The Courtyard House: The Little Red Devil Returning from the Peninsula

The smoke from the gunpowder gully had not yet dissipated, and the wind was blowing the smell of gunpowder northward.

Zhao Weiguo stood under a crooked jujube tree outside the ditch, his pistol still in its holster, with six bullets left in the magazine. He wasn't looking into the ditch; Old Zhou was finishing up what was happening there.

The gray-white slit in the east was a finger's width wider than it had been half an hour ago.

The monk lifted Yamamoto up from the bottom of the ditch. Yamamoto's arms were tied behind his back, the ends of the rope tied in a tight knot by the monk himself. Blood seeped from the gun on his shoulder, and a large patch of his uniform was soaked. He didn't struggle or make a sound, dragging his feet on the gravel, each step kicking up a small cloud of dust.

Zhao Weiguo didn't go over. He glanced at Yamamoto, his gaze lingering on the wet patch on Yamamoto's right shoulder for less than a second before looking away.

"Monk."

"arrive."

"Take two men and take the North Mountain Road." Zhao Weiguo took the cigarette off his ear, unlit, and twirled it between his fingers. "Get to the brigade headquarters before dawn and hand the men over."

"Yes."

"search."

The monk pressed Yamamoto down onto a bluestone outside the ditch, feeling him from his collar to his trousers. In the pocket of his military uniform jacket was a short knife sheath, empty; the knife wasn't inside. In his belt was a Browning pistol, its magazine full. In his left trouser pocket was a small roll of gauze, and in his right pocket, a map of the Taiyuan area, its edges frayed. The lining of his clothes was empty. The monk spread the loot on the ground and turned to look at Zhao Weiguo.

Zhao Weiguo walked over and flipped the map with his toes.

"Turn the belt buckle over to look at it."

The monk pulled Yamamoto's leather belt from his trousers, buckle facing up. The back of the brass buckle was flat, covered with a layer of green rust. The monk scratched it with his fingernail, chipping away a piece of rust, revealing brass underneath.

"Clean," the monk said.

Zhao Weiguo didn't say anything more. He put the cigarette back behind his ear, turned around and walked towards the mouth of the ditch to see Old Zhou collect the body.

The monk called over two veterans. One, surnamed Liu, carried a Czech-made rifle; the other, surnamed Sun, carried a Type 38 rifle. The two men positioned Yamamoto in the middle, with the monk supporting Yamamoto's left shoulder on the left and his right hand holding Yamamoto's hands, which were tied behind his back.

The North Mountain Road branches off from the north side of the valley entrance, running northeast along the mountainside for about thirty li to reach the brigade headquarters. The road surface is paved with gravel and bluestone slabs, the night dew creating a layer of mist on the stone surface. It's not quite dawn yet, and the bushes on both sides of the mountain road are dark clumps.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, there was a gentle slope ahead.

A bluestone slab lies across the middle of the slope, half on the slope and half hanging off the edge, one corner of which is loose. The bottom of the slab is hollow, revealing damp soil and withered grass.

The monk stepped on first, tested the stone slab with his foot, and the slab sank down with a click.

"Give me a hand," Yamamoto said softly, his voice hoarse.

The monk turned around. Yamamoto stood a step in front of the stone slab, his right shoulder slumped, his feet dragging on the spot. His hands, tied behind his back, were clenched into fists, his knuckles white.

"I said, 'Give me a hand,'" Yamamoto said again. (In Chinese. His pronunciation was very accurate.)

The monk glanced at the two veterans behind him. Veteran Liu raised the muzzle of his Czech-made rifle half an inch, while Veteran Sun's Type 38 rifle remained still.

The monk stretched out his left hand, passed it under Yamamoto's left armpit, and placed it on Yamamoto's left upper arm.

"Pass."

Yamamoto stepped onto the stone slab. The slab sank half an inch. Yamamoto leaned slightly to the left, his left shoulder resting against the rock face.

The rock face is inside the stone slab, close to the mountain path. There is a pointed corner protruding from the rock face, about a hand's length long, with a black quartz vein on its grayish-white surface.

Yamamoto's right shoulder met that sharp corner.

The sound of the fabric tearing was very soft, and the tear underneath the fabric was even softer.

The mountain itself sank down, and my shoulder slammed into the sharp corner of the rock wall, the corner digging into the wound on my right shoulder.

The monk heard a very soft hiss. The sound came from Yamamoto's shoulder, not from his mouth.

He instinctively gripped Yamamoto's left arm tightly.

"stop."

Yamamoto couldn't stop.

He twisted his right shoulder backward, and the sharp corner of the rock wall pulled out of the wound, bringing with it a small patch of blood that turned black on the rock wall.

