Chapter 7 Chapter VII

The last wooden sign I saw before camping was crooked by the roadside, and it indicated that the distance from Xinpingyang was fifty miles.There were at least 20 corpses lying on the short road less than 100 feet in front of the wooden sign; it had been raining continuously for the past few days, and the corpses were soaked in muddy water here and there, most of them were rotten, and maggots were crawling around, soaking in rot. The water in the corpse was green and smelly, and there were so many mosquitoes and flies, sometimes buzzing and flying in groups, like clouds of black smoke. Qi Zhijun was terrified and didn't dare to rest in the place where the carrion corpses were lying across.The scene in front of him was terrible, really terrible-only fifty miles away from Xinpingyang, they couldn't get there, and they were lying here forever.

He had to go, no matter what, he had to go to Xinpingyang.He had the material evidence to go to Xinpingyang: there was still half a teapot of rice in the rice bag, and there was a gun in his hand with twelve bullets. He would not fall, nor should he fall. That night, he went until it was completely dark, lit a torch and continued walking until he completely got rid of the smell of dead bodies and the pursuit of mosquitoes and flies, and then he found a plantain shed on the side of the road to rest. cold, really cold.The nasty fever entangled him again, and the burden of life increased.Dragging his exhausted body, he made some dried banana leaves and dry branches and lit a fire. He lay down by the fire for a while to catch his breath; Put a handful of rice in the thick military tea mug, ready to cook some porridge.

There seemed to be countless worms crawling in the stomach sac, biting his stomach wall.When he was about to cook the porridge, he grabbed the uncooked rice and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed desperately, but swallowed it without chewing it into pieces. Rice is delicious, even better than delicacies from mountains and seas. After taking two mouthfuls, he didn't dare to eat—he suddenly realized that he had made a mistake: there was only half of the mug left, which was only six or seven taels at best, and he still had fifty miles to go!What he chewed was not a bit of raw rice, but his own chance to survive.

He felt a little regretful, and forced himself to put the rice that had been put into the tea mug, and grabbed a dozen more grains and put them into the rice bag. The rice in the mug could hardly cover the bottom of the mug. He brought some water with his military cap, poured it into the tea mug, and carefully put the tea mug into the blazing fire to burn. Staring at the fire, staring at the tea mug, I thought of the girl named Yuangu I saw in the small mountain village a few days ago.He regretted it again, he should have hardened his heart and took away all the remaining corn from Yuangu.They are indeed difficult, but they are always better than him.He took Baogu, their grandparents would only starve for two days at most, and he...

Yuan Gu thought of Qu Ping.He wondered if Qu Ping was still alive in such a harsh environment?Since that embarrassing and desperate night, he has never seen her again, never seen Shang Wuqiang, Wu Shengnan, and Lao Zhaotou.He concluded that their misfortune outweighed their blessings.At first he and they were only separated by one night.If nothing happened to them, they would have caught up with him long ago.Their failure to catch up proved their disaster and trouble. He figured, nine out of ten times, Qu Ping fell, and Wu Shengnan also fell.So many young and strong men have fallen, how can the two women not fall?

He concluded that Qu Ping was dead. Guilt began to flow up like a rising tide, and he felt a little sorry for Qu Ping. If he didn't leave that night, if he faithfully guarded Qu Ping, Qu Ping would not die, for sure!With him and Shang Wuqiang's protection, Qu Ping would never fall down in the deep mountains of this foreign country.If he survived and met Qu Ping's parents one day after the victory, how could he explain to them; he could tell them: Because your daughter fell in love with another man, I was so angry that I left alone!Can you say that?Are you fucking a man or not?Is there nothing else between a man and a woman except love?

Tears rolled down her face, the lenses of her glasses became foggy, and Qu Ping's painfully dead face appeared in the fog of dancing flames... No, maybe Qu Ping won't die.She has Shang Wuqiang and a loyal colonel to protect her!How could she die? ! The damp smell that had been floating under his nostrils for a long time disappeared, and the hatred for Shang Wuqiang also disappeared.He should not be jealous of them, but should bless them!For their survival in this death march, and for their future happiness. He was moved by his nobility, and the tears on his face flowed more urgently...

The fire was weak, although the fire head was very high, the firepower was not enough. The handful of rice and the teapot of water were put on the fire for a long time before they could barely boil.When the boiled water was about to overflow, he put his hands on his lapel and took down the hot tea mug, and put it on a flat stone in front of him. He lay down, breathed, and impatiently drank a few sips of the rice-flavored water, and then put it into the ashes of the fire to stew. As soon as the tea mug had been settled on the embers, he heard footsteps. The footsteps were heavy, dragging, and very slow, as if they were not stepped on by human feet, but by mopping mops on the rough cement floor. of.

