"We ate on the way," the division commander said.
"Did you eat a lot? If you're not full, have some more. It's still the commander's mess, it might not be luxurious, but it's definitely delicious. Why not try it while you're here? It doesn't cost anything! I've served the leaders of several planets before, and I've made all those important figures fat." the cook said.
"Is there a menu?" Pei Yongxin asked.
"Order whatever you want," the cook replied. "There's no menu, but we can make most ingredients."
The division commander and Pei Yongxin hesitated for a long time before ordering a few home-style dishes.
The cook left, but the guards didn't close the door. Instead, they stood tall and saluted again.
A man and a woman walked in, both tall and dressed in casual clothes.
Pei Yongxin and the division commander were stunned for a moment, then quickly reacted, standing tall and saluting, "Greetings, Commander!"
It was Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. I was just in a meeting with people from the Galactic Empire's military and rushed over as soon as it ended," Jiang Ye returned the salute and said with a smile, "Please sit."
Pei Yongxin and the division commander sat down, their backs straight, filled with unease.
"Don't be nervous. This isn't a formal meeting, just a casual chat," Cen Yemeng said.
Pei Yongxin and the division commander relaxed slightly, but still maintained their reserved demeanor.
"Yongxin, can you tell me what happened from beginning to end?" Jiang Ye's expression turned serious. "I saw the report your division commander submitted. Two hours have passed in the outside world, but you and your soldiers were trapped on the train for two years?"
"We don't know the exact duration. After being trapped for a few days, we started using sleep to mark time," Pei Yongxin said. "Every time we woke up from sleep, we'd carve a mark on the wall, writing the character '正' (zhèng). By the time we were rescued, there were 145 of them, nearly two years."
"Were there any initial signs?" Cen Yemeng asked.
"First, there was network latency," Pei Yongxin said. "Signals couldn't be sent out or received, and loading was very slow. Pages that used to load instantly suddenly took a minute to appear. Then, all of my subordinates and I had a feeling that time had disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Jiang Ye frowned.
"I can't describe the feeling. The physical conditions inside the train were normal. I even threw my phone to test the falling time, and everything was normal," Pei Yongxin said, looking confused. "It was just a sudden thought in my mind that time was gone."
"When did you realize you were trapped?" Cen Yemeng asked.
"After a few hours, we knew something was wrong. Firstly, we couldn't contact the military at all. Secondly, rescue should have arrived under normal circumstances. Thirdly, the toads on the windows started to slow down."
"Slow down?"
"To be precise, it was as if they had solidified. At first, many toads were wriggling, their eyeballs were congested and bursting, and blood flowed down the glass. Soon, the toads' movements became slower and slower. At first, we thought the toads had all been crushed to death, but looking at the blood flow, it wasn't like that at all. Some large blood droplets had almost stopped moving, and small blood droplets from bursting eyeballs, which had flown out, actually stopped in mid-air."
Pei Yongxin's expression turned grim, as it was a nightmarish experience.
"At that time, we all stared intently out the window, watching everything outside freeze and solidify, eventually turning into statues."
Everyone fell silent.
Jiang Ye imagined the scene in his mind, and it was truly chilling.
The entire world's time had frozen, and there was no telling when it would thaw. The living were trapped in a small train.
"We gathered to discuss, but there was no conclusion. No one knew what was happening," Pei Yongxin said. "I led the team to take stock of the supplies on board, which were enough for about two years of survival."
"For the first few days, everyone consciously observed military discipline and did what they were supposed to do. After five days, several soldiers went mad, shouting and dismounting weapons from their fixed mounts. I fired a shot to subdue them," Pei Yongxin said, a hint of ruthlessness flashing in his eyes. "I gathered everyone for a meeting. In the meeting, I made the worst-case scenario plan: if we were trapped in this time slice forever, I would maintain discipline until the very last moment."
"Food was allocated per person. No one except me was allowed to hold weapons. If necessary, I could execute those who caused trouble. The toilets were already full, and feces were overflowing from the toilets. The toilets were networked, and without a network, they couldn't be flushed. I designated the last carriage as the feces car, where all the excrement was concentrated. We then rested in the front carriages," Pei Yongxin said. "I assigned the most reliable person in each carriage as an officer, responsible for everyone in the carriage. If anything happened, the officers would be executed collectively."
"Did you try to open the windows?" Jiang Ye asked.
"Yes, about a month after we were trapped, I also started to waver," Pei Yongxin said. "I suspected we had entered a temporal turbulence. If we waited, it might take ten thousand years for a breakthrough. So, I had the mechanical soldiers on the train cut off a small piece of the window, about the size of a ping pong ball."
"And then?"
"It was useless. After cutting it off, we could poke our fingers out to touch the toads, but time outside the car was still frozen," Pei Yongxin said. "We tried many methods successively, but none of them could get us out. We were all desperate, and we all wrote our wills, deciding to wait quietly for death."
"At first, everyone slept day and night, stared blankly, or cried. These three things were done repeatedly," Pei Yongxin said. "We didn't know the time, but during that period, we probably slept for more than fourteen hours a day. When we couldn't sleep anymore, we'd sit up and stare blankly, and after a while, we'd cry. There were no sobs, just silent tears. There was no sound in the carriage."
"Then one day, I had an epiphany. This wouldn't do. I gathered all the soldiers for a meeting and said that we couldn't be alive but have spirits like corpses. Let's consider ourselves as ancient cancer patients with two years left to live. Before we die, we shouldn't waste this last time. With so many of us, let's find something to do."
Jiang Ye, Cen Yemeng, and the division commander listened intently.
"The first thing we did was talk, sharing our life experiences," Pei Yongxin said. "The carriage chief of the third carriage first proposed this activity: everyone would talk in detail about their memories of their lives. Since we had only lived our own decades so far, listening to others' life experiences would be equivalent to living their lives for decades. If everyone spoke, it would be equivalent to each of us living hundreds of lifetimes, making us extremely long-lived, and we would have no regrets in death."
"The carriage chief of the fourth carriage countered at the time, saying that life experiences are life experiences, and decades of experience can be told in a few hours, which is severely condensed and not equivalent to living decades longer."
"The carriage chief of the third carriage replied brilliantly, saying that the time spent eating, defecating, and sleeping, no matter how much, is repetitive and meaningless. The important experiences in life are actually very few. The memories people have before death are also limited to a few events. Telling these events is equivalent to experiencing decades."