The ice and snow around them slid down, showering the two people in the face. It was a little painful, and the speed of their descent increased. It was a little hair-raising. Fortunately, they did not slide for too long. Both of their feet landed on the ground with a muffled thud.
This snow cave was not too deep. Xu Le's legs were still numb. He knelt down, but his arms were still tightly wrapped around Shang Qiu. The two of them were extremely calm, especially Shang Qiu. She had not screamed the entire way down, but her arms around Xu Le's neck were exceptionally tight.
Xu Le's brows furrowed slightly. He straightened his body with some difficulty and put Shang Qiu down. He looked around warily at the dark surroundings. Not sensing any danger, he took out the light stick from his arm pocket and snapped it with a snap.
A faint light instantly illuminated the surroundings of the cave. From the quick-solidifying cement wall beside them, they could quickly determine that this was a man-made space. This space was so large that the light from the military light stick could not illuminate the end of it. The two of them could faintly see countless densely packed grey cloth bags on the ground in the distance. They guessed that they were probably some stored supplies.
Xu Le immediately glanced at his wristwatch. After confirming that the signal connection with the ground had not been interrupted due to the underground space and the geomagnetic storm, only then did he relax. He lowered his voice and said to the system, "It's safe. Don't worry. The distance underground is about 6.4 metres."
Shang Qiu brushed away the ice and snow on her body and asked, "You clearly installed the echo positioning device on the MXT first. Why didn't the mecha alarm us? If it's because the mecha we're in is seriously damaged, then the other two MXT's didn't alarm us either."
"This was originally the exploration well system used by the Donglin Mine Tunnel, but I changed it a little. Now, this system will only alarm the manmade space. This underground space is built on the top of a natural ice rock, so the MXT's naturally won't alarm us. "
Xu Le picked up the light stick and glanced at the dry and cold rock surface above. He frowned and said, "The rock wall should be very thin. Because of the long years of cold, a weak line has been torn open in the ice layer above. That's why we fell down."
"Why did you make such changes?"
"We don't know how many natural cavities there are beneath the glacier area. If the Federation mecha were to report even the natural cavities, then we wouldn't even have to wait for the Empire to attack us. We wouldn't even be able to take a single step forward ourselves."
Xu Le explained as he listened attentively to the sounds coming from above. Bai Magnolia should be preparing the zipline at this time. Other than the dry and cold air in this underground space, there was no danger, so he was not in a hurry. He picked up the light stick and shone it into the distance. Suddenly, he frowned. He felt that those gray things looked a little strange.
For the sake of safety, the two of them did not move. They extended the light closer and found that under the wall not far from their right, there were also many gray things piled up messily together.
Suddenly, two faint reflections appeared between the gray things. Xu Le squinted his eyes and looked carefully. He finally recognized that it should be... a pair of eyes.
It was a pair of eyes that had been frozen by the cold. They were filled with the shock and sorrow of death. Around the eyes, after careful examination, they could see that it was a very small face. The skin on the face was completely covered by dust. Only those brittle strands of hair outlined the outline of the face.
Xu Le's eyes suddenly widened. He looked around from the little girl's body and finally saw that these gray things that were piled up like garbage were not supplies, but... countless corpses piled up together.
In a dark underground cave, suddenly seeing so many corpses, Shang Qiu, who had been able to maintain her calm when she fell into the deep cave, suddenly paled.
Xu Le knew that she was frightened. He quickly pulled her into his arms and buried her face in his chest. He did not want her to see this horrible scene again.
Shang Qiu's body was trembling slightly. Xu Le gently patted her twice. That pair of small eyes were extremely round. His gaze was as cold as the temperature of this place. It was indescribably cold as it slid over the gray corpses.
Bai Yulan slid down the zipline. Naturally, she followed Xu Le's gaze and was also stunned by this scene. They were all iron-blooded men who had experienced life and death on the battlefield. They had seen all kinds of miserable deaths, but this was the first time they saw so many corpses piled up together without dignity. The light shone from near to far, but everywhere it shone was gray. It was impossible to count how many people were buried in this spacious underground space.
Probably because they did not hear any response, a few more people slid down the ground. While they were shocked, they quickly followed Xu Le's instructions and brought the trembling Shang Qiu up.
With a whoosh, the high brightness lamp was inserted into the wall. The light in the underground space suddenly brightened, and they could see more clearly. Everyone couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air, and their expressions became shocked and perplexed.
