Spring in Fengtian (3)
The reason humans are the crown of creation.
Education.
A person born in the 21st century isn't a modern human simply by virtue of being born in the 21st century. It is the accumulated education and information of thousands of years—absorbed throughout the long years of growing to adulthood—that molds a person into who they are.
At school.
On street billboards.
In the movie theaters they visited with friends to kill time.
In the stray fragments of EBS documentaries and National Geographic specials caught while idly flipping channels.
And even in the volatile reels and shorts carved from famous scenes of films.
Modern humans absorb an enormous amount of information through their eyes, without ever realizing it.
From the impossibly beautiful celebrities who grace variety shows every single day yet whom one might glimpse once or twice in a lifetime, to the spectacle of American warplanes being called in to bomb Taliban positions in the Afghanistan war—all of it watched from the comfort of a sofa. News of events unfolding thousands of kilometers away is consumed over dinner, spoon in hand.
And so they were the people furthest from war, yet who had seen more of it with their own eyes than anyone else alive.
Even a first grader knows what a machine gun is, what a tank is, what fighter jets and helicopters can do.
Manchuria was a forgotten place.
A place where even newspapers barely circulated.
Its administrative networks and education systems had been shattered when the land became the battlefield of the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. Life there was that of a refugee, forced to wander and flee from one war zone to the next simply to survive.
And so they were closer to war than anyone—and yet, ironically, few of them had ever seen war with their own eyes.
To them, a gun was terribly dangerous but absolutely essential.
To protect themselves and their families from the beasts and criminals that prowled Manchuria in droves, they had no choice but to live close to it.
So they considered rifles dangerous—but they did not fear them.
And so they did not think the thing called a "machine gun" was anything so remarkable either.
Because they had never seen one properly.
A weapon they had heard was very good.
At best, a contraption that bundled many rifles together and fired them like a train.
That was the extent of their understanding.
Even the Western powers, after watching legions of Balkan allied troops melt away before Ottoman machine guns a year later, had failed to grasp what it meant. How could people living in this benighted corner of Manchuria possibly see through it?
They had no education. They had no information.
And so their brains could not process the scene before their eyes.
"······."
"······."
What is happening?
What is going on over there?
The relentless rat-tat-tat-tat-tat of machine guns kept ringing out from beyond.
As a brigade commander, as the man responsible for them all—
Lan Tianwei murmured, his hands trembling violently as he barely clung to his fraying sanity.
"···What just— what just happened?"
"······."
"What— what on earth is happening?"
Despite his pitiful questions, everyone standing beside him said nothing.
No—could not answer.
Because they heard nothing at all.
With every second they held their silence, the price grew larger and larger.
"Stop."
"······."
"Stop it right now! Boys, stop right now!!"
"E-eh? Yes?"
Lan Tianwei drew his pistol with a shaking hand and roared at his dumbstruck adjutant.
"Pull yourself together! I said pull yourself together!"
"Ugh— uuu, uaaah···."
It was no use.
The madness had already crawled down to his spine.
Abandoning his adjutant, Lan Tianwei searched for the next man.
"Hey! Colonel Wang! Snap out of it!"
"Hiiik! Spare me, spare me, please! I—I truly know nothing!"
"You! Get up right now! Are you trying to get every one of our boys killed!!?"
"Unhand me!!"
Colonel Wang tore his hand free and threw himself flat on the ground, beginning to chant a sutra.
"OGreatCompassionateAvalokiteshvaraBodhisattvawithyourmercifulgraceprotectmefromallcalamitiesOGreatCompassionateAvalokiteshvaraBodhisattva—"
"······."
This one was a lost cause too.
Lan Tianwei turned his head.
"···Ah."
And their eyes met.
Someone stood alone, having crossed a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
He was several li away, yet Lan Tianwei could feel it.
He's looking at me.
Who was that?
A man?
Or—
"···A yaksha."
"It's a yaksha."
At the voice that seemed to come from nowhere, agitation rippled through the ranks.
One became two, two became four, four became eight.
The six thousand— no, the ragged remnant, now only half that number, staggered and fell back.
"The yaksha devours men!!"
"Sorcery! It's sorcery!"
"Zhao Erxun summoned the yaksha with witchcraft!!"
This is it.
Once a formation breaks, there is no gathering it back.
Lan Tianwei raised his drawn pistol and fired into the sky.
"To your positions! Back to your positions! I said back to your positions!"
