Cleave the World with an Axe

“The mission has failed. This is the end for me, too.”

Cheng Xuan held his last bullet and gazed up at the dusky sky. A trace of despair crept across his camouflage-covered face.

All his teammates had been killed. He was the only one left, shot in the right side of his abdomen and so badly weakened by blood loss that his lips had gone deathly pale.

“This one’s for me.”

Cheng Xuan murmured to himself, as if speaking to himself, or perhaps explaining himself to his dead teammates.

December 31, 2022.

On the eve of a new year, they had lost their lives.