Courtyard House: Home Alone

A middle-aged pilot with a small mustache mustered his courage and shouted, "Who are you? Where is this place? The Empire will not let you get away with this!"

"empire?"

Lin Yifan chuckled softly, the sound echoing eerily in the empty space. "Are you referring to that empire that's currently burning, killing, and looting outside Tianjin? Or are you referring to the three divisions I've already wiped out?"

The man with the small mustache was deathly pale, his lips trembling as he couldn't utter a word.

Lin Yifan stopped wasting words. With a slight movement of his mental energy, the pilot who had been shouting the loudest screamed and rolled on the ground, clutching his head. This wasn't physical pain, but torture that acted directly on the nerves, more thorough than any form of torture.

"I'll ask one more time," Lin Yifan's voice remained calm, "Those willing to cooperate, step forward."

The silence lasted a full minute. Finally, a young pilot who looked to be only in his early twenties stood up shakily: "I...I'm willing. My father is a fisherman in Hokkaido, I don't want to die here..."

Once the first one was chosen, a second and a third followed. Ultimately, 287 out of more than 300 pilots chose to surrender. As for the remaining die-hards, Lin Yifan wasn't in a hurry; he had plenty of patience to wear them down.

After dealing with the pilot's matter, Lin Yifan quickly washed up, ate something, and left the space. He straightened his clothes and pushed open the door to leave the room.

Hearing the noise, the sentry immediately turned and saluted: "Comrade Xiao Fan, you're awake? Comrade Xiao Zhang instructed that you should go to the mess hall after you wake up; they've saved some food for you."

"Thank you, I'll go right away."

The canteen wasn't crowded; a few cooks were cleaning up the stoves. Seeing Lin Yifan enter, a burly man with a full beard greeted him warmly: "Young comrade, the commander specifically instructed us to stew some meat for you, come on!"

A bowl of steaming braised pork, two steamed buns, and a dish of pickled radishes. In the Eighth Route Army's garrison in 1940, this was practically royalty. Lin Yifan didn't stand on ceremony and sat down to eat heartily.

"Young man, eat slowly, don't choke."

The bearded man looked at him with a smile, "The commander really likes you. He came early this morning to tell you that you're growing and need to eat well. We've never seen the commander care about anyone like this before."

Lin Yifan, with a steamed bun stuffed in his mouth, mumbled a reply. He knew that this preferential treatment wasn't just because of the plane brought by "Ghost," but also because Grandpa Peng saw some kind of hope in him—a young man who could hold up a sky in a chaotic world, which in itself was the most powerful mockery of darkness.

After finishing his meal, Lin Yifan took a walk around the area around the camp. The soldiers were making final preparations; stretcher teams, transport teams, and sentry posts were all in good order. He noticed that machine gun positions were concealed on several high points, with the muzzles pointed towards the entrance to the valley.

"Comrade Xiao Fan!" Xiao Zhang ran over breathlessly, "The commander is looking for you at headquarters!"

The command post was located in an ancestral hall in the center of the village, with blue bricks and gray tiles, and the plaque above the door that read "Loyalty and Filial Piety Passed Down Through Generations" was already mottled. Lin Yifan followed Xiao Zhang through several sentry posts and into the inner room.

Grandpa Peng was standing in front of a hand-drawn map, talking to several people who looked like officials. When Lin Yifan came in, he waved for the others to leave, leaving only a bespectacled secretary to take notes.

"Xiao Fan, sit down." Grandpa Peng gestured to the wooden stool beside him. "The window of opportunity will start promptly at ten o'clock tonight. I've deployed a regiment to seal off the outer perimeter of the valley. In addition, the engineering company has already dug evacuation trenches at both ends of the runway, and the fuel has been dispersed and stored as you instructed."

"Uncle Peng has considered everything thoroughly."

"Don't flatter me."

Grandpa Peng waved his hand, his expression turning serious. "I'm asking you, what did the gentleman say to you back then? He called me and told me to select about a thousand people to train as pilots, but he didn't tell me anything else."

"Uncle Peng, there are more than ten training aircraft among the planes that arrived tonight. Tomorrow night between 10 pm and 2 am, a group of Japanese pilots captured by the 'Ghost' will come over. I have already persuaded them to be your flight instructors. However, you will still have to do the ideological work on them, which is your forte."

In addition, a batch of flight training materials will also arrive at the same time, but they are all in Japanese and will need to be translated.

Grandpa Peng frowned, then relaxed: "Japanese pilots as instructors? That's a novel idea."

He paced back and forth in the room for a couple of steps, then suddenly stopped. "Don't worry about ideological work. Our Eighth Route Army may not have many other skills, but we excel at reforming prisoners of war. Back during the Northern Expedition, how many of those warlord soldiers became revolutionary fighters?"

He turned to the bespectacled secretary: "Write this down. Tomorrow, notify the Political Department to select a few officers who understand Japanese to form a special reform group. Also, bring over those comrades from the Anti-War League of those island nations at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University branch campus, and have them share their experiences."

The secretary scribbled away quickly, the pen scratching across the paper.

"The textbook issue is easy to handle," Grandpa Peng continued. "We have a professor in our base area who escaped from Yenching University, surnamed Zhou, who is fluent in Japanese. I'll have someone protect him and have him do the translations. If that doesn't work, we can have those Japanese pilots translate them themselves—aren't they willing to cooperate? We have to show some sincerity."

Lin Yifan nodded, inwardly admiring the old general's pragmatism and insight. Beneath his seemingly rugged exterior lay a remarkably astute mind.

"There's one more thing," Grandpa Peng suddenly lowered his voice, "that 'ghost' you mentioned... were the people who came to see the plane off tonight also theirs?"

"Exactly."

"Can I see him?"

Lin Yifan was silent for a moment, then shook his head: "Uncle Peng, the 'Ghosts' have their own rules. They only recognize me, and this is for each other's safety. Just think, what would happen if the Japanese found out that the Eighth Route Army was in contact with the 'Ghosts'?"

Grandpa Peng nodded thoughtfully: "I understand. Single-line communication, spies in times of death or life, has existed since ancient times."

He chuckled self-deprecatingly, "Looks like my old bones aren't qualified to join."

"Uncle Peng, you flatter me," Lin Yifan said seriously. "The fact that you can see 372 planes tonight is itself the greatest show of sincerity from 'Ghost.' As for the rest... there's plenty of time."

"What a wonderful day!" Old Man Peng laughed heartily, then composed himself, pulled a pocket watch from his pocket, and glanced at it. "It's five o'clock in the afternoon, five more hours. I can't wait..."

Before they knew it, it was nine o'clock in the evening. Lin Yifan finished his dinner and rode over alone. By this time, everyone at the temporary airport had already evacuated.

He released his spiritual power and saw the soldiers who had been working enthusiastically just moments before now leaving in neat, orderly lines, heading towards their designated positions.