"H-hiik! The yaksha! The yaksha is coming!"
"What yaksha, you fool! That's Lee Tae-oh! A man! A human being just like us!"
"How is that a human!! What kind of man swallows thousands of lives in one gulp!!"
"You little bastards—"
There was nothing to be done.
Lan Tianwei blew the head off the man who babbled on with dead, unfocused eyes.
"Kghk!"
"B-Brigade Commander!!"
"Return to formation! All you need to do is advance and get out of the enemy's line of fire!"
"How— how are we supposed to do that!?"
"That's! That's···."
I don't know.
Nowhere in his memories of a lifetime, nowhere in the books he had read, did any solution to this situation exist.
"······."
Lan Tianwei lowered the pistol in his hand.
Soldiers brushed past him, fleeing, but it no longer mattered to him.
He turned his head and looked out the gate through which his own men were running.
···Far in the distance.
He could see dust kicked up by cavalry.
Lan Tianwei let out a hollow laugh for a brief moment—then pressed the pistol to his own temple.
***
"······."
"······."
"Jeom-san."
"···Ah, yes!"
"Fire."
Ma Jeom-san, his face frozen stiff, lit my half-crushed cigarette with mechanical movements.
"Sssshh. Hoo."
I smoked as I gazed out over the scene I had created.
My stomach turned. I wanted to vomit on the spot.
Bile was crawling up my throat.
But I couldn't.
I had to look at it straight on. I must not look away.
The field of fire was mine. The trap was mine. This hell was mine.
"Jeom-san."
"···Yes, Major."
"I don't think I'll be seeing heaven, I reckon."
"···Don't say such things. If you hadn't killed those men, we'd be the ones lying dead."
"That's true enough. But does the world ever work out quite that simply?"
I withdrew my gaze from the front and turned to look at Jeom-san.
He flinched slightly and looked away.
"I don't know how you'll come to see me after today. But there's one thing I want you to understand."
"And what would that be, sir?"
"I'm going to open up a better future. I need you to believe that."
The sin is heavy. Terribly so.
Far too heavy for a man of the modern age.
But to move forward in this godforsaken world, there is no other way. I had already made my peace with it.
I spat out the burnt-out cigarette and clamped a fresh one between my teeth.
"Second Lieutenant Ma Jeom-san."
"Yes, sir."
"Search for and rescue the wounded. Effective immediately, saving lives is our top priority."
"Understood! 1st Battalion! Follow me! Forward!"
As if he'd been waiting for the order, Ma Jeom-san rushed out with the soldiers in tow.
"Second Lieutenant Jo Do-seon. Second Lieutenant Woo Deok-sun."
"···Yes, sir."
"Detach two companies and form a pursuit unit. Borrow horses from the General's Headquarters stables."
"Who are we to pursue, sir?"
"The revolutionary, Zhang Rong. I don't know whether he's dead or alive, but we move on the assumption that he's alive."
"Understood."
"I'm coming with you. I'm the only one who knows his face."
"Yes, sir."
***
"Hah! Hah! Hahh!"
Gripping his wounded shoulder, Zhang Rong sprinted through the back alleys of Fengtian.
The spot where the bullet had lodged grew hotter by the minute, and the feeling in his shoulder faded with it.
"Damn it, damn that treacherous Han dog!"
Lee Tae-oh was dangerous.
He was no ordinary traitor.
He was exactly what those old traitors Wu Sangui or Hong Chengchou must have been.
Men gifted in war who poured that gift not into the service of Cathay and righteousness, but into throwing the world into chaos and lining their own pockets in the interval—men like that!
He reached a shabby abandoned house and stole a glance outside.
"There! There!"
"You rebels! Surrender and I'll spare your life!"
"S-spare me! I don't know anything about any revolution or whatever! I was only following orders to head to Fengtian!"
"I don't care about your excuses! Disarm right now or we'll treat you like the traitors Nam Tianwei and Zhang Rong!"
"I'll—I'll drop it! Just spare my life!!"
The pursuit unit.
That bastard Lee Tae-oh had clearly loosed his cavalry to hunt down the scattered soldiers of the 2nd Brigade fleeing in every direction.
"Kill every last rebel dog!"
"WAAAAAH—!!!"
"Neigh! Ho there!"
I have to get out.
If those madmen caught him, beheading would be the least of it; he couldn't begin to imagine how they might kill him.
Zhang Rong hastily tore up discarded clothing and wrapped it around his face, then slipped carefully out of the abandoned house and ran.
