Chapter Fifty-Six

  We huddled together and trudged over the wet Zen Da, the shelter station had been left behind us, our column was also drenched.

  Die, die! On our left front, shouting; dog meat on our right rear, barking at us in a low voice. This way we look even more like prisoners. "Stand up straight! Stand up straight! Today there's an instructor coming to see you, take good care of his eyes, let him feel that the good guns sent down are worth it!"

  We shrank back even more, anyway he wouldn't dare to use military law on us, and wouldn't even lift his foot to kick us.

  Actually, after fighting a battle like Nan Tian Men, we all understand why he did it. What we can't figure out is why we're doing this. We've already been through hell and fought the worst battles, so why are we again?

  When we were about to leave Chan Da, our whole wet team saw that mother and son.

  The wife of the dragon was huddled under the eaves, using her body as both a rain shield and blanket for Lebao, so all we could see was half of his small head covered by his mother's palm.

  So we can't see if Lebao is trembling or not, we are just trembling and at the same time seeing the body of the dragon's wife behind us trembling more violently. I couldn't help but take a look at the dragon, the dragon didn't even glance at me, what left the deepest impression on me was his cheek muscles that seemed to have suddenly grown bones.

  Die die die, suddenly started stepping, so we all started stepping, the falling rainwater was kicked by us into water droplets, making us even wetter, but this actually helped to drive away some cold air - and other things.

  We kicked the puddles and left Zenda City.

  The mountain peak made this open space a blind spot for cannon fire, and a group of people had been waiting here early on, like an unintentionally formed phalanx. The main body of the phalanx was made up of soldiers who were battered and bruised, no need to elaborate on them. The front row of the phalanx split off into a separate column, which was sheltered by officials holding umbrellas. It looked very much like a Roman phalanx with shields raised. In front of the phalanx, there were two umbrella-less guys standing guard, seemingly the commander of the phalanx, but actually Yu Xiaoqing who didn't dare to speak and Tang Ji who had no choice but to accompany him.

  Director Chen was sheltered under several layers of umbrellas, and he was getting a bit impatient.

  The rain is lighter than before, but after a long time, it still soaks people through.

  The rain accumulated on those rain-soaked household items - that is, the equipment we were about to receive - and dripped into the ground.

  Tang Ji covered his mouth and coughed softly, so Yu Xiaoqing looked at him - before that he had been looking east towards the direction of Chan Da, a mountain ridge connected to the eastern shore, waiting for the person to appear from that mountain ridge.

  Yu Xiaoqing moved his hand, and Zhang Lixian took an umbrella over to shelter the deputy commander.

  Yu Xiaoqing said to Tang Ji: "Take care."

  Tang Ji smiled wryly in a low voice. "I've come through all these hardships just for you to take care of yourself."

  He still managed to put on a comforting and apologetic smile for Director Chen, and immediately turned into a gentle and amiable face.

  "They arrived a bit late. Mr. Chen has already been here for five minutes," said Tang Ji.

  "You have always been an early riser and late sleeper. I am referring to the Imperial Envoy."

  "The army is going to war. My men only need to follow one rule, my rule." Yu Xiao Wei said without a doubt.

  Tang Ji forced a bitter smile and said, "Yu Zhong, what can I say to you?"

  "It's all understood without saying. Worldly wisdom, even the cleverness of moving fingers is learned. But from now on, it will only teach people to become mediocre and incompetent. I won't live to see the day when I need to be hypocritical, so I won't learn."

  Tanji began to complain, "It's just this kind of talk. It's gotten me into this place where I'm being sent off as a soldier."

  Yu Xiaoqing smiled and said to Tang Ji, "Tang Shu is the best. With Tang Shu here, these trivial matters that can't even be called military affairs will finally have someone to bother with."

  "The more I think about it, the more I feel your father's deep concern and good intentions. You've been promoted to a high position, what was the first thing your father said to me? 'It's all over, Brother Tang.' Qing has gotten himself into an unwinnable lawsuit."

  Yu Xiaoqing made a weird expression, similar to a ghost face. He didn't like listening to these things, but had no choice, so he looked away and finally found an excuse to extricate himself.

  "It's here." Yu Xiaoqing said, what he saw with the naked eye, Tang Ji could only find with binoculars, and it was Yu Xiaoqing who helped him find the direction, that he could find the small and insignificant team in the rain.

  "It's finally here," said Donkey.

  We crossed the Tangji Ridge, gazing down at that mountain ridge. The worn-out military uniform without even underwear had already chilled us to the bone. We didn't dare take another step because of the muddy and slippery ground. In fact, many of us were covered in mud up to our knees. We also didn't dare speak loudly, talking into the rain mist. If you were already frozen stiff all over, it wasn't enjoyable at all.

