WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 179: Alliances and Maneuvering (14)

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“Comrade Shangjiang Yang Yongbin. You should say something too!”

Lieutenant General Xieru pointed directly at the man.

The army Shangjiang, who had happened to be checking his watch again, lifted his head with a dignified air. Before he could speak, Lieutenant General Xieru pressed on, courteous in form but loud enough to force the issue.

“Isn’t the reason you occupied Treasure Island that you think as I do? If we move together, our bargaining power will be that much stronger! America will have to pay a far higher price! I believe the new China to come will need your leadership, Comrade Shangjiang!”

Treasure Island was the literal translation of the artificial island’s name. It was connected to the mainland by only one four-lane road. The army's Shangjiang had rammed a cargo ship into that choke point. It had happened before the winter season arrived.

A ship grounded on that narrow strip of land was a wall in itself, just as the U.S. military had stacked containers to block the mutant horde from entering. Occupying the rest of the island would not have been difficult.

‘Needs leadership... is that it?’

It was a hint that they should lead the community together. Not a concrete promise, but with so many eyes watching, she could not offer more than that. It would cost her too much face.

As Gyeoul watched, the army Shangjiang smiled.

“A new China, is it? You speak as if China has vanished.”

His voice felt more dangerous precisely because there was no malice in it. The room quieted for the same reason, most likely, under that gentle, almost affectionate tone. Even the hard-liners who had been raising their voices faltered. Even they could not naturally say that China had not vanished.

With his fingers laced together on the table, the Shangjiang continued mildly.

“A nation is spirit. Its other components are merely tools for putting that spirit into practice. And soldiers are those who protect that spirit with honorable force at its most perilous moment. In other words.”

With the trace of his smile still on his face, he pressed a hand to his chest.

“My homeland is here. Since the beginning of history, China has never vanished for even a moment. So all this talk of avenging a fallen homeland is laughable. In my view, every bastard here is a traitor.”

Gyeoul felt a dark premonition. Madness was more dangerous the more rational it was. Why had April Pacific turned into such a hell? Gyeoul’s finger slipped naturally into the trigger guard.

Should he kill this man, Shangjiang Yang Yongbin, right now? Along with the hard-liners?

No. Even if he did, the chance of delaying whatever Yang Yongbin was waiting for was close to zero. Right now, the man was merely sitting here. A plan already set in motion would carry on by inertia without the Shangjiang’s interference. Otherwise, no one this calmly insane would have any reason to come to a place like this. This was rational composure.

There was also little guarantee that a firefight would go the way Gyeoul wanted. He could somehow protect Lieutenant General Xieru, but everyone else’s lives would be left to luck.

「Insight」 kept affirming the chain of judgment that led him there.

Was there no way for now? Gyeoul regretted the communication channel, which carried almost no noise at all. Neither satellite waves nor directional radio could reach inside the ship. That did not mean he could briefly leave, either. He could only hope the CIA had noticed something.

As if she had felt the same ominousness, Lieutenant General Xieru’s shoulders went rigid.

“Comrade Shangjiang, you are turning away from reality. A nation is not something vague like spirit or philosophy. A nation is its people, the politics that guarantee those people’s lives, and the totality of the systems and infrastructure that materially support those lives. Gas, water, fuel, electricity, food! Tell me. How much of any of that remains now? What do we have left?”

This was not a passionate speech aimed only at the army Shangjiang.

“When will the next National People’s Congress be held? Is Comrade Chairman still alive? Can we expect orders from the Central Military Commission? Is there even a single place where an army group’s organization remains intact?”

Bang. The table rang under a powerful blow. Her commanding roar thundered through the room.

“Comrade! Admit that China has fallen! And remember the duty of a soldier! The military is not a band of murderers! We must protect the future of the people who survived! Revenge? Retaliation? I would tell you to go ahead and try. If it is just, I will not oppose it!”

Of course, there was no such thing as just revenge.

‘Revenge is comfort for the living. It means nothing to the dead...’

Even if a million flowers were offered to an ossuary, would their fragrance ever reach the dead? The beauty of flowers only comforted the living. The dead could receive nothing.

Even if this was Gyeoul’s thought alone, it would not have differed from the lieutenant general’s intent.

“Even if the surviving people are only a handful compared to the 1.36 billion before the Corpse Plague, we must value one living child more than the billion people who have already passed away! We cannot force that child to follow after the dead!”

The lieutenant general pointed at the room.

“Even if the Corpse Plague was America’s doing! If you truly want revenge! Should you not survive with Goujian’s resolve when he licked Fuchai’s feces? Victory belongs to those who survive until the final moment! What do you expect to accomplish by dying together? Shall we go to the underworld and boast? Shall we say we ended four thousand years of Chinese history in mutual destruction with our enemy? Do you think the comrades who went before us will applaud? Ha, don’t be absurd! You are bewitched by petty vengeance and abandoning your duty!”

