Besides the stench, there was the stifling heat, a sense of oxygen deprivation.
The density of people here was simply too high. Thirty thousand mouths breathing in and out simultaneously, with thousands of muffled and loud farts released every minute, the air quality was suffocatingly poor.
Jiang Ye walked from the periphery of the POW camp towards the center, observing the captives nearby.
Some captives had clearly been here for a long time, their bedsheets and pillows worn into yellowish human shapes. They would occasionally lift their covers to shift, releasing suspicious odors from within.
Jiang Ye saw one captive actually place a sausage next to his pillow, probably to nibble on it from time to time.
A few other captives were lying underneath their beds. When Jiang Ye asked them why, they said the beds were too sticky and uncomfortable to lie on, and the floor was cleaner.
The further towards the center, the hotter it became. There were no heating facilities; it was purely human body heat that made everyone sweat profusely. The captives' skin had developed an jade-like sheen from layers of sweat, their expressions were listless, half-asleep, like plague victims in medieval Europe succumbing to high fever.
A makeshift hospital was also set up here, with extremely dire sanitary conditions. Discarded syringes, scalpels, shed-skin-like gauze, and shriveled medicine boxes were strewn everywhere. Jiang Ye even witnessed an abdominal surgery being performed in the distance, with a mechanical doctor as the lead surgeon, and a few young nurses holding up the patient's intestines for arrangement – a scene that was truly gut-wrenching.
In addition to traditional surgeries, some military medical pods were also in operation to treat severely injured captives.
After each use, the medical pods produced a large amount of foul-smelling yellow waste fluid. The doctors would simply open the pod door and dump hundreds of pounds of waste fluid onto the ground, then open a new barrel of medical pod liquid, pour it in, and power it on.
Jiang Ye went over to inquire why the waste fluid was being dumped everywhere.
The doctor replied that the sewage system had been blocked for a long time and couldn't be cleared. There were too many captives and not enough staff, so this was the only way.
As they spoke, mechanical soldiers brought a group of naked captives, each carrying a sponge and a plastic bucket, to clean the waste fluid on the ground. They wouldn't clean it particularly thoroughly, just lower the water level, as new waste fluid would soon be dumped.
His attendants suddenly unfurled a large umbrella and held it over Jiang Ye's head.
Jiang Ye was bewildered. It wasn't raining today, so why the umbrella?
Suddenly, a drizzling rain began to fall, emitting a pungent odor.
Jiang Ye looked up, peering through the semi-transparent umbrella surface. The equipment at the top of the stadium, used for fireworks, was now spraying water into the air. As the streams of water fell, they turned into mist, drenching every corner of the POW camp, and everyone was bathed in the rain.
"They're spraying a compound solution," Che Zhen explained. "It contains antibiotic components to kill bacteria, antiviral components, and trace amounts of insecticide. There are no flies or mosquitoes in the POW camp; it's all thanks to the three daily rains."
Jiang Ye felt like he was suffocating.
He had been receiving reports that the conditions in the POW camp were extremely harsh, but he never expected them to deteriorate to such an extent!
This situation wasn't due to intentional mistreatment of the captives, but rather out of necessity.
Originally, the city defense forces here only numbered ten thousand. After deducting those killed in combat, the final number of captives would be at most a few thousand. Considering the possibility of civilians joining the army after the war, Cen Yemeng had allocated POW camp supplies based on a plan for thirty thousand people before deploying troops.
He thought this ample surplus would be more than enough, but unexpectedly, after the war began, the local city defense forces rapidly mobilized over five hundred thousand militia.
The way they mobilized the militia was quite brutal; they simply rounded people up in the city at gunpoint. Countless factory workers, farmers in the fields, company employees, and even small business owners, who were busy at work the day before, were handed infantry weapons the next day and driven onto the battlefield. Each person was assigned a position, perhaps a cannon on the street corner, or a machine gun behind a building window. Given a manual on weapon usage, they were then left to await the arrival of Jiang Ye Star soldiers.
These people had no fighting will and had not undergone military training; they were purely forced cannon fodder, lacking even military rations and pay. The moment they saw blood, they would rout. After routing, to fill their stomachs, they plundered supplies everywhere in the city. To maintain order, Cen Yemeng had to order all these people to be sent to the POW camp.
The result was a surge in the POW camp population. The camp, originally designed to hold thirty thousand people, was quickly filled with over three hundred thousand, a tenfold increase. In the past few days, troops had discovered many deserters in the suburbs, so the number of captives continued to grow.
It was good enough to keep so many people alive; living conditions were simply not a priority.
If the entire refugee planet surrendered, the logistics troops would still have the capacity to supply these captives with living necessities. However, with the front-line battles still raging fiercely, the logistics troops' focus was on ensuring the soldiers' combat readiness, and they couldn't attend to these captives.
Jiang Ye felt overwhelmed, summed up in four words:焦头烂额 (jiao tou lan e - in a state of utter confusion and distress).
He inspected for another hour, then hastily left the POW camp and took a spaceship to the nearest city for inspection.
This city had been captured just a week ago but still