Chapter Thirty-Eight

  After several volleys of gunfire, we didn't know how many Japanese soldiers fell behind the smoke wall. We started throwing grenades, and perhaps it was psychological, but the explosion sounds of the hand grenades sounded muffled in the smoke. Just as we threw out two batches, the smoke wall had already engulfed part of our last line of defense. The expansion of the toxic gas finally reached its limit, and when it pushed us to the edge of the cliff, it almost stagnated. So we looked like we were fighting against ancient monsters from the flood, with our bayonets looking pitifully small, and even the explosions of the lost grenades didn't seem shocking. The toxic gas made both us and the Japanese soldiers silent, and we all stumbled around, forgetting that there was such a thing as dodging tactics in this world. We just stabbed, hit or missed, the enemy stabbed back, hit or missed. Sometimes a comrade who had been stabbed fell into the smoke, sometimes a Japanese soldier who had been stabbed fell out of the smoke, and sometimes someone who had been driven mad by the toxic gas threw away his gun and screamed, only to be quickly shot down by several guns at once.

  I walked outside the defensive line formed by bayonets, firing my gun and trying to hit the ghostly enemy troops flashing in the smoke. Dead or alive, Miao Long and several others were doing the same thing, but the smoke concealed most of the killed Japanese soldiers, making it seem like they were endless and suffered no losses, our entire defensive line was being pushed step by step towards the edge of the cliff.

  "Fall back! Put down the wounded! Fall back!"

  I stared at him in astonishment, I didn't know where he was withdrawing to, and it was giving up the wounded - if we retreated two more steps our only possibility would be to roll all the way into the Nujiang River, others were as stunned as me.

  It looked like the guy had planned it all out beforehand, he slid down instead of jumping down that slope that would break every bone in your body. After sliding a few meters, he grabbed onto some razor-sharp grass and started firing his Mauser rifle. A Japanese soldier who'd been hit tumbled out of the smoke and rolled down the hill beside him. We quickly learned this crazy trick, sliding down and grabbing hold of anything we could - not that it always worked, there were plenty of poor devils who slid all the way into darkness without a sound, the only thing you could hear was their bodies crashing against the rocks - we started firing from an almost vertical angle, and finally the Japanese, who'd been like a wall of steel, lost the ability to fight back. Even if they managed to reload in the smoke, it was hard for them to aim while crouching down, and anyone standing at the edge of the cliff was basically a target we couldn't miss even with blind fire. Some Japanese soldiers who hadn't gotten a good look at the terrain just tumbled all the way down from the middle of our position.

  We were completely relying on our instincts to shoot, and there was no way to aim. When we fired two or three shots and a Japanese soldier rolled down, it became clear that it took several people firing ten or more shots to roll down one Japanese soldier. We began to realize that this damn attack had been blocked by us again, so the subsequent cries of "Charge!" were also within our expectations.

  "Bite them to death! Take back our territory!"

  We're all used to his weird way of expressing himself, but having risked life and limb, using hands and feet, for the second time within twelve hours to climb this damned mountain, there are still some poor devils who get farther away from the summit the more they climb. The great A-yi is one of these poor devils.

  So I looked at A Yi again as she slid down from beside me, waving her hands and shouting "Pull me! Pull me!"

  I didn't have time to care about him, so I just shot - at that speed he wouldn't die from crashing.

  Later, we survivors desperately tried to recall how we repelled the Japanese attack, but no one could remember - Ah Yi said it was because of the poisonous gas. We thought that was nonsense, and couldn't remember because for those tens of minutes, a beast had taken over our bodies.

  People who climbed back up to the top of the mountain plunged into the poisonous gas.

  We clashed again in the already dispersing poisonous gas, then came the bayonet charge, but this time the Japanese army couldn't even withstand a single round. This kind of warfare had long exceeded human endurance. The poisonous gas was suffocating us as well as them. They began to retreat, and this retreat immediately turned into a complete collapse. This time the Japanese became the camel that was crushed by the last straw.

  We, who were once chased like a stray dog, are now chasing the enemy like a stray dog. In my four years of military career, I have never seen soldiers running so desperately. The Japanese troops who ran out of the poisonous gas area threw away not only their weapons and backpacks but also their gas masks in order to breathe in more fresh air.

  We rounded up all the guys we could with bayonets, bullets and rifle butts.

  If I were in a different time and place, being suffocated by a mask would make me let out a low growl like a beast and scare myself.

  The 92 machine guns in the woods began spitting out tongues of fire, that was to block our pursuit.

  Die, die, turn around and wave his hands, the hoarse voice behind the mask came out, he must stop my mad dog-like colleagues, otherwise they will keep chasing into the woods like eggs hitting stones.

  "Die! Die! Big cry: 'Guard against! Guard against!'"