The severe rebuke made the air heavier. For a while, Lieutenant General Xieru’s harsh breathing almost seemed to echo. Everyone was subdued, and the only one unchanged was Shangjiang Yang Yongbin. He still maintained that formless composure. From another angle, it looked close to detachment.

There had probably never been a moment in Lieutenant General Xieru’s life when she was as upright as she was now. Nor had there been a moment when she was this sincere. Gyeoul judged this inwardly, but he was not looking down on her passionate speech. It was something the boy had only learned after dying, but life was a series of realizations in every moment. The self was remade by the continual assignment of meaning. How many people felt no shame for who they had been in the past?

It was not humane to berate such a person by saying that because their past self had been awful, their present self had no right to raise their voice. Gyeoul believed in the possibility that people could change. Even if it rarely happened in reality. In the same sense, he believed the world might someday change for the better.

He wanted to believe it.

Even though the doubt that it was already too late kept repeating endlessly.

People usually looked back on themselves when who they had been until then could no longer deal with reality.

In that sense, how symbolic was a world approaching its end? Gyeoul told himself it was a suitable place to dream a good dream.

“Lieutenant General Xieru. Fine words. I heard you well. You are full of youthful fire.”

Shangjiang Yang Yongbin looked like a kind old man from the neighborhood as he said it.

“You said a nation is a totality.”

What was his purpose in returning to something already said?

“I will not say that is wrong. But should we not distinguish the weight of each component?”

“What do you mean, comrade?”

Lieutenant General Xieru still attached the title comrade every time she answered. It was an intentional way of speaking. One word could change the mood, depending on how it was said. Whether it would be effective was another question.

The gracefully aged army Shangjiang asked the navy lieutenant general a question.

“It is difficult to explain, but let me ask first. What are you?”

“...I do not understand the intent of your question.”

“I am asking what the person called Lieutenant General Xieru is.”

“...”

“Just as you said China is the totality of the people and everything for the people, you must be the totality of your mind and all your physical components. Arms, legs, large intestine, kidneys, heart, bones, eyeballs, brain, ears, platelets and white blood cells, bone marrow, DNA, and if we go deeper, iron, protein, salt, and all sorts of other components all come together to form the person called Xieru. Is that not so?”

“Let us say so for now. Go on.”

“Good. Then let me ask one thing. Suppose your arm was cut off. Your right arm fell away. Then which side contains the person called Xieru? The severed arm, or the larger mass with the head attached?”

Lieutenant General Xieru’s expression turned grim. She was not foolish. She had seen through the deranged army Shangjiang’s intent. But the atmosphere in the room, that fragile balance, kept her from breaking off the conversation. Crushing the Shangjiang’s statement would be no different from declaring that she would say only what she wanted to say and refuse to hear the other side. That would mean the collapse of this meeting.

“Both sides would be me, but the side with more of me remaining would feel the regret.”

“Then let me ask again. Suppose you, in that state, lost your left arm as well. Where would you be, Xieru? The left arm? The right arm? Or the torso with the legs and head remaining?”

“...”

“Continuing on, suppose your limbs were cut off one by one until only your torso and head remained. As a person, would you, Xieru, have become one-fifth of yourself because your limbs were cut off? Or would your personality remain the same because your mind was intact, while your body had merely become inconvenient? Hm? Answer me.”

There was no time to form a counterargument. Just as Lieutenant General Xieru had pressed him at first, the army Shangjiang now drove her back.

“If the core of a human being is the function that sustains life, then the heart would be more important than the brain, no? There are people alive even in a state of brain death. But I doubt you would affirm such a condition. So you cannot say the heart, rather than the brain, is the person called Xieru.”

“...”

“Do you know the story of the Ship of Theseus?”

He brought up a Greek anecdote and continued without waiting for an answer.

“Theseus had a ship. A wooden one. For maintenance, the old planks had to be replaced again and again. After a while, not a single piece of the wood that made up the original ship would remain. Now suppose the removed planks were not thrown away, but gathered and used to build a new ship. Then which one should be called the true Ship of Theseus? The latter, which contains more of the original wood, or the former, into which new wood has continuously been fitted?”

“...”

“In the end, the element that decides authenticity is an abstract concept that cannot be seen from the outside. Spirit, philosophy, ideology, concept, interpretation, perhaps conviction, faith, or soul. Is that not so?”

The army Shangjiang sighed as if admonishing her.

“You could say that standard is subjective. But you also cannot simply say no. Even if China is the totality of many elements, if you cut and strike those elements away one by one and determine which side matters, what defines China, the core must be China’s spirit in the end. A certain individual, system, law, work of art, building, city, or territory, those small fragments are, for instance, no more than the severed limbs of the person called Xieru.”

