Early in the morning on January 9th, after Wei Ran sent the lightly dressed Suisui to the airport, he dressed up in disguise and rushed back to the studio without stopping.
Now the travel agency next door has not yet accepted vacations, and the neighbors a few hundred meters away, Mr. Nicholas and Jima, have still not come back. This is a rare and good opportunity.
He drove the car directly into the studio and locked the rolling door. Without even turning on the lights, Wei Ran took out the pistol carefully wrapped in velvet from the glove box.
"The beacon smoke stains the rivers and mountains with blood, and the Japanese will not return to Sichuan if they are not destroyed. Why should Xu Guo be afraid of death when he fights? Kill all the Japanese aggressors and build the Jingguan." Wei Ran recited the inscriptions on the gun silently with great seriousness, and then summoned the cowhide book without hesitation.
.
With a soft clatter, the cowhide book automatically turned to the blank eighth page, and a quill with a metallic luster drew a large hand that seemed to be stained with blood. In this hand, it was loose and weak.
is holding a 20-ring pot-bellied box.
With a soft "snap" sound, the metal quill fell onto the cowhide book, but the handwriting that appeared under the recovered pattern made Wei Ran frown. It was different from any previous time.
The handwriting turned out to be bright red!
Character identity: Wei Ran, apprentice of Cangxuzhai
Conditions for return: Defend Teng County
Teng County? Where is Teng County? But why is there no photo taking mission?
Before Wei Ran could react, his vision was shrouded in intense white light. Then, he heard an old voice saying, "Sui'an, come in with me. Wei Ran, close the door and come. Today is not the day."
It’s business.”
As the footsteps faded away, Wei Ran's sight finally recovered, and then he saw a thin figure wearing a green shirt, a black melon cap, and a pipe and pot stuck in the collar of the back of his neck. He opened the cotton curtain and limped.
He walked into the back room next to the counter.
Behind him, there was a young man who looked to be about the same age as himself. This young man named Sui'an was wearing a black Chinese tunic suit, with a gray Lenin hat and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on his head.
I lowered my head and looked at myself again. I saw a pair of coarse trousers and leggings on my lower body, a pair of black cotton shoes on my feet, a thin gray cotton-padded jacket on my upper body, and a hard cowhide belt four fingers wide tied around my waist.
There is even a small brass abacus on it that is not too big.
He turned around and looked around. Behind him was a wooden door with no threshold. Opposite the wooden door was a counter almost as high as his shoulders, with a wooden fence that went straight to his head. On both sides of the wall, there was a dusty table.
Small tea tables. On one of the tea tables, there is a small white porcelain bottle burning incense sticks.
While the door was closing, Wei Ran also saw the stone road outside the window and the surrounding low-rise houses. He also saw the big word "Dang" on the signboard at the door.
So, this Cangxizhai is a pawn shop?
Wei Ran muttered to himself, closed the heavy wooden door, picked up the top door bar standing on one side, and stuck the two ends on the recesses of the floor and door panel respectively.
When he opened the cotton curtain and walked inside, the old man in a long gown had filled three white porcelain bowls with wine and placed them on the Eight Immortals table in the center of the room, while the young man named Sui'an stood silently on both sides of the Eight Immortals table facing each other.
sit.
"Wei Ran, come and sit down too." The old man waved his hand in an easy-going manner, indicating that Wei Ran should sit across from Sui An.
When a large bowl of white wine was placed in front of him, the old man leaned on a cane and sat across from Wei Ran. He took out the pipe pot from his collar and slowly filled it with shredded tobacco while asking,
"Sui'an, how long have we been away from home?"
"Almost a year," Sui An replied without thinking.
The old man took out a box of matches, lit the cigarette pot, sighed and said, "Yes, it's been almost a year. This year, we fled from Peiping to Quancheng, and from Quancheng to Teng County. What's wrong with this stupid little devil?"
Have you been chasing our family?"
When the young man in a suit on Wei Ran's right heard this, he quickly said, "Dad, why don't we go back to Zigong? This shop..."
"Bang!"
The old man didn't wait for Sui'an to finish speaking, and slammed the table. The huge movement made all three young people tremble, and the former couldn't help but cursed in Shu dialect, "Run? Run away?"
Hammer! You filthy turtle with water in his head!"
In the silent room, the hot-tempered old man calmed down and sighed, then switched back to Mandarin that Wei Ran could understand and said, "I saw your cousin Hexian in Dongguan this morning."
