Chapter 4 GO Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Colonel Butcher

With a dagger at his side, a pistol in his hand, and a pack of dry rations on his back, Chen Ning left Blackwater Town and set off toward the Phoenix Legion’s Training Camp.

Knowing he’d been scratched by a zombie, he believed his days were numbered. Despair weighed heavy on his heart, and so, that first day, he only managed to trudge twenty kilometers.

As night fell, he stumbled upon a small rocky cave. He cut down some branches to conceal the entrance and decided to rest there.

He chewed on some rations, then lay down on a flat slab of stone. His gaze fell on the makeshift barricade he’d built at the cave’s mouth, and he couldn’t help but let out a bitter laugh.

I’m about to turn into a zombie, yet I’m still worrying about zombie attacks. How ironic.

Sleep didn’t come easily. Through the first half of the night, he tossed and turned, his mind haunted by flashes of his lost daughter, Xiao Guo… and the grim thought that he might soon become one of the undead himself.

By the second half of the night, the virus in his body began to stir.

Fever burned through him. Every breath seared his throat. His whole body felt aflame, as if something alive were crawling beneath his skin. The urge to tear his own flesh open was unbearable. His thoughts dissolved into haze and heat… until darkness swallowed him whole.

When Chen Ning finally woke the next morning, he bolted upright.

Am I… a zombie now?

That was his first thought. He frantically checked his body—no decay, no hunger for flesh. He was still human. More than that—his chest, where the zombie had clawed him, was completely healed, the wound sealed with fresh scabs.

“I didn’t turn into a zombie!” He laughed breathlessly, voice trembling with disbelief. “Ha! I didn’t turn! I’m still alive!”

But his joy was short-lived.

There was a rustle at the cave entrance—the branches he’d used as camouflage were knocked aside. A rotten, shambling corpse stumbled into view.

Chen Ning froze, his heart plummeting. Damn it! I shouldn’t have shouted! His voice must’ve drawn a stray walker from the wilderness.

It was just a low-tier, stage-one walker zombie—slow, weak, no stronger than an ordinary man—but to Chen Ning, who’d never fought one before, it might as well have been death itself.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Moving carefully, he drew his pistol, eyes locked on the creature.

Normally, the moment a zombie saw a human, it would charge like a starving piranha smelling blood.

But this one didn’t.

It stared at him… confused. Its rotting head tilted slightly, as if uncertain.

What’s it doing?

Chen Ning didn’t care to find out. The thing’s hesitation was his only chance. He raised the pistol, aiming for its head.

The zombie let out a low, guttural growl—an almost animal sound, like a creature trying to communicate—and took a few unsteady steps closer.

Only three meters now.

Chen Ning held his breath, finger tightening on the trigger.

The zombie’s hands were still lowered, its head tilting again, emitting another throaty murmur. It looked almost… puzzled. As if it thought Chen Ning was one of its own.

He couldn’t take the risk.

He fired.

Bang!

The shot rang through the cave, but Chen Ning’s hands trembled—he’d never fired a gun before. The bullet grazed the creature’s head, shredding half its ear.

The zombie froze for a moment, then comprehension flashed in its dull eyes. It realized Chen Ning wasn’t one of them.

It roared, baring yellowed fangs, claws flashing as it lunged, wanting to shed the human in front into pieces.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Chen Ning fired wildly, the recoil jolting through his arms. Bullets tore into the creature’s chest and limbs, staggering it back. The final shot punched clean through its skull.

The zombie collapsed, motionless.

Chen Ning gasped for breath, sweat dripping down his temple. That was too close.

But then, another thought crept in. Why didn’t it attack me at first?

A possibility dawned on him. Could it be because I was scratched before? Maybe the virus in me hasn’t taken over, but the zombie sensed it—mistook me for one of them?

If that were true… if the infection could somehow make zombies hesitate to attack him… then he might have just stumbled onto an advantage in this nightmare world.

