War Beyond the Obelisk

Chapter 10: Smiling Gas — 07

A strain.

That was not exactly a lie.

As far as Yu Feichen was concerned, an injury was not serious as long as he remained conscious.

Besides, he had already achieved what he wanted.

A group could not act with discipline until someone emerged as its leader. If the Koroshan prisoners were going to escape together, he first needed them to trust him.

That did not mean he wanted anyone to know that half his body currently felt barely functional.

The overseer opened the brass lock with a key.

“Captain, after you.”

His smile resembled a mottled snake finally watching an enemy being thrown into a cage.

Captain Anfield did not spare him so much as a glance.

The young officer carried a glass oil lamp in his right hand and stepped into the cell without hurry. The ends of his platinum hair curled slightly, gleaming beneath the warm light.

The lamp illuminated the entire room.

The iron door closed with a heavy creak.

“I hope you find the Koroshan bastards’ secret tunnel in your dreams,” the overseer said as he locked it again. “If not, no matter. Tomorrow we’ll devise some more refined discipline for these uncivilized traitors.”

He left two local guards outside.

Together with Anfield’s two personal soldiers, that made four.

Although they all belonged to the Black Crest Army, Oak Valley clearly did not trust the captain.

The moment Anfield entered the cell, Yu Feichen gripped his left elbow with his right hand.

Then he forced the joint back into place.

Pain swept through his arm.

He endured it without making a sound.

The pain did, however, clear his mind instantly.

He took two quiet breaths. Damp air touched the sweat along his forehead.

After two days in Oak Valley, the distinguished lawyer’s appearance had long since lost its original polish.

Dark chestnut curls had fallen loose over his brow. Combined with the cold aggression still lingering in his eyes, he now looked less like a respectable attorney and more like something difficult to tame.

Once he confirmed that his left arm could move again, he looked up.

Anfield had already seated himself cross-legged on a stained straw mat nearby.

There was hardly a clean inch anywhere in the cell, but the officer appeared unconcerned.

He extinguished the lamp.

Darkness returned.

Yu Feichen closed his eyes.

He needed sleep.

The day had drained him, and after midnight he still intended to investigate the camp again.

Yet he did not fall asleep.

Ten minutes after he closed his eyes, Anfield began coughing.

Not the loud, continuous coughing of someone in acute distress.

Only one or two suppressed sounds at a time.

The exhausted prisoners around them slept through it.

Yu Feichen did not.

Every cough erased whatever sleepiness he had managed to gather.

He stared at the ceiling in the dark, irritated once again by an outside factor disrupting his plans.

Why?

He had always been a light sleeper, but when a mission required rest, he could force himself to sleep even in the middle of a crowded marketplace.

Why was this different?

Yu Feichen considered the question for half a minute.

Then he reached a conclusion.

Vigilance.

He still had not fully confirmed Anfield’s position, which meant he could not classify him as a harmless ally.

And in a cell this silent, even a deliberately muted cough sounded painfully distinct.

Very distinct.

So when Anfield coughed again, Yu Feichen stood up.

He took his blanket with him.

Walking over, he dropped it in front of the captain without explanation.

Anfield’s voice was slightly hoarse.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Yu Feichen said. “You were keeping me awake.”

Anfield draped the blanket around his shoulders.

“I have a lung condition.”

Yu Feichen had already guessed as much.

This was not the first time he had seen him cough, and the cell was both cold and damp.

Following basic Koroshan courtesy, Yu Feichen offered the appropriate response.

“I hope you recover soon.”

Then he turned to leave.

“Your arm,” Anfield said. “Is it all right?”

“It’s fine.”

“Your shoulder?”

The question was delivered in the same level tone.

Yu Feichen paused.

The shoulder injury was not serious enough to interfere much, yet Anfield had noticed it anyway.

His powers of observation were unusually sharp.

“Not particularly.”

Since he had already been found out, there was little reason to hide it.

“I brought a cooling spray,” Anfield said.

His voice always carried something wintry, but lowered like this, it became almost mist over ice.

A gesture of goodwill.

And one that matched Yu Feichen’s earlier judgment.

Instead of leaving, Yu Feichen sat opposite him.

They were close enough now to speak quietly. The guards remained outside the door, and certain things were better left unheard.

“I need to confirm where you stand,” Yu Feichen said softly. “Captain.”

In the moonlight, Anfield lowered his pale lashes.

His profile was so composed that, for some reason, Yu Feichen thought of a statue that happened to breathe.

“I am not Koroshan,” Anfield said after a long silence.

His voice was equally low.

Yu Feichen leaned closer to hear him.

The wall was behind Anfield. Yu Feichen was slightly taller, broader through the shoulders, and more heavily built.

From a distance, it almost looked as though he had cornered the captain against the wall.

“The slogan of completely eradicating the Koroshan people has circulated through the Black Crest Army for years,” Anfield continued. “I have always believed hatred should not extend to civilians.”

Yu Feichen’s body, which had remained subtly tense, relaxed.

He leaned back.

“Then I’ll trouble you.”

He unfastened the top buttons of his shirt without hesitation.

Anfield remained expressionless as he took a small spray canister from his uniform.

The cooling agent could do nothing to actually heal an injury, but it numbed the pain remarkably well.

Cold mist passed over Yu Feichen’s arm and shoulder.

