
"Wait a moment." Lu Mingfei glanced at the direction where Joseph Bem disappeared, pursed his lips and made up his mind.
He lay on the ground and crawled carefully in the direction of Joseph Bem. Although he was not very familiar with Joseph Bem, he could not just leave this little fat man who always smiled when speaking here.
He should have inherited his family's bakery or gone to college. In short, he shouldn't have died here, shouldn't have died so easily like a bug.
"Hans, come back quickly. We can't bring his body back!" Kaczynski shouted anxiously as he watched Lu Mingfei crawling out of the trench, but his voice was not loud.
Lu Mingfei did not stop after hearing what Kaczynski said, but instead increased his crawling speed. The day-to-day practice in the boot camp took effect, and he soon crawled to the side of Joseph Bem's body.
But when he saw Joseph Bem's body, his whole body began to tremble.
It could no longer be called a corpse but a pile of rotten meat. Lu Mingfei also knew that he could not bring Joseph Bem's body back. He suppressed the urge to vomit and put his hand into the pile of rotten meat to search.
Soon he touched a round metal plate, which he cut into two, putting half into his pocket and the other half back on Joseph Bem.
That was Joseph Bem's identification tag. It was made of aluminum and recorded his name, unit number and blood type. Every soldier had one, including Lu Mingfei. This type of tag was jokingly called a dog tag during World War II.
Lu Mingfei climbed back into the trench holding Joseph Bem's name tag. He said nothing after returning to the trench, and no one around him asked him what he had seen.
In the end, Kaczynski patted Lu Mingfei on the shoulder and signaled that it was time to go.
Lu Mingfei and his friends followed Kaczynski back, and soon they saw the cemetery again. But for some reason, when Lu Mingfei stepped onto the cemetery, he had a bad feeling and the hairs on his body stood up.
"Kaczynski, do you feel anything is wrong?" Lu Mingfei asked Kaczynski beside him.
Kaczynski closed his eyes again, but this time, before Kaczynski could react, Lu Mingfei knew what would happen next.
The hissing sound of artillery shells slid down from the sky, and Lu Mingfei immediately pulled Kaczynski to the ground, with his body pressed tightly against the ground.
The ground began to roll, and there was no place to hide from the bombardment. Lu Mingfei and his companions could only lie on the ground and wait for the judgment of fate.
The ground shattered around them, and mud flew into the sky like a fountain, and then fell on Lu Mingfei and the others like raindrops.
A shell landed beside Lu Mingfei, knocking him off the ground. He fell heavily to the ground, and was completely dizzy. He didn't know if he was injured. Sometimes, under the effect of adrenaline, it would take a while for the wound to start hurting. He shook his dizzy head and found a crater in front of him. He remembered what he had seen on the Internet before, that it was rare for shells to fall into the same crater.
Lu Mingfei struggled to crawl into the bomb crater. At this time, the hissing sound of shells cutting through the sky rang out again. While he was groping around in the crater, he seemed to touch a wooden box.
He quickly got into the wooden box, hoping that the broken wood would provide him with some protection. As soon as he entered the box, he felt that he touched something cold and soft.
It was a corpse. It turned out that Lu Mingfei had crawled into a coffin, but he couldn't care less now. He could only pray that this coffin was not specially prepared for him.
The roar of artillery shells streaked across the sky, but this time there was no loud explosion. Suddenly, Lu Mingfei felt someone shaking his shoulder.
Lu Mingfei subconsciously thought that the corpse next to him had resurrected, but when he turned around he saw a man wearing a gas mask.
He recognized Kaczynski through the pair of pale golden pupils behind the gas mask.
"Poison gas! There is poison gas! Put on your gas mask! Hurry up, I can't hold on any longer!"
Only then did Lu Mingfei notice that Kaczynski's light golden pupils were bloodshot, as if he was under great pressure.
A yellow-green smoke spread across the cemetery, but was blocked a little in front of Lu Mingfei. That was the wind that he had seen gathering towards Kaczynski before.
But this time it was a little different. He seemed to see those transparent little goblins hiding in the wind. Some of them looked like mice with wings and some looked like bats. It was these little things that blocked the yellowish smoke outside.
Lu Mingfei felt as if he could control those little goblins. He was completely unaware that his pupils were also turning light gold.
Word Spirit: Mirror Pupil is activated, copying Word Spirit: Kamaitachi
But before he could try to control those bat-like goblins, Kaczynski had already covered his face with a gas mask. The moment the gas mask was covered on Lu Mingfei's face, the barrier formed by the wind collapsed instantly.
Kaczynski collapsed to the ground, and the yellowish smoke spread its tentacles like a giant jellyfish to every corner of the cemetery.
The sound of artillery shells was accompanied by a violent explosion. Lu Mingfei threw the body out of the coffin and stuffed Kaczynski and himself into the coffin.
An unknown amount of time had passed before the shelling ended and the yellowish smoke dissipated. Lu Mingfei saw a man getting up from the ground and taking off the gas mask on his face.
He observed the man for a few minutes and found that he seemed to be fine, so he dragged Kaczynski out of the coffin and took off the gas mask on his face.
Some people crawled up from the ground one after another, some lay on the ground wailing, and some no longer made any sound.
(End of this chapter)
