The Road Home

Chapter 4

It was one of the special skills of their squadron.

In the beginning, everyone had merely been trying to learn Mongolian and Russian. Later, though, they all discovered that simply learning to speak was not enough; they also needed to speak like those were their mother tongue. In order to be able to do this for their missions, everybody of their own accord began to explore more advanced ways of voice mimicking and controlling their vocal chords, muscles, and breathing. After a few years of painstaking efforts, several masters of impersonation were produced from their squadron. Gao Hai absolutely was being modest in his word choice when he said he was "pretty good" at imitating people's voices.

He used to be the number one master of this skill in their squadron. If he wanted to impersonate anyone, he could do it to the extent that it was as if he was possessed by that other party, let alone imitating Lu Yanchen, someone he was with every day. However, in the entire squadron, only Gao Hai had the guts to dare blatantly impersonate him.

Therefore, Lu Yanchen was very easily able to guess what was going on.

These last two years, he had been teaching Qin Xiaonan portrait drawing. The child was very talented, and in less than two years he had become rather skilled at it. Originally, Lu Yanchen had been quite happily surprised at this. Who would have known, though, that he would end up digging a pit for himself to fall into? That day, after seeing Gui Xiao, Qin Xiaonan had put in great efforts to draw a portrait of her and then told everyone, this was Commander Lu's first love and she had come to Erenhot. Consequently, these last several days, the entire group had been bursting with enthusiasm and sparing no effort in trying to, on this night, meet the person who could tame their Commander Lu.

Lu Yanchen had ignored them.

But in less than two days, this bunch of bachelor soldiers were going to be scattered in all directions, with many miles between them, and likely would not see one another again. Moreover, by such coincidence, the girl was in Erenhot right now. No real man would let this opportunity pass. Hence, they put together this whole melodramatic performance. Their intention had been very simple and innocent: they just wanted to see Commander Lu's first love.

They believed that your first love should be wonderful, or at least, it sounded really wonderful.

But to Gui Xiao and Lu Yanchen, this was practically a catastrophe.

Gui Xiao's heart plummeted straight down. "It's no big deal."

What could she say to a stranger?

"Miss Gui Xiao." Gao Hai, feeling as if he had been let off of a crime, clutched Gui Xiao's right hand excitedly. "On behalf of my second home, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and on behalf of our squadron, I welcome you. You will love the steppe just like you love your own hometown. This is the place I... Ah, no! This is the place Commander Lu loves most!"

The mist shrouding Gui Xiao's eyes still had not dispersed, and with great difficulty she put on an unnatural smile.

The lad carried on chattering about how Sonid mutton was delicious and how Commander Lu had time on his hands now so Commander Lu absolutely had to bring Gui Xiao to try it.

Fortunately, Lu Yanchen lifted his eyelids and gave Gao Hai a look that said, "Hurry up and get out of here."

This time, Gao Hai was sensible enough to get the meaning and swallowed the abundant and lengthy words of welcome that he had prepared. "Well, uh, then, you guys carry on! I won't disturb you anymore!"

Tossing out this last sentence, the lad slipped back into the crowd.

The person on the stage had been singing so happily that he had started another round of that same song and currently happened to be howling out these few lines of lyrics: "Forget—if you can... Oh, in one's life, what is there to cherish? Those who drift and wander aimlessly don't have the luxury of having love.[1]"