He vigilantly lay down behind the flat stone where the tea mug was placed just now, pulled out his gun, loaded the bullet, and drank in the dark where the footsteps sounded: "Who? Which part?" A faint and lonely voice sounded in the darkness: "I... I am from the Military and Political... Political Department!" Political Department?From the Political Department? !Will he, Qi Zhijun, meet someone from the political department here? !Immediately thinking of those familiar colleagues, he put the gun in his arms, stood up, and walked towards the man. The man was also walking towards him, walking with great difficulty.

It was so dark that he couldn't recognize who the person was, nor could he tell whether the person was a woman or a man.It probably never occurred to him that the person would be a woman. He stepped forward to help her, and accidentally touched the man's chest with his hand, only to be surprised to find that the man was a woman! His voice changed: "You... who are you?" The woman opened her lips mechanically, and murmured: "My...my surname is Qu, and my name is... Qu Ping!" "Qu Ping? Qu Ping!" He hugged her forgetfully, the tears in his eyes fell like raindrops:

"Qu Ping! I...I'm Qi Zhijun! You...you didn't recognize my voice?!" Qu Ping obviously didn't believe in the miracle in front of her eyes, so she grabbed him: "You...you are Qi...Qi Zhijun? You...are you still alive?" "Alive! Alive! Aren't we all alive?!" He helped Qu Ping to the side of the fire, and sat down on the flat stone. "Shang Wuqiang, Sister Wu, what about Old Zhao and the others?" Qu Ping said dumbly: "Dead, all dead!" "Shang...is Shang Wuqiang dead too?" Qu Ping was stunned for a moment. "Also... also dead... dead!" "How...how did you die?" He didn't know if he was excited or concerned. Qu Ping suddenly burst into tears: "Don't ask! Don't...don't ask! And...don't mention... mention him in front of me again!" After crying for a while, Qu Ping raised her tearful face. "You...what's the matter with you? You...where did you go that night?" "me……" He wanted to tell what he saw and thought that night, but after murmuring for a long time, he still held back, and only said lightly: "I don't like Shang Wuqiang, so I left alone!" Qu Ping seemed to understand something and stopped asking. The fire was so bright that it made her face very red. The tea mug on the fire caught her attention, and she greedily sniffed the rice fragrance in the air, saying: "You...do you still have rice?" He nodded and said nothing. He brought the cooked rice soup in front of Qu Ping, and said as frankly as possible: "Eat! You...you are probably starving!" Qu Ping tore a piece of green banana leaf and wrapped it around the handle of the tea mug. She didn't care about the heat, and drank the rice soup one gulp after another. Qi Zhijun turned his face away sadly: A girl as beautiful as a flower was forced to this point by the war!He couldn't stand it. He forgot the future of his existence and the cruel fifty miles that he had ordered himself to remember firmly. He poured out all the remaining rice in the rice bag, got some water, and boiled it again. A teapot of rice water was boiled into thick porridge again. He took the tea mug and handed it to Qu Ping again: "Eat this again!" Qu Ping looked at the steaming tea mug and really wanted to eat it, but after thinking about it, she still didn't move. "You... did you eat it yourself?" Qi Zhijun smiled faintly: "I've eaten, before you came here, I've eaten a pot of thick rice! Really! I'm luckier than... better than you, I... I've never run out of food! I met a kind man Shan girl, she gave me five catties of rice!" Qu Ping believed it, and asked happily: "Is there any more rice?" "Yes! Of course there is. It's hidden under the banana leaves in the shack! I... I'm afraid that someone will... rob me! You...you eat it!" Only then did Qu Ping pick up the tea mug, and ate up the thick porridge in the tea mug bit by bit. I'm so full.This was the only full meal I had on the way. She was so touched, she smiled sweetly, and said to Qi Zhijun: "It's so kind of you!" This is the highest reward.Her smile seemed to freeze in the firelight, he could almost grab it and put it in his arms.Her voice is also like a soft colorful ribbon, which can be used to tie up that frozen sweet smile. He wanted to stand up and kiss her, just once... His head was dizzy and he couldn't stand up. Thinking about it again, I also feel that this thought has a despicable meaning, should he ask her for a kiss in return for giving her two teapots of rice porridge? He sat there without moving, just said: "It's getting late, go... go to bed!" The shack was not big, shaped like a herringbone, she fell asleep on one side, and him on the other.A military jacket was hanging on a tree stick in the middle of the shack, not hers, but his. A military jacket separates the two worlds of yin and yang. She fell asleep and fell asleep, but he couldn't sleep. He was still looking for that frozen sweet smile outside the shack, it was her sweet smile, hers!She laughed like this in the bright classroom of Shanghai Minsheng Middle School, in the dormitory of Chongqing Military Academy, and in the trenches of Pingmanna.For her smile, Allied lieutenant Glaston gave his young life, but for her sweet smile, he only paid two teapots of porridge. It's worth it! She should laugh like this forever! The flame of love scorched his heart, and the memory of the plantain