Chapter Thirty-Two

  We rushed through the dark forest like wolves, and once we were defeated, there was no longer any formation to speak of. The trees on the narrow mountain path were as dense as walls, with gunfire flashing constantly, and so did our casualties.

  Die! Die! Slapping a furious and lingering subordinate, "Run! Don't counterattack!"

  He just shot that guy in the shoulder, and that guy was already hit, so he's dead, dead, keep running.

  "This battle can't be fought, we're being mowed down like grass. Luckily, we ran fast and only left 40 corpses in the forest. Think on the bright side, the good thing is that now we don't have to waste our breath anymore, everyone knows we're retreating."

  We finally escaped that hell-like dense forest, we were exhausted like a group of dead dogs, with scratches and bruises all over our bodies, pulling and supporting each other to climb to the top of the mountain where the vegetation was relatively sparse.

  We finally escaped the forest and climbed to the top of the mountain. The Japanese didn't deploy troops here because the main force of Chinese and British armies they were hunting wouldn't take this goat-killing, leg-breaking road.

  He died, he stopped using his telescope to gaze at the peaks below. In fact, without a telescope, it was clear that there was a flat area with rolling thick smoke.

  I watched the thick smoke and said, "The obstructive ones are gone, shouldn't the old gentlemen surrender? Their mission is to burn away the materials that would rather turn to ashes than fall into our hands, and to surrender with dignity - but we've provoked the Japanese army, and for the sake of their Japanese dignity, they probably won't care too much about British dignity."

  Die, die, mocking me, "Will you be at peace after hurting me with a few words? Are you satisfied now?"

  I gave him a glance, "Alright, dogs get beaten, cats get stroked. You have fire in your heart, do you want to stroke or beat?"

  "Do you want me to comb or clap to become a person?" He turned to all of us, "Take a look, if you want to see again, you'll have to wait until after the big victory, to be honest, I don't know what year it will be."

  We remain silent, he also remains silent, it seems we are at an impasse.

  The snake's butt was somewhat dissatisfied, "What's so good about it? The British lost, what does that have to do with us? They're not even as good as the little Japanese who fired at us."

  Kang Yao lowered his head and looked down at the mountain, "Just saw Myanmar, first occupied by Britain and then Japan, what's our relationship with them?"

  Die die die reminded him, "Fool, what are you doing looking down at the misfortune of others? Look up."

  The sky isn't magnificent, apart from a sun that's about to rise but hasn't yet and the sea of clouds, we can't see anything else.

  "Can't you see? Are your eyes blind? The living are in the mud, and the dead are in heaven. Today's dead people are all floating in heaven, with the same souls drifting around. You numbskull, your brother is going to be buried there, didn't you see? He's looking at you with a terrible face."

  What happened next sent shivers down our spines, he made a ghostly face similar to the one Wanting Life Before used to show us his utter disdain and hopelessness.

  "Slow down, Wanting, you're speaking too quickly and I don't understand. Oh, not spicy, Wanting is telling you, you're a stupid hammer, all you do is make a fuss and cause trouble, can't even get anything done?" Diediedie imitated Wanting's tone of voice.

  His pale face looked a bit ghastly, he was originally a dialect machine, but he really learned the tone and spirit of wanting to scold, his lips were writhing, as if he wanted to cry out in grief or scream like a ghost.

  We looked at him with disdain as he used a newly deceased person to scare the living daylights out of people, but there were indeed fools among us who believed it.

  "Doubing asked angrily: 'I am Doubing, what did he say about me?'"

  "Shit, I didn't even fart once, and you're already running away with your tail between your legs. You don't have a boss anymore, so now you can do as you please."

  Have you ever seen someone who never thinks look like they're thinking? That's what DouBing looks like now.

  "I'm going to die," I said, "Captain, if there really are ghosts, they float, not walk. Don't be fooled, Captain."

  "This life is just a series of unfulfilled ambitions, can you guys float up? Die, die, die, looking at me with such tragic and pitiful eyes, and it's not like they're looking at anyone else, just staring at me, really going to suffocate me to death."

  The dragon pulled out a strand of unknown hair from its body, blew it towards the dead person, and said "You're just a plaything. You can be a jumping god or whatever."

  He slapped the back of Mì Lóng's head with a loud "pa", half-joking and half-punishing, making Mì Lóng raise his neck in surprise, unsure whether to counterattack.

  "Avian people. So many deaths are in vain for you all, the dead have words to say to your entire nest of bird people." The dead said.

  Kang Ya muttered to himself, destined to be unheard, "......Let's go, let's go home."

  "Dead, dead, no one cares about Kangyao's muttering," "The British ghosts say they died of narrowness and arrogance, the Chinese ghosts say they died of listening to heaven and being careless. All the ghosts say they are stupidly dead."

  We watched him with a resigned air, looking at him in a distracted manner. Those who understood and those who didn't were the same.