  The dense crowd on the empty land made us hurry up for two steps, and even threw the dead body from the side front to the side back. This confusing play is finally going to end.

  "Are you a soldier fighting or a sheep rushing back to its pen? Over here!" shouted Deadie.

  We turned around in dismay, looking at him. This guy was left behind by us because he stopped walking as soon as we reached the uphill tunnel, which means our route is going up the mountain and not down to the valley. It doesn't seem like there's a team of reinforcements and supplies waiting for us on top of the mountain, but who cares.

  Yu Xiaoqing and others looked at a group of subordinates they had been waiting for under their watchful eyes, turning towards the mountain.

  Yu Xiaoqing was also shocked, while Tang Ji had already reached a state of bewilderment. He once again made a comforting and apologetic expression to Chen Dajun, but this time Chen Dajun no longer corrected his wicked tone.

  We climbed the Ji Qi Slope, a poor mountain in Tula Bashi, where the vegetation was surprisingly stunted and malnourished. Compared to its neighbor, Heng Luan Mountain, it's like two different worlds. Of course, we wouldn't climb Heng Luan Mountain like this; it's a heavily guarded strategic location on the east coast, just like Nan Tian Men guards the western passage.

  The road we are climbing is a path that even the woodcutters do not want to climb - to be honest, I doubt if anyone would like to come to such a thorny place to cut firewood - one slippery person often has to pull down another, now we have not only brought water but also successfully brought soup.

  Die die die, clinging to a malnourished little tree, with a face full of painted-on satisfaction and enthusiasm, "Don't cry, you old hag! It's hard going up but easy coming down!"

  Hao Shouyi gasped for air with his remaining half life, "If you come down... it will roll into a ball."

  He's dead! He's dead! So finally he pulled him up, "Once you reach the top, there will be what you've always wanted to see!"

  I refused his outstretched hand. "Want to see is disappointed him mom."

  "For example, I just thought of seeing you a little while ago."

  "This time I won't disappoint you," he promised.

  This affirmation has reached a mysterious level, and it actually gives us some motivation to continue climbing up.

  Die, die, like a huge reptile, heaving in the mud, stones and bushes, and keeping us in the same position, with him heaving towards a large clump of trees big enough to cover our whole body.

  He reminded everyone while nodding: "Be careful. With thousands of guns aimed at us, whoever makes a mistake won't be able to leave the mountain alive."

  This is already the top of the mountain. We can't see anything in the dense foliage, but even though the rain hasn't stopped yet, we can still hear the huge sound of water, which sounds very familiar. From the Nujiang River.

  We were crawling along in the tense atmosphere he had created, when suddenly the guy stood up without warning. In this thorny tunnel, we lost our sense of direction and ended up piling up behind him.

  I glared at him in anger, "At least give me a password first!"

  "Don't look at me, look at the South Heaven Gate," he said.

  I suddenly felt that his expression was very strange, so strange that it gave me a chill. He seemed to be in another world called the underworld, watching the souls who couldn't escape struggling to cross the river of the dead.

  He stood up because the branches here were enough to cover us. So I also stood up, and it was not comfortable to crawl, and those twenty or so also stood up unevenly.

  Push aside the branches in front of us and we can see the South Heaven Gate, so we pushed aside the branches.

  Then we saw the South Heavenly Gate.

  Nan Tian Men is very large, almost as big as Heng Luan Shan and Ji Qi Po combined. That's to say it's very high, the entire Nujiang River doesn't reduce its majestic momentum of crossing mountains and piercing clouds at all. From our angle, it looks like a monster emerging from the primordial chaos.

  What shocked us were not these, but the small dots busy on the mountain. At first glance, they looked like ants, but they gnawed down trees, dug trenches on the mountain, and earth-moving machinery roared to increase their speed of gnawing and digging. No. What shocked us was not these things either, but what was dug out and gnawed out by them and thrown into the precipice below the mountain, nor were they the trees, soil, and stones that rolled down into the Nujiang River, but those things mixed in, falling on the cliff wall, shattering and then falling into the torrent.

  We abandoned our bodies at the South Heavenly Gate.

  I feel very cold, it was really chilly this morning. Even the movements of everyone here have become very slow. The sound of "drip drip" coming through the rain and fog also seems to be frozen.

  "Something's wrong with the repair work. The Japanese front line is too long now. We have to defend our position."

  I took a glance at him, and he pulled out a telescope from somewhere. He looked carefully.

  What does it have to do with us? I don't want to go to Nantianmen again in this lifetime.

  However, our skulls, our bodies, our limbs, our blood, our bones, our bodies have long since rotted away, thinly covered with a layer of soil by the Japanese. Now they are being dug up, people wearing rubber suits and gas masks, with the greatest indifference and highest efficiency, using tanks modified with makeshift bulldozer blades to push them down cliffs in heaps, from Nantianmen to Nujiang River. They will experience an extremely long free fall, the lucky ones becoming a small splash in the torrent, the unlucky ones, their scattered limbs shattering once again on the rocks, either on the mountain or in the Nujiang River.