bush was erased from his mind. The man who might have dueled him was dead and disappeared from this world forever. Why couldn't he love?Why not crawl under the coat, wake her up, and say to her boldly and clearly: "I love you, love you! Everything I am born with is for you! For you! For you!" He dare not. — just as he dared not fight a duel, just as he dared not kill himself, just as he dared not be a ruthless wolf. He dare not. He set up a barrier with his uniform. Her even snoring came in bursts, and he could imagine her sweet and peaceful sleeping position.She must have been asleep on her back, her holy bosom, which fascinated him, must have risen and fallen with her breath, her eyes with long lashes must have folded like two ink lines, her alluring One's lips must be slightly parted... Emboldened, he thought of the life lesson that Hao Laosi taught him for no reason.He turned over and lay down on the dry banana leaf, making up his mind to push aside the barrier he had set up. The meaning of life lies in action, he should act, he should crawl over and tell her everything in his heart. With trembling hands, he lifted the military coat, and the military coat slid off, half onto his lap and half onto her waist.Through the faint firelight, he saw that she had one hand on her chest, and her slightly raised chest was rising and falling rhythmically. He quietly passed by, passed by... He finally leaned against her and touched her holy body. Sit up and wake her up?Shout or not? He hesitated and pondered, like a great general deciding a war.He leaned against her body and didn't dare to move, as if he was afraid that a slight movement would trigger a big battle. No!No!You can't wake her up at such a time and say such things!Although Shang Wuqiang is dead, the grief must still be pressing in her heart.He is human and cannot take advantage of others. He should pour out his love to her when he arrives at Xinpingyang, Shangkan, or India. At that time, he will be noble and irreproachable. However, her breasts and her lips are so alluring, he really wants to get up and kiss her lightly, gently... He turned his body upwards, and there was a burst of gold stars flying in front of his eyes. He felt very strange, why was he so useless!Why can't you even control your own body? I thought of death for no reason. Perhaps he would die, lay quietly beside her and died.He hadn't had a good meal for three or four days, and he had a fever again, and was bruised all over his body from mosquito bites.He cooked porridge for her to eat the last rice. His life was no longer guaranteed. If he died here, the noble love he dreamed of would always be a secret that only belonged to him... He suddenly became brave, and the arm that was close to her body was raised, and it fell gently on her chest. He stuck his hand through the buttonhole of her military coat.This is so good, so good... He was too bold. After five years of thinking and hesitating, he finally took this proud step of a man.For this, he will forget all sufferings, and thank this war, thank Burma, thank this unfinished death crusade. He hugged her and fell asleep like a couple on their honeymoon. When Qu Ping woke up, she felt something cold pressing on her chest.She didn't expect that it was Qi Zhijun's stiff hand.She wanted to push it away and sit up.Unexpectedly, when she stretched out her hand, she touched Qi Zhijun's straight arm like a tree stick. The arm was very cold, as if she had touched an ice cube, and the blood all over her body turned cold for a moment; when she sat up and looked again, the hand on her arm It was actually on the third button of her military coat that was fastened tightly.She immediately understood that this male classmate died hugging her. The cold feeling became more intense, as if there was a kind of icy liquid that drenched her whole body from head to toe, cooling every drop of blood and every cell in her body rapidly... She cried silently, and the tears fell on Qi Zhijun's stiff palms and arms. She silently put his arm on the ground, put it beside her, bent down to pack his belongings. She didn't know how he died.Looking at his bruised body, she thought that he might have died from exhaustion and mosquito bites. She didn't expect that he gave her the last bit of rice, and she collapsed to death from hunger and disease.She thought he still had rice!When packing up the relics, I was still looking for the rice that didn't exist in the shack. Mi didn't find it, but found something wrapped in brown paper in the pocket of his military uniform.When she opened the kraft paper, she was shocked—— It was a picture of her when she was seventeen! She could hardly believe her eyes. She thought hard and recalled, but she couldn't remember where she had taken this photo, let alone when and where she had sent him a photo. She rubbed her teary eyes, looked again, yes, the girl with pigtails in the photo is her, she stopped at the age of seventeen, smiling sweetly at her now! She returned to the age of seventeen in her life, returned to Shanghai Minsheng Middle School, and returned to the years when the "August 13" Shanghai War broke out... She suddenly remembered! After the "August 13th", the students of Minsheng Middle School who participated in the field service group took a group photo under the school badge at the school gate, including her and him. She looked at the photo again, and sure enough, she saw a flaw in the photo: she only had