Spy Wars: I am the Captain of the Military Police

Chapter 991 Spring Chapter, Li Shouren

January 31, 1938, the first day of the first month of the Dingchou year in the lunar calendar.

The morning in Nanjing arrives in a suffocating stillness.

There were no crackling firecrackers as I remembered, no children chasing and playing in their new clothes, and even the crowing of roosters and barking of dogs that used to rise and fall in the early morning had disappeared. It was as if the sounds of the entire city had been drained by the fighting of the previous two days.

Li Shouren huddled in a corner of the "Suzhou Fellow Townsmen Association" refugee camp, his body resting on cold floor tiles covered with a thin layer of straw.

He slowly sat up, and a mixture of musty smell, sweat odor, and a faint smell of cadaverine entered his nostrils.

This is a unique, inescapable smell found in the refugee camp.

He pushed open the nearly collapsing wooden door, and a stronger gust of cold wind from the street immediately rushed in, carrying with it a more complex smell.

The acrid smell of burning wood, a strange odor with a sweet and rotten undertone, is produced by the slow decomposition of an unfinished corpse at low temperatures.

The sensation of stepping on the street is complex.

The frozen, hard ground was covered with a thick layer of dust, a mixture of broken bricks, rubble, shell casings, and an unidentified black substance.

With each step, a soft creaking sound came from the soles of my shoes, as if I were walking on the bones of the city.

As far as the eye could see, there were only broken walls and ruins.

The once familiar streets and alleys are now unrecognizable. Many houses are reduced to just a few charred wooden beams stubbornly pointing towards the gray sky, their walls riddled with holes, silently recounting the fierce battle and subsequent atrocities that occurred not long ago.

Several Japanese flags stood out abruptly on the high point of the ruins, fluttering in the cold wind like strange fungi growing on a wound.

Some bold citizens, perhaps swayed by the "public notice" posted yesterday by the Japanese military police, or perhaps longing for home, or simply looking for supplies to survive, have already appeared on the streets in twos and threes.

Their movements were slow and wary, like startled rabbits, their eyes constantly scanning their surroundings.

Li Shouren saw an old woman trembling as she used a wooden stick to pry open a collapsed roof beam, murmuring a name.

Not far away, several men silently dragged a stiff, frost-covered corpse from under the rubble, wrapped it hastily in a tattered straw mat, and lifted it onto a handcart.

There were already three or four similar bodies piled up on the vehicle.

No one cried; only heavy breathing and the rumbling of wheels crushing gravel sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silence of the street.

Further away, beside a main road, the scene is more "orderly" and even more ironic.

Hundreds of Chinese laborers, under the watchful eyes of a dozen armed Japanese soldiers, were numbly clearing away the rubble blocking the streets.

The clanging and banging sounds and the dull thuds of moving heavy objects were incessant.

In the center of the ruins, there was a huge cooking pot, with firewood crackling beneath it. Inside, a murky, porridge-like substance churned, emitting an indescribable odor that was a mixture of moldy rice, rotten vegetable scraps, and perhaps a little salt.

Some migrant workers who had finished their work were queuing up, holding broken bowls in their hands, staring longingly at the pot.

Their faces were expressionless, only showing a numbness that had been worn down by hunger and exhaustion.

Li Shouren's stomach convulsed violently, and the intense hunger made his vision go black.

He hadn't had a decent meal in two days; the thin porridge rationed daily in the safe zone was barely enough to keep him alive.

The food in that pot, though of poor quality, was at least hot and filling.

His steps slowed involuntarily, his gaze drawn to the heat.

But the next second, he clenched his fist tightly, his nails digging deep into his palm, using the pain to bring himself back to his senses.

He seemed to see the despair in his wife's and daughter's eyes as they were separated in the chaos, and he seemed to hear the screams that had once echoed throughout the city.

"I can't eat this! The food I get for working for the Japanese is earned with my own spine!" He roared at himself, abruptly turning his head and forcing himself to leave that area, continuing towards Zhonghua Gate, the place that was once called "home".

With each step he took, hunger gnawed at his will like a wild beast, but something much stronger, called dignity, sustained him.

Walking on familiar yet unrecognizable streets, Li Shouren's thoughts drifted uncontrollably back to the past.

He was originally the owner of a small silk and cloth shop inside Zhonghua Gate, named "Ruifuxiang". Although it was not big, it was enough to feed his family.

His wife, Xiu'e, is gentle and virtuous, and his daughter, Xiao Juan, is lively and adorable.

The Spring Festival is the most lively time of the year. Xiu'e prepares the New Year's goods well in advance, and hangs red lanterns and pastes the paper-cut window decorations she made herself in the shop.

Xiao Juan would wear her new cotton-padded jacket and run around inside and outside the shop, waiting to receive New Year's money.

On New Year's Eve, the family sits around the table, enjoying a sumptuous New Year's Eve dinner, listening to the continuous sound of firecrackers outside the window. The air is filled with the aroma of food and the smell of sulfur—the warmth of human life, proof of being alive.

He instinctively reached into his pocket and touched a cold, hard object—a brass pocket watch.

The watch case is badly worn, with the copper core showing through the edges, and the chain is also a bit loose.

This was one of Xiu'e's dowry when she married him, and it was also an old item passed down from her family.

On that chaotic afternoon before the city fell, Xiu'e shoved the watch into his hand, her face urgent yet unusually calm, and said, "Shouren, take Xiaojuan and run to the safe zone... Don't worry about me, I'll pack some things and come..."

Keep this watch; it's a keepsake... and it's very important...

"No matter what, live on. We... We'll meet again..." That was the last time he saw his wife.

He knew his wife was different from ordinary people. Ever since he opened the silk shop at his wife's urging, some people would occasionally approach her and say strange things. Every time, his wife would make various excuses to go home early to cook.

Li Shouren admitted that he initially had doubts about his wife...

Until one day, he secretly followed his wife home and discovered that she had taken a telegraph machine from under the bedroom floor...

From that moment on, I understood my wife's difference, and I became increasingly cautious... terrified that one day we would be discovered...

On the day the city fell, he ran desperately with his daughter, but they were separated in the chaotic crowd, and his daughter disappeared without a trace.

Now, this pocket watch, which is no longer very accurate, has become the only real memento that Xiu'e left him.

Whenever he couldn't fall asleep at night, he would take out this watch, stroking its cool surface, as if he could still feel the warmth of Xiu'e's palm.

His home was gone, his family scattered, and only this watch, along with those fragmented memories, proved everything he once possessed.

This is something more precious than life itself.