The howling night wind swirled violently through the mountains, the figures locked in pursuit and combat surging forward across the terrain. In the darkness, with visibility poor and the ground treacherous, the man giving chase from behind stumbled and fell, tumbling across the grassy slope, but scrambled back up and continued the pursuit with a shout. Before long, the two of them, grappling with each other, tumbled together into a stream running through the hillside.
The chaotic clash of bodies and blows felt like nothing more than instinct built up over years of conditioning. The pursuing soldier had lost his steel blade somewhere along the way but kept swinging his fists regardless, while on the other side, the once-stooped night-soil worker now wore a gaze every bit as savage, as though he had returned to the northern lands, acting out the countless imagined moments of retaliation he’d once fantasized about, should his enemies ever discover him. Snatching up a wooden club from the water, he swung it hard, striking the soldier across the shoulder, then across the head and face, again and again, until the young soldier lay bloodied and broken by the streambank.
Though he himself had already taken several blade wounds, Tang Minjie stood there in the moonlit stream, breathing hard and fast.
Had this happened on level ground, he would have stood no chance at all against his opponent—a few strikes of the blade would likely have been enough to kill him. But in the desperate scramble of the chase, his familiarity with the terrain had given him the edge that led to this outcome.
A cold wind blew through the night. He looked down toward the base of the mountain, and in his mind rose the image of the two Huaxia Army soldiers, hurled high into the air by the methane explosion… He’d killed his own people…
At this moment, he felt a faint sense of confusion himself, not entirely sure why he’d run up into the mountains at all. Looking down below, he saw that the farmstead and village had both already lit up with torches, people gathering in the darkness…
He stood in a daze for a while.
Then he went to check on the condition of the soldier who had fallen by the stream, pulled out a rope and bound the man’s hands, retrieved the steel blade, and dragged him forward as they continued on. …
Down below the mountain, at the No. 223 Agricultural Research Institute, the small handful of security personnel had already gathered, and the rest of the staff had picked up whatever knives, spears, and farming tools they could find, converging toward the composting yard.
The middle-aged soldier, eyes bloodshot, checked on his fallen companions. One had been killed instantly in the explosion; the other still showed some faint signs of life—though, to be precise, he too was already fading fast. A doctor from the institute with some rudimentary medical knowledge had come over and was doing what he could.
Chen Cirang arrived to check on the situation, and the middle-aged soldier introduced himself: he was, it turned out, the leader of the work team stationed in Wenpu county, a man named Fang Lu, holding a rank within the military that was, at the very least, well beyond anything Chen Cirang himself could touch.
Realizing that the man accused of harboring the landowner who had now fled—Tang Minjie—was clearly no simple figure, Chen Cirang, sensing something was off about the whole affair, offered a few words in his defense, suggesting there might be some misunderstanding involved. Fang Lu, pointing at his dead companion, flew into a rage: “You call this a misunderstanding? You call this a misunderstanding!?”
Chen Cirang knew perfectly well that Tang Minjie’s background wasn’t simple, but he certainly didn’t dare talk back any further under the circumstances, and had no choice but to accept the man’s directions. “You’re local—call together everyone you can, guard every possible escape route around here, we must catch him. I’ll be conducting the interrogation personally.”
The villagers, too, had already begun gathering.
Fang Lu walked over to his other companion; “Cripple” came over as well. “Xiao Yu went after him first thing, still no word from him—I’m afraid he’s run into trouble. And… with this many outsiders showing up now, is this going to get out?”
“Anyone coming back from intelligence work isn’t easy to deal with—we’d expected as much going in. But if something’s happened to him, why didn’t he run toward the crowds? Why didn’t he call out for help?” Fang Lu, eyes red, seemed somewhat lost himself at this point. He looked around, thought for a moment, then said, “If it draws a crowd, so be it. Everyone searches together, we all go up there together, and we do everything we can… to kill him on the spot.”
The group nodded, gripping their weapons tightly, and began making their way up the mountain. …
The mountain ridge behind Little Ye Village wasn’t small. Tang Minjie, dragging the Huaxia Army soldier along with him, pressed onward deeper into the hills. After a while, the man’s head lolling, the soldier gradually began to regain some measure of consciousness. Tang Minjie held the steel blade to him, forcing him further into the depths of the mountain.
The young soldier’s head was bloodied, his consciousness not entirely clear; Tang Minjie’s own state was much the same. This sudden turn of events had shattered the dreamlike peace he’d experienced over the past half-year. He wasn’t even entirely certain what he ought to do next, how to go about it, or even why he was doing any of this at all.
He shouldn’t have gotten involved in any of this in the first place, really.
The night before, hiding in the waste bucket, wounded, that Squire Qiu had made accusations against the Huaxia Army work team that had piqued his curiosity. Badly injured, with evidence that was frankly thin at best, the man had said certain things that Tang Minjie hadn’t known whether to believe, so he’d simply, almost unconsciously, made a few arrangements and waited for the other side to walk into the trap.