one head in the photo, and the shoulders and part of the hair on the head were not photographed.Obviously, this is partially enlarged from the negative of the group photo.She also remembered that he rushed to wash and put the group photo at that time. Tears rolled down, wet his calm and serene face, and her eyes became hazy... So he loves her so much, loves her so much!He has followed her since the age of seventeen, accompanied her, and silently guarded her, whether it was on an isolated island in Shanghai or in Pinmanna in Myanmar.She remembered the diary he gave her on her 22nd birthday, and remembered the words in the diary: "Whether it is the severe winter of war or the peaceful spring, love is always with you!" This love is his love!Why didn't he say it earlier, why?Why is she so stupid!I didn't see his deep and holy love in this sentence!Why was she deceived by such a human-faced beast as Shang Wuqiang to lose her pure heart! "Zhijun! Zhijun!" She threw herself on his dead body and cried bitterly, kissing his cold face, forehead, and lips with trembling lips and hot tears... She knew that this kiss was what he had dreamed of in the past five years, what he had been dreaming about constantly... The seventeen-year-old spring is rippling around her, and the song that she has sung countless times and her classmates have sung countless times echoes in her ears: "Zhijun! Zhijun!" She was calling, wanting to wake him up from his slumber, and bring him back to the seventeen-year-old life, listening to her singing, listening to her laughing, singing and laughing with her. However, he would never wake up again, and he left all hope of life to his sun! She hugged him and passed out from crying. When she woke up, she kept her seventeen-year-old self by his side forever. She sealed the door of the shack with earth and stones. She picked up his gun and fired all the bullets in the gun against another dawn piled up in the forest. In the lingering sound of gunshots, she knelt down beside a pile of shiny bullet casings, and kowtowed to the shack where he slept forever, and kowtowed again... With his glasses, his gun and mug, and a big heart of love, she walked the last fifty miles to New Pacific. The road is long, long... She was dressed in rags, with blurry tears in her eyes, walking in a trance, each step was heavier and more difficult.On the road in front of her, the sunlight leaking from the tops of the branches and leaves fluctuated, as did her hope of life.She struggled through the light of life, leaving suffering and sorrow behind forever, and throwing it to the silent and vast history like a sea of ​​smoke.History only records the process and the ending, not the tears of a small person, she knows.She stopped crying, even if she collapsed and died immediately, she didn't cry anymore.Seeing so many people crossing the threshold of death and entering the eternal kingdom of heaven, she felt that she suddenly realized: death is not terrible in the first place, and people will die after a hundred years of life; death is just a part of life.The difficulty is not death, but how to face up to death. Only those who dare to face up to death can live tenaciously!She walked forward panting again, towards the sun she hoped for.But for some reason, the legs and feet became inflexible. The two legs seemed to be unable to support the weight of the body. The body kept leaning forward, and the hands always wanted to dig into the ground... She fell softly, pawing her hands on the ground and rubbing her knees on the ground, leaving two stubborn and tenacious traces of life on the road stepped by thousands of pairs of Chinese soldiers. She thought of the group of monkeys, and felt that she was becoming an ape, a monkey, and a fish; she was degenerating little by little, and finally turned into a cloud of white mist when the world first opened. Her body became very light, and she floated up in the mist.Floating, floating, she scattered the seeds of life and love to all the rivers, lakes and seas, and to every corner of the vast land... In August of the 31st year of the Republic of China, 3,800 remnants of the Fifth Army of the Burmese Expeditionary Force of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army arrived at the Tipon camp in India.It was later found out that 13,280 members of the army were missing or martyred during this long-distance transfer.Qu Ping, the captain of the Political Department, was rescued by Liu Jingchao, a second lieutenant and translator of the military department, 43 miles away from Xinpingyang, and survived.In November of the 32nd year, the expeditionary force attacked Yubang, kicking off the prelude to the counter-offensive.On March 30th, thirty-fourth year, the expeditionary force and the British Allied Forces joined forces at Chomke.On the same day, Qu Ping, a major and deputy director of the Political Training Department, was shot by stray bullets from remnants of the enemy and died at the age of 25.Thirty-three days later, the Allied forces of the United States and the Soviet Union joined forces on the Elbe River west of Berlin; at the same time, the Allied forces captured Berlin; on the same day, the Allied forces landed in Rangoon to carry out the final sweep of the remaining enemies in southern Burma.The death and disaster experienced by the 17,000 members of the Fifth Army of the Burmese Expeditionary Army finally received the reward of victory from the God of Justice.