78: Chapter 79 The Prisoner-of-War Olympics Under the White Dove Poster

The mountain path, where ice and snow had just begun to melt, was full of mud.

Rotten leaves mixed with the distant smell of gunpowder fermented in the air.

A long line of prisoners of war, dressed in American military uniforms, lowered their heads,

shuffling forward with heavy steps.

Their boots sank into the mud, making a sticky sound when pulled out.

Tony walked in the middle of the line, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.

Cold wind poured in through his tattered collar, taking away the last remnants of his body heat.

The bugle call from the Battle of Triangle Hill position still echoed in his mind.

The threatening words of his Officer before the battle now seemed terrifyingly real.

"If you fall into the hands of the Chinese, they will flay you, gouge out your eyes, and smash your bones."

These were the exact words printed in the manual issued by the Far East Command.

Tony looked at the Chinese soldiers escorting them on both sides of the line,

cold sweat seeping into his palms. The cotton uniforms of these Chinese soldiers were scorched in many places,

their faces stained with indelible black soot,

and they walked with a limp.

They had just retreated from a hellish battlefield,

and the smell of gunpowder on them was even stronger than at the front line.

Tony felt his doom was near.

His starved, cramping stomach suddenly contracted.

His legs gave way, and he tripped over a rock hidden in the mud, falling heavily into the muddy water.

The surrounding POWs quickly scattered, fearing trouble.

A rifle with a bayonet extended towards him.

Tony, terrified, hugged his head and curled into a ball,

his voice distorted: "Don't kill me! You devils! Help!"

He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the searing pain of a rifle butt smashing his skull.

The anticipated blow did not fall. He heard the sound of clothes rubbing in front of him.

Tony bravely opened one eye.

The Chinese soldier responsible for the escort stood before him.

It was a young soldier, not holding a gun.

Tony remembered this man's face; not long ago on the position, this man had smashed a machine gunner's head with a rock. A green ID character, “Jack,” floated above his head.

Jack said nothing, took out half a piece of dry ration, still warm from his body, from his Huai,

and threw it by the muddy water in front of Tony.

Tony looked at the dry ration, then at Jack.

Jack's eyes held none of the brutality or hatred Tony had expected,

only extreme weariness.

That weariness was devoid of any emotional color, purely the underlying exhaustion left after physical exertion.

Jack turned and continued walking.

Tony grabbed the dry ration, didn't even wipe off the mud and sand, and crammed it into his mouth, wolfing it down.

The coarse powder slid down his shriveled esophagus, and after swallowing,

a familiar taste emerged in his mouth.

This was the fried flour ration issued to the Chinese army, identical to the dry rations he had captured on the battlefield.

The column continued forward.

After crossing a towering ridge, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

The gate of Bitong Prisoner of War Camp appeared at the end of the road.

Two rows of wooden stakes stood tall, surrounded by barbed wire.

Tony held his breath, his neck unconsciously tensing.

He expected to see a gallows behind the gate,

or execution stakes, with dark red blood flowing on the ground.

The front of the line completely stopped. Those behind couldn't stop in time,

colliding solidly with the backs of the people in front, causing a series of clanging noises from their tin mess kits.

Tony was pushed to the edge of the line and peered out.

In the center of the camp gate, there was no gallows, nor any execution squad armed with live ammunition.

Between two thick logs hung a huge, colorful poster.

Under the surrounding gray and gloomy sky, the poster was strikingly vibrant.

In the center of the poster was a white dove with outstretched wings, and below the dove were five rings: red, yellow, blue, green, and black.

At the very bottom of the poster, a line of large English letters was written in extremely conspicuous print.

Tony stared, unconsciously sounding out the words:

"Peace and Sports - The First Bitong Prisoner of War Camp Olympic Games is about to open."

The entire POW contingent fell into a long silence.

Only the whimpering sound of the cold wind sweeping through the valley could be heard.

The "man-eating Oriental devils" from the Officer's mouth and the Olympic poster with the white dove before them,

created an extremely absurd contrast.

No one spoke, no one moved.

Hundreds of fearful eyes stared intently at those English words, trying to find a hidden murderous intent within them.

After a full half minute,

a British POW with a full beard at the front of the line moved his lips,

asking in an extremely low whisper, "Is this a joke?"

No one answered him.

The gate slowly pulled open to both sides.

Several unarmed Volunteer Army soldiers stood behind the gate, guiding the contingent into the camp.

Tony dragged his legs over the threshold,

and an open dirt sports field appeared in his sight.

Several Chinese soldiers in single uniforms were carrying flattened tree trunks,

nailing them to the ground to make simple hurdle frames.

Not far away, someone was using lime powder to draw white tracks along the edge of the field.

In a corner, several thick cloth bags filled with sand were piled up; these were props to substitute for shot puts.

Several medical personnel in white coats moved about, carrying stretchers.

Tony, walking unevenly due to severe frostbite on his feet, was stopped by two medical personnel as soon as he entered the camp.

He was led into a relatively warm tent. A stove was burning inside the tent.

The military doctor gestured for him to take off his boots.

Tony complied, revealing his frostbitten, blackened toes, which emitted a putrid smell.