The monk heard a "click" sound.

The sound came from Yamamoto's right shoulder joint, muffled yet crisp, like someone snapping a dry twig against his knee.

The mountain itself was short, and his right hand slowly slid to one side through the reversed rope loop.

Only then did the monk notice Yamamoto's right hand.

Yamamoto's right hand was no longer in the reverse-arm position. The noose was still on, but it was binding an arm that was about to come off.

copper.

Yamamoto held a three-centimeter-long copper casing in his right palm. It was a detonator casing, a spare part for detonating landmines, carried by Japanese special agents. The casing was narrow at one end and wide at the other, the narrow end pointing towards the shoulder joint.

The monk lunged forward and pressed down on Yamamoto's right shoulder. There was no bone under his palm, only a piece of bone that was shifting, which made his hand go numb.

The sound of the bone dislocating was very clear this time. "Crack," came another sound from the shoulder joint socket, with a slightly sticky feel.

Yamamoto gritted his teeth, and blood leaked from between them.

The monk's hands were wet with blisters from Yamamoto's right shoulder. He couldn't exert any strength. He was slipping.

Yamamoto tried to insert the copper shell into the crevice of his shoulder with his right hand. It was halfway in when it got stuck. Yamamoto's left hand was weak, though he could still use a little force. He pressed his left hand against his right shoulder and leaned his body against the sharp corner of the rock face.

The sharp corner of the rock face pressed against the wide head of the copper shell.

Yamamoto Tsubaki.

The copper shell rotated half a circle inside the shoulder bone.

The opening where the bone fragments were misaligned was stretched open by that half-circle.

Yamamoto didn't utter a sound. His face was pressed against the rock wall, his cheek rubbing against the gray stone, leaving a bloody mark. His eyes were open, not looking at the monk, nor at the rock wall, but at the sliver of gray-white sunlight above the rock wall.

Twist the copper casing another half turn.

"Click."

Third tone.

The right arm dislodged from the shoulder joint socket.

His entire right arm, along with the rope that was twisted behind his back, fell off the mountain.

A broken bone fragment and a pool of gushing blood remained at the shoulder. Blood clung to the sharp corner of the rock face, trickling down the surface and dripping onto the gravel at his feet, drip-drip-drip.

Yamamoto tilted to the left.

He rolled off the edge of the stone slab.

The slope was steep and narrow, with sections of bushes and gravel gullies. Yamamoto bounced on the gravel, crashed into a dead tree root, bounced again, and rolled into the bushes. It was dark inside the bushes, and no one could be seen; only the sound of branches snapping and a muffled groan could be heard.

The monk took two steps and stopped at the edge of the steep slope.

The steep slope was wet, and the night dew made the leaves of the bushes slippery. Below was a ravine of loose stones, piled high with rocks of all sizes, dark and bottomless. The monk, a one-armed man still bleeding, couldn't run far. But the slope was so slippery, the night so dark, yet the monk jumped down himself, his foot slipping, his gun bouncing on a rock, leaving an opening for the man at the bottom. Even a one-armed wounded man dared to fight him.

Veteran Liu's Czech-made rifle was pointed down the steep slope.

"Company commander, are we going down or not?"

The monk remained silent.

He stared for two seconds at the mark on the steep slope where the bushes had been trampled. Beyond the mark was a denser patch of bushes, and then it disappeared from view.

The monk clenched his right hand on his leg, then released it.

On the bluestone slab beside the steep slope, Yamamoto's right arm and the copper case containing the fuse remained. The copper case was stuck in the shoulder bone and hadn't been removed. The severed arm, still attached to the rope noose, lay askew on the slab, with a small pool of blood on it.

When Zhao Weiguo came up from the North Mountain Road, the monk was still kneeling in front of the stone slab on the steep slope.

Zhao Weiguo wasn't walking very fast. It was only two hundred steps from the mouth of the ditch to the pine slab. He kept looking at his feet as he walked, at the pool of blood on the stone, and at the grayish-white mark that had been rubbed off the edge of the slab.

He walked to the edge of the steep slope and stopped behind the monk.

I glanced down.

It was dark below the steep slope. At the end of the trampled bushes, all was quiet. Dew slid down the leaves, dripping onto the gravel, drip, drip.

The monk knelt there without turning around.

Zhao Weiguo didn't ask him.

Old Zhou and his men caught up from the other side of the ditch. Behind Old Zhou were two soldiers from the assault team, one carrying a roll of tarpaulin and the other carrying a first-aid kit.

Zhao Weiguo glanced back at Lao Zhou and pointed down the steep slope.

"Go all the way down."