  I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my hand. I looked down and saw that the old veterinarian, Hao, was pinching my hand with his fingers, his fingernails already digging into my flesh.

  The old man muttered: "...... Kang Ya."

  I suddenly understood what he was saying, and I snatched the binoculars from him. I immediately found the place where we buried him, as at that time we had buried him on the steep slope of the Nujiang River so that he could see the east bank, so it was easy to find - only the entire layer of soil there had been stripped away. Then I saw him piled up with several other corpses at the edge of the soil heap, and a excavator was heading towards him.

  The telescope was snatched away, and when using that thing, he accidentally poked his own eye socket with too much force, but I think he's like me, his body feels numb now. He just found what he wanted, the telescope was snatched away by Hao Shouyi again, Hao Shouyi was in a flurry and opened it upside down, Ah Yi helped him correct it.

  "Ten seconds per person. Leave a thought behind." Said Dead Dead.

  I watched with my own eyes as the excavator approached the pile of earth and corpses, rolling up the bodies and earth and rocks, along with the remains of trees, all together. Kang Yao was tumbling in the waves of mud, appearing and then being buried again. He seemed not to want to see us, but he inevitably drew closer to the cliff.

  "What's going on? Why aren't you opening fire? Let them dig! Where are the people?! What's going on? Why aren't you fighting?!"

  He died, staring at him, and didn't stop, the snake's butt hugged him, and the mourning star covered his mouth, because it seemed that the dead Hunan boy not only could rush out of the forest, but also rush down the cliff.

  "Die, die, mechanically repeating: 'Everyone looks for ten seconds. Leave a thought. Then go down the mountain.'"

  Old Hao next to me was frantically wiping away tears and snot, while sticking the telescope into his eye socket. If you weren't pressed down by the mourning star with your head in the mud, have you ever stuffed a trapped beast's mouth? That trapped beast was gnawing at the mud while still saying "fight, fight".

  I watched as Kang Yao hesitated for a moment on the cliff, then tumbled down with the black soil and branches, crashing against the sharp rocks, swirling, rolling, and disappearing into the Yellow River and green mountains.

  No longer did he howl at the earthy den he had dug out; now he was quiet, and we were all quiet, not even breathing.

  "Alright, watch closely. In two more minutes, everyone will head down the mountain. The master wants to show his appreciation for us, so he'll arrive half an hour early; we should at least be on time."

  "...Why didn't he kill you?" I asked.

  "He thought I should have died at the South Gate of Tiananmen."

  "It doesn't matter where you die. You'd better die soon, or else you won't be able to bring us to see this."

  "Isn't this what you've always wanted to see? You've seen it. Even a love-disappointed guy like you hasn't been disappointed." Die, die, and yet he still doesn't forget to mock me.

  I could only stare at him, his numb head was pressed into the mud, my own head was pressed into something unknown, I had to desperately adjust my breathing.

  Always wanted to see. Yes, was again overshadowed by him, but indeed always wanted to see, thought not dare to see. We do not know whether the South Tianmen left our body or our soul. We are disabled people who have lost limbs thinking of residual limbs, no, we only have a dozen or so, we are residual limbs that have left the body, thinking of the body.

  Everyone died again, and we all looked at each other. The beast doctor sat in the mud, using a handful of wet leaves to desperately wipe his face. Snake's butt was facing the telescope, holding his breath. The mourning star touched the bones of his brother on his body, and his expression was surprisingly celebratory. A Yi knelt there, muttering silently in her mouth, no one was pressing down on her anymore, but she still lay in the mud, maintaining a posture of being pressed down. Everyone is different, not a single person is the same.

  "Dead dead dead! *snaps fingers* Let's go, let's go!"

  Then we lay down and crawled away in the dense forest path.

  The hardest part seems to have passed, no one wants to fight. Yu Shi's entire ammunition is only enough for a 30-minute barrage and will not be fired for the dead.

  The Japanese army then openly trampled on our corpses and built their fortifications. The superior was secretly delighted, because the bandits finally settled for a defensive position.

  So we crawled and left, we were thieves who had our bodies stolen, sneaking back to see the body that had housed us for a lifetime.

  We stand in the muddy water, and his cruel deeds did not encourage us at all. And I think what he wants is not encouragement either.

  He Shuguang and a few others wearing raincoats walked back and forth among us, splashing mud water on our bodies while correcting our formation. Obviously, they thought our uneven lineup was unacceptable, repeatedly adjusting it, but unable to figure out the inexplicable atmosphere that permeated between us.