Was that only Gyeoul’s imagination, that the words about cutting off limbs felt significant? While Gyeoul considered that, Lieutenant General Xieru protested with an enraged face.

“That is sophistry! Human life is more important than anything else! Comrade, you are trying to distort reality with a mere analogy!”

At that, the army Shangjiang tilted his head.

“Surely you are not unaware of the misery of a life lived only to stay alive?”

Then he laughed aloud. It was a hollow laugh, and from another angle, almost like weeping.

Though it was the nonsense of a madman, the misery of a life lived only to stay alive struck deep chords in Gyeoul’s heart. The unread messages piling up day after day. Those miserable people expected all happiness to come after death, and they were absorbed in peeking into the afterlife. The happiness they longed for was low in quality. He even wondered whether it was because they knew nothing beyond it.

The Ship of Theseus. Gyeoul thought of the body he had left behind in physical reality. Where was the person called Han Gyeoul? Was Chairman Go Geon-cheol, who possessed more of Han Gyeoul, closer to Han Gyeoul in the original sense? Or was Han Gyeoul’s thought, with only the brain and spinal cord remaining, Han Gyeoul?

If neither was true, was the person called Han Gyeoul torn apart, existing fully in neither place?

His concentration weakened. If combat broke out now, Gyeoul would not be able to perform at his best.

“I will say it again. China exists. It has only lost many parts.”

In the midst of this, the army Shangjiang calmly declared.

“Therefore, I will remain faithful to the mission my homeland gave me. I am speaking of the rules of engagement in an emergency. How should we act when the nation faces a crisis due to an attack of unknown nature, and when it becomes impossible to expect normal orders from the normal chain of command? Surely none of you gathered here would claim not to know.”

Gyeoul barely managed to halt his drifting thoughts.

“Indiscriminate retaliation against potential enemy states... You are insane! You are out of your mind!”

Lieutenant General Xieru’s accusation, almost a scream, was correct.

If the nation’s functions were paralyzed by a preemptive attack from an unidentified enemy, retaliation would be launched against every country that might have carried out the attack. This was a rule of engagement shared by nuclear states.

“Unless there is an order from the Central Military Commission, my duty does not change.”

Shangjiang Yang Yongbin looked like a loyal soldier as he said this. Depending on how one saw it, he also looked like a person who had reached his limit and stopped thinking any further.

At that point, he looked at his watch once more. Then he nodded deeply.

“It is finally time.”

“You! What are you plotting?”

To Lieutenant General Xieru, who no longer used respectful speech, Shangjiang Yang Yongbin answered with a tired expression.

“In thirty seconds, seven nuclear daodan will be launched.”

The room that had been watching the confrontation froze in an instant.

“What... did you say?”

It was Rear Admiral Lei Yanlie’s utterly dazed question. The army Shangjiang only shrugged.

“All of you must have thought Changcheng 9 was the only means of retaliation, but no. There are mobile nuclear daodan launchers from the Second Artillery... no, the Strategic Rocket Force. That is why I secured Treasure Island. Launching from aboard a ship is not impossible, but it lacks stability.”

Gyeoul felt his mind freeze. He had always thought this might be the final apocalypse, but this was the moment that possibility suddenly came right up to him.

The Shangjiang continued.

“To tell the truth, even I did not know such things existed for a while. Well, they were among the cargo loaded in a frenzy while the mainland was being devastated. The officer in charge killed himself, and the soldiers were killed or eaten... Nuclear daodan launchers left abandoned among every kind of cargo and junk without anyone knowing they existed. It may have been the first such case since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

His low laughter rang with strange clarity.

“You fool...”

Lieutenant General Xieru’s rebuke trembled with rage.

“Now I see you are thoroughly mad. Do you think those daodan can leave this sky?”

“Well, who knows.”

The army Shangjiang answered with gloomy amusement.

“Nuclear daodan were launched while a meeting of generals and Party officials was being held here. Not one or two either, but a full seven. Now then, what judgment will the captains you comrades trust make? Will they not think the missiles were launched by the collective will of the generals gathered here?”

“You staked everything on that uncertain possibility?”

Her question was almost a scream. But even as every gaze in the room pierced him like a skewer, the madman’s calm did not waver.

“Why act surprised? Is there anyone here who did not attend with the resolve to stake everything on one decisive throw? Did you not come risking your lives because you had no room left, because the odds were low but you would wager everything?”

“Mad... he’s mad...”

The sickened murmur unexpectedly came from one of the hard-liners. He, too, had likely not expected such a sudden development. The other hard-liners had also gone white and stiff.

