Chapter Thirty-Three

  I watched as Hao Shouyi lowered his head and wiped away at his eyes.

  The scout who went ahead to explore the way came back to our resting area, shouting in a hoarse voice: "It's all clear up front! Not even any dead bodies! Let's go, you bunch of lucky bastards!"

  He just took a glance at Miroku and his gang - Miroku turned his trailer into a transport vehicle that could be used in three shifts within half a minute - then he began to clamor and gather us scattered sand into a team.

  I involuntarily helped Hao Shouyi get up, and as I supported him, I felt that his decline was not just physical. We walked towards the crowd gathering at the death notice.

  The dragon patted the cargo cart that Kang Ya was pulling, one colleague pushing and another supporting. He just noticed someone trembling beside him: Dou Bing was carrying his share of heavy ammunition, rifle, spare barrels and the machine gun that should have been carried by Long Wang, which was shaking under the unbearable weight.

  "Raised by a big girl, exhausted to death without knowing what's going on." He took down the machine gun and rifle from Dou Bing's shoulder and put them in the car. After thinking for a moment, he smashed a box of biscuits that was not worth much money into Nuo La Hui's arms, adding all of Dou Bing's load to the car.

  Kang Yao complained about the increasingly heavy car: "Can this be sold for money?"

  "Have you no shame? What can't be sold?" said Mi Long.

  Kang Ya was overjoyed and pulled the cart with all his might.

  We began our long journey back home.

  We walked while sharing biscuits, and the biscuits from Nala were quickly eaten up.

  He died and died this time as a vanguard, but his vanguard was walking backwards, he kept paying attention to the possible dropouts in his team.

  I was supporting Hao Shouyi, but my attention was more on the dead body at the front of the team.

  Our ambiguous team leader is a renegade, and at this moment he's going against the rules. When we first met, he exerted high pressure on our unruly group, forcing us to fight, and we almost made him an unnamed corpse in the jungle. During the retreat, he could have shot us, but instead he abandoned all orders and discipline, as long as we remembered one thing: don't fall behind, if you fall behind, don't even think about going home.

  Die, die, die, shouting loudly. It's hard to understand how that guy who has never rested can still shout so loudly. He shouted in a hoarse voice: "Don't fall behind! If you fall behind, you'll be sleeping with the fishes! After sleeping, you won't even have the chance to dream of going home!"

  He rushed past us, kicking and punching a stumbling comrade we had rescued from the shallows, one of our machine gunners - "What's your name? Where are you from?"

  "Luojin Sheng, Yangzhou, Guanyin Mountain."

  Die die die, what he said may not be Yangzhou dialect, but at least it's Jiangsu dialect. "Flesh and stinky, no matter how detailed you explain, your mom won't know that you died in Myanmar, Ma Li Mu Zu Ma Mu Shen, Luo Jin Sheng."

  We don't know what stimulated Luo Jinsen to start walking again, and we saw him whirl back to the front of the team like a dead leaf, still retreating.

  "Uncles and grandpas, I'm the grandson of all of you, please don't just stare at the ground with your eyes wide open, also help those who are about to fall down and pretend to be dead, okay?"

  We watched as the guy tumbled down from the slope, let out a loud cry of pain and disappeared from our sight. We were stunned and rushed forward to see him crawl out from a heap of bushes at the foot of the slope.

  "Does it look good? Does it refresh you? Let's laugh with all our might, give a personal performance, and after we finish laughing, let's leave...” He stopped talking because he saw us staring at him, but our staring was no longer because of him, but because of what was behind him on the slope, turning around slowly.

  We finally walked out of the jungle, and under the mountain slope, there was a road that could finally be driven. None of this mattered, what mattered was that on that muddy and terrible road, from the extreme mountains to the extreme mountains, were our defeated, exhausted and disheveled colleagues.

  Dead, dead, looked at them and then turned back to look at us. We stared blankly ahead when Dead, dead no longer looked at us - he walked towards that defeated army, we followed, and merged into that defeated army.

  He created a small miracle that was destined to be submerged, after the encounter with the Japanese army, we survived 161 people, when we returned to our own crowd, there were still 161 people, not one less. Then he began to try his best to make this small miracle not be submerged by the crowd, and his method was to make it bigger.

  He's still running on the muddy road, sometimes he falls down, that's okay, he's good at getting up, getting up and shouting to our team that we can't see yet.

  "Do you think you are eagles? Each going your own way? Look at yourselves in the puddle on the side of the road, do you look like eagles? Where is your gun? Is there food in your belly? Are these two wooden stakes your wings? You're not even as good as a sparrow. I'll tell you how to go back, have you seen geese? They fly in two rows, with the injured ones in the middle, hundreds of small wings become two big wings, flying ten times farther than eagles - that's how we'll go back! Do you want to follow us? We've fought battles and killed Japanese soldiers all along the way."

  Our troops have grown many times over, and at the distant view, they are hidden by the mountain bends, and there are constantly scattered soldiers joining us. We look trustworthy, walking in the front is the first batch of more than a hundred, compared to others we all keep our weapons, we never dispersed our formation.

  I walked up to him and watched as he bent down to drink from a puddle on the side of the road, moistening his parched throat.

  "What do you want to do?" I asked him.

  He's dead, he's dead, laughing away, if he doesn't shout now, his voice is like a broken windbox, "I have my own army."

  "I doubted: 'Even if you really pull out a team, when you return to your so-called home, are you still the captain?'"

  "That's also considered done. Looking back, I have something to brag about."

