enjoyebooks Chapter 2: Rejecting Military Arts
Chapter 2: Rejecting Military Arts
If you ask Liu Yu what the hardest part of his two years of compulsory military service was, he would definitely not say it was the 20-kilometer cross-country run, nor would he say it was standing guard at night in minus 30 degrees Celsius.
The hardest thing is having forty-six years of memories but having to pretend to be a blank slate.
In the ninth month of basic training, the squad leader discovered something strange.
"Liu Yu, have you handled guns before?"
On the shooting range, Zhao Tiejun, the stern-faced squad leader, stared at the target paper. Five shots, forty-seven rings—a score that would be considered excellent even among veterans.
Liu Yu remained expressionless: "Reporting to the squad leader, I've never touched it; maybe I practiced with air rifles when I was a kid."
Zhao Tiejun looked at him with some skepticism, but didn't ask any further questions.
Of course he had handled real guns; in his previous life he had a shooting range membership card and went to shoot seventy or eighty times a year, touching both pistols and rifles.
With the added live-fire training in the military camp, once muscle memory is activated, accuracy naturally becomes much better than that of peers.
There are many similar cases.
He learned tactical maneuvers quickly because he remembered most of the key points of the movements from the military movies he had watched in his previous life.
He quickly mastered housekeeping because he knew the trick to "folding tofu blocks" was to spray water to press the edges.
Even during emergency assemblies, he remained calm and composed, having already experienced countless "life-or-death races," though these were merely business-related situations.
……
The biggest advantage of military camps is that, apart from training and guard duty, there is plenty of time left, like sand on the Gobi Desert.
We train for eight hours during the day, and then have two hours of free time after dinner until lights out.
Aside from half a day of political study and physical fitness tests, the rest of the weekend is all my own time.
Add to that the hours of "sitting still" while on night duty, how could an eighteen-year-old body with a forty-six-year-old soul bear to sleep?
He made a plan for himself to pick up his academic studies again.
In his previous life, he dropped out of high school and joined the army. After being discharged, he did not continue his studies.
Although I have made up for a lot of knowledge after my business grew, it is true that my foundation is weak.
He pulled out several yellowed study materials from the company library.
I tackled politics, Chinese, mathematics, and English one by one.
Mathematics is the hardest subject. Now I have to relearn functions and solid geometry. My brain feels like it's been shoved into a meat grinder.
He forced himself to study; if he couldn't solve a problem, he would do it ten times, and if ten times wasn't enough, he would do it a hundred times.
He said to himself, "Don't you have the willpower of a 46-year-old? You can build a business with billions in revenue by selling cars, and you're telling me you can't learn math?"
Three months later, he was able to answer at least half of the basic math questions in the college entrance exam correctly.
He has an advantage in Chinese and English.
In his past life, he loved watching movies and improved his English listening skills to a considerable degree with the help of subtitles; reading comprehension was also one of his strengths in Chinese.
People who sell things are best at understanding other people's psychology. Isn't reading comprehension just about understanding the psychology of the test creator?
He asked the class monitor to buy several books when he went out: "Fundamentals of Screenwriting", "Introduction to Film Directing", and "History of Chinese Television".
While reading these books, the instructor curiously flipped through one and asked, "Liu Yu, do you want to pursue a career in the arts?"
"Reporting to the instructor, just browsing around."
……
It was a night in the depths of winter in 2000, and the wind on the Gobi Desert made the tin doors of the barracks rattle loudly.
Liu Yu, wrapped in a military overcoat, sat on the edge of the bed, turned on the flashlight, and pulled a hard-covered notebook out from under the pillow.
He had begged and pleaded with the company clerk to give him this; the cover had two words written in black pen: "Bullet".
What he wanted to write was a story about special forces soldiers.
The protagonist is named Xiaoyu. He joined the army at the age of eighteen and rose from a troublemaker in the recruit training camp to become an elite soldier in the special forces.
The story begins with a new recruit being disciplined by his squad leader and ends with him being wounded and discharged during a border counter-terrorism operation, with his comrades lining up to see him off.
Liu Yu used all the narrative techniques from the thousands of movies and TV series he had watched in his previous life.
The beginning should be captivating, the middle should have ups and downs, the climax should be thrilling, and the ending should be tear-jerking.
He used sales techniques from his past life to write the characters' dialogues; concise, powerful, and engaging.
He revised the first paragraph seven times.
"When Zhuang Xiaoyu first touched a real gun, his hands were shaking. Not because he was scared, but because it was fucking cold. In December in the Gobi Desert, the temperature was minus twenty-five degrees Celsius. The metal barrel was frozen like an icicle, and his fingers almost stuck to it. The squad leader came over and kicked him: 'What are you shaking for? If you can't even hold a gun steadily, what kind of soldier are you!'"
After he finished writing it, he read it through himself and felt it was alright.
There were images, details, and characters; so I continued writing.
......
On training days, I write 500 words each day.
On my days off, I write 1,000 words each day.
He couldn't take a notebook while on guard duty, so he would think about the plot and dialogue in his mind and write them down later.
One notebook was full, so I asked the clerk for another one.
The second book was also almost full. By the summer of 2001, he had written nearly 150,000 words.
According to his outline, the entire novel will be about 300,000 words; he has already completed half of it.
Days passed by one by one.
Spring comes late to the Gobi Desert; sandstorms still rage in April. The summer sun can scorch your skin until it peels off.
Autumn is the most beautiful season, with clear skies and fluffy clouds, and distant snow-capped mountains shimmering in the sunlight.
Winter is the worst; when you're on night watch, frost can even form on your eyelashes.
