War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1616 Family Instructions and the Future (Added for Li Guang Bird Shooting Master, thank you for the reward.)

"Brother Wei, what are your plans for the future?"

In the west wing, Li Sui'an helped change the topic to divert Zhao Jinyu's inner confusion and sadness of losing her Anti-Japanese Allied Forces comrades.

"Later? Which later?"

Wei Ran asked, the sacrifice of the Sun sisters was also a blow to him, and he also needed to divert the despair in his heart - even though he knew he would win in the end.

"Drive away the devils."

Li Sui'an suddenly spoke with a Sichuan accent, "After we defeat the Japanese, what are you going to do?"

"Go home, get married and have kids. Get a wife who's right beside you and have a house full of kids."

Wei Ran gave a joking answer and then asked, "What about you? Do you plan to be a soldier forever?"

"What the hell! Why do I have to be a soldier for the rest of my life?"

Li Sui'an sighed, suppressing the accent that came out subconsciously, "I will go home immediately after driving away the Japanese, back to Zigong. I miss home."

"What do you plan to do after you go back?" Wei Ran asked softly, "What do you plan to do after you go back? Open a pawn shop?"

"Open a pawn shop?"

Li Sui'an was silent for a moment, "I don't have the vision of my old man. If I open a pawn shop, I will lose a lot of money.

After I return, I plan to open a grain store and call it Cang Bing Zhai. If there is a disaster in the future, I will distribute grain, as much as I can, to save as many people as possible!"

In Wei Ran's silence, Li Sui'an shuddered uncontrollably, "After the dam burst last year, I saw with my own eyes the disaster victims swapping their children with each other and eating them. They were exchanging their children for cannibalism, the kind of cannibalism in the books!

  What is written in the book is just what is written in the book! How can you dare to eat people?

do you know?

Even if they were the exchanged children, the adults were reluctant to eat them and gave them to the children who stayed behind. Those children survived by eating the flesh of their brothers and sisters."

Hearing this, Wei Ran shuddered uncontrollably, and his mind couldn't help but recall the tragic experience in Leningrad.

Hunger, eating people out of hunger, this is beyond the scope of whether it should be condemned. At that time, condemnation has long been meaningless.

"That damn Jiang"

Zhao Jinyu changed her tone helplessly in the middle of cursing, "Damn God!"

"When the country is in trouble, it should first defend itself against foreign humiliation; when the country is prosperous, it should trade with all directions."

Li Sui'an sighed and said, "This is our Li family's ancestral precept. Now is the time when the country is in trouble. According to the Li family's ancestral precept, I must resist foreign humiliation.

Once these devils are driven away, all industries will be in decline and the people will be in hardship. If I am still alive and if the Li family still has a surplus, I will open a grain store and save as many people as I can."

"What is your Li family trying to do?" Wei Ran asked deliberately.

"What's the point? If the nest is destroyed, all the eggs will be intact."

  Li Sui'an smiled and said, "If the damn Japanese invaders really invade Sichuan, will the people of Sichuan survive? Are we going to hand over our Lijia Cangbingzhai's foundation of more than a hundred years to the Japanese invaders?

I bother!

If that day ever comes, I would rather burn down our Li family's assets and all the salt wells in Zigong with my own hands, and not even leave them a drop of brine!"

"You will return to Zigong alive and open a grain store."

Wei Ran said with great confidence, "I might even go to your grain store to buy food when the time comes."

"If that day ever comes, I won't charge you any money no matter how much rice or flour you buy!"

Li Sui'an said with an unstoppable smile, "After we drive away the Japanese, I will go back and open a grain store!"

"What about you?" Wei Ran raised his chin towards Zhao Jinyu.

"I haven't thought about it, and I'm too lazy to think about it."

Zhao Jinyu lay on the kang, lit a cigarette, and said very straightforwardly, "Kill the devils. I want to kill the devils now when I eat, sleep, and dream. As for the rest, I can think about it slowly after I kill the devils. I may not live to see that day."

"What if we can live to that day?" Wei Ran asked as he also lit a cigarette.

"Let me think about it"

Zhao Jinyu looked at the ceiling and pondered for a while before saying happily, "Then I'll find a pasture to raise horses. When the time comes, I'll ask my brother-in-law to ask a matchmaker to find me a big-handed, big-assed, and sexy woman who can give birth to eight or ten sons!"

Speaking of this, Zhao Jinyu became interested and blurted out a shocking piece of information without hesitation, "Brother Wei, you definitely don't know yet, right?"

