The Road Home

Chapter 23

The first time Lu Yanchen put on a bomb suit was in the second year after he joined the military. Back then, all bomb suits were made according to a standard height of 1.8 metres. The several people who had voluntarily signed up for the work had heights of 1.7 metres or so, and when they all slipped on the size-large suits, only on him did the suit fit just right.

At the time, he was not even the age of twenty yet, and he had not thought much when he put on that heavy suit. Later when he went to Erenhot, this field was even more of an unpopular one. He had basically singlehandedly built up and trained the explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, squad. Many of the people he selected had shorter builds, and they had specially made some size-medium bomb suits. Each person had been given a tweezer, a needle, and thread. These were all tough, strong men, but when they were doing needlework, they had not been the least bit slipshod about it. In order to be prepared to deal with mercury tilt bombs, each person had carried a metal ball on a wooden board to train his balance and would not even set it down when going to the bathroom.

Unlike other teams, once the people on this team were out on assignment, they were treading the line between life and death.

Consequently, only the people on this team had a special privilege: every two days they were allowed to call home and let their families know that they were safe.

After putting on a thick, heavy bomb suit, Lu Yanchen flexed his fingers and turned his gaze onto the current leader of the EOD squad and Qin Mingyu.

"If this ends up becoming a meritorious act, who gets the credit for it?" The squad leader grinned. "Our squadron or the police training brigade?"

Qin Mingyu sighed, "I'm guessing they won't give it to our squadron."

A signal was given from up above: the crowds of people had been successfully evacuated.

"First leave some last words, Commander Lu," the squad leader said, as was usual practice.

"It's still that same one." Lu Yanchen pressed an earplug into each his left and right ears. " 'Thousands have fallen to shellfire and thousands have shed their blood, but each inch of land is worth an inch of gold[1].' "

These were, when he first arrived here in the steppe lands, the first exhortatory words spoken by his old squadron commander. The day the old squadron commander sacrificed his life, Lu Yanchen had wept like he was a homeless dog. That day, he had originally been the one who was supposed to go swap for the hostages and take their place, but he had been forcibly held down. From life to death, it had all happened in a matter of a second, and then that person was gone. That bunch of bastards!

Lu Yanchen pulled down his protective face shield.

Gui Xiao's entire night was spent in unrest, from having stomach pains to a headache to, eventually, trigeminal pain. From her temples to between her brows, it felt as if someone was taking the tip of a blade and gouging at her nerve, scraping at it a little at a time and digging it out, and then every ten to twenty seconds giving it a fierce jerk.

Over and over this continued until her pillow was sodden with sweat by the latter half of the night.

She rolled off the bed, groped her way to the side of the luggage, and threw it open, digging out all the bags that held various odds and ends: sunscreen, sunglasses, lip balm, cold medicine, stomach relief medication, sleep medicine, pain medicine...

After taking some sleep and pain medicines, Gui Xiao left all the lights in the room on and went back to sleep.

Before long, she muddledly began to dream.