  He tripped over a corpse and fell headfirst into a shell hole behind him. I ran over to pull him out, but he was in a very awkward position, even the gun in his hand had fallen off, earlier when shouting, the mask was opened a bit, now it was completely torn off.

  That guy fell to the ground, got up while rubbing his eyes which were streaming with tears due to the remaining toxic gas. I stretched out my rifle stock to pull him up, then stared as a Southern-style handgun barrel emerged from the smoke and struck his forehead with great force.

  The action of wiping away tears suddenly stopped.

  And I watched everything that happened in the pit like a nightmare, a seriously injured Japanese military officer stood up from the smoke, he was kneeling, earlier when he was lying down, the smoke in the pit had completely submerged him. The guy was covered in blood, his gas mask was also smashed, and he simply tore off the thing, revealing an extremely calm yet crazy face.

  My gun is stretched out on the periphery, the muzzle pointing at myself, even if I can do something, it's impossible to stop the guy who is wounded and smoked and has lost his mind.

  The plank fell down, and the hammer struck. I clearly saw the dead head being smashed askew by that Japanese man who used too much force.

  Card pop-up.

  He let out a strange cry of either joy or anger, and although he couldn't see, he grabbed the pistol that had almost taken his life. He felt for the officer's neck and pounced on it, loose earth falling down in a flurry, nearly burying the man beneath him. Then he used the butt of the gun to strike again and again. A man unseen was striking another unseen with the butt of a gun.

  My colleagues have stopped pursuing, several of them just stopped at the edge of the pit and silently watched our furious commander.

  I stood at the edge of the pit, holding out the rifle stock in front of him, and he finally calmed down. We pulled him up, and Lóng Mén Xīng poured some water onto a rag and handed it to him. He still clutched the Southern pistol in his hand, but began to wipe his eyes.

  He wiped it off and said: "First time encountering toxic gas, luckily you shouted early."

  "It's lucky it's tear gas, not the kind that causes blistering. Normally they'd charge in with this stuff and take down any position." I said.

  "Awesome! I'll have to remember this for next time. Thanks!"

  His thanks were so sincere that I didn't know how to respond, and I turned my head to look at the corpse in the pit, while he took over the gas mask and Mauser gun that his colleagues had helped him pick up.

  I said: "You killed an officer about your age, a lieutenant colonel, who might have been the commander of a regiment."

  Dead dead look at it and say: "Very young indeed."

  "They're from a wealthy and influential family, with a bright future ahead of them. Their middle commander seems to be a graduate of the Imperial Military Academy." I lowered my voice and muttered, "The fake has replaced the real thing."

  I had some hare-died-fox-sorrowed sentimental feelings, but after taking a closer look, I immediately lost interest in a very pragmatic way.

  "It's just a deputy, thinks winning is certain and comes to practice. You see they're not chaotic at all." He bowed his head towards the pit, expressing his condolences in this way, "Young and not learning well, holding a drumstick against someone's forehead and hitting wildly, I won't sigh for your fleeting beauty like flowing water, look at the big bump on my forehead from being hit!"

  I followed him with tears and laughter.

  We walked through the battlefield.

  The toxic mask was quickly stashed away in his bag, and as he said, he later realized how important it was. He weighed two guns in his hand, the Mauser that had just gone on a killing spree was also put back into its holster by him, playing with the southern gun, which was flashy but useless, with some silver-plated decorations. Dead Dead walked while unloading the stinky bomb and then tucked the gun into his waist.

  I didn't bother to talk to him, but turned around and looked. After the gas had dispersed into the night fog, we finally knew how many enemy soldiers we had killed, they were most densely dead on our position, then scattered all the way to the woods at the foot of the nearby mountain where they hid - my colleagues who died were no less than them.

  We haven't won many battles, so I've seen people lying flat on the ground, but never as many dead enemies as we killed. I can't recall what just happened and am astonished that "I" was among those who did it.

  But I don't know why all of this fills me with sorrow instead of a triumphant passion.

  He's dead, he's dead. It seems that there is also the same confusion. He rarely fell silent and used a thin rope to tie up the smelly fart's butt, tied it around his own neck.

  He didn't provoke me, but I started provoking him, "Protective charm? Life-saving amulet? Do you still want to go back alive?"

  He glared at me sideways, "You're a dead man. A dead man used this to shoot me in the forehead."

  "The ghost of the battlefield, never takes lives."

  Dead Dead said: "They asked me why."

  "Why?"

  He glanced at me and put the bullets that were hanging on the string into his own clothes. He walked away.

  Just like the volcano of anger in front of him that never erupts, what he says is only a small tip of an iceberg above water.

  "So I also knew he was absolutely not joking."

  So I also left.

