Chapter 60: What kind of person is she?

  Kang SH looked at Chen Zhihao and pointed to Yang Wei, "Is this Comrade Yang Wei? Truly a hero emerges in his youth! Chairman Mao remembers you well. Looking at your equipment, you must have won many battles. Even the local guerrilla troops' weapons are luxurious." He was referring to the guards following Chen Zhihao, Yang Wei, and Liao Xudong. The equipment of the guard company following the three was uniformly German-made submachine guns, Japanese bayonet-modified combat knives, steel helmets with camouflage nets, light machine guns and grenade launchers for fire support, snipers equipped with special sights, backpacks bulging with supplies; all wore black leather gloves, their clothes were modified camouflage uniforms, and their feet wore anti-puncture boots made by city cobblers using Japanese military boots with added steel plates.

  In fact, inside are all the steel plates picked up from the battlefield and sewn into leather bulletproof vests. Tests have shown that they can withstand the firing of a Type 38 rifle at a distance of one hundred meters, and the firing of a pistol at a distance of thirty meters. If the distance is closer, it may tear the leather clothing and cause casualties.

  Yang Jie heard this and smiled slightly, "Director Kang is overpraising us, we're just having a small skirmish, how can it compare to the regular army's major battles? Welcome to guide our work team. Please come on up."

  Yang Jie and his men brought enough war horses with them and had been waiting in the area for five days before they received news to meet them.

  Kang Sh, although a scholar, was quite bold and had ridden horses several times. He took the reins from a soldier's hand and was about to mount when suddenly, urgent hoofbeats were heard in the distance. A small figure was bent over the horse's back, almost continuously whipping it as it ran. When still a few meters away from the crowd, the person pressed both hands on the horse's back, sprang up, and using the momentum, landed where Yang Xiu and the others were standing.

  "What's wrong, Stone? What happened?" Yang Jiong had already recognized him from the way he dismounted his horse, and was delighted to see his elegant movements. This little guy was really into martial arts, especially with Hu Yi's dedicated teaching. Sometimes Yang Jiong also taught Hu Yi some things, taking the opportunity to guide him and Song Shu together.

  The stone's face turned slightly pale, unsure if it was tension or urgency. After landing, he panted heavily, "Quickly, Captain... quickly return... Li Baoguo Captain, he..."

  Yang Jie brought over a few stones, his face somewhat tense. Chen Zhihao beside him was also shocked. He was very clear about the relationship between Li Baoguo and Yang Jie. Yang Jie regarded these younger brothers as more important than himself. When Li Baoguo failed to make contact on time, Yang Jie stayed in the communication room, refusing to leave until 10 pm when Li Baoguo finally turned on his radio. Li Ying and Chen Zhihao accompanied him for four hours. At that time, although Yang Jie was anxious, he remained very calm.

  "Captain Li was injured," Stone finally said, "in the town of He Dian in Dingxing County to the south. Nan's squad is taking care of him." Stone caught his breath a bit, "Nan sent a telegram saying for you to rush there immediately with a doctor and medicine."

  "How badly was he injured?" Yang Jie knew that Li Baoguo had a bulletproof vest, which was high-tech stuff from the 21st century. Ordinary firepower couldn't hurt his vital parts at all. Judging from Nan Wei's words, Li Baoguo must have been seriously injured. "What else did Captain Nan say?"

  "It was the Japanese master who was injured by a knife, very seriously. The southern troops are gathering their forces and defending the Heishui Town, waiting for you to come and rescue them. Hurry up, or else...” Tears welled up in Shi Tou's eyes. Li Bao Guo had taught him the most things and also gave him the most warmth. Every time he came to the base, he would bring something for Shi Tou and Song Shu. Although he looked very brave, his heart was filled with thorny warmth.

  Tagore said, "In my heart there is a tiger sniffing at the rose." Probably referring to people like Li Baoguo.

  "Everyone, I'll take my leave first. Chen Ge, you've worked hard." Yang Yu said, then leaped onto the white high-headed horse, shook the reins, and the warhorse let out a long whinny, raised its head, and galloped forward. Shi Tou also mounted his horse, fiercely swung his whip, and followed closely behind. The guard soldiers, with someone shaking the reins on horseback, chased after them. The horses' hooves pounded the earth, rumbling like thunder, gradually fading into the distance.

