Armed Train in the Apocalypse

Upon the wasteland, beneath Eternal Night.

Directly facing the modern army was an equally boundless torrent of cavalry!

Denser and more frenzied than any steel flood. Tens of thousands of warhorses, their whole bodies pitch-black, frames monstrously robust, shoulders over three meters high, muscles knotted like rock, coats sleek as satin, gleaming with a faint matte sheen in the dark. Their limbs were thick as pillars, and every step they pounded into the earth sent a dull tremor through the ground, as if they meant to crack the wasteland itself.

The cavalry wore primitive metal armor, armor black from head to toe, the same color as their mounts.

Ancient, mysterious runes were carved upon it; the runes flowed with faint glimmers in the dark, and just looking at them made one’s head swim.

A shell was about to land in the middle of the cavalry formation when the leading Black Armored Cavalry merely flicked the dark-red banner in his hand, and the shell was swept into it before Qin Mian’s dull gaze. Then came a violent explosion, and the rider’s whole body flared with light.

In the blink of an eye, the rider’s flagpole snapped, half of his body was blasted to pieces by the shell, and he pitched headfirst to the ground, leaving only the black warhorse still galloping forward; freed of its rider’s burden, it only ran faster and faster, hooves beating the wind, thunder rolling.

Qin Mian thought his eyes were playing tricks on him and sat back down in the trench.

Then, in a numb tone, he asked, ”How come I’m seeing us fighting cavalry?”

”Yeah, cavalry,” his college-student Warrior comrade in the squad said. ”Cavalry that can tank bullets.”

Qin Mian slapped his comrade’s thigh hard and snarled in a low voice like an enraged lion, ”Artillery firing on cavalry—did I fucking time-travel, or has this world lost its mind?”

The latter simply answered with a punch, gritting his teeth as he replied, ”We all lost it.”

Qin Mian grunted, made sure he wasn’t dreaming, and once more looked out at the battle beyond the trench.

With an Anger-filled Roar from the first rider to break through the midpoint of the battlefield, all the cavalry erupted into a mountain-shaking, sea-roaring frenzy of Gunfire, a roar of voices. Qin Mian couldn’t understand the meaning buried inside it, but even from more than ten kilometers away, that sound still chilled his guts, numbed his blood, and made his brain feel like someone had slammed a hammer into it.

It was half a moment before he came back to himself.

All kinds of short-range weapons started to come into play; autocannons meant for ships or helicopters thundered without pause, sabot armor-piercing rounds drew crimson trails, high-explosive shells bloomed flowers of death in the air, and machine-gun fire tried to weave an impenetrable wall of Metal.

Most of it was useless.

Armor-piercing rounds that hit those breastplates traced over with ghostly blue runes weren’t deflected—they were absorbed, their speed dropping sharply until they sank into the armor. Blue light spread through the shell bodies, turning them into cold scrap iron. The flames and fragments of high-explosive shells were swallowed and extinguished by an invisible, rippling, shadowy barrier before they could reach the charging formation.

Even the bullets that punched through the barrier did little damage when they hit the armor; the cavalry’s plate was unimaginably hard, far beyond ordinary ballistic material, and even the warhorses beneath them had hides and flesh tough as refined iron. They could grit through artillery bombardment and simply take it.

Compared to tanks and guns, these riders were more like a steel flood!

They slammed into the steel line.

There was no deafening crash of impact, only the teeth-aching groan of Metal being forced to bend and tear under titanic Power.

One warhorse reared upright, its front hooves crashing down on the base of a tank’s turret. The ”skull” of forged steel was smashed straight down into the hull!

The Knight on its back swept his lance; cold light flashed, and the tank gun barrel sheared in two like a hot knife through fat.

More Knights drove into the positions like wedges. Strange flames coiled around their spears, swords, and halberds, like a Power that unraveled matter; the composite steel plating of armored vehicles tore open like sheepskin paper, and hard Metal was nothing but a toy before their heavy lances.

Drones in the sky began suicide interceptions, but all they did was add more spectacle to the battlefield.

In Qin Mian’s ears there was nothing left but the sound of Metal deforming, armor shattering, and, here and there, the brief Anger-choked cries of comrades in despair, instantly drowned in silent slaughter.