He had seen this kind of frostbite in U.S. field hospitals; the usual treatment was direct amputation.

The military doctor put on a mask and opened a tin box. The pungent yet refreshing smell of ointment diffused.

The military doctor dipped a cotton swab into the ointment and very gently applied it to his necrotic flesh.

As the cotton swab passed over the festering wound, the military doctor's hand was steady, showing no sign of disgust.

Tony stared at those calloused hands, his mind blank.

All the military education and pre-war propaganda he had received could not explain what was happening before his eyes.

Huaxia, Su Yun Studio.

On the optical computer screen, the public opinion war on the external network was raging.

The rumor-mongering articles spearheaded by Jeffrey, the U.S. Far East Command's press Officer, had dominated the headlines of major Western media outlets.

These articles were accompanied by blurry black-and-white photos—POWs beaten and hung from trees, wounded soldiers with blood-stained faces.

The headlines, without exception, used words like "barbaric," "slaughter," and "hell."

Su Yun sat in front of the console, typing a series of commands on the keyboard.

"Large DLC 'Bitong POW Olympics' simultaneously streamed across the entire network, split-screen display activated."

The moment the command was issued, the live broadcast screen for five hundred million online viewers worldwide split in half.

The left half of the screen showed the black-and-white photos of "bloody abuse of POWs" just released by Western media.

Careful viewers could even spot pixel discontinuities left during photo compositing at the edges, and several backgrounds clearly belonging to abandoned Hollywood studio props.

The right half of the screen showed the real-time, ultra-high-definition footage from Bitong Prisoner of War Camp.

In the footage, blond American soldiers were eating steaming boiled potatoes;

British POWs gathered together, kicking a ball made of rags;

Tony sat in the tent, watching the Chinese military doctor meticulously bandage his toes.

Above the screen, the colorful poster emblazoned with "Peace and Sports" fluttered in the wind.

An extremely cruel direct comparison.

No narration or commentary was needed; truth and lies clashed on the same screen.

The live stream comments on the external network froze for a full half minute,

then exploded in a torrent.

"Those politicians are treating us like fools! Look at the right side, they're even giving cold medicine to POWs!"

"This absolutely cannot be real, the Chinese must have rehearsed it in advance, this is a meticulously choreographed communist play!"

"Rehearsal? Go and rehearse frostbitten, festering toes? Go and rehearse those genuine chewing motions when eating potatoes!"

"But Officer Jeffrey said they were barbarians..."

Doubt, arguments, collapse—the cracks in public opinion expanded visibly among Western netizens.

Su Yun watched the backend data panel.

The emotional value for the "Trust Crisis" branch had surged fourfold in just twenty minutes, with the progress bar nearing its maximum.

Game World, sunset.

The orange afterglow hit the dirt sports field,

casting long, slanted shadows from the makeshift hurdles.

A static sound came from the loudspeakers hung in various corners of the camp,

followed by a harmonica tune that echoed gently through the valley.

It was "Katyusha."

The melody was mellow and tinged with sadness. Several Eastern European POWs lining up for dinner were the first to react.

A wounded soldier with a prominent nose stopped what he was doing and hummed a line in his native language, following the tune.

Then the second person beside him, then the third.

Soon, POWs of different skin colors and factions began to hum this same melody in their respective languages.

The ice of language and position began to crack with the sound of the harmonica.

Tony sat on the grass at the edge of the sports field, holding his allocated rice and fried noodles.

He looked up, his gaze sweeping over the crowd and landing once again on the white dove poster on the gate.

Something solid cracked inside him; he couldn't quite name it, only felt a heavy tightness in his chest.

He turned his head and saw a wooden board standing in a distant corner of the camp.

Dozens of lines of Chinese characters were densely carved on the board.

He didn't recognize the characters, nor had any Chinese soldier ever explained what they were.

Jack, who was in charge of the escort, was leaning against the wooden board, smoking a rolled cigarette.

The flickering light illuminated his expressionless face.

Tony remembered Jack's gesture when he threw the dry ration.

Late at night. The lights in the POW camp's makeshift dormitory were out.

The cold wind rattled the paper windows. Snoring, rising and falling, came from the communal bunk.

Tony tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He reached into his inner pocket,

pulling out a family photo with worn and curled edges.

By the dim moonlight filtering through the window,

he looked at his wife in the plaid shirt in the photo,

and their son, John, who had just turned eight.

A faint rustling of paper came from the bunk next to him.

Tony turned his head. On the adjacent bunk,

a Chinese wounded soldier with a thick bandage on his left arm was also awake.

The wounded soldier was wrapped in a thin military blanket,

also holding a black-and-white photo.

The moonlight shone on the photo.

Tony could barely make out a little girl with two braided pigtails,

smiling happily at the camera.

The wounded soldier turned his face, his gaze meeting Tony's.

Neither of them put away the photos in their hands.

Tony sat up, extended John's photo towards the wounded soldier,

then pointed to his own chest.

The wounded soldier looked at the photo in Tony's hand,

then at the girl's photo in his own hand.

After a moment of silence, he gently nodded.

Tony's Adam's apple bobbed. He searched his mind for the few words he knew,

and stammered out a Chinese phrase he had learned from the interrogation manual:

"You, home, where?"