"Know what?" Wei Ran asked curiously.

"My brother-in-law has a youngest sister who has a crush on Brother Li."

Before Li Sui'an could stop her, Zhao Jinyu winked and said, "I followed my brother-in-law back home once before and fell in love with him. My sister sent me messages several times asking me to ask Brother Li what he thought."

"There's more to this?" Wei Ran became interested. "Tell me quickly, what's the girl's name and what does she look like? Wangchuan, do you like her?"

"Call Ma Qinghe!"

Zhao Jinyu rushed to say, "My sister told me that she studied in Peking for several years! It seems that she was a classmate of Brother Li."

“At most, I can only be considered an alumnus”

Li Sui'an quickly said, "In fact, they are not from the same school. There are several years between them."

A junior high school girl?

Wei Ran muttered something, and asked happily, "Do you like her?"

"She is a progressive young woman, she won't follow me back to Zigong to open a grain store."

Li Sui'an made a particularly frank joke, then looked out the window, and then leaned close to Wei Ran's ear and whispered, "Brother Wei, let's put aside the love affair, and go to the staff officer for advice. Miss Ma wrote to me before saying that she was going to Yan'an and was planning to invite the company commander to go with her. Do you think this is reliable?"

"Extension"

When Wei Ran heard the name of this place, his heart skipped a beat. He actually knew the correct answer to this question!

However, when he subconsciously wanted to say it, he asked back inexplicably, "What did the company commander say?"

"My brother-in-law doesn't even dare to fart"

Zhao Jinyu came over and whispered, "Their family is somewhat related to the Ma family army. If he dares to go, the Ma family's master will definitely twist his head."

"Let's talk about something else." Li Sui'an saw someone walking outside and immediately called the two brothers to change the subject. At the same time, he raised his voice and said, "Don't always talk about me, Jin Yu, is there really nothing between you and that girl from the Yang family?"

"Why are you dragging it onto me?"

Zhao Jinyu said angrily, "I don't like Miss Shiyi. How can she live with her tiny arms and legs?"

"You are really a wild boar that cannot eat fine bran"

Wei Ran cursed with a smile, but at the same time he nodded towards Li Sui'an.

Li Sui'an's eyes seemed to have found the answer, and he nodded slightly towards Wei Ran in response. His face, which still retained a scholarly air, showed nothing.

“Why can’t I eat fine bran?”

Zhao Jinyu didn't notice the two people's "flirting" and continued to look at the ceiling and said nonsense, "Look at Shiyi's body like a little bean. I don't think she can catch a grasshopper on the grassland with a rope, let alone a horse. How can I be interested in her?"

  There will be a time for you, a silly boy, to slap your thighs.

Wei Ran grinned and was too lazy to persuade her. Even if Yang Shiyi was in the future, she would still be a real beauty. Moreover, just by reading the letter, we can tell that she is a cultured person.

  Back then, the little girl even sacrificed her reputation to save the three of them. Now Zhao Jinyu is being picky, and he really deserves it.

Wei Ran couldn't help but be distracted for a moment, then he smiled bitterly and shook his head. Only then did he realize that Zhao Jinyu was not telling the truth.

If Hu Bazhi had said those words just now, it would be more or less reasonable, but Zhao Jinyu is no rude person.

  In this case, he still said so. Maybe he didn't want to delay the girl from the Yang family.

Helplessly looking at Zhao Jinyu who was still "slandering" Yang Shiyi, Wei Ran was too lazy to listen to the nonsense of this scheming boy. He left the west wing on the pretext of having something to do, took his camera and two silver dollars and went to find Lao Liu from the kitchen team, and began to prepare for the evening's reconnaissance activities.

When the moon climbed up to the treetops, the pistol team led by Ma Jintao himself quietly left the base on horseback and ran a long way along the flooded Yellow River in the night, but they were not in a hurry to cross the river.

This time, this cavalry squad did not even light their lanterns; their stirrups, sabers, and even horseshoes were wrapped in a layer of wet rags to avoid making too much noise.

Wei Ran also made preparations in advance. In addition to hiding some food in the lunch box, he also begged Lao Liu from the kitchen to help him cook a large pot of cornmeal and wild vegetable porridge with salt and a large pot of boiling water in exchange for helping to take a photo and two silver dollars, and poured them into two of the oil barrels in the metal book.

