Yet humanity has never bowed to fate…
Deep within the underground cavern, time seemed to freeze.
The dim emergency lights barely illuminated this artificially excavated vast space.
The air was thick with the smell of damp earth, machine oil, and an indescribable, tight silence.
Occasionally, water droplets condensed on the rock wall fell, landing on the temporary metal floor below with a soft sound, strikingly clear in the dead silence.
Su Xiche slowly turned around.
Before him stood a silent formation.
One hundred and seventeen men.
These were the last remaining forces of the 103rd Division’s forward command that he could still gather.
They wore their steel helmets straight, their rifles clean, and on their faces was fatigue, but more than that, a nearly solidified determination.
Pairs of eyes, under the dim light, still shone astonishingly bright, like tempered steel, looking toward their division commander.
Su Xiche’s gaze slowly swept across every familiar or relatively unfamiliar face.
There were old brothers who had gone through thick and thin with him since boot camp, young platoon leaders fresh out of military academy still carrying a bit of scholarly air, taciturn but technically proficient veteran NCOs, and green recruits with still-immature eyes who had already killed Abnormal Beings with their own hands.
They differed in age and experience, but standing here at this moment, they shared a common name—soldiers of the 103rd Division.
His gaze eventually slowly rose, passing over rows of silent shoulders, and landed on a flag held high by a burly sergeant major standing at the very front of the formation.
It was a red flag.
It had been through gunpowder and smoke, its edges somewhat frayed, its color no longer a bright new red but a dark red settled with war and years, as if soaked with the hot blood of countless martyrs.
The golden star at the upper left corner still shone, even in this weak light, as if containing the light of unyielding will and faith.
This flag had once fluttered on countless battlefields, witnessed this unit grow from nothing, from weak to strong, and also witnessed countless heroic sacrifices and immortal feats.
It had traversed the darkest years, and up to this day, it still stood here, never fallen.
Su Xiche looked at this flag, and the corner of his mouth uncontrollably curled up slightly.
That was not a light smile; it contained too many things—pride, nostalgia, tragedy, and a trace of barely perceptible, almost pious tenderness.
His gaze lingered on the flag for a long time, as if wanting to imprint every detail, every fold, into the depths of his soul.
Finally, he reluctantly looked away from the flag and back to the silent formation before him.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he cleared his slightly tight throat.
His voice was not loud, but carried a power that pierced the silence, clearly reaching everyone’s ears.
“Comrades.”
He began, using the most formal and solemn address.
“Before formally issuing the combat order and executing the final mission… I want to tell you something first.”
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the crowd again.
The soldiers and officers straightened their backs, their eyes fixed on him, waiting quietly.
Su Xiche took a deep breath, as if the next words required great effort to speak.
His voice dropped slightly, taking on an unprecedented gravity.
“The previous intruders… the day the battle started, those Abnormal Beings that attacked our command post, with extremely bizarre forms and attack methods…”
He paused longer, as if choosing his words, or mustering courage.
“They… are not people from here.”
“Not from here?”
The soldiers and officers flashed momentary confusion and incomprehension on their faces.
This statement was too vague, too strange.
“Here” meant Beihai?
Meant this war zone?
Or… something else?
But they maintained absolute discipline; no one whispered, no one murmured.
They just suppressed their doubts, their eyes still firmly fixed on their division commander, waiting for his explanation.
Su Xiche saw the confusion in their eyes.
He gave a bitter smile, a smile that carried deep helplessness and an almost cruel clarity.
“I know this sounds absurd, even… hard to accept.”
His voice echoed in the empty cavern.
“But what I’m about to say, you can choose to believe or not.”
“However, this… is the fact we must face.”
He raised his head, his gaze seeming to pierce the thick rock walls of the cavern, looking toward some void, a chilling distance.
“The land beneath our feet, the Beihai we are fighting to defend, this war we are experiencing, even… every one of us—”
His voice suddenly rose, with a resolute determination, yet extremely heavy. “—is not real!”
A deathly silence fell.
Even the sound of dripping water from the rock wall seemed to disappear.
Everyone, including the most composed veterans, had their pupils contract sharply in that instant, their faces showing expressions of disbelief, as if their worldview had been shattered in a moment.
“Not real?”
“What does that mean?!”
Su Xiche did not give them time to digest the shock.
With an almost cold calm, he continued to state the unbelievable fact.
“The world we live in, everything we have experienced, including this tragic defensive war… is more like… a reenactment based on a certain piece of real history, a distorted, solidified scene.”
He struggled to find words that ordinary people could understand.
“In… in the true, future real world, we are called the Dead Realm—a special space formed by the intertwining of the dead’s obsessions and historical fragments, and we…”
His gaze fell on every soldier’s face, watching them go from shock to bewilderment, then to a vague fear and resistance.
“We are the… aborigines derived from this Dead Realm.”
“In other words,” Su Xiche’s voice dropped, carrying a pain like self-torment, “including me, Su Xiche, everyone standing here… our existence, our memories, our emotions, our convictions for which we bleed and sacrifice… may all be… just false.”
The word “false” struck everyone’s heart like an ice pick.
“And those previous intruders with bizarre behavior patterns and abnormally strong strength, those Abnormal Beings that raided the command post, even… our political commissar, Comrade Lu Sanshan,” Su Xiche’s voice carried a barely noticeable tremor, “they are all people from that future real world.”
“They came here with their own purposes and missions.”
The amount of information was too great, the impact too strong.
Many soldiers’ faces lost color, their eyes shaking violently.
They could face the most ferocious Abnormal Beings, could calmly meet death, but this truth that fundamentally denied their own existence was harder to bear than any physical attack.
Su Xiche gave them a moment to breathe.
He knew these words would shatter a person completely from the inside out.
But he had to say it; he had to return the choice to these brothers who shared life and death with him.
“I know, this is hard to accept.”
Su Xiche’s voice sounded again, gentler than before, but more resolute.
“You can not believe it, can think I’m crazy, or bewitched by some power.”
“But in my personal view, this… is the fact we must acknowledge.”
He took a step forward, closer to his soldiers.
“And the mission we are about to execute is also related to those people from the real world.”
“Originally, I thought this would be the last, and only, real sacrifice made by us, the 103rd Division, us false people, to protect this false land.”
He changed his tone, his gaze becoming extremely sharp, as if to see into everyone’s soul.
“But now… I want to return a choice to all of you.”
“A choice?”
The soldiers’ eyes focused again, confusion mixed with a faint, even unnoticed, expectation.
“Since we are false, and the Beihai we guard is not real… then the meaning of this mission we originally resolved to execute at all costs, the last drop of blood we were prepared to shed… seems… to have become a bit different.”
Su Xiche’s voice was very slow, every word pounding on everyone’s heart.
“Originally, everyone decided to follow me, Su Xiche, to resolutely die for the final plan, for the Beihai defense line, without regrets. On behalf of Beihai’s millions of people, I thank you all!”
He straightened his chest and solemnly saluted his soldiers.
After the salute, he slowly lowered his hand.
“But now it seems…”
Su Xiche’s gaze swept over those young or no longer young faces, looking at the bloodshot eyes and scars on their faces, “we seem… to have another choice.”
He paused, and the air in the cavern seemed to freeze again.
“Do you… want to go home?”