Liu Yu's body was also changing. When he enlisted, he was 1.78 meters tall and weighed 65 kilograms, which was rather thin.
After more than a year of training, he grew to 1.82 meters tall and weighed 75 kilograms, with clearly defined abdominal muscles.
In the words of the squad leader, "He's like a soldier now."
His eyes changed even more; when he first enlisted, his eyes held a fierceness, a sense of defiance, and the anger of a young man forced into a corner.
Now all those things are gone, replaced by calmness, focus, and a composure that is impossible for people of the same age to have.
The instructor mentioned once at a company meeting: "Liu Yu from the third squad has made the most progress this year."
Zhao Tiejun said, "This kid is like a completely different person."
They didn't know that the person had indeed been replaced.
Not all secrets can be kept in the military.
……
On New Year's Day 2001, the regiment held a cultural performance, and each company had to put on a show.
The instructor approached Liu Yu: "I heard you wrote a novel, could you adapt it into a skit?"
Liu Yu hesitated for a moment, then agreed.
He spent three days adapting the first few chapters of "The Bullet" into a short skit script, which he named "New Recruits Reporting for Duty".
The company selected five soldiers to rehearse, and he was the director.
On the day of the performance, the audience was filled with both laughter and tears.
After reading it, the regimental commander patted the political instructor on the shoulder and said, "This soldier is talented."
Later, people from the political department of the troupe came to talk to Liu Yu and asked him if he was interested in applying to the PLA Academy of Arts.
Liu Yu thought about it and politely declined.
"Report: I want to go back to my hometown to take the exam."
It wasn't that he didn't want to go to the PLA Academy of Arts; he knew in his heart that his stage wasn't in the military system.
His mother works at Hunan Broadcasting System, and his sister is at Cambridge Business School. What he wants to do in the future requires a market-oriented environment.
His discharge date was set for December 2001.
The company had a dinner party the night before I left.
More than twenty veterans who were about to be discharged sat around in the canteen. On the table were braised pork, big plate chicken, peanuts, and several cases of beer that the instructor had bought out of his own pocket.
Zhao Tiejun picked up the enamel bowl, which was filled with beer.
"Liu Yu," he stared at the soldier he had led for two years, his voice a little hoarse, "when you first came here, I wanted nothing more than to kick you out of the army. Skipping drills, talking back, sneaking out at night; you did all the things that a raw recruit deserved to be beaten up for."
Liu Yu just held the bowl and grinned foolishly, without saying a word.
"You changed later." Zhao Tiejun paused. "Not that you became more honest, but that you became smarter. You know when to be firm and when to be lenient. It took me ten years in the army to learn this skill."
"Class monitor..."
"Don't speak, listen to me."
Zhao Tiejun waved his hand. "I've read your novel. It's well-written. You even included our company in it. I told the political instructor that once it's published, our company will buy a hundred copies and give one to each soldier."
Someone laughed in the cafeteria, the laughter tinged with a nasal tone.
Zhao Tiejun held out his bowl: "Liu Yu, go back and do a good job. Don't embarrass your uniform."
"Yes!" Liu Yu stood at attention, drank the wine in his bowl in one gulp, his eyes reddened, but he didn't cry.
He thought to himself: Squad leader, don't worry, I will never embarrass myself in this life.
……
The next morning, the first snow of the winter fell on the Gobi Desert.
Liu Yu stood at the entrance of the company, carrying that camouflage backpack.
Two years' worth of stuff was crammed in, with the top one being a thick hardcover notebook, containing the first half of "Bullet," 156,000 words.
The instructor came over and handed him a large envelope.
"These are the background check materials and personnel file certificates; you'll need them to complete the procedures when you get back. And this too."
He pulled a third-class merit medal from his pocket. "It was approved by the regiment to commend your performance in literary and artistic creation."
Liu Yu took it and gave a standard military salute.
"Thank you, instructor."
"Alright, let's go." The instructor patted him on the shoulder. "The car is waiting at the door."
A Dongfeng truck was parked at the entrance, ready to take the group of veterans to the county bus station, 20 kilometers away.
A dozen or so people climbed onto the truck bed and stood in the cold wind.
The vehicle started and slowly drove out of the camp gate.
Liu Yu clung to the edge of the truck bed and looked back.
The barracks gradually shrank in the snow, but the company's red flag still fluttered atop the flagpole.
The outline of the Qilian Mountains in the distance was blurred by the heavy snow, like a faded ink painting.
He suddenly recalled the sense of loss he felt after selling his first car in his previous life; it was his first pot of gold, and he felt empty inside when the car drove away.
This feeling is even stronger now.
But he knew that this empty place would soon be filled with something new.
He glanced down at the notebook in his camouflage backpack and a slight smile appeared on his lips.
Back in Changsha, I still have to finish my senior year of high school, take the art exam, and write the second half of "Bullet".
There's a whole world waiting for him to stir up trouble.
Someone started singing in the truck bed.
It's an old song. I don't know who started it. The voice was hoarse and off-key, but everyone sang along.
"Sending off comrades-in-arms on their journey, silently shedding tears, the sound of camel bells ringing in our ears..."
Liu Yu did not sing.
He looked up at the snowflakes falling from the sky and said softly.
"I came back in 2001."
Thousands of miles away in Changsha, the Xiangjiang Bridge is bustling with traffic.
Inside the Hunan Broadcasting Building, Zhang Yan was attending a meeting at the Finance and Assets Center.
In the corridor of Xiangya Hospital, Liu Jianhui had just finished a coronary artery bypass surgery.