  "Director Kang, look, Xiao Yang is like this, I'm sorry." Chen Zhihao said somewhat awkwardly.

  "There's nothing, when I came, the chairman had already told me that Little Yang has some gangster aura, very heavy on loyalty, but essentially a good comrade." Kang said magnanimously, while mounting his war horse, only to discover that the guards waiting behind them were now only half in number.

  When they arrived at the base, Kang SH found that the base was bustling with all kinds of car engines roaring, personnel shouting for deployment, guns clashing, and people loading ammunition boxes yelling loudly. In less than fifteen minutes, the scene suddenly cleared up, and soon, soldiers in neat queues began to board the vehicles. Such neat and uniform movements, such swift and fierce departures, even he, who had seen the Soviet army gather, was shocked and felt a sense of pride that he had never experienced before.

  Five minutes later, the fleet began to depart. One by one, they hummed out of the base, and the wind blown by them made Kang's clothes flutter.

  "It seems that Yang's team has already left, this should be the second batch of troops to depart. Shall we go to the combat room first?" Liao Xudong also had great respect for Yang Jie, who highly valued the mechanization construction of the base and stipulated that every field army must hand over captured vehicles to the base for unified allocation to troops. Of course, the base retained a portion, which was to form a modern rapid reaction force.

  In the combat room, Kang Shuai finally understood how far he was from the military. As soon as he entered the combat room, a staff officer came over and handed him materials, starting to brief him on the situation.

  Li Baoguo, who was originally the rear guard, supervised the troops to pass through the pre-set channels one by one. In Hexiantown, he met with Nan Weiren, who was in charge of opening up the channels. The two looked at each other and smiled happily as they watched the last batch of grain cross the Jumao River Bridge.

  A weight was lifted off their shoulders as the two men, accompanied by a small number of special warfare troops, entered He Dian Town on October 4th at 6:00 am. It was then that the unexpected happened.

  In the northern riverside town, there is no affection and intimacy with water like in southern towns. On an early winter morning, before anyone gets out of their warm bed, even the morning sun lazily covers itself with a thin layer of gauze, shyly peeking out from the horizon. The town is quiet, making people almost forget that this is a time of war, the morning fog drifts gently in the wind, hiding various courtyards in an ambiguous state, occasionally a rude dog makes a few lazy barks, contrasting with the cold and quiet morning stillness.

  Li Baoguo and Nan Weiren walked quietly on the main street with their special forces team, appreciating the seemingly peaceful world in front of them, as if they had merged with their own era again. They had also executed tasks in the northern countryside in the morning, walking in the same morning fog as now, seeing houses and gatehouses that looked like those in front of them. Behind them was their company commander, and the team behind was responsible for clearing up traces.

  Suddenly, Li Baoguo and Nan Weiren almost simultaneously pulled each other, a strong intuition trained through life-and-death experiences made the two men wake up with a start. Xu De and others following behind them did not sense anything unusual, but they were extremely familiar with the movements of the two men and quickly hid in the nearby hutong doorway. In an instant, only Li and Nan were left on the main street, but in every corner, dark gun barrels sealed off the area within tens of meters around the two men, making it impossible for a drop of water to leak through.

  A woman's figure appeared hastily at the entrance of the town on one side of the bridge, her tense and frightened face not hidden by the thin morning fog. Nan Weiren, however, saw that this woman was not simple from her hurried but not chaotic footsteps. Li Baoguo looked at the woman wearing a fitted jacket with blue flower trim, and a common women's cotton skirt below, with pink pants covered in grass seeds and muddy dew, and shoes completely soaked through. When she saw Li Nan and the others, a hint of surprise flashed across her haggard and tired face.

  The woman ran quickly towards the two, and when she was less than five meters away from them, Nan Weiren heard the sound of laughter mixed with Japanese and Chinese coming from the Luoma River Bridge. The wooden clogs worn by the revelers made a crisp sound on the ancient bluestone pavement, echoing from afar.

