It Really Did Exist

Lu Xiaoya bit her lip and followed the group. She wanted to see what tricks this young Brigade Commander was up to.

The group skirted the camp and headed north for about half a mile.

Before they even reached their destination, a thick, nauseating stench of burning flesh drifted over on the wind, mixed with the strange smell of barbecue and diesel.

Several female students couldn't take it and started gagging, their hands over their mouths.

The boys' faces turned deathly pale one after another.

When they rounded a small hill, the sight before them made everyone draw in a sharp breath.

An enormous pit appeared before them, several basketball courts wide.

Inside, flames roared as countless charred human-shaped figures rolled in the fire, crackling and popping.

It wasn't any kind of crematorium.

It was a mass grave!

A gigantic tomb piled high with over ten thousand bodies!

"Ugh..."

At last, one of the students couldn't hold it in any longer and ran off to throw up.

All color drained from Lu Xiaoya's face. She clamped a hand over her mouth, her stomach churning as horror filled her eyes.

She had never imagined that the true face of war could be so direct and cruel.

It was ten thousand times more terrifying than anything described in words or photographs.

Chu Shixin pointed at the enormous pit, his voice still booming.

"See that? That's White Bear's Far East Armored Army. More than thirteen thousand of them. The Brigade Commander said to leave no one behind, so not a single one got away."

"We've been burning them for three days, and it still stinks like this. Can't help it. If we don't burn them, a plague could break out."

He spoke as if it were nothing, but to the students, his words landed like thunderclaps.

It was real...

What he'd said was actually true!

Chu Shixin didn't give them much time to absorb the shock before leading them to the other side.

There, an even more spectacular sight awaited them.

A "mountain" made of weapons.

More than a hundred armored vehicles and tanks, blown into bizarre shapes, were piled together like scrap metal.

Beside them were mountains of rifles, machine guns, mortars, and boxes upon boxes of neatly stacked ammunition.

"These were all captured. The Brigade Commander said White Bear's our transport corps. Whatever we're short of, we just have to ask them for it." Chu Shixin patted a tank's turret, and it rang with a hollow clang.

"These things are tough chunks of iron, but they're just shells. Our soldiers have plenty of ways to deal with them."

The students were speechless.

They touched the tanks' cold armor and stared at the heaps of weapons, their minds completely blank.

A legend...

It really did exist.

Lu Xiaoya stood before the pile of "scrap metal," staring blankly.

She remembered how she'd questioned Zhang Xueming earlier, and her cheeks burned as if someone had slapped her hard across the face.

That night, dozens of bonfires blazed across the Eighth Brigade's camp.

The students, still reeling from the shock, were now filled with boundless admiration.

They crowded around the Feng Army soldiers who had just returned from the battlefield, peppering them with questions.

"Brother, how did you manage to win?"

"Yeah, yeah! Come on, tell us!"

The soldiers were all young men in their early twenties. Surrounded by students—especially pretty female students—they blushed, but stood tall and proud.

They all remembered the Brigade Commander's earlier order: tell them half, hold half back; make it as mysterious as possible, brag as big as possible!

An old soldier took a swig of liquor, wiped his mouth, and began his performance.

"How'd we do it? Easy! That day, we found a bunch of Russians hiding in an outhouse. The Brigade Commander just gave the order: 'Throw grenades in there!'"

"Man, we tossed in dozens of grenades—boom! Boom! Boom! The whole outhouse went flying! Those Russians inside got blown up—tsk, tsk, fertilizer everywhere!"

The students listened, dumbfounded and a little disgusted, but even more excited.

Another soldier, unwilling to be outdone, knocked on the entrenching tool beside him.

"What's a grenade compared to that? The entrenching tools in our brigade are the real weapons of mass destruction! You know White Bear's tanks, right? Iron turtles! Our squad leader waited for the right moment, then used this thing to pry the barrel crooked! And one of our boys was even more savage. He shoved the tool right through the viewing slit and stirred things up inside. The driver turned into minced meat on the spot!"

"Right, right! We also pierced their fuel tanks with bayonets!"

"We dumped chili powder into their air vents!"

The soldiers told one absurd, darkly comic tale after another. The students listened, their blood pounding with excitement, as if they too had taken part in this bizarre, astonishing victory.

Lu Xiaoya sat a little farther away and didn't join in.

She knew that ninety-nine percent of these stories were probably made up, but she also understood that for soldiers to speak so casually about such a brutal battle, their young Brigade Commander must have had extraordinary methods and prestige.

Halfway through the bonfire gathering, Zhang Boling brought Lu Xiaoya over to Zhang Xueming, who was talking with several officers.