Chapter 1: Waiting Online

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...A good many old hands online keep saying: If wealth comes, I shall indulge myself; if poverty comes, I shall change with the times; if beauty tempts me, I shall yield; if they do not beat me, I shall confess; if they beat me, I shall cry. I will swallow no hardship and do no work.

Life is no more than thirty thousand days. If I can live one day, I will live one day.

The whole point is this: once I have lain flat completely, no one can exploit me or make a fool of me.

Reform the workplace? Hell, I will not even go to work. As long as I do not think about buying a house, buying a car, starting a business, getting married, or having children, life will be wonderfully carefree.

But damn it, can someone tell me what to do now that even lying flat has become a luxury? Or what am I supposed to do if, all of a sudden, I no longer feel like lying flat?

Waiting online. It is rather urgent...

Excerpted from Hu Biao’s collected diaries, Nonsense...

As these thoughts flashed through Hu Biao’s mind with lightning speed, the situation at that moment was this:

Some forty or fifty meters ahead of a position thick with the smoke and stench of blood, a tiny enemy tank was slowly trundling toward them.

A dozen or so paces behind the tank came around forty enemy soldiers in uniforms the color of dried dung.

They carried Type 38 rifles fitted with bayonets, each rifle almost taller than the men themselves, advancing in groups of two or three.

Hu Biao could not identify the exact model of the tiny tank before him, because he was not a proper military enthusiast.

Still, he estimated that the thing was under four meters long, about one and a half meters wide, and roughly as tall as his own six-foot frame. It did not even carry a small-caliber tank gun, only one light machine gun and one heavy machine gun.

In the modern world, this contraption would have been about the size of one of those oversized electric scooters for old men.

It had no communications equipment whatsoever. When the infantry advancing alongside it wanted to speak with the crew, they first had to smash the tank’s hull with a rifle butt.

Only after the crew heard the commotion would someone stick his head out of the tank, allowing the two sides to talk.

In short, after seeing modern main battle tanks weighing dozens of tons and packed with advanced electronics, even a dog from the modern world would shake its head at this pint-sized tank.

And yet this same contraption—one that would make even a dog shake its head—had driven the few dozen men still breathing on the position nearly to despair.

They all knew that once the thing reached the position, it would tear their defensive line apart completely. But after trying countless methods and losing many men, they had achieved not the slightest result.

Yes! Not the slightest result.

The machine gunner known as Big Bucktooth, a man who usually bragged that his Czech light machine gun could hit anything he pointed it at—if he aimed for a man’s left eye, he would never miss into the right—was now hammering the trigger in a frenzy.

Big Bucktooth had not been boasting. The bullets he sent forth were accurate and vicious.

Almost every round struck the tank’s outer shell, but apart from throwing off sparks, the 7.92 by 57-millimeter Mauser pointed bullets could not penetrate the thing’s thin armor.

The same was true of the 7.92-millimeter round-nosed bullets fired from the Hanyang rifles scattered across the position, their bolts being worked again and again. They had even less chance of piercing it.

Of course, the desperate fire from the Czech light machine gun and the Hanyang rifles was not entirely useless.

At the very least, the ringing impacts kept the tank crew from driving any faster, while forcing the enemy infantry to stay farther away lest they be struck by ricocheting bullets.

But what about a heavy machine gun? Could that penetrate this little tank?

The company’s sole Maxim heavy machine gun that was even barely serviceable had long since been blown into scattered parts by a single enemy grenade-launcher round.

Its main gunner, a heavily bearded man from Lu Province who could never feel full even after three bowls of coarse rice, yet could run like the wind while carrying the heavy Maxim, now lay blood-soaked beside the gun position with his assistant gunner, nicknamed Little Bride.

Neither man was dead yet. Their chests rose and fell faintly; they were still breathing. It was simply that no one had the time to go and save them.

No one alive on the position had any time. They might even be dead themselves in the next second. Everyone was preparing to plug the breach with his own life, trying to halt the advance of that little machine.

The only difference was whose name the company commander called first. Whoever was sent to fill the gap would die a little sooner.

As the enemy tank advanced, both of its machine guns kept firing furiously. Two serpents of flame swept back and forth before it. Anyone caught by them died on the spot.

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Adding to that, the enemy soldiers farther back would occasionally stop and fire.

The bullets they sent flying seemed to have eyes, striking with ruthless accuracy. Every attempt to destroy the tiny tank ended in failure.

Each wave of brothers sent charging out died as a wave. Three groups had already been wiped out.

The stretch between the position and the tank was now covered with the bodies of men who had long since died. No one knew who would go as the fourth group, or whether they could blow up the iron tortoise...

******

Young Company Commander Feng Yaozu flung away his military cap. He no longer cared about the hairstyle he usually groomed until it shone with hair oil; now it was as disheveled as a chicken’s nest.

With his eyes bloodshot, he glanced at the few men remaining on the position and called out another name, like the King of Hell summoning souls:

“Third Platoon Commander, you’re up. The rest of you provide cover.”

“Damn your mothers, you little devils! Anyone in Third Platoon who can still breathe, follow me!”

The Third Platoon commander, nicknamed Little Henan, instinctively swallowed hard. Then he threw back his head and shouted at the top of his lungs.

Why had he swallowed instinctively?

Because this old army loafer—who supposedly had begun soldiering and taking army rations during the First Zhili-Fengtian War, and who was always shouting that the bullet meant to kill him had not yet been invented—probably knew that things would not end well today.

Knowing that, however, did not stop him. Clutching three grenades bound together, he leapt from the position and took the lead.

Hunched low and constantly changing direction, he moved swiftly toward the tiny tank.