  "Halt!" is the shout of a rascal. "Hana-ko-san, halt!" is the shout of an enemy soldier.

  The woman ran up to the two men and suddenly knelt down on the ground, "For the sake of being Chinese, help me, two brothers. Save me!"

  Li Baoguo pulled the girl up with one hand, "Don't be afraid, stand behind me."

  A dozen or so devils and ronin rushed up, shouting, and saw the woman hiding behind two young men. But these two men seemed to have completely ignored them, their faces without a hint of fear or panic, and one of them even smiled slightly.

  "Hachigatsu, you are too uncivilized!" Li Baoguo shouted loudly in Japanese, stunning the oni and ronin.

  "Who are you?" a ronin leader said, "We have been ordered to capture this Chinese woman, she is the person our Saikyo Shrine wants, no one is allowed to ask questions." Apparently he took Li Baoguo as his own man, although his tone was tough, but still explained things very clearly.

  "What is the Xijing Shrine?" Li Baoguo turned to ask Nan Weiren, but his body rushed towards the enemy group. Because he was speaking Chinese, the devils didn't understand what he meant for a moment, and seeing him rushing forward, they scattered in all directions.

  Xu De and Song Yanchun, hiding at the entrance of the alley, were very clear about Li Baoguo's temper. Seeing him make a slight movement, they knew he was going to fight the devils with his bare hands. Quietly putting down their weapons, the two men rushed towards the devils from their hidden position. Although the kung fu of these two men was different, they had one thing in common - they were ruthless when they struck, which was a result of Li Baoguo's teachings by example.

  As soon as the three of them entered the crowd, they immediately saw the individual's means. Li Baoguo's martial arts were not as good as Song Yanchun's, but the damage he caused to his enemies was far greater than that of Xu De and Song Yanchun. Li Baoguo walked in Yang Jie's way, with quick and simple fist techniques, without any extra movements, sometimes just hard-hitting, one punch hitting the enemy's fist, hard-hitting back the opponent's fist, making the opponent dare not to touch him again. Another was that Li Baoguo could attack with his whole body, even his buttocks, which he used very cleverly. A devil and he were back to back, and he suddenly knocked him in front of Xu De, the devil stumbled, and Xu De punched him in the temple, killing him on the spot.

  Song Yan-chun is a master of Wing Chun, and his every move reveals the elegance of the style. Due to his habitual self-discipline as a martial artist, he kills the least number of people; usually, he just knocks his opponents down or beats them until they lose their ability to fight.

  Nan Ruo knew what Li Baoguo meant as soon as he started talking. He quietly made a hand gesture. Immediately, soldiers emerged from their hiding places and surrounded the woman, three inside and four outside. The muzzles of the guns held by the three men inside were always unintentionally pointing at the girl's vital parts. The four people outside held their guns with one leg half-kneeling, alerting in all directions.

  To the south were Ren's Blood Blade Squad, Li Baoguo's Iron Blood Squad, and Gao Junping's Dragon Whistle Squad, all of whom were on the same level as Yang Jiong's Guard Squad in terms of equipment. They wore black or camouflage uniforms, combat boots, black gloves, reinforced submachine guns, and steel helmets with camouflage nets. As soon as they appeared, the girl was startled, unaware that these were simplified versions of various special warfare equipment from the 21st century that Yang Jiong had painstakingly created. However, it was enough to intimidate anyone. After all, weapons are not the top priority; what matters most is people's thoughts and character. Equipment can be simplified, but ideology cannot be simplified. Yang Jiong's military training, especially his demands on Li Baoguo and his men, emphasized quality over quantity, prioritizing a smaller, more elite force rather than a large, disorganized one.

  Including several ronin, they were no match for the three men's attack. The last ronin turned and ran, just as Li Baoguo was about to chase after him, a Japanese devil on the ground shouted something loudly, and that ronin actually stopped in his tracks, quickly pulling out a short and thin bamboo tube from his chest, pulling the fuse at one end of the tube, a firecracker exploded with a loud bang, a red flame shot up into the air, exploding in mid-air, scattering into a beautiful flower.

  Whether it was the fleeing ronin or the ghosts and ronin who couldn't move on the ground, they all had a very calm expression on their faces, not caring about the three killing gods standing in front of them.