  I said indifferently: "Whatever. Go ahead and scold as you like, after all, you saved us."

  "Whatever." said Dead Dead.

  But when he turned around and looked at the mountains and sea of clouds, his casual expression was gone. The second time we saw him dragging a gun, kneeling in the direction where the dead man was said to be. When he recited those strange phonetic symbols with his mouth, we had an illusion of stepping into the sea of clouds.

  "Namo Amitabha, Namo Amitabha, Namo Amitayus, Namo Amitayus, Namo Mahasthamaprapta, Namo Mahasthamaprapta, Namo Avalokitesvara, Namo Avalokitesvara."

  Then he stood up amidst our stunned and bewildered faces, "Let's go, let's go. The dead are already dead. You living bird people, I'll take you home."

  We are walking down the mountain road in the sea of clouds. Sometimes sunlight shines through the cloud layer onto our bodies, but that can't lift our spirits.

  We're going home. The Japanese army is weak and afraid of the strong, with a loss ratio of 10 to 40, they turned to attack the disorganized troops who were fleeing in all directions. - And our small team walked out of the sea of clouds, our hearts also entered the sea of clouds, we almost had direction before, but now we are like the weather here, vague, humid and gloomy.

  The dragon is always at the forefront, not only in marching and fighting, but also in doing good or evil, rising or falling. As a result, the dragon was the first to collapse.

  The terrain has become relatively flat, and Dead Dead is using a British-style compass to identify the direction. We are all exhausted, dragging our feet and leaning on our guns, and even kicking a small branch can make us fall. The two strongest people among us are Mysterious Dragon and Dead Dead, and compared to the heavily loaded bean pancake behind him, Mysterious Dragon is like a floating cloud, but he suddenly turns to Dead Dead and says: "If we don't rest soon, I'll kill you."

  He didn't care about the threat of the mysterious dragon's lair, but after taking a look at his miserable team, he also knew that they had reached their limit.

  "Walk for another half hour, rest for 15 minutes!" He shouted to the end of the team, "Don't pull too hard! I'll start counting from the first person who sits down. Can you guys even rest for 15 minutes on your own?"

  The team sped up.

  We walked for another half hour and then for an hour more because the place we arrived at, even if our legs were broken, we wouldn't rest there.

  The buzzing of flies sounded like low thunder, and our eyes were like those of startled rabbits as we gazed at the bodies along the roadside passing through the thicket. Those who had been shot to death, stabbed to death, died from machine gun fire, died from explosions - the victorious Japanese army would carry away their own dead, leaving behind only the bodies of our comrades.

  Dead bodies line the road, and he doesn't try to conceal the fact that a disastrous defeat once took place here. The little road is so long that it numbs people, most of whom try to look at the back of the person in front of them, occasionally one of them can't help but run to the side of the road to vomit.

  I covered my mouth and nose with a piece of cloth and went to check on the corpse behind Dead Body.

  "It's the main force." I determined.

  "Dead on, dead on," he said, studying his compass. "Which means we're at least heading in the right direction."

  I asked him: "Why don't you recite 'Namu Amida Butsu' anymore?"

  "The living worry more than the dead."

  I returned to the ranks and inserted myself between Hao Shouyi and Ah Yi. The lead soldier, Mi Long, had already placed himself in front of us, he wasn't unable to move, but was looking around in all directions.

  We don't want to talk, this isn't a place for talking.

  The dragon suddenly handed the machine gun to Dou Bing, who had been following him all along. The sudden movement almost knocked Dou Bing over. Then, the dragon turned around and walked away, taking a watch from a dead man's hand. We continued walking in silence, watching as the dragon seemed to pass through us like we were transparent.

  The dragon seems to have just recovered his memory, he had claimed that he would come to make a fortune, and he immediately put the old declaration into practice. We watched as the dragon quickly became someone we didn't recognize.

  The dragon rushed through our midst, roughly pushing aside Hao Shouyi, who was blocking his way, and plucked a steel pen from the body of a dead man on the other side of the road.

  Dead and dead, we walked towards the end of the team with a blind eye. We tried to move forward with a blind eye. We didn't want to talk, this wasn't a place for talking.

  The dragon has rings of various materials on his hands, several necklaces and long-life locks made of gold and silver around his neck. He wears three to four watches and has so many pens inserted in his chest that you would think he is a pen repairman.

  He trudged through the thick underbrush, his target a handcart that lay on its side nearby. He flipped over the corpse sprawled across the cart and rummaged through the boxes of crackers and canned goods it carried.

  We can only sit here and rest, although the bodies of our colleagues are still in sight, but where aren't they? Our noses have long since lost their sense.

  I sat with Hao Shouyi and A Yi, cleaning my rifle as I watched Midge push the car out of the bushes, starting to sort through his new loot.

  "That Ryūko bastard is going to die." I said.

