A blood-red setting sun was sinking low over the western hills, coupled with a few messy floating clouds, making the entire sky transition from light to dark in complex colors. It looked extremely unreal, as if the sky was painted.
The air was thick with the smell of fireworks, and there were lingering smoke everywhere. He held his rifle in one hand and walked slowly among the ruins. Many of the remaining fires were still burning. He raised his curly hat brim and slowly scanned the surroundings with his narrow eyes. Among the ashes, there were corpses scattered in all directions, men, women, old people, and children. Some had been burned beyond recognition, some had their stomachs cut open and blood was sticky and flowing out of their internal organs, some had lost their limbs or heads, and most of the bodies of women were basically, in the ashes, among the corpses, the bright light was particularly dazzling.
He walked slowly, looked slowly, and came to Shi Cheng, who was sitting beside a ruin, and said calmly, "Go gather your people."
Shi Cheng was in a daze and didn't notice Hu Yi coming, let alone hear Hu Yi talking. He continued to mutter in a low voice: "I should have used a gun to force them to leave, then this wouldn't have happened. Why don't they believe it? Why don't they believe it? I've said it all, but they just don't believe it..."
He raised his foot and kicked Shi Cheng's shoulder, knocking him unconscious to the ground, and repeated calmly, "Gather your people. Collect the bodies."
Shi Cheng finally regained some consciousness and saw the soldier standing in front of him clearly. He turned over and fell to the ground, saying in frustration: "I tried to lead them away on the road, but it was useless. Three of my team members died and a platoon of puppet soldiers chased them into the mountains. They came here just for this... Why don't they believe me? They...
"It's not that they don't believe you, but they don't believe the Japs. You may not be able to survive by living in disgrace. If you treat the Japs as human beings, this will be your fate sooner or later. It has nothing to do with you. Now take your people to collect their bodies." Hu Yi's tone was light and a little cold.
Shi Cheng stared blankly. He had no emotion, no sympathy, and he was as lifeless as the gun in his hand. How could he say that
It was too late. Qingshan Village was massacred by the devils and turned into a no-man's land outside the planned blockade line. As Hu Yi said to Shi Cheng, those villagers thought that it was OK as long as they were not Eighth Route Army soldiers, and that they were obedient citizens, and that the devils were reasonable. So, they became the devils' training and venting tools, and made their own contributions to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Belt, from their lives to everything else.
Su Qing lowered her head, sighed deeply, then gathered her hair by her ears, raised her cold face again, and walked into the ruins filled with smoke.
There were corpses everywhere, it was a horrible scene. Seeing Luo Fugui and Wu Shitou sweating and desperately digging a pit, and seeing Liu Jianqiang and Li Xiang silently picking up corpses, Ma Liang was assigned to stand guard at a high point. He continued to move forward, but he couldn't bear to step over the corpses on the ground, so he walked around them carefully. Looking up, a puff of black smoke slowly drifted past, revealing a tall ruined wall on the roadside in front. In the bloody sunset, a little girl was sitting on the top of the high wall, with a pair of crooked braids, holding a small half-piece of cake in her hand, some cake crumbs on the corners of her mouth, frowning her little eyebrows and looking around, her little face was clearly reflected by the sunset.
Su Qing felt helpless watching this scene. This time, this place, this environment... This child and he are born to be the same kind of people. No wonder they can be so close.
At this time, the little girl sitting high on the wall also saw Su Qing walking into the village. Her beautiful big eyes narrowed immediately, and she raised her hand to stuff the remaining half of the cake into her little mouth. She chewed it with her little cheeks puffed up, letting the cake crumbs fall from the corners of her mouth from time to time, and looked down at Su Qing provocatively.
Su Qing didn't want to meet the eyes of this unscrupulous kid. He continued on his way, continuing to avoid the corpses on the ground, going around them one by one. Before he had walked far, he suddenly stopped, turned his head, and looked at the corpse he had just gone around.
After quietly looking at the corpse's face that was tilted on the ground and blurred by blood and dirt for a while, Su Qing finally bent down and carefully turned the corpse over, revealing its full appearance. The pair of beautiful eyebrows that were looking at the corpse finally curled together tightly.
Hu Yi came to Su Qing and asked Su Qing, who was squatting on the ground observing the corpse, "What's the matter?"
Su Qing clapped his hands and stood up. He looked at the body on the ground and sighed softly: "Cut him open."
Hu Yi looked at Su Qing's face in confusion, then looked down at the body on the ground. It was a thin young man in tattered clothes, and he looked like an ordinary villager.
"Why?"
"No reason, just do it when I tell you to." The pair of phoenix eyes turned coldly to Hu Yi, deliberately showing a condescending attitude.
Hu Yi met her eyes, nodded expressionlessly, and asked calmly, "Excuse me, sir, do you want to dig out his heart? Or dismember his body?"
Su Qing frowned angrily: "Just whet his appetite, don't go too far"
He knelt on one knee, looked at the body carefully, tore open the shirt of the body, and then pulled out the bayonet...
Uh—wah—crash—there was a sudden sound of vomiting from the nearby wall, followed by the little girl on the wall shouting angrily: "You are disgusting" and then the sound of someone climbing down the wall and leaving.
Su Qing kept looking up at the sky, not daring to look at the scene around her, but the sound of the blade cutting the corpse still made her feel uncomfortable and her hair stood on end. It was not until Hu Yi's bloody palm dragged a sticky thing in front of her and asked, "Are you looking for this?" that she lowered her head and carefully identified the thing in Hu Yi's hand. She suppressed the urge to vomit and nodded, saying, "Put it on the ground carefully." Then she gestured to the corpse, "Put him away and bury him alone. He is one of us."
Hu Yi put the sticky paper in his hand on the ground, then turned around to deal with the incision on the body, put clothes on the body again, picked it up horizontally, and strode out of the village.
Su Qing carefully disassembled the paper paste, bit by bit, layer by layer, piece by piece. The red, white and black were all sticky together, and the words could not be distinguished at all. He had eaten it himself and it should have been sent to the Political Work Department.
He was a courier, and was responsible for the last section from the letter collecting location to the independent regiment. Unexpectedly, he also died here. It must have been a coincidence that he and the villagers were surrounded and killed by the Japanese in the village.
In the center of the paper, we finally found two small pieces of paper with barely discernible words on them. On one piece, we could barely make out the three words "Second Shopkeeper", and on the other piece, we could only make out two words "Sheep's Head". The rest of the words could no longer be recognized.
Only two words could be recognized in the whole letter, "Second Manager" and "Sheep's Head". Su Qing's face suddenly became very bad. He couldn't guess what the two words "Sheep's Head" meant. The code name of "Second Manager" was the highest leader of the underground transportation organization in Meixian County. What did this mean? It couldn't be good news. He intuitively felt that this letter should be bad news.
Su Qing fell into deep thought...