  As expected, in less than a minute, Li Baoguo and Nan Weiren both sensitively felt a very familiar yet worrying fear, which was the deeply ingrained memory of death after experiencing life and death many times. It was a mysterious premonition that transcended ordinary perception. Li Baoguo took a step back, while Nan Weiren took a step forward, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Xu Desong and Song Yun Chun's feelings were slightly delayed, but they soon felt the pressure from the air as well. The smooth morning breeze that had been blowing gently suddenly seemed to be locked up by something, and the misty fog became heavy. Unconsciously, a rapid heartbeat sounded in their chests, and their eyes twitched violently for a few moments. Song Yun Chun took a step back and secretly raised his internal energy to its limit. Xu De felt an overwhelming urge to let out a loud roar to release his emotions, knowing that this was the invisible pressure exerted by their opponents. Captain Yang Jue had once said that if the opponent's aura could control your emotions in an intangible way, then you were in the most danger, because he could also sense whose strength was the weakest, and the first one to be attacked would inevitably be you.

  Xu De couldn't help but take a deep breath.

  A dark shadow suddenly flashed out in the gradually thickening fog, rapidly shooting towards Xu De. Song Yan Chun was highly vigilant, and Li Bao Guo also knew that Xu De would definitely be the first to be attacked, but when the object flew out, both of them didn't have time to react at all.

  Fortunately, there is Nan Wei Ren, this king of sniping guns. No matter who it is, Yang Jue admires him to the death, Liu Qingqing once laughed and praised Nan Wei Ren as the contemporary successor of Xiaoli Feidao, Li Xunhuan's personal heir would not be so, no one can find out when Nan Wei Ren's gun was drawn and when it was put back. There is only a gunshot, a crisp collision sound, in front of Xu De, not far away, a black swallow flying dart was shot down.

  "Good. Very good." A bright and clear woman's voice came out of the fog, followed by the fog slowly dispersing, revealing a slender woman dressed in all black standing before everyone. "Who are you?" The woman in black didn't wait for Nan Weiren to respond, "No matter who you are, anyone who can catch my flying dart will be given a chance to live. Unfortunately, whether it's within the Great Japanese Empire or this vast China, they've all died under my darts. You're the first person to survive under my darts, and I, Teng Jiangxiu, will definitely give you a chance to live."

  The woman gazed into the distance, her eyes filled with a proud and arrogant air, as if those in front of her were nothing but corpses. The defeated devils and rascals who had fallen to the ground crawled towards her, but when they reached a distance of three steps away from her, they suddenly didn't dare approach her, instead circling around and sitting down together with faces full of reverence.

  "Wei County guerrilla team, you're quite bold." Nan Wei Ren replied coldly, "Whether or not you can be the first to escape under my gun depends on whether you have the guts for it." He was rather eager to test his skills against Teng Chuan Xiuzi, after all, he had a gun, and he firmly believed that few people could escape from his line of fire. Nan Wei Ren took a step forward, his hands hanging naturally by his sides, his eyes gleaming with a fierce light. Although there was no gun in his hand, Teng Chuan Xiuzi keenly sensed the aura of murder emanating from him, an atmosphere that only a seasoned veteran like Nan Wei Ren could exude, a subtle yet palpable pressure that only a master could detect.

  Teng Chuan Xiuzi just gave him a cold glance, "Among the people I've met, you're the first to use a gun to this extent. You should be able to compare with me. However, I have a request,"

  The atmosphere in the field was a bit strange, and Xu De couldn't help but let out a loud breath. Li Baoguo took a step forward, gently waving his hand at Xu De and Song Yanchun, and the two reluctantly retreated, only to realize that the gap between themselves and their captain could not be made up for by martial arts alone.

  "You didn't ask." Li Baoguo interrupted him coldly, "What do you think you are? Am I afraid of you?" Li Baoguo seemed to ignore the great pressure brought by Teng Chuanxiu, and very lightly drew his combat dagger from his waist, with a face full of disdain. "Little girl, if I didn't pity your miserable fate, I would have cut you down with one knife long ago!"