Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 38 Illusions
Su Mengfan looked around and asked, "What happened here?"

He was horrified to see the corpses all over the hall, and now there was silence except for his conversation with the commander, and no other voices could be heard.

The commander stared firmly into his eyes and replied, "It's okay, you don't need to worry."

He bent down and picked up his backpack from the ground. Inside was a smoking military hand-held machine gun. It was obvious that his machine gun magazine was almost out of bullets.

The commander walked forward, and Su Mengfan tried to keep up with him.

He looked around and saw something he hadn't noticed before - there were several black bodies hanging on the bridge, where Su Mengfan had just heard his sentence.

The commander didn't speak, and gradually quickened his pace, as if he had forgotten that Su Mengfan was so scarred that he could barely walk.

Su Mengfan was trying to speed up, but the distance between them was still increasing.

He was afraid that the commander would just walk away, leaving him in this horrible station.

It is covered with blood that is smooth, sticky and even still emitting heat, and the only inhabitants are corpses.

Su Mengfan thought: "Do I really deserve to be rescued at such a price? Is my life more important than the combined lives of so many people?"

Still, he was glad he had been rescued.

But the bodies of all—scattered here and there, like torn bags and rags, on the granite of the platform, on the rails, one by one.

They stayed permanently in the position when the commander's bullet shot into them—they were all dead, so Su Mengfan survived.

The Commander turned things upside down so easily, as if he sacrificed some little people to protect a most important big person...

It's as if the commander is a chess player, and the subway is a chessboard, and everyone is his, because he is playing the game alone.

But the question is, is Su Mengfan such an important figure in this chess game?

All these people had to die to keep him?

Henceforth, the blood that ran along the cold granite might well have flowed through his veins as well, as if he had drunk that blood, extracting life from others, and thus preserved himself.

He will never feel warm again...

Su Mengfan tried to run forward, trying to catch up with the commander who asked him if he could still feel warm, or if he would still feel cold and depressed by the blazing fire, like a cold winter night in a wide station.

But the commander was far away from him, perhaps because Su Mengfan failed to catch up with him, the commander jumped onto the track, and ran into the tunnel as nimbly as an animal.

From Su Mengfan's point of view, his movements looked like...a dog running?No, like a mouse... oh my god.

Su Mengfan uttered his terrible thoughts: "Are you a mouse?" He was terrified by his own words.

The commander replied, "No,"

It seemed that someone was whispering and warmly whispering in Su Mengfan's ear: "You are the little mouse. You are the little mouse! Cowardly mouse! Cowardly mouse!"

Su Mengfan shook his head, but immediately regretted it.

Now, the dull pain in his body erupted from the intense exercise.

Unable to control his limbs, he began to stagger forward.

Then he stopped and pressed his scorching forehead against the metal mechanical parts of the cold subway station next to him.

The corrugated surface made his skin uncomfortable, but the burning sensation of the red, swollen flesh eased.

Su Mengfan stayed there for quite a while, but he still didn't have the strength and energy to think about his situation and situation.

Gathering his breath, he tried to carefully open his left eye a little.

Now he sits on the floor, pressing his forehead against the latticework of the subway station, which reaches to the ceiling and fills the space on either side of the low, narrow archway.

He faced the hall, and there was a path behind him.

The nearest arches on the opposite side as far as he could see were also made into cages, and in each cage sat a number of people.

This half of the station was facing the half of the station where he was sentenced to death.

The half of the station where he was sentenced to death was a perfectly elegant, bright, airy and spacious world.

In addition to warm lighting and slogans and murals on the walls, there are crystal and gorgeous columns and wide and high arches.

Compared with this, the former is like a banquet hall, but here everything is cruel and terrible, and the circular ceiling is low and narrow, making people feel as if they are still in the tunnel.

Its height is only twice the height of a man, and there are many columns, but they are very rough, and each column is much wider than the arches cut across it.

The vaulted ceiling was so close to the ground that he could reach it if his hands weren't tied behind the back of the rope.

Besides Su Mengfan, there were two other people in the prison. One was lying on the ground with burns on his face and ragged clothes, moaning silently.

