Just as he kicked the door open, he saw the tobacco leaves strewn about in the courtyard, drying haphazardly, tools scattered in disarray, and dust flying everywhere. The color of yellow earth seemed to cover everything.
But he saw no sign of any enemy.
He saw only a gaunt woman desperately trying to hide two girls behind her, eyes wide, staring blankly at Huai Shi, terror in her eyes.
"I-I apologize..." he swallowed hard, "got the wrong place."
He was about to turn around when a teammate kicked him aside. Immediately after, he heard the roar of automatic rifles, a series of loud bangs, the faint sound of screams, and the sound of blood spurting.
He didn't even have time to look back.
In the distance, it seemed someone was shouting something. Something whizzed through the air, followed by another loud explosion.
In the end, there was no sound at all—only total silence and a sharp ringing in his ears.
From out of nowhere, an RPG turned everything into rubble.
Huai Shi instinctively lay flat on the ground, crawling forward until someone pulled him up and yelled something into his ear, which he couldn't make out. He just obeyed the squad leaders' commands, firing blindly ahead.
He didn't realize his magazine was empty.
Then he saw the bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies...
Women, children, the elderly, and more children... tall or short, fat or thin... some whole, others torn apart.
It all happened too quickly, so quickly he couldn't react.
He didn't even find the enemies the instructor was talking about before the fight seemed to be over. Then he was dragged by angry teammates to the square and beaten.
Amid intense dizziness and confusion, the instructor walked up. The middle-aged man with the mustache looked down at him and, after a while, gestured to someone behind him.
Someone dragged two enemies who were still struggling to the front.
Then Huai Shi was helped up by the instructor, who gently patted the dust off him. The instructor placed his sidearm in Huai Shi's hands and said something about the shrieking children on the ground.
Huai Shi didn't catch it, looking around blankly to see the cold faces of his squadmates.
He saw the mess of bodies dragged into the square, piled into a mountain. The blood that gathered formed a river.
The instructor said something, and he still couldn't make it out. Consequently, the barrels of his squadmates' guns slowly lifted, aimed at him, and he froze.
The instructor spoke to him one last time.
This time Huai Shi finally heard him clearly. He said, "Fire."
Subconsciously, Huai Shi pulled the trigger at the enemies.
Once, twice, three, four times...
Quickly, the magazine emptied. The two enemies on the ground turned into a mess of flesh, motionless, with blood bubbles continually forming and popping from the bullet wounds, blackening the pale yellow earth.
In the last moment, Huai Shi finally saw his own face reflected off the corpses.
From the lifeless eyes of the two little girls.
「.」
Huai Shi opened his eyes in the room.
Huai Shi began to convulse violently. He yelled furiously at Raven, and then he started to vomit.
Leaning over, sprawled on the ground, he vomited until tears streamed down his face.
The first thing he felt was fear, followed by pain, then regret, and finally only anger and disgust—a profound anger and disgust for himself.
He had actually opened fire.
On two little girls who had no ability to resist...
"Damn it..."
He covered his face exhaustedly, almost wanting to cry, "Damn it..."
Even when he burned Red Gloves to death, he hadn't felt a twinge of anything. But it was in this meaningless record that he felt such profound fear of death and such deep aversion to the act of killing.
There were never any enemies there, only the elderly who had lost their sons in the war, women who had lost their husbands, and children who had lost their fathers...
It was just a senseless slaughter.
He had actually opened fire.
Even though he knew it was just a record and being killed meant nothing, he had actually opened fire... at two children who could hardly be considered enemies.
Because of fear, terror, confusion, or perhaps... weakness.
What on earth had Red Gloves done!
And what had he done?
"It seems I was too eager for quick results; the choice of practical training wasn't quite right," Raven said, looking at him sympathetically. "This is my fault, not yours. Rest for tonight. I will adjust the new..."
"No, just give me a few minutes—"
Huai Shi interrupted her, "Just a few minutes."
Silence fell. Soon, he had calmed down, gone to the washroom, cleaned the mucus and saliva from his face, and returned to the hall.
He said calmly, "Let's do it again."
"Are you sure?" Raven asked skeptically.
"Again."
Huai Shi repeated, "Again."
After a long while, as if Raven understood something, she smiled.
She said, "Okay."
The Event Branch point fell, and darkness swooped in.
Huai Shi opened his eyes, smelled the dry dust, and felt the scorching wind blow in from outside. The instructor was issuing orders from the passenger seat, "Kill them all, leave none alive."
Huai Shi nodded and said, "Okay."
Then he raised his gun, aimed at the driver's seat, and pulled the trigger.
In the roar, sparks erupted from the muzzle.
The driver was dead, a mess of guts smeared on the shattered window as the car suddenly twisted and rolled.
Huai Shi felt the rush of wind beside him. In the violent rolling, it seemed a group of people pounced on him, and he was quickly pinned to the ground by his teammates.
The rear door of the vehicle opened.