"Third brother has come to Teng County?" Sui'an stood up and asked in surprise.
The old man nodded, knocked the table in front of Wei Ran with the pipe pot in his hand, "Go and get the baggage on the altar table."
When Wei Ran saw this, he quickly stood up, picked up a heavy blue cloth bundle from the altar table against the wall and placed it on the table.
Before he could sit down, the old man had already opened the bag and took out two armed belts filled with bullets and two 20-ring pot-bellied boxes in cowhide holsters. Then he placed them separately.
In front of Wei Ran and Sui An.
"Wei Ran, you followed the old man from Peiping to Teng County. Now the old man's nephew is fighting here. We are not going to run away. You can take this gun and fight or escape if you want." After that, the old man said
He took out a pile of silver coins from his pocket and placed it in front of Wei Ran.
"Everyone is responsible for the national crisis."
After Wei Ran finished speaking, he simply picked up the pistol on the table. There was no engraving on the gun. Looking at the gun in front of Sui An, there was also no engraving on it.
The old man nodded with satisfaction, then looked at Sui An, who was sitting opposite Wei Ran, "You are my son, so you have no choice. Take this gun and go to your cousin, and follow him to fight the Japanese. If you can survive,
Just follow your cousin and find a job in the army. If you don't survive...the old man will collect your body for you!"
When the old man said this, he directly picked up the porcelain bowl in front of him and said, "After drinking this bowl of wine, you... just go and kill the Japanese!"
Sui'an and Wei Ran looked at each other, picked up the big bowl in front of them in unison, frowned and poured the spicy white wine inside into their stomachs.
"Clang!"
The white porcelain bowl in the old man's hand fell on the table. He raised his trembling hand and pointed at the ajar door not far away, "Go and fight for the glory of the nation, and fight for the survival of the country!"
Wei Ran and Sui An were silent for a moment, putting down the porcelain bowls silently. The latter knelt on the ground and kowtowed three times, picked up the weapons on the table and started to walk out, but was immediately stopped by Wei Ran.
.
"You two, please wait for me in the back room."
After Wei Ran finished speaking, without waiting for their response, he stood up, raised the curtain and returned to the outside of the pawn shop. Using the cover of the counter, he took out the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera from Berlin from the leather book.
He remembered clearly that when he got this camera, it came with a box of spare film in the horse-skin camera bag. But he was not sure whether the 1945 film could still be used now.
Fortunately, as he unscrewed the sealed Bakelite box anxiously, there was indeed an unused roll of film inside.
Putting the film into the camera quickly, Wei Ran immediately returned to the inner room, calmly looked at the old man who was still sitting in his original position and said, "Shopkeeper, let me take a picture of you two!"
"Camera?!" Sui'an, who had already put on the armed belt, asked in surprise, "Brother Wei, where did you get it?"
The old man glanced meaningfully at Wei Ran, who was worried about how to explain, and in a calm tone helped find an impeccable excuse, "Someone brought it in exchange for money yesterday. It's rare that this kid has a heart. Come sit here!"
Sui'an, who was usually not in the pawn shop, didn't ask any more questions when he heard this, and quickly stood behind the old man. After the two of them had posed, Wei Ran found the right angle and immediately pressed the shutter.
"Shopkeeper, I put the camera back." Wei Ran looked straight at the old gentleman and said.
The latter waved his hand silently, and Wei Ran immediately walked out of the room and quickly put the camera back into the cowhide notebook. At this time, he no longer cared about whether the secret of the cowhide notebook would be exposed. He just didn't want to be like Stalinger anymore.
Just like that time, no regrets remain.
Deliberately making some noise at the counter, Wei Ran walked into the back room again, bowed solemnly to the old man who was still sitting on the chair, and then picked up the armed belt on the table and the shiny 20
After ringing the big belly box, he followed Brother Sui'an and left the closed pawn shop through the back door.
It wasn't until the sound of closing the door was heard from outside that the old man sitting on the chair, with tears streaming down his face, took out a flower-mouthed poker that had already been rolled out of pulp, staggered to the window, and pushed away the paper
The window was covered with paper, and I looked silently at the two coffins covered by tarpaulin in the backyard.
Outside the pawn shop, Wei Ran and Wei Ran were walking on the rutted stone road, neither of them in the mood to speak.
"Brother Wei, do you think this small Teng County can be defended?"
