They ignored the refugees and walked straight up to the headlights, charging toward him.
Wei Tianyang could only see a few black shadows and the outlines of RPD light machine guns slung over their bodies.
"Still alive? Where did you crawl out from?"
"Looks like a patient, wearing surgical clothes."
"Seems like we're near Tiantai Pharmaceutical's territory."
"Let's detour, can't say if he ran out from there."
"What do we do with him? Send him back?"
"Send him back for what, there's no money in it."
"He's so young, just a teenager, isn't he?"
"Male or female?"
"The little bitch."
"Not a bad option."
"Your mother's..."
The government soldiers loomed over Wei Tianyang, who was lying on the ground, as if they were discussing an injured dog.
The rain steadily intensified, and he saw the middle-aged man pull a dagger from his embrace; the other refugees said nothing, but their hands, too, now held various sharp and hard objects.
"Help me..." Wei Tianyang looked at the man and said.
A soldier walked over to his side and savagely kicked him in the belly.
Wei Tianyang curled up like a shrimp; the kick seemed to have knocked the soul right out of his body.
"What did you just say?" the soldier squatted beside him, stroked his face with a smile, and asked.
The man's face was expressionless as he said, "You're going to help us too."
"How... how am I to help you?" Wei Tianyang asked.
The soldier turned his head to look at his comrades, who all burst out laughing.
"We want to play with you," the soldier said with a grin.
"Bury us," the middle-aged man said solemnly.
Wei Tianyang understood, and he nodded slightly.
"Let's help you get these clothes off first," the soldier said, chuckling.
The man stepped forward and slit the soldier's throat with a knife.
His pupils dilated suddenly, stark white in the darkness, too conspicuous; the severed trachea startled him. He didn't know what happened, but the fear brought on by a lethal injury was real.
The soldier clutched at his neck, his palm full of sticky fluid, and he sought the light to see if it was blood.
However, as soon as he turned around, he found his comrades had silently fallen to the ground, and two others were dragged screaming into the darkness without any more sound.
The soldier took two steps and opened his mouth to shout, but could only make a hissing noise, his face turning leaden, instinctively trying to breathe but unable to draw even a little air into his lungs.
Then the sound of the truck engine drowned out the rain, charging straight at him, twelve steps, eleven, closer and closer, but he had already lost the strength to dodge.
The soldier was knocked down in the muddy ground, the front wheel crushed its way up from the inside of his thigh, smashing through the pelvis and the organs inside the abdomen, feces and intestine spraying out from the wound, coiling into a warm, wet, smelly mass inside his camouflage pants.
Next, the wheel crushed his breastbone, grinding its way up to his face before stopping.
A female refugee alighted from the truck, dressed in tattered clothes, expressionless, carrying a sleeping infant on her back.
All the soldiers were dead, their bodies emitting clouds of red blood vapor, which then all swirled toward Wei Tianyang.
He lay there on the ground, passively absorbing the blood essence, just as he had done in that underground tunnel.
With continuous absorption of the blood vapor, his hunger, fatigue, pain, and low spirits all recovered, and strength returned to his body.
Even his skeletal left calf and right forearm slowly returned to a flesh-covered state.
It couldn't have been clearer…
The dead were his nourishment.
Large groups of migrants stood in front of the car headlights, like ghostly shadows.
Wei Tianyang approached the uncle, noticing that the dagger in his hand was not bloodied.
"Keep your promise," said the uncle.
"Where are you all…?" Wei Tianyang asked.
All the migrants were facing the direction from which the military vehicle came, pointing to the distant darkness.
Wei Tianyang nodded.
Without a word, the uncle led all the migrants toward the north, walking into the night. A large group of people silently departed, without even leaving footprints behind.
Wei Tianyang watched them disappear, then searched the bodies of these soldiers.
They were equipped with RPDs and AK74s, old guns from the previous century. Each soldier's gear was fairly rudimentary, no bulletproof vests, no helmets, just wearing mud-gray camouflage uniforms with simple ammunition belts.
Wei Tianyang found a canteen and opened it to take a big gulp, but his mouth was fiercely spicy, and he looked down and spat it out on the ground.
The canteen contained alcohol…
These men didn't bring backpacks, so he could only casually take off one of the soldiers' clothes to wear, ill-fitting as it was, still better than barefoot in a surgical gown.
Wei Tianyang folded the document bag and tucked it into the pocket of his camouflage pants.
He had wanted to take a rifle, but just like the guards at Tiantai Pharmaceutical, the guns were locked. No matter how much he pulled the trigger, they wouldn't fire, so he gave up on the idea.
The military truck's engine was still running. Wei Tianyang got into the driver's seat, fiddled with the gear shift, and tried out each of the three pedals. When he stomped on the third pedal, the vehicle lurched forward a few meters.
He got the gist of it, turned the steering wheel, and drove over the bodies on the ground, heading in the direction the migrants had pointed.
Wei Tianyang had never thought he would learn to drive under such circumstances, but luckily the terrain of the wilderness was flat. There were no concerns about collisions, no traffic rules to worry about, just enough for him to figure out the specific functions of the three pedals and the lever.
The engine roared loudly, the accelerator was pressed hard, but the speed wouldn't pick up. Wei Tianyang suspected that the impacts he had inflicted earlier might have caused engine problems.
About fifteen minutes into the drive, lights finally appeared on the horizon of the wasteland - probably a small town.
But in the meantime, in the beam of the truck's headlights, Wei Tianyang saw something even more tragic.
About twenty meters ahead, in an open space, lay dozens of bodies, haphazardly, face-up. Suitcases and backpacks had been rifled through, clothes and daily necessities scattered everywhere, suggesting that whoever searched through them had no interest in these items.
Wei Tianyang pulled the key from the ignition and got out of the vehicle, standing before this multitude of corpses.
These men, women, and children seemed like refugees.\ They were as young as two years old, held in their mother's arms, and as old as seventy, cruelly shot in the waist with intestines spilled all over the ground.
Wei Tianyang instantly noticed the uncle's corpse, lying amid a pile of luggage; his chest was blasted open by rifle fire, eyes staring fixedly at the cosmos, still clenching a bloodied dagger.
"I will help you… bury you all…" Wei Tianyang muttered to himself.
He opened his right palm and extended five long claws, tearing into the mud soaked by the rain. It took most of the night to dig graves for each of the bodies and bury them one by one.
What was the reason for all this…? Had a civil war broken out?
But… why kill civilians?!
After burying the migrants, the eastern sky began to lighten, and the rain had stopped.
But Wei Tianyang was still very much awake. The fear and confusion about what was happening to him, the anger at Ruan Yu, the puzzlement over the military's brutality, dispelled any sleepiness.
From the scattered luggage, he compiled a set of clothes suitable for himself, a much better option than the ill-fitting military uniform.
He also found a backpack and a cheap digital watch. Finally, he could properly carry the slightly dampened document bag.
Looking at the digital watch, it was already 3 a.m., the distant lights were not too far. He decided to give up driving and resolved to walk to town. After entering the town, the military truck was an unnecessary hassle; he couldn't explain the bloodstains on it or why he possessed the vehicle.
Wei Tianyang turned and left, leaving only those simple graves on the desolate land.