Had they come openly and aboveboard, everything would have proceeded properly—someone would have come to question him formally, to negotiate. He’d assumed that was the process that should have followed.
Every reaction had been purely instinctive. He was simply too well trained.
So much so that when they came to kill him at his own doorstep, Tang Minjie had barely known how to respond at all.
The scene of the methane pit exploding, killing two men, had struck yet another heavy blow to his mind. What had it all been for? How had things suddenly come to this?
At one point, he heard the soldier ahead of him coughing violently, spitting up blood, then cursing through gritted teeth: “…Why? Why…? Why, for some bastard like that, why?! If you’ve got the guts, kill me! Kill me!”
Tang Minjie remained silent, but after a moment said, “I’m sorry…”
“You won’t live through this,” the man said. “Do you know that? You won’t survive this… do you know they were heroes, my brothers? They fought and bled against the Jin dogs in real battle. What are you, some kind of coward! Getting exiled here to haul manure—that’s basically kneeling down to the enemy, isn’t it! You coward! I’m telling you, you won’t live through this—”
Tang Minjie pushed him forward with the blade. Part of what the man said, he found himself agreeing with.
“But why… why did you people do something like this…”
“We… we did it for the good of the Huaxia Army…”
“No.” Tang Minjie shook his head. “You forced people to sign land deeds under duress, then killed their entire families. Once the land reform is complete, you’ll cash in on those deeds—and there’ve been other dealings on the side too.”
“That’s slander! You have no proof—”
“It won’t stay hidden. This kind of thing is easy enough to uncover, once someone actually investigates. Fabricating temporary land deeds for the record means you’ve got friends of your own within the government. But which lands used to belong to the Qiu family—plenty of locals know that. You can fool outsiders, but once an investigation has a direction to follow, it won’t take long to unravel…”
“…”
“And besides… you people coming here to kill me is practically a confession in itself. How did you people end up like this?”
“…” The night wind blew across the ridge, stirring the leaves in the forest. The soldier fell silent for a moment. “…What right do you have to lecture me, you traitor who sold out his own comrades?”
“I don’t mind that you people killed someone—even if it was a bit extreme, that’s fine, I never meant to interfere,” Tang Minjie said. “But the Huaxia Army can’t be allowed to become this—using public office for private gain…”
“Using public office for private gain?” The young soldier laughed, tilting his head slightly. “This world—we’re the ones who fought and won it.”
Tang Minjie looked at him.
“My brothers fought for it!” the man said. “We won it, fought to the death for it—do you have any idea how many brothers of ours died young, how many were left crippled, how many left entire families behind? Do you have any idea, you coward? Do you think all that glamour and prosperity in Chengdu today belongs to someone else? Do you know how many of my brothers have family members who got sick and couldn’t even go see a doctor, couldn’t afford proper medicine? Do you know that some of us go to Chengdu, and a whole year’s stipend isn’t even enough to touch a girl’s hand?”
Tang Minjie said nothing.
“Sounds crude, doesn’t it? Coward? But what did all of us fight and risk our lives for? To live a better life—isn’t that fair enough? We fought to the death so our families could hold their heads high in the big cities—isn’t that fair? I joined the army in my teens, took wounds, went hungry—I want a pretty girl of my own, isn’t that fair? Especially for the brothers who’ve already died—don’t their families, their children, deserve a future that’s every bit as good as anyone else’s? What’s the point of being a soldier? In the old days, everyone who joined the army did it to trade their life for money, for a future—only the Huaxia Army… we’re the strongest army there’s ever been, in all of history! But we don’t get the best of anything!”
“…The army already has arrangements in place for wounded and disabled soldiers—doctors, care facilities, provisions for widows and children. I know the higher-ups have made arrangements for all this. Don’t try to twist things.”
“Sure, there are arrangements—but they’re just ordinary ones. Ordinary housing, ordinary schooling. Have you ever actually been to Chengdu, taken a look at those people over there? They’ve got everything good—all sorts of novelties, fine clothes, rich food. Do you know what it’s like to bring the children of your fallen comrades into the city and stand there looking at all those nice things, knowing we can’t afford any of it? Do you know what it’s like to watch your own comrade, missing a leg, stand there knowing the same thing?”
“So that justifies corruption?”
“Our—our commander… he’s raising nineteen children left behind by fallen comrades. We give him the best we can, we spend the money on this—with a clear conscience!”
“So…” Tang Minjie paused. “This wasn’t just about this land reform, either—you people were already taking money before this. How?”