An expressionless instructor walked in and looked down at him.
"Unqualified."
He said, then pulled the trigger.
BANG!
Huai Shi's head exploded.
He opened his eyes, breathing heavily, drenched in sweat.
Quickly, he picked up the warm water from the table and downed it in one go. "Again!"
"Okay," Raven nodded, and darkness enveloped them once more.
"Kill them, all of them, leave no one alive."
He heard the instructor's voice and immediately laughed, pulling a dagger from his boot and nimbly slicing across the throat of the teammate to his right. Fresh blood spurted out, staining the dust motes floating in the air crimson.
Time seemed to freeze.
In that instant, Huai Shi drew his gun and fired the pistol rapidly, aiming at teammates in front, behind, and to his sides. He continuously pulled the trigger, and clumps of brain matter exploded.
But soon, he was gunned down again.
"You need some strategy," Raven said. "Theoretically, you could annihilate them unscathed, but I need to remind you, you're reading Red Gloves' record, which means what happens and what each person will do are all from his subjective judgment, understand?"
"Not really."
"No matter, you will understand soon enough," Raven averted her gaze. "Again?"
"Yes!"
Huai Shi opened his eyes again, shifting slightly in the vehicle as the instructor issued commands. He slowly rotated his neck, checking the equipment on his body.
A military knife, a pistol, an automatic rifle, a bulletproof vest, a walkie-talkie, a few magazines tucked into the quick-response vest, and an Iron Grenade.
Weighing the hefty object in his hand, Huai Shi met the gaze of his teammates with a smile and quietly pulled the pin with his little finger.
A silent countdown.
Three, two, one.
In that instant, he leaped forward, crashing into the rear door of the vehicle. He tumbled embarrassingly out of the speeding car and onto the ground, where he was pricked by thorns and bushes along the roadside, his hands throbbing with pain.
But soon, he heard the boom behind him.
The transport vehicle on the road shook violently and leapt dozens of centimeters into the air as if from nowhere. Then, the iron box of the vehicle swelled as if inflated, spewing blood-red fire from its shattered openings.
It quickly twisted and deformed in the burning flames and rolled to a halt.
Huai Shi got up from the ground, panting heavily under the scorching sun. But soon, he saw it: in the burning wreckage, the twisted iron door suddenly emitted a sharp noise as a foot kicked it open.
From the co-driver's seat, the icy-faced instructor walked out slowly, his cold gaze lingering on Huai Shi's astonished expression. Despite looking like an ordinary person and showing no traces of Source Fluctuation or Stigma, he had survived the violent explosion, not even a hair out of place.
"So that's what it means? Everything that happens and what each person will do is just Red Gloves' subjective judgment, right?"
Huai Shi couldn't help but laugh, mocking that Red Gloves fellow, "What kind of psychological trauma do you have regarding your instructor?"
Otherwise, how could that clearly normal instructor survive unscathed from a grenade explosion?
Did this guy really think his instructor was some invincible, steel-hardened titan?
"I didn't expect it, 7794."
The instructor looked at him indifferently, slowly rotating his neck, his fingers lightly tapping on the whip handle strapped at his waist, making a sound that caused Huai Shi to tense up suddenly.
TAP, TAP, TAP...
That sound of fingers tapping on the whip was a symbol of punishment and torture.
One torture, two severe injuries, and then there would be no third time.
Having seen countless companions whipped to death on the training ground, Huai Shi could actually feel Red Gloves' residual despair and fear. His will to resist began to crumble rapidly.
The instructor stepped forward, looking down at his trembling opponent. He reached out and pressed on his head.
Twist.
CRACK!
Huai Shi's neck broke.
BANG!
Huai Shi opened his eyes in anger and slammed his fist on the table. "Coward!"
He was unsure if he was cursing Red Gloves or himself. After all, through the memories of countless training sessions, he had come to deeply understand the instructor's cruelty and ruthlessness.
"It seems you've come to realize the limitations of a subjective recorder, haven't you?" Raven smiled enigmatically. "People who can't extricate their perspective from their own fear and confusion can't act as absolute objective recorders of everything. But that's the beauty of recorded experiences; it gives you the potential to surpass the person being recorded."
"How do I do that?" asked Huai Shi.
"It's simple," said Raven. "Just blow everything up. No matter what happens, no matter what's in your way, just take care of them all in your own way, and you'll be fine.
Even the hardest arcade game can be bruteforced; one-credit clearance is but the very basics. On the contrary, speedrunning and flawless victories are the real pursuit—"
She paused for a moment, her smile sly. "How about it? If it feels too hard, do you need a cheat code? With the Book of Fate, you could easily make yourself as omnipotent as a god."
"No, thanks."
After resting for a while and feeling his energy had mostly recovered, Huai Shi massaged his slightly aching forehead, ready to begin again. But then he saw Raven offering him a cigarette.
"Since you're so spirited, I'll gift you a blue bottle for free."