Where—where could he go?
The East Gate would surely be sealed by now.
The West Gate and South Gate too, most likely.
And the North Gate Lee Tae-oh had walked straight through himself—there was no escaping through any of the four great gates.
"What am I—what am I supposed to do?"
No plan came to him.
He had to tell Sun Yat-sen that Lee Tae-oh had to die.
He had to.
Having crawled back into another crumbling house, he lifted his head slightly and scanned the outside once more.
···The encirclement had tightened since before.
Is this the end?
He clenched the arm from which blood dripped steadily.
How much time had passed?
Muttered voices approached, and the door burst open under a military boot.
"Don't move!"
"Heh— I haven't the strength to, you Han dogs."
Behind the soldiers gripping their rifles stood a familiar face.
"Lee Tae-oh."
"You're looking well, Zhang Rong."
"Heh. Heh heh. A Wu Sangui through and through. You are the enemy of this continent. Every Han alive would want to chew the flesh from your bones. The whole continent will stand as one and pray for your downfall."
"Stand as one, you say. Do you truly believe that?"
Lee Tae-oh crouched down in front of Zhang Rong, who leaned limply against the wall.
"China is one. Naturally."
"Is that so? Then I should tell you—it's truly a shame."
"?"
"Because for the next twenty years or so, China's going to be torn to pieces. It'll be hell on earth, more or less."
"Heh heh. Spout your nonsense. How could you possibly know the future?"
"Well. In exchange, I'll take this Manchuria of ours, rip it apart properly, and turn it into a place where people can actually live. And, incidentally, collect a bit of ownership along the way."
"You vile filth. Sun Yat-sen will tear you apart. My comrades—the great Chinese nation—do you really think they'd let traitors like you live?"
"I did in fact come back from the future, and let me tell you—that great Chinese nation of yours wasn't all that impressive."
With that, Lee Tae-oh drew his pistol and pressed it to Zhang Rong's head.
"Heh heh. I'll be waiting down below to watch you fall."
"Yeah, that's not going to happen."
Lee Tae-oh pulled the trigger.
***
Central Fengtian.
The Shengjing General's Headquarters.
Zhao Erxun was trembling.
"Why— why isn't Lee Tae-oh storming the East Gate? Crushing it before Nam Tianwei arrives would be the sound strategy, wouldn't it!"
"A commander in the field has no duty but to be trusted, Your Excellency. Trust him, then."
"Surely— surely Lee Tae-oh isn't in league with them?"
"If he were, he'd have taken every one of us prisoner when we reached the West Gate watchtower, yourself included."
"Then why on earth is he dithering!"
And when Nam Tianwei arrived, the 2nd Brigade pushed into the city and began grinding through the streets, block by block, toward the headquarters—Zhao Erxun went half mad.
"This— this incompetent fool! He misses his chance to catch the enemy, then gets pushed back and back again— what in the world is he doing!"
"Bad news, Your Excellency! The enemy has advanced to within ten li of the headquarters!"
"KYAAAAAH—!!!"
That wretch Lee Tae-oh is dithering around and we're all going to die!
The vitality that had overflowed from Zhao Erxun's body withered and shriveled in an instant—right about the time he'd sooner swallow a panic drug than his red ginseng—
"Your Excellency! Your Excellency! Urgent report!"
"What now— did we lose? Annihilated, were we?"
"No, Your Excellency! A great victory! Major Lee Tae-oh has killed the rebel leader Zhang Rong and two thousand mutineers, and taken the rest prisoner!"
"We won? ··How?"
Zhao Erxun blinked his eyes and then rose from his seat.
"You're deceiving me, aren't you?"
"N-no, Your Excellency! It's the truth!"
"What did the Tongmenghui lot promise you if you sold me out? Thirty taels of silver?"
"Truly not! I would stake my own life on it!"
"Really, now?"
Ah. I could go for some red ginseng.
Vigor came flooding back into Zhao Erxun's body in an instant.
"Your Excellency, Major Lee Tae-oh is on his way here now."
"Oh— ohh! Bring wine and meat! This is the hour of a hero who has cut off the enemy's head!"
"Yes, Your Excellency!"
Before long, Lee Tae-oh ascended to the headquarters and stood before Zhao Erxun.
"Your Excellency. I've come to collect that drink you promised."
"Lee Tae-oh!!!"
Damn it! I like you, I really do!