Chapter Eleven: The Little Grandfather Makes His Entrance

July 23, 1938—Laojun Temple

On the mountain road, more than twenty soldiers of the Central Army were running for their lives. Every one of them was panting, yet none dared to stop. Just an hour earlier, they had been an elite company of over a hundred men, accompanied by the families of the officers they were escorting, forming a force of nearly two hundred. Now only a little more than twenty remained. They had abandoned all their goods and even the families in their care, yet still had not managed to shake off the Japanese.

“Company second-in-command, how much longer do we have to run?” a soldier asked the equally disheveled officer beside him.

“Don’t stop. None of you stop! The moment we do, we’re dead!” The officer cast a sidelong glance behind him. He could not see the Japanese, but the faint shouts and trembling branches could not be deceiving. The enemy was close—very close. He felt as though the God of Misfortune had taken a personal interest in him. Every time, he ended up in situations like this.

“Company second-in-command, look! Isn’t that a temple?” another soldier said, pointing toward Laojun Temple halfway up the mountain.

“Get your eyes checked, you little fool! Those are Taoist priests!” The officer pointed at several priests still sweeping the road at the foot of the mountain.

“Don’t run! You useless old bastards—how dare you run!” The soldier grew frantic when he saw the priests drop their brooms and dash toward the summit. They had been running for most of the day and had no idea where they were. They desperately wanted to find someone and ask for directions. There were Nationalist troops stationed somewhere nearby. If they were close enough, they might yet be saved.

“Stop yelling like ghosts. Listen to me. We’re going up the mountain too. If the Japanese refuse to let us go, we’ll head deeper into the mountains.” The officer studied the layers of dense forest above them, then used his Mauser pistol to nudge up the brim of his cap. He had clearly made up his mind to take the risk.

And so this miserable band of Central Army soldiers began making its way up the steps toward Laojun Temple—or rather, crawling. The sight made the Japanese squad leader, who had been following behind them the entire time, burst into laughter. He strongly suspected that Wu Ziyu, the man they had been searching for, was among them. Otherwise, he would never have refrained from using heavy weapons for so long. The three grenade dischargers in the grenade-launcher section could have wiped out those twenty-odd men in minutes.

The Japanese squad leader did not hurry after them. Instead, he ordered the puppet troops behind him to advance. The terrain here was so complicated that he had no intention of plunging in recklessly. Wasn’t that precisely why he had brought these local security troops along? Even if the enemy had an ambush waiting, he had nothing to fear.

Sure enough, before long, white smoke began rising from the dense woods on both sides. One puppet soldier after another collapsed. At the sight, the Japanese squad leader’s lips curled upward, and he immediately ordered the grenade-launcher section to open fire.

Boom—boom—

Two Type 89 grenades flew toward the woods where the white smoke had just appeared. Then, after two explosions, the world fell silent once more.

At that moment, the scouts sent to the hills on either flank returned. They confirmed that there were no signs of any hidden troops nearby. Even so, the Japanese squad leader did not lower his guard. He ordered the machine gunners to rake the stone steps ahead of the Central Army soldiers. After several bursts produced no reaction, he finally ordered the Japanese squad to follow.

They had no choice but to catch up. The puppet troops were moving far too slowly. Even now, they were still probing cautiously around a bend, showing no intention of continuing the pursuit. The ambushers’ marksmanship was merely “ordinary”; after firing for quite some time, they had only wounded two men. What was there to be afraid of?

In a concealed position beside Laojun Temple, Li Yunlong and Wang Yue were each observing the Japanese through binoculars. With Laojun Temple’s defensive system at their disposal, the entire Independent Detachment—apart from the weapons workshop—had already entered position. The firepower of a single Japanese squad was utterly insignificant before them.

“Are the men at those two positions all right?” Li Yunlong asked with some concern as he watched the places struck by the Japanese grenades. The enemy grenade dischargers fired quickly and accurately. Their gunners had barely emptied their ammunition racks before coming under counterfire. This was not an easy battle to fight.

“They’re fine. There are prepared positions over there, with foxholes right beside them. They’re protected.” Wang Yue was completely unconcerned. The forest on the mountain was exceedingly dense, and the Japanese grenades had exploded in the treetops. Blocked by the trees, very few fragments could reach the positions where the gunners were stationed. The Japanese squad leader might have looked experienced, but he lacked a proper understanding of mountain warfare. He was still a little short of the mark.

“Aren’t we making a bit too much of this? We’re not attacking a county town.” Li Yunlong’s eyes shone with envy. He had seen the ammunition issued to the troops, and it alone was enough for an entire brigade to fight a battle of moderate size. The New First Regiment could not have used that much in a whole year. This was a classic case of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

“Strategically, we must look down on the enemy; tactically, we must take them seriously. We can never afford to be careless.” Wang Yue put on a solemn expression. He certainly could not tell Li Yunlong that he did not really know how to fight either, and that his only method was to blanket the enemy with firepower.

Before long, the Japanese squad entered the ideal ambush position. Without hesitation, Wang Yue fired a red signal flare into the sky. Whatever else happened, a proper sense of ceremony had to be observed.

The flare had not yet reached its highest point when the attack began. Since the Japanese and puppet troops were all on the steps, artillery was unnecessary. Even so, the force had ten heavy machine guns, nine light machine guns, and more than a hundred rifles. To increase the density of fire, the riflemen had been temporarily rearmed with Mauser 1884 rifles.

The attack came swiftly and ended just as swiftly. Thousands of rounds swept across the steps. The Japanese squad had no cover whatsoever, and the outcome was never in doubt. In less than a minute, every Japanese soldier—apart from a few who had fallen from the cliffs—had been turned into a corpse. Blood pooled together and ran down the stone steps, a horrifying sight.

Jia Youfu, commander of the training detachment, immediately seized a metal megaphone and called out to the puppet troops, who had been terrified into stupor, ordering them to surrender. Most of the puppet soldiers in Heyuan County’s security regiment had once served in the same unit. They had surrendered as an organized force after being surrounded during the Battle of Xinkou, and all knew one another. Already frightened, they surrendered their weapons at the first assurance that their lives would be spared.

Before long, the Central Army officer who had been pursued by the Japanese was brought before Wang Yue. A slightly sunken glabella, a faint vertical crease between the brows, mismatched eyes, straight eyebrows, earlobes turned toward the mouth, a square forehead, phoenix-shaped eyes, and a lean nose without much flesh—

Wasn’t this “Teacher Zhang”?

Why did he seem to attract characters from films and television like a magnet? And their little young master was already a lieutenant by now?

“Greetings, sir!” Meng Fanle’s legs were still trembling. Whether from exhaustion or terror, no one could say. By rights, he ought to have been rejoicing at surviving such a disaster, but he could not feel happy in the slightest. He had been escorting the family of a senior government official back to Tongguan. He had survived, but the family had been left in Japanese hands. There was no way to explain that away. If he returned to his original unit, he would certainly be punished. Yet where else could he go? Surely not to this strange-looking force standing before him?

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