The penal battalion was not a place for men; it was a mill designed to grind down souls into obedient, disposable tools. Lin Wei learned this truth on his first day, under the watchful, contemptuous eyes of the drill sergeant, a grizzled veteran named Commander Xin with a face like cracked leather and a voice that could strip paint.
"You are maggots!" Xin bellowed, pacing before the ragged line of new convicts. "Worthless flesh sentenced to die for the Emperor! Your lives are a debt, and this…" he gestured to the dusty training ground and the fortified walls beyond, "…is where you pay it back in blood and sweat! There are only two ways out of the Seventh Penal Battalion: death in battle, or a pardon earned by a mountain of Jin corpses! Any man who tries a third way—desertion—will find it quickly!"
He pointed to a row of wooden stakes topped with grisly, decaying heads at the camp's entrance. "Their families back home will pay the price for their cowardice. Remember that."
The training was brutal and simple. Days were filled with endless drills: forming shield walls with heavy, splintered practice equipment, thrusting their rusty spears at straw dummies until their shoulders screamed, and marching in the scorching sun until men dropped from exhaustion. It was a world away from the precise, intellectual work of surgery. Here, strength and brutal simplicity were the only currencies.
It was in this crucible that Lin Wei made his first, tenuous connections. Survival in the ranks demanded a semblance of camaraderie, even among thieves and outcasts.
The first was "Sly" Liu, a wiry man with quick fingers and a quicker smile. He'd been a serial chicken thief from a nearby county. "Not proud of it," Liu confessed during a water break, "but a man's got to eat. Got caught pinching a bird from a military courier's coop. Stupid." Liu's skills, however, were invaluable. He knew how to acquire "extra" rations, how to gamble without getting caught, and, most importantly, how to hear every piece of gossip that flowed through the camp. He became Lin Wei's source of information.
The second was "Ox" Li, a mountain of a man with a simple mind and a surprisingly gentle demeanor. He'd been a farmer conscripted into the regular army but had struck an officer who was confiscating his village's last grain reserves. Demoted to the penal battalion, Ox Li's immense strength was a buffer for Lin Wei and Sly Wang against the more predatory convicts. He rarely spoke, but his presence was a palpable comfort.
The most intriguing, however, was ScholarZhang. An older man with intelligent eyes that held a deep, simmering resentment, he'd been a minor clerk accused of sympathizing with rebel factions critical of the Southern Song court's appeasement policies. He wasn't a fighter; his body was frail from a life of paperwork. "I am here not for what I did, but for what I wrote," he told Lin Wei one evening, his voice low. "They fear ideas more than swords sometimes." Scholar Zhang saw something different in Lin Wei—a calm intelligence that didn't belong in this place.
He would often engage him in quiet conversations about the geography of the frontier, the tactics of the Jin cavalry, and the complex, corrupt politics of the Southern Song military command. "Knowledge is a weapon too, Lin Wei," he would say cryptically. "Even here."
Lin Wei kept his head down, performing the drills with a grim determination. He used his anatomical knowledge to make his spear thrusts more efficient, conserving energy. He observed the camp's hygiene—or utter lack of it—with a sense of professional horror, the system in his mind silently cataloging the risks of dysentery and typhus. He treated his own blisters and minor cuts with meticulous care, using scraps of cloth boiled in his water ration, drawing curious glances from Sly Liu.
"You're a fussy one, aren't you?" Liu remarked.
"An infection can kill you as dead as a Jin's arrow," Lin Wei replied simply. It was the closest he came to revealing his past.
Weeks bled into a month. The frantic incompetence of the new recruits was slowly hammered into a dull, mechanical readiness.
Then, one evening, the atmosphere in the camp shifted. The daily grind ceased. Extra rations of hardtack and dried meat were distributed—the traditional "last meal" before an engagement. Commander Xin addressed them, his speech uncharacteristically blunt.
"The Jin bastards are probing our lines twenty li to the north," Xin barked, his voice cutting through the cold air. "A cavalry screen, testing our strength. The General wants a show of force."
He paused, letting the anticipation build into dread.
"The Seventh Penal Battalion will have the honor," he sneered, "of forming the center of the front line."
A wave of fearful murmuring passed through the ranks. The center of the front line was where the enemy's charge would hit hardest.
"Hold the line!" Gao continued. "You will be the anvil. The regular battalions—the 4th and 5th—will be the hammer on the flanks. They will sweep in once you've absorbed the enemy's momentum."
Scholar Zhang, standing near Lin Wei, muttered under his breath, "An anvil is struck. It does not strike back. They will use us as cannon fodder, to bleed the Jin for the regular troops to finish off."
Xin's final words erased any lingering doubt about their fate. "The camp guards and the General's own archers will be positioned behind you. Their orders are clear. Any man who takes a single step back without the signal will be cut down as a deserter. There is no retreat. Your only path to survival is forward, through the enemy."
The message was chillingly clear. They were not just soldiers; they were a disposable barrier. Their own army was positioned both to support them and to execute them.
A cold silence fell over the camp that night, thicker than before. It wasn't just the fear of the Jin ahead, but the terror of the Song army at their backs. Men sat in small groups, not sharpening weapons, but just staring into the darkness. The hope of survival had been replaced by the grim calculus of how to die in a way that might not get their families punished.
Sly Liu lost his usual smirk, his face pale. Ox Li gripped his spear, his knuckles white. Scholar Zhang sat beside Lin Wei, staring into the feeble campfire.
"They have turned us into a weapon pointed at both ends," Zhang said, his voice hollow. "The Jin in front, our own comrades behind. There is no strategy for this, Lin Wei. Only butchery."
Lin Wei didn't answer. He looked at his hands. The system interface remained silent, offering no comfort. The directive
"[Survive.]" now seemed like a cruel joke.
Survival meant advancing into a wall of Jin cavalry. Survival meant not being shot in the back by his own side.
Beyond the palisade walls, the horizon was dark. But tomorrow, at dawn, it would be painted with the colors of war, and the Seventh Penal Battalion would be the first brushstroke, smeared across the front lines.