Ghostly blue flames flowed and spread through the steel wreckage.

Where they passed, blood froze, fire went out, leaving only twisted Metal rimed in white frost and bodies gone utterly still.

Under the vault of heaven, the steel flood still fired, but its edge had been seized, torn, and was slowly being devoured by a greater, older, more silent beast out of Eternal Night.

The Roar of Gunfire and the Knights’ soul-piercing shrieks wove together into a vast symphony offered up to Destruction, against a backdrop of silent, encroaching, absolute darkness and hoarfrost.

Qin Mian felt like there were other sounds at his ear, but he couldn’t hear them anymore.

His mind was completely seized by the scene before his eyes.

It wasn’t until a big hand slapped across his face that he realized the squad leader was glaring at him in Anger. ”I said come with me—can’t you hear?!”

Qin Mian snapped awake as if from a dream and scrambled to his feet; even then, his head was still fogged.

’I actually zoned out on the battlefield’—the thought made him feel a little ashamed.

But when he saw the squad leader going down the line slapping the other Warriors too, he felt much better.

”Don’t just stand there—get them all over here!”

The squad leader cursed.

Qin Mian hurried to call the others. The ones he was close with, he shook a couple times more; the ones he wasn’t, he kicked and shoved. Either way, everyone who woke up was just like him, brain scrambled, and no one gave him trouble.

The whole company of more than a hundred Warriors had already assembled and started moving along the trench toward the edge of the battlefield.

Only then did he notice a small detachment of cavalry heading their way.

Compared to those heavy Black Armored Cavalry, these riders looked much weaker, equipped only with leather armor and bows.

But now Qin Mian didn’t dare underestimate cavalry in the slightest.

When they drew and nocked their arrows, his nerves were so tight he didn’t even hear the orders; he just went straight down flat. The hiss of arrows tearing the air sounded over his head, and only then did the company commander’s and squad leader’s shouted ”Down!” orders belatedly reach him.

Qin Mian couldn’t help cheering for himself in his heart.

’You really are a war genius!’

He raised his head and suddenly felt something warm and wet on his scalp. He turned back toward the light—and then he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.

The college student who slept in the bunk above him didn’t have a head anymore. The college student who’d told him he’d buy a car after discharge and go back to school, find a girlfriend on campus; the college student who’d slurped instant noodles with him after coming off watch; the college student who’d just been talking with him in the same trench—was gone.

The corpse collapsed into his arms, red and white spilling out in a messy flood, like a collapsing high-rise.

There was no saving him, no room for rescue—he just died, without the slightest warning.

Up ahead, the squad leader and company commander were roaring orders to fight back. Qin Mian didn’t know how he laid the college student’s body down; he didn’t know how he picked up his rifle, how he went through the first battle of his life, how they annihilated the enemy, policed the field, and then withdrew under their superiors’ command.

He didn’t know why, but his head was full of the college student’s talk about campus life—skipping class every day on the excuse of signing up for the army, sleeping in until the ginkgo leaves turned blazing gold under the autumn sun, going to the cafeteria for meals, getting sick of it and wandering the snack streets with his roommates, talking about pretty girls they liked, debating what to eat that night, where to go tomorrow, joining in contempt for some debauched scumbag guy while secretly wishing he could take his place...

Suddenly he envied the guy a little. Maybe... maybe after the war ends, he should try for a university too?

This sudden thought surprised Qin Mian.

He’d always hated studying; otherwise he wouldn’t have gone straight into the army after high school. It was all the college student’s fault for getting him hooked on the idea of studying.

”What’re you crying for? Your arms and legs are all still on, aren’t they?”

Qin Mian realized that, without noticing it, his face was streaming with tears—and the man in front of him had become the company commander.

In the pitch-dark, the company commander went from soldier to soldier, feeling them over to see if they were wounded.

Once he was sure Qin Mian was in one piece, the company commander clapped him hard on the shoulder.

Aside from getting kicked, this was Qin Mian’s first time really interacting with the company commander. The Power in that hand drove a lot of the confusion out of his heart.

When the company commander had finished checking the ten-odd Warriors they had left, he forced himself to say, ”Our mission to hold the enemy is complete. We can withdraw from the battlefield now. Stay with me—no one falls behind!”