Chapter 74 Chapter Thirteen

On a rainy autumn night, Shangguanfeng's wish came true.When he woke up again, the hands of the watch pointed to one o'clock in the morning. The first thing he heard—no, felt passively with all his being—was a deep and vast silence.It comes from this vast rainy night, and it seems to come from the original place that makes rainy night a rainy night; it is empty and contains all nothingness, and it is the sound of wind and rain in the world, the swaying of trees in the wind and rain outside the window, and the sound of rain. It was filled with the louder and louder roar of the motor of a car that had just driven back and then suddenly stopped.In this pervasive and pervasive silence, he became aware of the presence of the girl beside him.With a half-naked neck and a plump shoulder, she was sleeping very casually, with a happy and contented smile on her rosy cheeks, and she was snoring softly and evenly.Shangguanfeng suddenly felt a kind of sobriety he had never experienced before.

"Who am I?...Where am I? Who is this girl lying next to me?..." He remembered, the girl next to him was Yunxia instead of Liuxi, "I have been waiting for this moment, today I The time has come. . . . I have nothing to regret in my life. . . . " That question, which he had been avoiding lately, clearly came to mind. "Where should I choose to go?...I have become Yunxia's husband, and I have an unshirkable responsibility for her life....We will soon complete the legal marriage procedures, no matter what the age on my file is Already twenty-two years old...Since I can't leave the army, I should be transferred from the army to the Army Academy in the provincial capital. We will have a small family of our own like everyone else, a son or daughter, and we will go home every day at sunrise. Our life will be full of the symphony of pots and pans, and the whispering happiness of all small families, year after year, quietly. Until one day, I found myself Reaching the octogenarian age..."

His thoughts stopped here, and Shangguan Feng's heart trembled.As long as he chooses the Army Academy, his life will be arranged by an invisible hand. It's scary. "Will I have many nights like this in my future life? Yes. . . You can see a piece of curtain cloth with a strange pattern reflected by the light, this boundless tide of silence and loneliness rushing to your heart... This is peace." He chewed the final conclusion word by word, and said Not surprised, "In my life there will no longer be such intense and touching spiritual activities as during the Gongmushan War, especially there will be no more life-and-death trials like the Battle of 634 Heights. Among the people of the Qing Dynasty, disappeared..."

It wasn't until today that he understood what the Battle of Highland 634 had really given him: Ever since that battle, he could no longer accept a peaceful life like tonight! If you don't go to the Army Academy, you must stay in the army, and you must answer another question hidden in your heart: Is it really worthwhile to be a soldier in a field army who may participate in a border war at any time in a peaceful environment and will be forgotten by people later? Looking at the calico curtain with a strange pattern illuminated by the street lights, he felt that his heart was being illuminated by the light of a gradually burning candle.

"Soldiers in peacetime... What are you afraid of? Not war and death, but just being forgotten by people....Actually, forgetting is very natural. You have defended the peaceful life of this nation with your youth and life, and also It is possible to make people forget about wars and soldiers. You can make them forget you, and you are of great value. It seems absurd, but it is true, because being forgotten is as much a time of peace as sacrifice. The fate of the soldiers... Not only Liu Youcai and Ge Wenyi will be forgotten, but the Battle of the 634 Heights will be forgotten, and we living soldiers—military commanders, division commanders, regimental commanders, and myself—will also be forgotten. As long as you live, you already know that you have been forgotten....But you, like many others, are forgotten in the history of this nation, you are the bones, muscles or blood that make up history. Therefore, as long as this ancient nation is still alive Proudly living, multiplying, and developing your own civilization on this land, you have not been truly forgotten..."

Four months ago, when the whole battalion rushed to the 632 highland area from Heifengjian, a problem that he had not solved under the enemy's artillery fire clearly came to his mind, and he suddenly had the answer. "War and death. . . . What kind of thing is this? Under the circumstances at the time, it was impossible for me to find out. . . . Today I understand that war and death are not themselves. War and soldiers Their sacrifices stand for something other than themselves: the peace of a people and the desire for peace and its dignity.  … It is because of the desire for peace that you must go into war, and go to and through death.

"I will go to the field again. . . . I may die in the next frontier war. . . . But today I am consciously determined to return to the field. . . . The real reason is that even though the sacrifice and the forgotten , I also have to admit that among the various occupations in today's society, the ancient occupation of the soldier is still the most noble and moving one.  …” At this moment, he realized that this was not only his final decision, but also his lifelong decision. A week later, when his vacation was over, he simply packed up and went back to the army.