On the mountains, in front of the advancing team, Xu Ruifeng and Lao Ma were walking together.
Lao Chu didn't come this time because he was waiting in Lao Crow's Nest to receive important information.
They walked out of the mountains little by little as Si Baozi's thick voice told stories about the rivers and lakes.
"Let me tell you, the butcher in Northern Manchuria was a tyrant at that time. Who dares to provoke him?"
Xu Ruifeng listened happily, but Lao Ma never got caught up in the story. He looked at Lao Xu's smile and asked, "You don't seem too upset."
"What are you upset about?"
Xu Ruifeng also thought about it. This man had to find a place to put his soul. Anyway, it was impossible for him to go to Northern Manchuria and Nanjing, and his wife was in the rear, so why couldn't she be a Red Party member? At least, he didn't resist.
Become a Red Party member.
"It's even warmer."
"What?"
Lao Ma explained: "When I first read your information, I thought this person was cold-blooded. In such a big environment, he turned a deaf ear to the Japanese and ignored the suffering of the people. He was as cold as if he had just been dug out of the Songhua River in the middle of winter.
Ice cube, except those around you, no one means anything to you."
"But after you came, it didn't seem to be the case."
"You know how to laugh and make trouble, and you don't take the initiative to cause trouble. You don't want to be the boss on your own. Lao Xu, it seems that you are no longer the cold killer."
Following Lao Ma's description, Xu Ruifeng asked himself the same question, but no one answered in his heart.
He seems to have forgotten what he was like before...
What's it like?
Not to mention setting up defenses when meeting people. At least if a stranger wants to come to him, he will have to spend several years to prove himself.
This is not just entering the heart.
What about now?
He no longer cared whether Lao Ma deliberately dug a hole after drinking too much. Every day from the time he opened his eyes to the time he closed them, he seemed to see the exhilarating joy of Si Baozi and the others and the little warriors in front of him.
The most important thing is that the heavy burden on Xu Ruifeng's shoulders disappeared.
He didn't feel that he was half a head shorter than Wen Wan, and he seemed to no longer pursue the meaning of existence...
Very magical.
It was as if it was slowly being enveloped by the warm current created by the Red Party, melting it little by little.
"Then what should I do?"
Lao Ma said two words that were not the answer: "Target. The only difference between you and us now is these two words. Once you find your goal, we will be the same kind of people."
"Target?"
He remembered the other two words Wen Wan said to him under the street lamp: "You mean faith?"
"No~yes." Lao Ma drawled: "What I'm saying is, you have to know what you want."
This time, without waiting for Xu Ruifeng to speak, he explained: "Do you know what Lao Chu wants?"
Xu Ruifeng held the tree and followed the old horse around a corner and said, "I don't know."
"Lao Chu also has a son. He is eleven this year. He is from Fengtian."
"When Fengtian was occupied by the Japanese, Lao Chu's son was in school. At that time, the Japanese not only promoted Japanese language teaching in schools, but also gave some special treatment to the children of Japanese overseas Chinese in China. I heard that they even had two dozen meals for lunch.
Children are all different.”
Lao Ma sighed and spoke helplessly.
"Lao Chu was poor at that time. He was swinging a sledgehammer in the factory. One time when he was working, the school called him and told him that his son was lying and was caught."
"Lao Chu ran to the school in a hurry. As soon as he entered the school, he saw a Japanese teacher reaching out and slapping his son. The fool rushed over."
Xu Ruifeng asked: "Did he start a fight with the Japanese?"
"No. He just protected the child tightly behind his back and asked timidly, 'Why do you beat our child?'"
"But you know what the Japanese say?"
"The Japanese said that his son relied on the Japanese he learned in school to pretend to be a Japanese child and go to the canteen in the Japanese overseas community to eat."
"My child was young, so he didn't think so carefully. I thought I could reply a few words in Japanese, and I saw that there was fish and meat in the children's canteen in the Japanese area, so I went there."
"But can two groups of children wear the same clothes? They were caught when they got there."
"As a result, the child was expelled."
Xu Ruifeng didn't think there was anything strange about this. Wasn't it just a child pretending to be Japanese just to eat? He even thought the child was quite smart: "What does this have to do with Lao Chu's goal?"
"When Lao Chu told me about this, I asked him the same question. I think his son is quite decent."
"What do you think Lao Chu said?"
"Lao Chu said that what he cared about most was not whether his child cheated the Japanese cafeteria of food, but how the whole thing happened. At that time, the Japanese teacher taught him what the child looked like when he pretended to be a Japanese child.
He held his neck and chest straight, and shouted "I am Japanese" with his back straight. But when he saw his son, he bent his back and lowered his head."
"His son, just for a bite to eat, actually said he was Japanese..."
When Lao Ma looked back at Xu Ruifeng, his eyes showed pity, but what Lao Xu could imagine was the sadness flowing in Lao Chu's eyes at that time.
"And, after leaving the campus, his son asked Lao Chu something."
"The child asked Lao Chu, 'Dad, why can't we eat the candied haws of water ourselves, but the Japanese children eat it happily?'; 'Dad, why do Japanese children wear leather shoes, and I want to wear the straw sandals you knitted?"
';'Dad, what is the difference between me and the Japanese? They can eat meat, but I want to eat pancakes and wild vegetable porridge'..."
"Dad, I don't want to be Chinese anymore, I also want to be Japanese."
Xu Ruifeng stopped immediately and stood there looking at Lao Ma.
Si Baozi lost his voice, and the little warriors around him stopped making trouble. For example, Lao Ma's words were like Monkey Sun using the Immobilization Technique on the fairies in the peach garden.
He was just a child. He didn’t know what patriotism meant yet. All he could see was that Japanese children had better food and better uses than he did. It was normal to be envious. In this case, the classification of nationality was just to classify him as a lower class.
In the ranks of people, children will naturally feel that becoming Japanese is an improvement.
However, this country is inherited by batches of such children!
If all children think this way, will there still be this country once they become successors?
Isn't that the purpose of those Japanese people teaching Japanese in school and not allowing children to speak Chinese in class?
Isn’t that where the sticks in their army, the Baodao people, come from?
Lao Ma said with a trembling voice: "Lao Chu told me that his goal with us is to hope that one day his son can eat meat and wear leather shoes."
Is this a matter of being able to eat meat and wear leather shoes?
What Lao Chu said was that he hoped that his son would be proud to be a Chinese one day!
But when will this day come?
When!!
Why is it not in the lunar calendar!!!
Lao Ma held Xu Ruifeng's shoulders and said softly: "Find that goal, find that goal that makes you forget all rules, forget all beliefs, forget all rules and regulations, and still strive for it."
"Then, with your already warm body, grit your teeth and fight until your last breath."
He turned around and walked out, continuing to lead the way through the mountains and forests. Xu Ruifeng and the following soldiers stood there until the old horse was no longer visible, still unable to take a step.