The four men remaining in Third Platoon gritted their teeth and charged out after him.

Under ordinary circumstances, at a moment like this, the men on the position could have thrown a volley of grenades, raising a curtain of dust to conceal the attackers as they approached the tank.

But the battle had reached this point, and the position’s last three grenades were already clutched in Little Henan’s arms.

Where could they find any more to throw for cover?

Fortunately, amid the dense storm of bullets, Little Henan’s figure remained quick and nimble as he advanced, earning admiration from anyone who saw him.

Unfortunately, no matter how swift and agile his feet were, they could not outrun bullets. After covering only some seventy or eighty feet, a burst from one of the tank’s heavy machine guns struck him in the head.

In an instant, his skull erupted in a great cloud of blood and vanished entirely.

The body without a head continued stumbling forward for several more steps before collapsing face-first onto the ground.

It kicked up a towering cloud of dust, for the earth before the position had been softened by repeated artillery bombardment until it was almost mud.

One could easily sink a foot into it past the ankle.

Perhaps, despite always fighting other squads and platoons over food, weapons, and ammunition, Little Henan had treated the men under him exceptionally well in ordinary times.

Seeing this, the few men from Third Platoon who had charged out after him slowed involuntarily.

With voices thick with tears, they cried out mournfully, “Platoon Commander!” Then they rushed straight toward Little Henan’s corpse.

But that brief hesitation gave one of the tank’s light machine guns an opening. It swept a full magazine across them.

They were cut down where they stood, none likely to survive.

Thus the fourth group sent forward to destroy the tank was wiped out once again.

And in that short span of time, the tiny tank had advanced still farther. It was now barely thirty meters from the position, and the fire from its light and heavy machine guns had become all the more deadly.

In the blink of an eye, Big Bucktooth was cut down, and the position’s only suppressive fire fell silent.

Seeing this, Company Commander Feng Yaozu’s eyes turned scarlet.

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He turned once more to look over the position, wanting to send out a fifth group to destroy the tank. But of the full company he had once commanded, only a quarter remained.

His trusted guards and subordinate officers were all dead. Even his younger cousin had been killed. It seemed that the unit he had painstakingly built would be buried here in its entirety today.

Overcome by grief, and with death already in his heart, he charged from the position himself.

He rolled across the ground and seized the bundle of grenades lying beside Little Henan’s headless corpse. Then, using the shell craters scattered before the position, he pushed rapidly onward.

To give their commander even the slightest chance of success, the men on the position worked the bolts of their Hanyang rifles and fired with all their strength.

They no longer cared that they had only a few rounds of ammunition left.

In the end, when the commander was still seven or eight meters from the enemy’s tiny tank, a blossom of blood burst from his left thigh.

His movements as he approached had been tactically sound, but the enemy infantry behind him had still managed to hit him in the leg.

The shot sent him staggering to the ground. Even so, once down, he continued rolling toward the tank while pulling the fuse on the bundle of grenades.

The wooden-handled grenades produced by the Jinling Arsenal had a fuse delay of six to eight seconds.

Thus, before the bundle could explode, the tracks of the slowly advancing tank had already rolled onto the commander’s body, crushing upward from his lower abdomen.

At the moment the tracks passed over him, the young commander—said to have been born the pampered son of a wealthy family, forever dressed in an immaculate uniform, his waist cinched tight by his equipment belt—let out a terrible scream. His head and legs jerked upward at either end of his body like a shrimp.

It was easy to imagine the agony he was enduring.

Then a violent explosion erupted beneath the tiny tank.

With a harsh metallic crunch, the enemy tank’s track snapped, and the machine finally stopped moving. But apart from the commander’s legs, still clad in gleaming cavalry boots, nothing remained of him.

“Brothers, follow me! Kill the little devils and avenge the commander!”

The highest-ranking officer left on the position—the deputy company commander, widely known to be greedy and lustful—shouted this, then charged out with a C96 pistol in one hand and a saber in the other.

At his cry, the thirty-odd men remaining on the position followed one after another, some carrying bayoneted rifles, others brandishing sabers.

Unfortunately, as the impending bayonet fight began, the enemy did not, as people online claimed, uniformly unload their rifles before crossing blades.

Only around thirty of the enemy soldiers began unloading their weapons in preparation for the bayonet fight. The rest stayed where they were and continued firing. On one flank, a Type 11 light machine gun never stopped shooting.

Amid a violent crackle of gunfire, another six or seven of the charging men were cut down. But those who remained did not even spare a glance for their fallen brothers. They continued charging forward with all their might.

It was at that moment that Hu Biao and the others, carrying or shouldering food, finally reached the position through the artillery fire. The brutal scene they had glimpsed throughout their approach now lay starkly before their eyes.

Even though this was not the first time Hu Biao had witnessed such a hellish spectacle, his stomach and chest still churned violently.

Before he could vomit, someone kicked him in the lower back. He stumbled from the blow, but the shock brought him back to his senses.

When he turned, the old platoon commander’s usually kindly expression was nowhere to be seen. Eyes wide as if he meant to devour someone, the old man roared at him:

“Hu Biao, you spineless fools, follow me! Otherwise I’ll hack you to death myself!”

With that, the old man—who was said to have served in the army for more than twenty years without ever fighting a battle—raised a cleaver and strode out of the position.

Though his figure had grown quite old, it was filled in that moment with an indescribable resolve.

And under such circumstances, Hu Biao, still carrying a shoulder pole laden with noodles, could not help recalling the words at the beginning, along with the unbelievable and utterly screwed-up experiences that had befallen him over the past several days...