“It will be difficult for the captains of the air-defense destroyers to guess the full circumstances. They will be confused. But the launched daodan are clearly Chinese, and in the urgent situation where the U.S. military tries to intercept them, their judgment can only be based on patriotism. I do not fight battles I cannot win.”

Loud explosions began sounding outside. All kinds of weapons were being fired.

Should he shoot? Gyeoul hesitated again and again.

Tension stretched taut. If Gyeoul pulled the trigger now, a fight would begin where everyone aimed at everyone. This had been that kind of place from the start. Lieutenant General Xieru had wanted Kurt Lee so badly because, in an emergency, she had hoped at least she herself could return alive.

The generals in this room could now be seen as having tilted toward moderation instead, because of the army Shangjiang’s actions.

Shangjiang Yang Yongbin thought differently.

“There must be traitors among you who attended under the instigation of the U.S. imperialists.”

His indifferent eyes swept the room as he continued.

“It does not matter if every nuclear daodan fired today is shot down. With this, America will suspect everyone in this room all over again. Their basic stance will change. It will also be of great help in letting you comrades decide your positions. As an elder of the military, I have a duty to unite you.”

Which was right, Gyeoul’s Insight or the Shangjiang’s calculation?

The Shangjiang said calmly,

“There is no compromise. There is only retaliation. Death to our imperialist enemies. Long live the People’s Republic of China.”

Lieutenant General Xieru stood. She glared at the Shangjiang for a moment, then backed toward Gyeoul nearby. Many muzzles aimed at the lieutenant general, but none actually fired. The army Shangjiang also remained relaxed, for whatever reason. He could have chosen to kill or threaten everyone.

‘Is he excluding the possibility that he could die?’

Maybe those who remained and gathered around him would be enough.

Or maybe he was simply mad and out of his mind.

“I will say this one last time.”

Lieutenant General Xieru addressed the room.

“I will not set foot in this madness! Anyone who is awake, whoever you are! Come to me! I will be waiting with China’s future!”

Then she whispered to Gyeoul.

“Let’s go. Protect me, as promised.”

Gyeoul led her through the faint red diagonal warning lines. While the guards surrounded the general, the confused rest surged into motion. They must have wanted to see the chaos outside with their own eyes.

The farther outside they went, the louder the noise became.

‘No radio transmission is coming in...?’

Since it was an emergency, the CIA was probably in chaos too.

Bang. When he opened the door leading outside, the sky finally came into view. The deepened night was bright with every color. The streaks of light flying in from outside the bay were the desperate efforts of American cruisers trying to intercept the nuclear missiles. Lines of machine-gun rounds like beams of light, and countless interceptor missiles flying toward the nuclear missiles. Chinese destroyers spread barrages to block them.

In the dark celestial sphere, the brightest lights were seven lines of ruin climbing toward the heavens.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#Q&A

Q. BlueCrystal: I want to know whether there are differences between the physical book and the serialized version, and whether there are any plans for a signed-copy event or first-edition limited signed copies.

A. There will be almost no difference. I did touch up chapter 23, the scene everyone knows, but I do not think it affected the overall quality.

As for signed copies... it will not be anything like a first-edition limited run. I am thinking of making about 10 to 20 author presentation copies and distributing them privately.

Q. Amishu: What are the differences between the physical book and the serialized version? Are there no bonuses included in the published version? Like side stories, a terminology guide, and so on.

A. It will probably be a few illustrations or maps. I had not thought about terminology explanations. I will consider it for the next volume. Some of the things I wrote in the Author’s Note do help with deeper understanding... and I think adding explanations about historical accuracy or background would also be good.

Volume 1 is already in the printing stage, so that would be difficult. When Volume 2 comes out, I will have to be more diligent.

Q. PumpkinPumpkin: It took me 4 hours to beat Dakch... I thought it was a kids’ game... but that damned crow was really scary. I even felt cosmic horror from it.

A. If it took 4 hours, you beat it much faster than I did. You are good. But was it a crow? I thought it was an owl.

Q. LewdDemonF: I plan to buy the physical book, but will there be a signed-copy event too?

A. As I said above, there is no particular event like that planned.

But signed copies are not occult tools. Why do you want them so badly? Haha.

Q. Gibbon: The author must be frustrated too. What is with people asking over and over about things mentioned several times in the Author’s Note... It seems like too many people just shut up and read only the main text, then only ask questions and read the note after something makes them curious. Author, who died 41,000-some years ago after being hit by a meteorite and then revived after 100 years, though you claim it was your booger, based on my investigation by any and all means, that was not the case... do you have any intention of taking revenge on the Great Old One who dropped that meteorite?

A. It cannot be helped if people who read later do not know the contents of old notes and answers. The note is not part of the work’s content.

Revenge... well... haha...

Footnotes:

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