  I suddenly felt a surge of tears, but it wasn't from being moved, rather it was due to the wisps of smoke drifting over from the side of the road. Every single person who dared to walk by had their eyes well up with tears: some guy had piled up a huge stack of branches in the woods and set them ablaze, and the still damp fuel had produced enough noxious fumes and black ash to choke a person to death. As I walked towards there, my feet sinking into the ground, the arsonist was kowtowing to the ashes, then picking something out from the ashes with a relatively clean piece of cloth.

  "Hey! What are you doing? Spying and reporting to the enemy?"

  The arsonist was speaking in a familiar Yunnan accent we had heard before, "I burned my brother."

  I and Deadwood watched as the guy put us aside, ignoring us, and picked up the charred bones from the ash heap into his cloth bag.

  "Die, die, say: 'You this burn, every three mountains Japanese people see us.'"

  The arsonist corrected him, "Not three mountains. The Japanese vanguard was right behind us, and my brother was bitten to death by them."

  So he scratched his head and planned for others: "Can't carry it? Burn it, good to bring back home? Follow us, we're going back to Yunnan."

  That guy didn't react, he took off his top, stuck the bag full of bones to his skin, and then put his clothes back on. "Go back to Sichuan. The mountain wind here is harmful to people, my brother wants to go back to Sichuan - I've been running horse teams in Yunnan with my dad since I was a kid, my mom and younger brother are in Sichuan, it's not easy for us to meet up again after just arriving in Burma."

  Die die die... After some thought, he asked that guy: "Want to take down a few of those guys who bit your brother?"

  That listless guy suddenly had spirit, picked up the gun he'd set aside - I couldn't help but notice that he was one of the few who kept his weapon well-maintained, and he also had a long-handled chopping sword with a red cloth band tied around it.

  We stood by the roadside, recruiting willing soldiers from our large troop to participate in this small battle. The hot-headed one had already found a kitchen knife among us, and the snake-like guy had somehow found another kitchen knife, secretly comparing the size of the blades with the burning man's machete behind his back. We looked at the confused dragon at the end of the team, we still needed a machine gun.

  That guy and his trailer, along with his new dog Legs Malone and others, as well as a beanpole with a perpetual scowl on his face - this whole crew was lagging behind because they were busy looting a truck that had been destroyed by Japanese artillery fire. The truck had already been thoroughly ransacked by retreating soldiers many times before, so the looters came away empty-handed and fell in line with sullen faces - which grew even darker when they saw us.

  Die la die la asked Mi Long: "The little Japanese have arrived. Want to bite back? Bite the Japanese army that follows us."

  The dragon looked at him for a while, "Finished biting and still withdrawing?"

  "Ask despite knowing."

  The dragon then began to scratch his ribs, and once again became the person who wore military uniform the least like a military uniform among us. With an open chest and torn sleeves, "I won't go then. I have money now, it's more worthwhile to keep this small life for myself."

  Die, die, crazy dragon, "Do you want to die or are you afraid of death?"

  The dragon is not fooled, "I'm afraid of being cheated to death."

  He threw his own rifle to a willing but unarmed soldier, went to the dragon's carriage and picked up the machine gun, and also took several magazines. He swept a glance at the dragon, who had been taken away from his beloved machine gun, but the dragon's expression hardly changed.

  "Let's go. Within three meters, I know you're wounded, but you're better than this guy, this half-dead old man," said Deadwood.

  Even Kāng Wò and Dòu Bǐng felt ashamed, but the Living Dead Dragon was still scratching his ribs. I glanced at him, then we followed the Dead Dead Drill into the roadside woods, I had a feeling that we wanted to get as far away from the dragon as possible, and when I turned back, the dragon and others were also opening the way, they also wanted to get as far away from us as possible.

  We lay in ambush in the forest, and the dead silence allowed him to copy the Japanese method. He and most people climbed up trees, using dry food bags or backpacks as shooting supports. The defeated army had passed by, and the highway outside the forest was now eerily quiet.

  I wasn't in a tree, I was among a group of people lying down in the jungle, pretending to be dead between the wreckage of trucks and cannons.

  I was ordered to play the role of one of my comrades who died in battle in Burma. This is a beautiful job, no need to climb trees, and those with big guts can even sleep. But I kept staring at the sky above the forest, afraid that I really died. I always felt that I had been killed by that Japanese tank, and now it was my inexplicable body wandering around.

  The dragon is afraid of being fooled to death, I agree. When I rushed onto the battlefield for the first time, I immediately understood one thing: all I had was my life, and how I disposed of it was a huge problem. I'm sure what people fear is not death, but having control over their own lives is everyone's desire.

  I lay on my back and looked up at the tree, where a dead branch made a gesture. Then I heard the soft rustling of leaves: the Japanese scout who had been hiding finally appeared.

  We started shooting at the Japanese troops who were only paying attention to the big road outside the forest, but were completely unguarded against the treetops and corpses around them. Machine guns, hand grenades, bayonets... The enemy was quite sinister, using only machine guns to attack our rear team, cutting off their escape route.

  Smooth to the extreme, the inaction of the defeated army is our best cover. The Japanese scouts learned from then on not to appear within our sight again.

  The last two Japanese soldiers escaped, we wanted to shoot but couldn't because the Yunnan guy who had burned his Sichuan brother pulled out his machete and rushed up to block our line of fire. We watched as he chopped down one in a frenzy, the second ran like a rabbit, but the Yunnan guy was really a loudmouthed turtle, he almost chased them out of our sight.

  I took aim with my gun, and my marksmanship was still decent. I could take out that Japanese soldier who had been tailing the Yunnan guy.

  "Stop it! Stop it! Let's see how far he can run!"

  Then Yunnan guy silently knocked down the second one, and then ran back to our formation that was gathering - so we returned to our main team.