It wasn't until he passed a crossroads that Sui'an said worriedly, "This Teng County..."
"If you can't defend, you have to defend..." Wei Ran patted the other party's shoulder, "Where can I find your cousin?"
"Don't you mean Dongguan?" Sui'an pointed in a direction with the box cannon in his hand.
"Let's go faster. If we see him sooner, we can help him more."
Sui'an nodded when he heard this, and quickly put the pistol he had been playing with just back into the cowhide holster. After all, his family opened a pawn shop. Of course he knew how to use this weapon, but he had never pulled the trigger on anyone.
At the same time, Wei Ran, who was a little behind, turned his attention to the scenery of Teng County.
In this small town surrounded by high walls, there are some low-rise houses mixed with some two-story buildings. Along the way, you can also see a church with an American flag or a crisp flag.
In addition to these immobile buildings, there were also refugees running out of the city on their shoulders and hands on their shoulders, as well as groups of soldiers with good looks, carrying wooden ammunition boxes in pairs.
Ran in a hurry.
Although it was only a quick glance, the old sleeves and large knives wrapped in coarse cloth on the shoulders of the soldiers, as well as the tattered military uniforms and straw sandals with toes exposed, hinted that they were not elites.
But looking at the confident looks on their faces, as well as the "immortal Banban" and "turtle son" coming out of their mouths with laughter from time to time, you can tell that they have long left all their concerns about life and death in the comfortable land of abundance.
In an unspeakable silence, the two of them inquired together. When the sun in the sky had already touched the city wall in the west, Sui'an finally saw a skinny soldier wearing a shabby military uniform in Dongguan, directing the soldiers to dig bunkers.
"Third brother! Third brother!" Sui'an shouted at the thin soldier at the top of his lungs. This loud voice immediately attracted the side glances of the surrounding soldiers carrying bamboo hats.
"You're welcome?!" After the skinny soldier was attracted by the movement here, he recognized the young man who was shouting at a glance.
"Where are the eldest and second brothers?" Sui'an waited for the skinny soldier to come over and immediately grabbed his arm and asked.
Unexpectedly, this question immediately broke the joy of the brothers' reunion. The skinny soldier took off his hat. After a long silence, he choked and said, "We are gone in Shanxi. The eldest brother hacked two Japs to death. The second brother...the second brother was killed."
The Japanese artillery shells exploded... they were gone!"
"All... gone?!" Sui'an asked tremblingly with his eyes widened.
The skinny soldier stretched out his dirty big hand, wiped his face vigorously, put on a happy expression, and asked pretending to be relaxed, "It's all over, why are you..."
"The shops in Peiping are gone, the shops in Quancheng are gone, and the schools are closed."
Sui'an pointed in the direction behind him, "My father took me to escape here at the beginning of the year. After he saw you in the morning, he told us not to escape anymore and asked us to come over and fight the Japanese with you. He even prepared two coffins.
"
As if he was afraid that the skinny soldier would refuse, Sui'an kept introducing, "This is my cousin Li Hexian, and this is Wei Ran, the man my father hired in Peking two years ago."
Li Hexian fell into a daze when he heard that two coffins were prepared. When he came to his senses, he patted Wei Ran and Sui An on the shoulders, "Then stay, we brothers will fight the Japanese together!"
"Li...sir" Wei Ran shouted hesitantly, but in fact all his attention was on the wooden gun case hanging on the other man's waist.
"I'm just a squad leader, not a senior officer." Li Hexian waved his hand, looked at Wei Ran and Sui'an's armed belts full of ammunition bags and holsters with interest, and asked curiously, "Where did these guns and bullets come from?"
of?"
"My father bought it in Peiping," Li Sui'an explained. "In these uncertain times, there are always people who want to steal things from pawn shops."
"Can you use it?" Li Hexian asked.
"It works!" Li Sui'an nodded affirmatively, and then looked at Wei Ran with Li Hexian.
"No problem" Wei Ran nodded equally confidently.
"You two, stay with me first!"
Li Hexian didn't pay attention. He led the two of them toward the city wall and said, "Our mission is to guard Dongguan. Before the Japanese come here, we will get you two acquainted with the fellow villagers."
"Do we have many fellow villagers in Zigong?" Li Sui'an asked, following step by step.
"The squad I lead doesn't have one." Li Hexian looked to the southwest worriedly after hearing this. "The other company has two, but they are responsible for defending Nanguan. That place is not easy to defend..."
