Chapter Sixteen: The Armored Train Cannon

Morning mist and faint dawn, the sky cast a gentle light.

Du Huaishan lifted the flap of the tent, and a gust of cold wind slapped his face, jolting him fully awake.

Today was the day to report to the Army Academy—the day the new recruits enlisted!

He tightened his coarse cloth shirt.

Starting two days ago, many refugees had gradually left to seek their own fortunes, leaving the camp much quieter.

Du Huaishan hurried to the water point to wash his face.

While brushing his teeth, Tan Hai approached, rubbing his sleepy eyes and limping slightly. The soreness from lactic acid buildup had clearly made him suffer, yet Tan Hai stubbornly refused to admit it. Even when Du Huaishan told him, “If you don’t massage and stretch after long-term training, you’ll develop muscle knots, and it will hurt even more,” he wouldn’t let him help.

“Take it slow, we’ve got plenty of time!”

Seeing Tan Hai’s anxious expression, Du Huaishan spat out his mouthful of water and spoke.

He’d heard that the Fenghou Station wasn’t far—a one-hour walk away. Now, with the sun barely peeking above the horizon, it was just past five o’clock.

After washing up, the two, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, had little to pack.

Leaving the tent, they headed straight for the city of Fenghou.

Since arriving, this was the first time Du Huaishan had truly seen the city’s face.

After a short stretch of yellow earth road, the street’s center was paved with blue stone slabs. Passersby, clad in long cotton coats, hurried to and fro.

As dawn broke, street vendors were already setting up their stalls, calling out loudly, “Candied hawthorn! Potato bites, water chestnuts, tangerines—so many flavors, all freshly dipped in syrup!”

“Salted twists, crispy twists, Golden Ox butter twists…”

“Drinks! Drinks! Three tokens a cup! Warm the stomach and quench your thirst!”

“Fenghou Gazette! Today, the 173rd Winter intake of new recruits at Yingzhou Army Academy—newspaper for sale! Newspaper for sale!”

…

The look in Tan Hai’s shining eyes made it clear—Xintun had never been so bustling.

The deeper they walked into the city, the grander and more luxurious the buildings became. They saw young gentlemen riding in rickshaws and ladies in restaurants, nibbling bread, genteel and elegant, gazing at the street scene outside their windows.

But Du Huaishan noticed something else: Fenghou City had a river running through it, and along the northern banks, a city wall stood—much taller than the outer wall, at least twenty meters high.

On the ramparts, numerous patrolling soldiers in quilted armor, sabers at their waists, stood guard. Heavy machine guns and artillery were mounted, and occasionally a rickshaw or a black Yeli motorcar passed through the city gates.

It was said that the truly wealthy and powerful resided in the inner city.

Fenghou Station was built not far from the western side of the inner city.

Before reaching the station entrance, Du Huaishan saw a dense crowd of people, the street corners filled with rickshaws.

Most were families sending their children off to join the army.

Tan Hai saw a woman standing before her son, who wore new clothes. She straightened his collar, fastened his buttons, smoothed the creases again and again, and, feeling forlorn, lowered his head.

Du Huaishan, witnessing this scene, thought of his own parents.

But before he could dwell on his homesickness, a commotion at the station entrance distracted him—a recruit had lost his train ticket, and the soldier on duty refused to let him in.

It was understandable.

Anyone careless enough to lose such an important item would likely cause disaster on the battlefield as well.

“Go on in!”

Having checked their tickets, the soldier waved them through.

Du Huaishan passed through the ticket checkpoint into the platform.

The sight that greeted him utterly stunned him.

On the eight-track railway, an enormous black steam train was parked at the edge. The locomotive was thirty meters long, over two meters wide, and a single wheel stood taller than half a man. The entire body gleamed black, except for a row of jagged, metal front shovels fixed beneath the engine, painted crimson—or perhaps stained with fresh blood.

A massive oval-shaped cylinder, formed by the boiler and steam engine, was protected by two one-centimeter-thick black armored steel plates on either side.

What surprised Du Huaishan was the huge, flat, rotatable platform protruding at the end of the engine’s cylinder, from which extended a cannon as thick as a fist, its caliber clearly over 100mm!

Behind this platform stood an even taller cylindrical tower, with a heavy machine gun mounted atop, its barrel thick as an arm.

Each black carriage behind the engine had a high platform on the roof, equipped with machine guns, and at the rear, two 75mm howitzers were mounted in succession.

A battlefield meat grinder: the Maxim-Electric Gun!

The battlefield’s dominant monarch in the Great War: the 105mm Army Field Gun!

Good heavens!

To assemble this entire family of death-dealing weapons together, the steam locomotive must weigh nearly two hundred tons—what kind of terrifying traction would it take to pull such a monster?

“Woooo—!”

Suddenly, the engine let out a thunderous whistle, its smokestack releasing a hiss of white steam from the boiler.

Enormous, black, rugged, steam-powered machinery, metal bearings, artillery.

All these words swirled through Du Huaishan’s mind, mingling with the scent of coal dust and limescale in the air, deeply stimulating his senses. A wave of steam-powered magical realism washed over him.

No wonder, even in an age of chaos haunted by monsters and ghosts, transportation still pressed onward.

Such an extravagant armored train, with its ammunition fused with red marrow, would be unstoppable by ordinary monsters.

“Form up!”

Time must be drawing near; soldiers on the platform began organizing the recruits, dividing them into groups to board the corresponding carriages.

“It’s magnificent! And so many people!” Tan Hai had never seen such a colossal military train.

After the two boarded, the carriage was empty, surrounded by iron plates—a windowless space much like an old freight car.

The only difference was a central iron ladder, leading straight up to the machine gun post on the carriage roof.

Soon, the carriage was packed with about a hundred people.

Soldiers closed the doors, plunging the compartment into darkness, lit only by a pitiful tungsten bulb hanging from the ceiling.

“Woooo—!”

Clack! Clack!

At precisely seven o’clock, the steam engine’s wheels rolled forward, and the train slowly headed north.

Everyone sat cross-legged, all seventeen or eighteen years old, restless. Unable to see outside, they chatted noisily—some asked about hometowns, some about what would be taught at the academy, some about how to slay monsters.

For instance, the bigger the monster, the greater its destructive power; monsters had no intelligence and could not speak.

Du Huaishan had already guessed most of these facts.

Some, though never having seen a monster, boasted and bluffed, only to be exposed and left embarrassed, covering their faces with their clothes.

In short,

Most of the young men who came to join the army

spoke as if monsters were nothing, thinking them mere trash to be dispatched with a bullet or a blade.

Only a few, like Du Huaishan and Tan Hai, stayed silent.

They had either survived the Xintun City incident, experiencing firsthand the terror of monsters,

or their pupils were of a different color.

They had already awakened their mystical powers.