Chapter 2: Crossing Over

  "Wow......" How am I still in the sky? When I regained consciousness, I was surprised to find myself still falling down from mid-air. Was everything that happened just now an illusion? Was everything that happened when I fell into the hole earlier a dream?

  But soon I found something was wrong, because I had heavily fallen to the ground, and my chest was transmitting wave after wave of choking pain. However, I was very clear that this was not serious, compared with the pain from vomiting stomach acid earlier, it was like being bitten by a mosquito.

  "There's a ghost..."

  "Don't move! Put your hands up!"

  ……

  Cries and shouts, as well as the sound of guns being cocked, had already turned everything around me into chaos before I even opened my eyes.

  I opened my eyes in confusion, instinctively sat up straight and jumped up, and was shocked to find myself standing in a large pit under the dim sky. My feet were trampling on several bodies wearing cotton-padded jackets and military caps, looking like corpses. Could this be real? I thought to myself, as the only dead body I had ever seen was my grandfather's when he passed away. But the pale faces of these "corpses" didn't seem fake either. I kicked them a few times with my foot to make sure they were really dead or alive.

  "Don't move..."

  "You...are you human or ghost?"

  Following the sound, I raised my head and found that the surroundings of the pit had been filled with people in the same attire, and... each holding a gun at me. Old-fashioned rifles, I recognized most of them as Type 38 Arisaka.

  "Who... who are you? What is this place?" I asked in confusion.

  A newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger because it has never seen how ferocious the tiger can be. Similarly, I had never seen a gun before and didn't know how harmful it was. Facing the black holes of the gun barrels in front of me, I didn't feel any fear in my heart, even though I knew I should be feeling fearful at that moment. So I thought for half a minute about whether I should pretend to look scared...

  "Hurry, hurry and pull him up..." After a while, an old soldier with a wrinkled face but bright eyes was the first to react: "Little Shandong, go call the company commander and instructor, there's a live one here."

  "Get a blanket..." After several people dragged and pushed me out of the pit, the old soldier quickly covered me with a blanket and rubbed me vigorously through the blanket.

  I'm like a puppet being manipulated by them, my mind is completely blank, what's wrong with me? Am I dreaming?! Just now it was clearly summer, I still remember wearing short sleeves, how come there's snow everywhere now, and I'm wearing this thick cotton-padded jacket...and these old-fashioned rifles that can only be seen in movies and museums...

  "The company commander has arrived"

  "Where is he?" The voice was thick and slightly hoarse.

  "In this..."

  Before I had even finished speaking, a round face with Chinese characters appeared in front of me.

  "Comrade, comrade..." He looked me up and down, relieved to see that I was unharmed, and stood up with a smile: "Comrade, we almost buried you alive... Sorry about that."

  Then he quickly pulled a long face, his fingers pointing randomly in the air: "What's going on with you guys? You haven't even figured out if someone is dead or not before burying them. Can't you just check for breath to make sure? How can you complete revolutionary work like this?"

  "It seems like it's dead..." The old soldier said in a low voice, his face filled with shame, looking like a child who had been caught stealing food.

  "Now this big living person is fake too!" Upon hearing this, Lian Zhang was even more furious, his eyes wide open like lanterns.

  "Commander Lian... I heard there's still one alive?" This was a voice with a slightly bookish tone.

  "Instructor, you've come just in time." The company commander's expression eased a bit as he spoke to the young man who had been running towards him: "Take a look at them, they've made such a big fuss. If we really have to bury our comrades alive, how am I supposed to explain it to our superiors?"

  "Order Zhang (Company Commander)." A Shandong accent chimed in: "If he's really buried, how will the superior know......"

  "The little mountain east is not messy." The person called the instructor's face sank, and soon ordered: "Quickly, go check again, we can't let our comrades die in vain because of our negligence. Our comrades should die on the battlefield, absolutely not at the hands of our own people."

  It is...

  Comrade? Instructor? Battlefield? Old-fashioned rifle...

  My mind was a complete muddle, and I looked around blankly at the people. They were speaking Chinese, every word of which I could hear clearly, but somehow I just couldn't understand what they were saying. The scene in front of me seemed to have a sense of déjà vu, oh... I remembered that before I went to North Korea for an interview, I had looked up a lot of information about the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.

  I have a habit, that is to investigate as thoroughly as possible the past and present of the person I am going to interview. The people in front of me, and these equipment, are so similar to what I saw about the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in my data, could it be, could it be...

  "Comrade, comrade..." A few shouts interrupted my thoughts. The person called the instructor said to me with a hint of apology: "Comrade, not finding out that you were still alive was an oversight in our work. I will ask the higher organization to discipline us. Which company are you from? Come with us and we'll take you back to your unit!"

  "Whose platoon is this?" I still didn't understand the situation and asked back with a confused face: "This...what's going on?"

  The instructor and the company commander exchanged a glance, then explained to me: "It's like this, comrade. Last night you froze to death... oh, I should say you were frozen unconscious. Our company is responsible for burying comrades who have frozen to death. We will soon be catching up with the main force. Comrade, which company are you from?"

  "Are... are you volunteers?" I looked around at the people hesitantly, still not daring to believe this fact: "You're the Chinese People's Volunteer Army?"

  A moment of silence, and everyone looked at me with a strange gaze.

  After a long time, the old soldier finally walked up to the instructor and said in a low voice: "Instructor, I heard that some people will forget who they are after being injured. Do you think this comrade has frozen his brain and doesn't even know who he is?"

  The instructor hesitated for a moment, nodded in agreement with this statement, and then walked up to me and asked: "Comrade, do you still remember which company you belong to?

  I was taken for a man with amnesia, and I shook my head in a mixture of laughter and tears.

  "Do you remember who you are? Your name?"

  "My name is Cui Wei."

  "Good." Upon hearing this, the instructor nodded and seemed to let out a sigh of relief, as if he was worried that I had become an idiot.

  "Comrade, now I'm telling you clearly, we, including you, are soldiers of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army. We're going to catch up with the main force now. The revolutionary discipline stipulates that we cannot abandon wounded comrades, so you must follow us. Do you understand?" He then turned around and ordered the old soldier: "Old squad leader... you take charge of bringing him along, don't lose him..."