The other one had black eyes and brown hair, and hadn't shaved for a long time. He squatted there, leaning against the marble wall, looking at Su Mengfan very curiously.

Two burly men in camouflage uniforms and berets came to the edge of the cage, and one of them led a dog and reprimanded it from time to time.They and it seemed to wake up Su Mengfan.

Turns out it was all just a dream...just a dream...he just finished it.

They were still preparing to hang him.

He moved his red and swollen tongue, looked sideways at the man with dark circles, and asked softly, "What time is it?"

The man happily replied, "It's 09:30."

He pronounces it in the same tone as the kebab sellers Su Mengfan hears in the downtown area: They pronounce "o" as "a" and "y" as "ay".

Then, the man with dark circles added: "It's night now."

At 09:30, there are still two and a half hours before twelve o'clock—five hours before the execution.

Su Mengfan once tried to imagine: before being executed, what should a person think in front of death?
Is it fear, hatred for the executioner, or remorse?
He was empty, he felt his heart pounding in his chest, his temples throbbing, and the blood was slowly building up in his mouth, and he swallowed it.

The blood smelled of rust, maybe wet iron with some blood on it?
They will hang him.They are going to kill him.

He will no longer be able to live in this world.

He couldn't imagine, couldn't bring that situation into his head.

Death is inevitable, it's a part of everyday life in the subway system, but it's always like some kind of misfortune that's unlikely to happen to you, where bullets fly over you and disease jumps over you.

The old man's death is so far in the future that you don't have to think about it, so you don't think about it all the time.

Even though you have these thoughts, you have to forget about them, you have to drive them out, kill them, or they will take root in your consciousness and make your life very miserable.

Don't think about the fact that you are mortal, or you might go mad.

The life of a condemned man differs from that of a normal man only in one respect, and that is that he knows when he will die, whereas the common man does not know when he will die.

So to the common man it seemed as if they could live forever, though it was entirely possible that he would be killed in some cataclysmic event the next day—death itself was not terrible, the terrible thing was waiting for it.

How will they execute after seven hours?
Su Mengfan couldn't imagine how a person would be hanged.

They might hang him from the ceiling with a rope around his neck or use some sort of stool...neither...it's hard to imagine.

He is a little thirsty.

He struggled to move the switch, and swung the train of his thoughts onto other tracks—towards the officer he had shot—the first man he had killed in two lifetimes.

That scene came back to him again: the bullets that had pierced his broad chest, and how they had left burnt black marks, the marks of coagulated blood.

But he didn't regret what he had done in the slightest, which surprised him.

He used to think that every man killed must be a heavy burden on the conscience of the murderer--they would appear in his dreams and haunt his old age...but no.

Things seemed nothing like what he had once imagined, no pity, no regrets, only gloomy contentment.

Su Mengfan knew that if the slain person appeared in his nightmare, as long as he turned his back on the ghost indifferently, it would disappear without a trace, and he would never have old age again.

Time is running out, when there is only a little time left, you have to think about some important things, some of the most important things, things you have never had time to think about before, save it for later...

About the fact that you didn't choose the right life, and that you would have chosen differently if given a second chance...

No, he couldn't have any other life choices in the world, nothing to try to do all over again.

Shouldn't he have raised his automatic machine gun and stood by when the border guards shot him in the head?

It's simply not feasible—what's the matter with the old man?
Damn it, how can I get saliva to drink!
First, they'd take him out of prison...if he was lucky, they'd lead him through the transfer tunnel, but there was no time now.

If they hadn't put the damned hood over his head, what would he have seen between the bars of the lattice frame in front of him?

Su Mengfan moved his dry lips with difficulty, and said, "Which station are you from?"

He moved himself away from the latticework and turned his head upward to meet his neighbor's eyes.

　May you go through thousands of sails and come back as a young man!

　　I have new inspiration for the idea of ​​system punishment provided by the book friend "Gulardo can finally fly", and I am very grateful.

　　Ugh... "Chapter 33" is blocked again.Applying for it, it will be out shortly. (Does not affect the main storyline)
　　
　
(End of this chapter)