  Hao the veterinarian said with understanding: "Everyone has times when they are being stubborn, throwing a tantrum, and can't get along with themselves. When he's called to go abroad to make a fortune, it seems like he's just accumulating things for his own downfall; when he's called back home, his family is actually occupied by the Japanese."

  "Ai immediately responded to me, 'It's military law.'"

  Hao and I exchanged a glance, our eyes filled with strangeness and awkwardness, making Ah Yi, who had been full of confidence, suddenly feel uneasy.

  I said: "What I mean is we're all pretty much doomed anyway."

  "Ai Yan's face turned red,"I didn't mean it that way... I meant, such a disorganized army, really needs some military law to govern them."

  "What military law? You ignorant fool who has never been to war, all you know is howling about military law with those who charge into battle. What use are you people? Apart from the firing squad, what have you given us? Even the porridge you give us is moldy." Ah Yi's words ignited my anger.

  Hao Shouyi scolded: "What evil fire are you stirring up again? When did Ah Yi become an executioner? He has never eaten a single grain of rice more than you."

  That's the evil fire, I decided to shut up. Ah Yan was also stuttering. "I'm not what you are. I and you are the same." He blushed in such a self-contradictory sentence, "I mean order, we are poor, just poor without order."

  The evil fire that had been suppressed suddenly flared up again. I had just wiped the gun clean, and now I stuck the stock into A Yi's chest, put his hands together on the trigger, and pressed my own head against the muzzle. "Order? Come on, help out. From here on in it's chaos, all stirred up by you. Help out, give it a military trial."

  A Yi wanted to take his hand away, I helped him put it back together. If not for Hao Shouyi hitting me hard on the back of my head, I would have used A Yi's hand to pull the trigger.

  "What's wrong with you? You're an old soldier, is it fun to make trouble like this?" the old man scolded.

  I also think the kid is arrogant, and with a huff, he took back my gun. "You don't even know how to use a gun and you're talking about killing people? I was just trying to scare him. Is there a ghost bullet in this newly cleaned gun?"

  I slammed the gun to my side, and with a "bang", a bullet whizzed past me, flying off in an unknown direction. Hao Shouyi, A Yi, and I stood there like wooden chickens, while our colleagues just glanced at us, as if nothing had happened - they didn't know that I had almost blown my own brains out just now.

  I kicked the ghost gun further away from me with one foot, then curled up and rubbed my head hard. Ah Yi stared at me, his lips trembling.

  "You all... you all want to go back like this?" Dr. Hao looked at us.

  That trip to the Ghost Gate made me speechless, and my fragmented words seemed like a curse. "I wanted to win a battle, but I don't want to anymore. I've been deceived again, this is the last time. No, no one has deceived me, I have deceived myself. A few days ago, I told myself, 'Enough, Meng, besides being despicable, you can also be a bit more humane' - that was the last time, I won't say it again. I'm going to become a scoundrel, and scoundrels don't talk to themselves like this."

  He stared at me blankly, then looked down at the ground, even the mud seemed to evoke a lasting fearful expression on his face. Dr. Hao looked at me, then gazed blankly at others. We were like people resting in the interval of torture, some lay like corpses trying to recover a bit of exhausted physical strength, some mechanically wiped their guns that were mostly useless, and some knelt down to worship the endless stream of dead bodies along the way.

  Hao Shouyi muttered: "...... die, die, it's true what you said, many people will die this time."

  I cut him off, "The most useless thing in this world is being right."

  Hao the veterinarian didn't pay attention to me, "Americans are dead for granted, British people are too proud to die, Japanese people are crazy and greedy to die - how do we die?"

  "How will we die?" I asked absent-mindedly.

  "Mi Long died carelessly, Ah Yi died resigned to his fate. I don't know if you're better or worse than them, but you have both qualities." said Hao Shouyi.

  "I asked venomously, trying to find a weak point to strike him with, 'And you? Veterinarian, how did you die?'"

  "I watch you, I can do nothing. Can't do anything, just watch you. I'm heartbroken to death, watching you heartbroken to death." His last sentence really made me speechless, I looked at his turbid eyes like a blind man, and I gave up fighting back.

  I will never forget the old man's eyes for my whole life, even after he died a long time ago I still remember his eyes, dry and withered like an old well. Just like the one in his hometown that he used to tell me about, you keep drawing water from it but one day it dries up.

  A dragon in the distance shouted loudly: "Come here, either fight against the devils or get rich, if you can't fight against the devils then just focus on getting rich! Who will help me push this cart? I'm selling genuine goods at a fair price, no cheating of the young and old, and I'll share two-tenths of the profit with you!"

  "How many are there? What's two-tenths?" Kang Ya asked.

  "I guarantee you'll return without having to beg on your knees for food. I guarantee you won't go hungry!"

  Kang Ya put the sling on his own shoulder, and it wasn't just Kang Ya who went up together.