Chapter 89: Base Integration (4)

The soldiers’ eyes lit up. Everyone knew the bayonet drill and had practiced it, though in the world before the end, as weapons became ever more advanced, no one had truly taken it seriously.

Long Zhanhai was not only skilled in his family’s martial art; he also knew the various schools of martial arts throughout the country very well. One glance was enough for him to recognize the bayonet drill, and at once he felt he might have kicked a hornet’s nest. He had even seen troops in the Huairou mountains forge steel pipes and then take up bayonet practice again.

But none of them had the stern precision of Sun Xiaoshan’s stance, and that crazed aura of slaughtering hordes of zombies made him feel strangely familiar. He had seen many people who had killed zombies carry that same air about them.

Such people were troublesome. If you could not kill them, you would be tangled up with them like adhesive plaster, impossible to shake off.

He began to regret his attitude. This brother had clearly killed many zombies indeed. Even if he defeated him, he ought to treat him to a drink and apologize. He also saw that this brother had never practiced martial arts; in his first stance, he had even shifted his feet twice on the ground before settling into place.

“I’m ready. You make the first move,” Long Zhzhai said, deciding to let Sun Xiaoshan strike first, as a kind of concession.

Sun Xiaoshan was not polite. With the push of his right foot, he drove his body forward, while his left foot stepped out swiftly, landing heel first. His right foot followed by the same distance. Both arms thrust the steel pipe toward Long Zhzhai’s head, his left hand guiding the direction, while the force of his right foot and his waist propelled his body forward. Then his left calf drove his thigh into a great forward step. When he struck, his foot stayed no more than a pair of fists above the ground. As his left foot landed, the red tassel atop the steel pipe flicked with a sharp hiss, and the weapon shot straight for Long Zhzhai’s forehead!

Even fully focused, Long Zhzhai broke into a cold sweat. The stance was utterly ordinary; it was simply too fast.

He had no time to parry and hurled himself leftward. The steel pipe spear skimmed past his forehead by a hair. Sun Xiaoshan did not panic. Using the push of his left foot and the spring of his right, he leapt backward.

As he landed, his left and right feet touched down in sequence, neither foot rising very high from the ground. The steel pipe did not sway, and his upper body remained in the posture of a poised thrust.

Then it became Sun Xiaoshan’s solo performance. He kept thrusting relentlessly. If he missed, he sprang back and thrust again. If Long Zhzhai dodged left, he thrust left; if Long Zhzhai dodged right, he thrust right.

Long Zhzhai was driven to the point of fury. He kept being stabbed at, and if he slowed even slightly, that pipe would plant itself in his forehead. Even if the steel pipe was wrapped in thick cotton cloth, it was still no pleasant thing. His face held nothing but fragile places like nose and eyes.

Whatever move Long Zhzhai wanted to use required time, but Sun Xiaoshan remembered only that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He cared not at all how nimble Long Zhzhai’s leg techniques might be, nor how the red-tasseled spear in Long Zhzhai’s hands might be about to pierce him. He ignored it all and thrust again and again, each strike aimed straight at Long Zhzhai’s forehead.

There was no time for a trump card. Even if Long Zhzhai managed to unleash one, his own head would be struck first. On the battlefield, that meant he was already dead. Who would fear a dead man’s secret skill?

In the end of days, people’s stamina had increased, and Sun Xiaoshan had also trained himself through constant running and endless errands. He kept thrusting and thrusting.

Long Zhzhai was chased in wild circles around the courtyard. By the time his legs found their rhythm, he could no longer stop running. Some even counted six legs on him, saying he dashed like a windmill.

No matter what he wanted to do, he needed a brief opening, and Sun Xiaoshan simply would not give him one. He thrust and thrust and thrust.

“There’s no winner, no winner,” the old fox, Commander Liu, finally said. He could see that both men would end up exhausted. One had undergone rigorous martial training and possessed excellent endurance; the other had fought his way out of a mountain of corpses and had no concept of fatigue when it came to zombies. So he stepped in to smooth things over. “Xiaoshan, stop now.”

Only then did Sun Xiaoshan withdraw, still warily watching Long Zhzhai, who was running like mad. He held his thrusting stance and, with the push of his left foot, moved backward, then stepped his right foot back, then his left, retreating one step at a time until he returned to Li Fengyi’s side.

Li Fengyi was overjoyed. He had already been preparing for a group beating, shame be damned, and had not expected that Sun Xiaoshan, a scholar turned rogue, would even get the real rogue dealt with. Strictly speaking, he had never seen people at war with one another; he was busy killing zombies all day and only knew from the records that Long Zhzhai had come from a martial arts background and now served as a bodyguard for a company boss. He had always been worried.

As for Sun Xiaoshan, he had no real martial training at all. He had only learned how to survive by killing zombies.

Long Zhzhai circled the courtyard once more before his junior brothers finally stopped him. He halted, looked around, and saw Sun Xiaoshan still holding the steel pipe spear in a thrusting pose, staring intently at his head.

He flung out his hand, hurled the spear far away, and muttered, “That’s just shameless.” Then he covered his head and crouched on the ground.

Back inside, the discussion continued, and the government officials and the company’s second-in-command had all lost their temper.

The soldiers also followed them in. They looked at Sun Xiaoshan with admiration. Sun Xiaoshan appeared calm and unruffled on the surface, but he had been so furious just now that he had only known how to thrust. Thinking back afterward, he felt a twinge of fear. He remembered Long Zhzhai’s file: a martial arts expert, no less!

His legs began to tremble under the table. Li Fengyi noticed it and nudged him with his own leg to ease his nervousness.

Long Zhzhai did not come in. He felt too embarrassed. Taking his junior brothers, he went to the cars parked outside the Beijing Hotel and waited there. He lay across the back seat, his face completely disgraced this time.

The Special Committee radio station broadcast: the first meeting among the three sides had been extremely friendly. At a later date, the three principal leaders would meet together to discuss integration. This had been a successful meeting, a victorious meeting, one that heralded humanity’s movement toward unification. The day of human revival was within sight, and the next rendezvous would be held at Xiaotangshan outside Beijing.

After that, the teams from the Mentougou mountains and the Huairou mountains departed. Before the vehicles pulled away, the soldiers carefully studied Sun Xiaoshan with great interest.

“This is the pre-apocalypse future infantry soldier program equipment of our country,” the Minister of Science and Technology, Minister Liu, explained to the leaders of the Special Committee, gesturing toward the gear before them. The equipment was displayed behind a glass partition in the wall. “It includes the weapons subsystem, the integrated helmet subsystem, the computer wireless electronic subsystem, the software subsystem, the protective suit, and the individual soldier equipment subsystem.”

The gear was fitted onto a soldier mannequin painted in camouflage. Minister Liu pointed to each component in turn as he introduced it. “The modular weapons subsystem is designed and manufactured based on the Type 95 and Type 03 rifles. It includes major electrically related optical components such as a ballistic computer, electro-optical sight, camera, and laser rangefinder digital compass, providing the soldier with distance and directional information. The soldier links his position through the Beidou navigation system, and when indirect fire and combat identification calls are needed, he has an accurate target location. This system will allow infantry to operate in all weather conditions and at night. Together with the other components, it enables a soldier to avoid exposing himself to enemy fire.”