When he dressed again, his movements were noticeably easier.

“Sleep,” Anfield said.

He put away the spray and placed a luminous pocket watch between them.

The minute hand pointed downward.

Ten thirty.

“One and a half hours,” Yu Feichen said.

Anfield did not ask what would happen after one and a half hours.

He returned to his straw mat and closed his eyes.

This time, Yu Feichen slept unexpectedly deeply.

Even so, long-trained instinct woke him precisely at eleven fifty-eight.

Anfield was still there.

Awake.

He seemed not to have changed position at all.

The moonlight had disappeared. Only vague black shapes remained in the cell.

Across the corridor, the washroom tap dripped with the rhythm of a stopwatch.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The second hand reached midnight.

The dripping stopped.

Yu Feichen took out his lighter.

Click.

The instant the flame appeared, his pupils contracted.

His fingers opened.

The new flame vanished at once, plunging the cell back into darkness.

Footsteps approached.

Anfield came over.

“You saw it?” Yu Feichen asked.

“I did.”

A cold hand touched Yu Feichen’s palm and took the lighter.

Click.

The flame returned.

Anfield relit the glass oil lamp.

Two dark shapes lay across the floor.

Bodies.

One belonged to the broad blond prisoner from their cell.

The other belonged to the small man.

Both appeared to have died after some terrible ordeal.

Yu Feichen approached slowly.

The lamplight revealed their faces.

He had seen them for only an instant when he first struck the lighter.

Now he saw them clearly.

Their eyes were closed.

And both were smiling.

The expressions were unnaturally serene.

On living faces, the smiles might almost have looked peaceful.

On the dead, they were deeply wrong.

Yu Feichen looked around the cell.

Everyone was still present.

Including the blond man.

Including the small man.

Both were asleep.

Yu Feichen drew a slow breath and began opening the lock.

The noise woke the others.

“Do not open your eyes,” Anfield ordered. “Stand up.”

The prisoners hesitated, then obeyed instinctively.

They did not understand why the officer had given such an order, but his tone left little room for argument.

“Bai Song. Vadans.”

Anfield called both men accurately by name.

Vadans was the large-nosed prisoner.

“Open your eyes.”

They obeyed.

The first thing both men saw was the two bodies on the floor.

Bai Song went pale.

Vadans cried out.

The small man kept his eyes tightly shut.

“What… what happened?”

No one answered.

Anfield only repeated:

“Do not open your eyes.”

A moment later, Yu Feichen got the door open.

“Take those two outside,” Anfield said.

After a brief hesitation, Bai Song took the blond man by the arm and guided him toward the corridor.

Vadans did the same with the small prisoner.

“Once you are outside, you may open your eyes,” Anfield said slowly. “Do not look back.”

Bai Song led the blond man into the corridor.

“All right.”

The blond man exhaled and opened his eyes.

A muscle in his neck twitched as he visibly fought the urge to turn around.

“What exactly are we doing?” he whispered.

Vadans stopped beside the smaller prisoner.

“All right.”

His hand was trembling badly.

The small man opened his eyes with obvious relief and stared straight ahead.

There were no lamps in front of him.

Only dense, endless darkness.

Back inside the cell, Anfield held the lamp while Yu Feichen examined the walls.

“They struggled,” Yu Feichen said.

There were old signs of punishment on both bodies, along with newer evidence that something violent had happened.

Before midnight, Yu Feichen had assumed the same phenomenon from the previous night would repeat.

But now something had changed.

After midnight, Oak Valley was showing them a scene from some future day.

And on that day, the blond man and the smaller prisoner had died inside this cell.

Still wearing those impossible smiles.

“Check the other rooms,” Anfield said when Yu Feichen finished.

He carried the lamp into the corridor.

Yu Feichen followed.

The others began moving after them.

And then—

The small man’s curiosity overwhelmed him.

What had happened?

What were they hiding from him?

What could possibly be so terrible that he was f*******n to look?

Just once.

Only from the corner of his eye.

One glance.

His eyes shifted.

Through the gaps between the iron bars, he saw his own face lying inside the cell.

Gray.

Still.

Smiling.

A terrified cry tore from him.

He lunged toward the bars, then suddenly began convulsing as though some invisible force had seized him.

“What—”

Bai Song moved toward him.

Before anyone could reach the man, his body collapsed—

and vanished.

Instantly.

Just as the monk had disappeared beyond the gate.

But there was one difference.

The monk had vanished into the gray fog outside the camp, leaving nothing behind.

Inside the cell, the future body of the small man still lay exactly where it had been.

Dead.

Smiling.

Bai Song’s voice shook.

“How…? Why…?”

He was clearly asking Anfield.

Anfield did not answer.

Instead, his pale green eyes turned toward Yu Feichen.

The message was obvious.

Explain.

When Captain Anfield asked questions, he sounded like an interrogator.

When he merely looked at someone, he somehow managed to resemble a teacher calling on a student.

Yu Feichen took a deep breath.

He did have a theory.

“One person cannot be both dead on the floor and alive outside the cell at the same time,” he said.

“So when he saw his own body, the two versions could no longer continue to exist together.”

He looked toward the place where the small man had vanished.

“One of them had to remain.”

A brief silence.

“The dead one did.”

The instant those words fell, the blond man’s breathing turned harsh.