The soldier blinked, startled for a moment, then finally gave a bitter laugh. “What the others in the work team said was right—buyouts aren’t the answer. Leave these landowners alive, and sooner or later they’ll be working behind our backs, digging at our roots out of spite. Killing them is the only way to settle things once and for all. And their land, we sell off to the higher-ups at the lowest possible price—they’re dead anyway, no use to them either way. Do this once, and everyone gets to live a good life, nobody gets hurt. You coward, don’t you get it? Once the land’s evenly divided, with no one left behind holding a grudge, our Huaxia Army spends the least money possible, and every hero’s family gets to live well—that’s the best possible outcome, the very best outcome there could be—”
By the end, his voice had dropped, coming out almost as a low, seething growl. Tang Minjie closed his eyes, the sigh in his throat coming out almost like a groan.
The two of them walked on for a while longer, coming to a stop at a cave-like hollow in the mountainside, sitting down on the ground. Tang Minjie’s head swam with exhaustion, and so did the soldier’s, but after a moment of silence, the man’s bloodied eyes turned toward him.
“You killed my brothers—there’s no way you’re walking away from this alive…”
He said this, and after a pause, added, “You know, we weren’t even planning to kill you at first. We wanted to talk, we were actually willing to… just work with you. But it ended up like this…”
After another pause: “Where did you hide Squire Qiu?”
Tang Minjie sat there in a daze, then sighed. “…Not at the institute.”
“Still at the night-soil station, then?”
“…” Tang Minjie looked at him, not entirely sure whether he felt admiration or pity for the man’s persistence, but finally allowed himself a mocking smile. “He was too badly wounded. He was hiding in one of the waste buckets. He died partway through telling me what happened.”
“…” The young soldier’s mouth fell open. “You did that on purpose…”
“Mm…” A sigh. “I really did think there might be a good outcome to this. I thought… it was practically guaranteed…”
“Heh… heh heh…” The soldier gave a mocking laugh of his own, then said again, “You killed my brothers—there’s no way you’re walking away from this alive.”
Outside the cave, the night wind kept blowing, and faint sounds could be heard drifting up from below the mountain. The two of them rested for a good while like this. Tang Minjie made no further move, but the young soldier hadn’t given up either, occasionally speaking up. “Why don’t you run?”
Then, a while later: “What exactly did you do out there, anyway?”
Tang Minjie ignored him, only speaking up once more, when the soldier repeated his curse of “you killed my brothers,” answering slowly: “The word you’re looking for is ‘comrades.'”
The young soldier seemed to freeze for a moment, then said, deliberately, word by word: “…And you think you deserve to use that word?”
Tang Minjie fell silent after that.
Time passed, drop by drop, carried on the wind. Down below, the search was gradually spreading closer. Tang Minjie leaned back against the cave wall, no longer intending to move at all. His thoughts churned in confusion, drifting back over the calm of the past half-year—but the moment he’d allowed even the faintest wicked impulse to surface, it had ended up killing two more people. He was aware that the young soldier behind him was quietly working the rope binding his wrists against the rock wall; he knew he ought to stop him, but simply couldn’t be bothered to speak up.
He even dozed off for a moment, ever so slightly.
At some point in the night, sounds began drawing close from outside. Tang Minjie opened his eyes, looked over at the soldier across from him, and raised his long blade. “Don’t say a word.” But the soldier, his bonds not yet fully undone, sprang to his feet, letting out a loud cry: “Over here—!”
The shout tore through the night sky. The hollow they were in was formed by a recess in the rock, and the two of them weren’t far apart—Tang Minjie’s hand moved almost without thought, and the blade was already pressed against the man’s throat. But the young man laughed. “Come on, then—right here—go ahead and do it! If you’ve got the guts, kill me!”
Tang Minjie didn’t move.
Not far off in the darkness, the middle-aged soldier had already come running—no firearms here, only a bow in his hand. Tang Minjie held the young soldier in front of him with the blade, but the man struggled violently against him: “I’m not afraid to die! Go ahead, do it! Coward! Do it—Chief Fang, Squire Qiu’s already dead, killed by his own kind in a falling-out among thieves. This coward doesn’t have the guts to do it—kill him, kill him!”
Fang Lu drew his bow, eyes red, staring across the distance. “Two of my brothers are dead… who are you?”
“Kill him, Chief Fang, before the others get here…”
The young soldier struggled on, utterly unafraid of death. Tang Minjie let out a sigh and released him. Holding his blade, he looked across at Fang Lu and shook his head. “Why did you people have to do something like this?”
Overhead, the sky was bright with moon and stars, but he thought to himself, it no longer mattered. He’d decided to stop right here.
The peace of these past six months flashed through his mind, but it all felt swiftly distant now. What filled his thoughts, more than anything, was the bloody, howling wind and snow of the north, the endless anguish that had clung to him ever since his sister’s death. Death, to him, felt like something that had long been overdue.
[Author’s note referencing a personal matter, not part of the story, omitted from translation.]