Old Zhou tied the oilcloth around his waist and led the two men down the steep slope via a sheep trail. The trail was narrow, barely wide enough for one person, and the gravel crunched underfoot. It took the three of them about fifteen minutes to reach the bottom.

Below the steep slope was a north-south gully of gravel, filled with dense bushes whose branches scratched at people. Old Zhou parted a clump of bushes with his hands and saw the severed arm underneath.

The severed arm was still attached to the noose, the end of which was tied in a tight knot by the monk, and the knot remained intact. The bone fragments at the end of the arm were dislocated, and a copper fuse was wedged into the shoulder joint. The fuse was three centimeters long, made of copper, narrow at one end and wide at the other, with the wider end facing outwards. Blood and a severed muscle fiber stained the surface of the fuse. The tourniquet from the arm was broken in two; one piece remained on the arm, while the other lay in a crevice in the nearby rubble.

Old Zhou squatted down, pried the copper shell out of the bone crevices, laid it out on the oilcloth, placed the severed arm on the oilcloth as well, and picked up the piece of cloth with the bloody bandage. He then wrapped the oilcloth around the four corners and tied it into a small bundle.

"Leave a mark," he said to the soldiers behind him.

A soldier took a strip of red cloth from his first-aid kit and tied it to a dead tree root by the ditch.

Old Zhou climbed up carrying his oilcloth bundle.

He placed the bundle at Zhao Weiguo's feet.

Zhao Weiguo squatted down and lifted a corner of the oilcloth to take a look.

The layer of blood on the copper shell had turned black. At the severed end of the arm, a piece of muscle tissue from Yamamoto's shoulder socket was still clinging to the bone fragments. The shoulder socket was empty. The bone hadn't come back in after it dislodged.

Zhao Weiguo covered the corner of the oilcloth back up.

He glanced up at the distant North Mountain Road. The grayish-white crack to the east had already reached the ridge; in another fifteen minutes, it would be truly dawn. The gravel gully below the steep slope stretched southward, ending at an even higher ridge, beyond which lay yellowish-brown hills. There were no houses on the hills, only a few abandoned charcoal kilns, their entrances half-collapsed, looking like dark holes from afar.

Zhao Weiguo stood up.

He didn't look at the hills again.

The red marker on the gully entrance panel was still lit. Yamamoto Ichiki's location was marked behind a ridge to the west, his vital signs bar was shorter than before, and his mission level was steadily decreasing.

A line of text pops up in the lower right corner of the panel.

[High-risk target has broken out of encirclement. Vital signs are weak. Tactical simulation level continues to decline.]

Zhao Weiguo glanced at the line of text for two seconds.

He raised his hand and turned off the panel.

The monk was still kneeling in front of the stone slab on the steep slope.

Zhao Weiguo walked to his side, but neither helped him up nor called out to him.

The sound of dew dripping still lingers below the steep slope. The smoke from the gully mouth is blown north by the wind, traversing the mountain path and disappearing behind another, unseen ridge.

Zhao Weiguo looked down at the darkness below the steep slope.

"Don't chase after them."

The monk slumped down, lowered his head, but didn't rise.

Zhao Weiguo didn't say anything more. He stood by the steep slope for a while, took the cigarette off his ear, put it in his mouth, but didn't light it.

"Oh shit."

He bit off a piece of the cigarette. Cigarette residue spilled out and landed on the gravel at his feet.

The gray-white slit on the east side finally opened up the mountain ridge.

Its daybreak.

Ten miles away.

In the shady corner of the yellowish-brown hills stood an abandoned charcoal kiln, its entrance half-collapsed, the dark cave reeking of aged charcoal ash. Outside the kiln, a few clumps of withered grass were bent to one side by the night wind.

Yamamoto squeezed through the crack in the kiln opening and sat down against the kiln wall. The kiln wall was cold, absorbing half of the moisture from his back.

His right shoulder was bare. The tourniquet was wrapped three times around the wound, which he had tied on the way using his left hand and teeth. It wasn't tied tightly, and blood was still seeping, but it was slower than before.

The cave was dark. Yamamoto's face was pressed against the cave wall, and the bloodstain on his cheek from the sharp corner of the rock had dried.

He had his eyes closed.

His breathing was heavy, with each inhale accompanied by a hissing sound, as if it were being squeezed out from a leaky vent.

After a long time, he opened his eyes.

The clump of withered grass outside the kiln entrance bends to one side in the wind, then bends back again.

"This child."

His voice was very soft.

"He's a demon."

It was in Chinese. He didn't use Japanese.

No one answered from inside the cave. The smell of aged charcoal ash seeped out through the crack at the cave entrance, carried by the morning breeze to a few pebbles in the shady corner of the hill, where it dissipated.