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 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.
Driving the car directly into the studio and locking the rolling door, Wei Ran took out the pistol carefully wrapped in velvet from the glove box without even turning on the lights.
"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 invaders and build the Jingguan." Wei Ran recited the inscriptions on the gun very seriously, and then Without hesitation, he summoned the cowhide notebook.
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 one hand, he held a 20-ring potty box loosely and weakly.
With a soft "snap" sound, the metal quill fell onto the cowhide book, but the writing that appeared under the recovered pattern made Wei Ran frown. Unlike any previous time, the writing this time was actually bright red!
Character identity: Wei Ran, apprentice of Cangxuzhai
Return condition: defend Teng County to the end
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, and then he heard an old voice saying, "Sui'an, come in with me. Wei Ran, close the door." Come on, we’re not doing business today.”
As the footsteps faded away, Wei Ran’s vision finally recovered, and then he saw someone wearing a green shirt, a black melon skin hat, and a collar on the back of his neck. A thin figure with a pipe and a pot in his mouth opened the cotton curtain and limped 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.
Looking down at myself, I saw a pair of coarse trousers and leggings on my lower body, a pair of black cotton shoes on my feet, a gray thin cotton-padded jacket with folded breasts on my upper body, and a nondescript pair of four-finger-wide ties tied around my waist. The hard cowhide belt has a small brass abacus that is not too big.
Turn around and look around. Behind you is a wooden door with no threshold. Opposite the wooden door is a counter that is almost shoulder-high and has a wooden fence that goes straight to your head. Against the walls on both sides was a small tea table covered with dust. On one of the tea tables, there was a small white porcelain bottle burning incense.
While closing the door, 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 Cangxuzhai is a pawnshop?
Wei Ran muttered secretly and closed the door.It was a heavy wooden door. I picked up the top door bar standing on one side and stuck the two ends into the recesses of the floor and door panel respectively.
When he opened the cotton curtain and walked into the inner room, 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, and the young man named Sui'an They sat silently on both sides of the Eight Immortals table facing each other.
"Wei Ran, come and sit down too." The old man waved his hand casually, indicating that Wei Ran should sit opposite 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 and pot from his collar and slowly went inside. While packing the tobacco, he asked, "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. Why is this little bitch chasing our family?"
The young man in a suit on Wei Ran's right quickly said, "Dad, why don't we go back to Zigong?" Shop..."
"Bang!"
The old man slapped the table hard before Sui An finished speaking, and the huge noise frightened all three young people. With a shudder, the former couldn't help but cursed in Shu dialect, "You're still running? Run away with a hammer! You stinky little turtle, your head is filled with water!"
Falling into silence, In the 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."
Wei Ran hurriedly saw this. He 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 they were placed 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 run away. ." After saying that, the old man 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. He looked at it again. The gun in front of Sui'an also didn't have any engravings 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 to find your cousin and follow him to fight. The devil can survive.Come, you can follow your cousin and find a job in the army. If you can't survive...the old man will collect the 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, frowned and poured the spicy white wine inside into their stomachs.
"Dang! "
The white porcelain bowl in the old man's hand fell on the table. He raised his hand tremblingly and pointed at the ajar door not far away, "Go and fight for the glory of the nation, go and fight for the survival of the country. ! "
Wei Ran and Sui An were silent for a moment and put down the porcelain bowls silently. The latter knelt on the ground and kowtowed three times, picked up the weapons on the table and walked out, but Then Wei Ran stopped him.
"You two, wait for me in the back room."
After Wei Ran finished speaking, he stood up and raised the curtain and returned. In the outside room of the pawn shop, he took out the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera from Berlin from the cowhide book under the cover of the counter.
He remembered clearly that when he got this camera, it came with it. There was a spare box of film in his horse-skin camera bag, but he was not sure whether the 1945 film could still be used.
Fortunately, he opened the seal uneasily. There was indeed a roll of unused film in the bakelite box.
Wei Ran quickly loaded the film into the camera, and immediately returned to the inner room, looking calmly and still sitting in his original position. The old man said, "Shopkeeper, please take a picture of you two! ”
“Camera? ! Sui'an, who had already put the armed belt on his body, 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 helped find an impeccable excuse in a calm tone, "Someone brought it in exchange for money yesterday. It's rare that this kid has the heart to sit down." Come here! "
Sui'an, who usually wasn't in the pawn shop at all, stopped asking questions when he heard this and quickly stood behind the old man. After the two of them had posed, Wei Ran found a good angle and immediately pressed the button
"Shopkeeper, I put the camera back. "Wei Ran looked straight at the old gentleman and said.
The latter waved his hand silently. Wei Ran immediately walked out of the room and quickly put the camera back into the leather 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 leave any regrets like the time in Stalingrad.
Deliberately making some noise at the counter, Wei. Ran then walked into the inner room again, bowed solemnly to the old gentleman who was still sitting in the chair, then picked up the armed belt and the shiny 20-ring potbelly box on the table, followed Brother Sui'an, He 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 took out a thickened pawn from his arms with tears streaming down his face.Huakou Luzi staggered to the window, pushed open the paper window, and silently looked at the two coffins covered by oilcloth in the backyard.
Outside the pawn shop, Wei Ran and Wei Ran were walking on the rutted stone road, and neither of them had the intention 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 it, you have to defend it..." 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 walk faster. If we see him earlier, we can help him more."
Sui'an nodded when he heard the words and hurriedly finished what he had been doing. He put the pistol 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.
This small city is surrounded by high walls. There are some two-story buildings mixed in among the low houses. Along the way, you can also see a church with an American flag or a crisp flag.
In addition to these immobile buildings, there are also refugees running out of the city on their shoulders and hands on their shoulders, and there are also groups of soldiers with good faces, carrying wooden wooden arms in pairs. The homemade ammunition boxes hurried past them.
Although it was just a quick glance, the old sleeves and large knives wrapped in coarse cloth carried on the shoulders of the soldiers, as well as the tattered military uniforms and straw sandals with toes exposed, all hinted at the May Day holiday. They are not elite.
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 already put aside all concerns about life and death. Stay in the comfortable land of abundance.
In an unspeakable silence, the two of them inquired all the way. When the sun in the sky had already touched the city wall in the west, Sui'an finally saw a man wearing a shabby military uniform in Dongguan, directing the soldiers to dig bunkers. Skinny soldier.
"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.
"Sui'an?!" 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 thin soldier took off his hat, and after a long silence, he choked and said, "We are gone in Shanxi. The eldest brother hacked two Japanese to death, and the second Brother...Second brother was blown up by the enemy's shells!"
"All...all gone?" Sui'an asked tremblingly, his eyes widening. .
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. , said he didn’t want to run away, and asked us to come and fight the Japanese with you, and... he also prepared two coffins." Sui An kept talking as if he was afraid that the skinny soldier would say no. The introduction said, "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 back 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 pretended He shouted hesitantly, but in fact all his attention was on the wooden gun box hanging on the opponent'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 gun holsters with interest, and asked curiously, " Where did the gun and bullets come from?"
"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 come with me first!"
Li Hexian didn't care, and led the two of them to the city wall while saying, "Our mission is to guard Dongguan. Before the Japanese come over, let me get you two acquainted with the fellow villagers."
"Do we have many fellow villagers in Zigong?" Li Sui'an followed suit.
"The squad I lead does not have one." Li Hexian glanced worriedly to the southwest after hearing this. "There are two in the other company, but they are responsible for defending Nanguan. That place is not easy to defend..."