Putting aside whether these things could be used, he was really scared by what Li Suian told him about cannibalism.

Bai Yuguang was still running in the front. Under the moonlight, the horse team galloped through the wilderness. From time to time, Wei Ran could see the faint blue phosphorescent lights on the roadside.

That was the only light that the starving corpses on the ground could bring to this dark world, but the light from these burning corpses only brought everyone grief and fear that had long been numb.

After running in relative silence for almost half an hour, the leader Bai Yuguang finally stopped.

"Captain, let's just cross here. The water is deeper ahead, and it's unlikely that the Japanese will cross the river from that side."

Bai Yuguang first glanced at a big willow tree growing in the distance to confirm that the location was correct, then he spoke in a low voice.

Compared with the village where they were stationed, this place was covered with mud and yellow sand that was deep enough to drown horse hooves, or to use a more appropriate name - the Yellow River floodplain.

"Go, go."

Company Commander Ma reminded in a low voice, "Everyone, get ready. Tonight, our main task is to see if there are any Japanese troops around. If we see any enemy troops, we should fire first. If we can defeat them, we will fight. If we cannot, we will run back immediately."

"puff!"

In response, the crowd struck each other with their sabers wrapped in rags and their stirrups, which were also wrapped in rags, making a dull sound.

"Chirp!"

Led by Bai Yuguang and Captain Ma, the group rode their horses through the mud and sand and walked slowly in the opposite direction.

Although we were on horseback, this was not really a safe or comfortable mission.

Because of the mud and sand underfoot, the war horses could not run at all. Even if they did, there was no telling which step would trip them.

No matter how good a war horse is, if its leg is broken, no one will want it as a draft horse and it will have to be slaughtered for its meat.

After walking carefully in the yellow mud for more than half an hour, Bai Yuguang was the first to stop and say, "If I remember correctly, there should be a village ahead."

"Go and take a look." As Ma Jintao spoke, he had already lowered the nose of the box gun.

Without any hesitation, Bai Yuguang took the lead and ran towards the village soaked in water with five or six cavalrymen, while the others rode on horseback and stood in the mud, waiting quietly.

Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. During the increasingly long wait, Bai Yuguang and his companions rode back one by one.

"Captain, we circled the village twice and looked inside, but there were no survivors." Bai Yuguang paused and added, "The stench of corpses is very strong, and it is estimated that many people died inside."

"Is there a place to stay?" asked Captain Ma.

"no"

Bai Yuguang shook his head. "Many houses have collapsed. Only those collapsed houses can barely accommodate a person."

"The Next Village"

Captain Ma gave the order in an expressionless tone, and the cavalry squad set out again through the mud. Guided by the map that Bai Yuguang had memorized, they checked each village one by one.

Even without explanation, Wei Ran could tell that they were looking for a foothold where the Japanese could hide, and at the same time they were investigating and recording the terrain of the area.

This was destined to be a hard and dangerous job. None of them knew what the horse's hooves would step on next, and no one knew whether there were Japanese devils hiding in the next village.

Under the cover of night, the team went further and further, but they did not find any living people in the villages they passed by.

On the contrary, the yellow mud under their feet became shallower and shallower, and finally when they stopped, they finally saw the solid ground they had missed for a long time.

"Huaiyang City is not far ahead," Ma Jintao muttered to himself, and then simply urged his horse to go back.

The only difference was that they did not return the same way they came. Instead, they followed the long-abandoned riverbank and advanced from this side in the direction of yesterday's battle.

The situation here is somewhat better than the areas we just passed through. The silt washed out from the Yellow River has accumulated layer upon layer, so the war horses finally don't have to soak in the yellow mud all the time.

But on the other hand, the thick mud and sand undoubtedly covered the arable land, making it impossible to grow crops in this place.

They continued walking and exploring along the way, and when they returned to the camp safely along the route they retreated after yesterday's battle, the sky was almost bright.

As usual, they washed the horsehide and filled it with concentrated feed. After taking a bath, Wei Ran, Zhao Jinyu and Li Sui'an drank the remaining half pot of wine and ate a few mouthfuls to fill their stomachs. The three of them fell asleep immediately.

It was only the second day, and his current position meant that even if he was familiar with the history that was about to unfold, he could not possibly know the details of the regiment commander and Captain Ma's plan for the next battle.

In other words, the only thing he can do is to do his job well.

I'm going to update the story for Li Guang, the bird-shooting master. I can't take it anymore, so I'm going to sleep.