Xu Le squatted down and began to examine the frozen corpses. Just about ten meters in front of him, there were at least a hundred corpses piled up. There were old people, children with frightened eyes, half-naked women, and young men with wounds on their bodies. All of these corpses were covered in a thick layer of gray.
Bai Yulan picked up a smear of ash from a woman's corpse that was piled at the top of the pile. She gently rubbed it twice and said to him, "This is the Empire's weasel hair latex explosive. After being frozen for a long time, it decomposed into gray powder. It seems that in the beginning, they were preparing to burn all of these corpses to ashes. But for some reason, they did not complete it in the end. "
Xu Le nodded and silently turned the little girl whose eyes were still open after she died. Because of the cold for many years, all of the corpses were almost stuck together. This action was somewhat difficult to do, especially when the sound of flesh tearing made him and the soldiers behind him tremble uncontrollably.
"It's one of us." Xu Le stared at the bloody hole behind the little girl's neck where the chip was and said with a voice without a trace of emotion, "You guys check the other corpses."
As expected, the corpses piled up here all had a bloody hole behind their necks that had been frozen by ice, revealing the white cervical vertebrae. There were traces of brutal destruction on the joints, and the chips in the vertebrae had disappeared without a trace.
After the tragic first war, the people of the Empire were most afraid of and hated the Federation's The Glory Of The Charter. They wanted to decipher the secrets of the Federation's Charter at all times. The chips behind the necks of the Federation captives were naturally their most important spoils of war. Although after a long period of experiments, the Empire confirmed that there was no way to obtain the technology they needed from these chips, but this bloody and cruel method became a habit of the Imperial armies.
"It seems that everyone here is our people." Xu Le stood up and looked at the endless gray in the darkness. Thinking of how many of his compatriots had died here, his heart was unprecedentedly heavy and gloomy.
"I found an exception." Lan Xiaolong waved his light stick not far away and pointed at a corpse in front of him with a complicated expression. "This guy is from the Empire because he's wearing the Empire's military uniform. Also, his neck is undamaged."
Everyone walked over and stared at the corpse of the Empire's military officer in confusion, not knowing why he would appear here. Bai Yulan lowered her head slightly and said, "The Wolf-Hao latex took a long time to decompose. The military uniform of this Empire's military officer is old-fashioned. It seems that this massacre happened many years ago. Because of the dry and cold environment of this place … the corpses are well-preserved."
Xu Le didn't say anything. He just stared at the corpse of the Empire's military officer in silence, the fingers of his right hand trembling slightly. Lan Xiaolong stood up and handed over a small booklet.
"What is this?"
"It should be the diary of this military officer. His rank should be quite high to be able to use this kind of fiber paper. Be careful when you flip through it, it may break at any time."
There was nothing shocking in this diary. About ninety percent of the first half was describing the feelings of this military officer named Arthur when he was far away from his homeland of the Empire. The seven years of boring interstellar travel were filled with a sense of boredom. The later half talked about his battle life on planet 5460 and his yearning for the maple trees of his hometown. It wasn't until the last page that it described the night before the massacre … his mental activity.
"An Empire military officer who didn't want to slaughter Federation civilians was killed by his own army." Xu Le closed the diary and looked at the corpse at his feet. He was silent for a long time.
"It's not strange for there to be an extra person among the animals, but this doesn't change the definition of them as animals," Bai Yulan's eyes were cold as she replied.
"Although it's not easy to pinpoint the location now, we still need to record this location." Xu Le looked at Gu Xifeng and said, "Because this place will be built as a memorial in the future."
"Understood," Gu Xifeng replied with a serious tone.
Ever since the victorious military operation, the federal army had launched a major counterattack on the three fallen planets. However, the troops had basically never found any living citizens of the federation in the enemy-occupied areas. After a lot of effort, they had only found a few wild tombs and occasionally a few corpses. Group 7 had found some corpses on planets 5460 and 163, but the number of graves and corpses didn't match the population statistics before the Imperial expeditionary Force took over.
The upper echelons of the Federation government and military already had some very bad guesses a long time ago. They were worried that the civilians had already died in the secret massacre of the Imperial expeditionary Force. Today, the New Seventeenth Division's accidental discovery proved this tragic reality.
Xu Le looked at the countless corpses covered in dust in front of him. His eyes narrowed slightly. After a moment of silence, he took off his military hat. The soldiers behind him also took off their military hats or helmets. Everyone lined up and solemnly saluted and said goodbye to these comrades who had been dead for many years.
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