He wanted to test it again, but the area he was in was too close to the Camp—imperial soldiers patrolled often, clearing out any undead they found. For the next two days, until he reached the training base, he didn’t encounter a single zombie.

It left him both disappointed and relieved.

But when he finally arrived at the Phoenix Legion’s Azurebird Training Camp, all thoughts of testing theories vanished.

The base stood within a mountain valley, shielded by cliffs on three sides. At the front rose massive iron gates and towering walls manned by armed soldiers in black imperial uniforms. On their sleeves burned the red insignia of a blazing Phoenix—the mark of the Phoenix Legion.

Before those gates stood a sea of people—tens of thousands had come to enlist.

Most were scavengers, slum dwellers, or desperate refugees. A few were young nobles, hoping to earn glory through military merit. In the Empire, war was the only ladder to rise—noble or not, honor was forged on the battlefield.

But the Phoenix Legion’s standards were ruthless. Only a few among the crowd would ever step through those gates.

Thanks to Major Rahu’s letter of recommendation, Chen Ning was one of the last recruits accepted.

He received a military ID tag—the front embossed with the Trainee emblem, the back engraved with his name and a number: 999.

They were only taking a thousand recruits this time. Had Chen Ning arrived two minutes later, even Rahu’s letter wouldn’t have saved him.

He joined the line of new soldiers marching through the gates, his heart pounding. The air buzzed with excitement—like a carp leaping toward the Dragon Gate, hoping to transform into dragons.

———

TL note: carp leaping toward the Dragon Gate, hoping to transform into dragons (鲤鱼跃龙门)

struggling through hardship to achieve an extraordinary breakthrough

———

Every new recruit wore the same look: joy, pride, ambition.

Then the alarm sounded.

A commotion rippled through the crowd. The tens of thousands who’d been turned away were rioting. 

When they saw Chen Ning and the thousand new recruits walking into the base to begin a new life, despair consumed them. They had to return to a world filled with zombies, hunger, poverty, disease, and death.

Some began to lose their minds. Madness spread among the crowd as they rushed toward the base gates, screaming hysterically:

“Take me with you! Let me in too! I want to be a soldier! I want to eat meat and drink wine!”

The chaos swelled into madness. Sirens wailed—the sharp, intermittent scream signaling the base is being attacked.

On the battlements stood a towering man, bare-chested, with muscles like coiled steel. An intricate tattoo of the Eight-Faced Buddha stretched across his chest. A cigar smoldered between his lips as his narrow eyes scanned the mob below.

“Colonel Butcher,” a thin officer murmured beside him, “the rejects are rioting. Orders?”

A slow, cruel grin spread across the man’s face. He looked at the rioters the way a butcher eyes pigs before the slaughter.

The next instant, the sirens changed pitch—short, sharp bursts. The signal to fire.

Chen Ning watched in shock as a soldier thrust his bayonet into a screaming rioter. Then—gunfire erupted.

Rifles blazed from the gates and the walls, bullets raining down like steel hail. The mob screamed, fell, and died in heaps. Blood soaked the earth.

Within minutes, silence returned. Only the dead remained.

The new recruits stood frozen, their earlier excitement extinguished, replaced by horror.

Soon after, they were herded onto the vast training ground. There, the infamous Colonel Butcher awaited them.

He was massive—his frame bursting with muscle, his grin feral. The scar across his face twisted when he smiled, making him look more like a beast than a man.

He stood before them, surveying the thousand trembling rookies like livestock in a pen. His voice boomed across the yard, dark and mocking.

“Welcome, new recruits. I’m your commanding officer—Colonel Butcher.”

“I bet every one of you thinks you’re lucky, chosen to join the Training Camp.”

He paused, his grin widening, teeth glinting under the sun.

“But let me tell you this—being chosen isn’t your luck.”

His eyes gleamed coldly.

“It’s your misfortune.”

Silence hung heavy in the air.

Then he threw his head back and laughed, a chilling, guttural sound.

“Welcome,” he said, voice low and cruel, “to Hell.”