  I saw our wounded from a distance, and I also saw Kang Yao sitting outside the crowd, leaning against a row of corpses. The crowd was gathered in a circle, rescuing something - probably another wounded person who had arrived too quickly. No one came to take care of me, I don't know if it's because Kang Yao should be considered a friend or not. I saw and heard Kang Yao staring at the crowd with a cough, a kind of heart-wrenching and suppressed cough, because it came from someone whose lungs were pierced by bullets. You could almost hear his severely injured internal organs convulsing in the cough.

  I watched him, slowly approaching him. As I approached him, he gently suppressed his cough.

  So I gently stretched out a hand to stroke his slightly convulsing back, and Kang Ya turned around with a spirit that I couldn't think of, which came from anxiety, "The veterinarian is dead!"

  "He's an old codger. Are you okay?"

  "I'm fine! The vet, the toxic gas came and he didn't run away. He used a wet cloth to cover our mouths and noses, but he inhaled so much himself that his intestines were burned, rolled over, and died!"

  I've figured it out, and with Kang Ya's spirit like this, I really don't think there's anything to worry about. I turned around and shouted at the group of fools: "Get out of the way! When someone faints, don't crowd around! This is tear gas, not mustard gas! He was choked!"

  People scattered, the snake's butt was pulling Hao Shouyi's hands in a wing-like motion, I don't know what point he thought this could save people, La Liao was pounding Hao Shouyi's chest, that was his version of CPR.

  I rushed over and shouted: "Get out of here! The old man will be beaten to death by you! Pour water on him!"

  Water was splashed on the old man's face, and he breathed in, the water that had been sucked into his nose choked him awake. He coughed and sat up, while the people who thought he was going to die let out a sigh of relief and dispersed to attend to their own business.

  "Poison gas!... Where's that little Japanese?" The old man said, then glared at us, "Aren't you all dead yet?" He started rubbing his chest, "Why does my chest hurt so much?"

  The snake hissed and spat, its eyes blazing with fury as it rubbed its sore hand, which had been punched by the veterinarian.

  "It's rocky." I said.

  "What's going on? Has Japan been defeated again?... I say, if you're going to fight a war, then fight it. Why do you keep running back and forth like a merry-go-round?" the old man asked.

  "That's tactics. Did you get it?"

  The old man pulled me open, and I didn't get angry with him for this overly violent action, because I also heard that after Hao Shouyi woke up, Kang Yao no longer suppressed his cough, which was really earth-shattering. I turned around and saw Kang Yao spitting a mouthful of blood into the darkness, then fell to one side.

  Kang Ya, originally a deputy platoon leader in the transportation company, was a driver without a car. He wasn't much of anything, but he got shot through the lungs for no reason and was thrown into the poisonous gas that choked people to death, coughing his way through the Japanese army's 14th attack from start to finish. I think his lungs are probably shattered by now.

  We several of us wanted to move Kang Yao to a slightly more comfortable place, but found that there was no more comfortable place, so we had to put him back on the corpse he was leaning against. I found that the corpse was the wounded soldier he had dragged over with great effort, only it was already dead.

  In all this commotion, Kang Ya didn't cough anymore. I think the broken lung tissue was probably coughed out of his airway.

  Kang Ya said: "I'm not coughing anymore."

  So we were relieved and said, "Okay, okay." "Don't cough anymore."

  "He also said: 'No one takes me as a younger brother.'"

  Hao didn't hear clearly, "What?"

  We were a bit puzzled, his words came out of nowhere.

  "Don't ask me what I want. He said with a bit of resentment, "Who would take me as a brother? I know, every day I'm asking people for things, taking advantage of their kindness, who would take me as a brother?"

  I said: "Actually, you don't want anything. You just want to make some noise and let people see you."

  I was kicked by someone, I don't know who it was, Hao Shouyi, Bula or She Pigui are all possible.

  "I took you as a younger brother. Even if I die, I won't have a younger brother," said Nai La Shi.

  Kang Ya was a bit happy and fumbled with Bu La, "I want to look in the mirror."

  "What...?" Na La almost couldn't believe his own ears.

  "When I drove before, the rearview mirror was blown off by a Japanese plane, and every day I followed the footsteps of the old mouse, forgetting what I looked like." said Kang Ya.

  Honestly speaking: "You look better than me."

  I kicked it with a non-spicy foot, "Mirror! Who has a mirror?"

  Hao Shouyi also shouted: "Who has a mirror? Mirror?" He was even a little happy, "This is easy to handle."

  But everyone was busy packing and moving corpses, doing chores, someone looked at us stupidly for a moment, someone shook their head, but no one had a mirror.

  I said: "Bayonet."

  "Huh?" Dr. Hao didn't understand what I meant.

  I said: "Grind the knife."

  Then we started sharpening our bayonets.