Chapter 137: Becoming a Ghost-Killing Bandit

  In a forest on the eastern slope of Songshan Mountain.

  "Where are we going, Commander?" Liu Yutong asked.

  Dong Li Mao looked at each of the scattered soldiers sitting in the forest, his heart surging with emotion. Ah, where should they go?

  "Beat the devils!" As the highest commander of this hundred-strong troop, Dong Li Mao couldn't possibly say he didn't know where to go.

  "But the bridge was blown up. Let alone us, the entire expeditionary force lost its rear support. How can we fight the devils now?" Liu Yudong said with some emotional agitation.

  Dong Li Mao asked: "Do you want to leave the Special Operations Unit?"

  Liu Yudong was taken aback, shook his head and replied firmly: "No way!"

  "If you want to take the scouting team and leave, go find the new 38th Division, I won't stop you." Dong Li Mao was speaking from his heart. From now on, the special operations team would no longer receive any supplies; ammunition, food, medicine, and clothing would all have to be taken care of by themselves. He didn't want his brothers to follow him and suffer hardship while constantly facing the threat of death. If someone wanted to leave, he wouldn't treat them as deserters.

  Liu Yudong said: "I am a member of the Special Operations Unit, and even if I die, I will be a ghost of the Special Operations Unit! Unless you don't want me anymore, Captain!"

  Dong Li Mao patted Liu Yu Zhen's shoulder and asked: "Are you willing to follow me as a bandit?"

  Liu Yuzong nodded seriously: "I'm willing!" Then he asked again: "Commander Lian, are we really going to be bandits?"

  "Haha……" Dong Li Mao's heart suddenly felt clear and bright, knowing what Ta Lao Ye had been doing with the special agent brothers: "That's right! We're going to become a band of anti-Japanese guerrillas who make the little devils shit and piss!"

  "But we are soldiers, how can we be...be bandits..." Liu Yudong said with a somewhat despondent expression.

  "What's wrong with being a bandit? Did the Tang Dynasty know that? Li Shimin was able to become emperor and create the glorious era of the Great Tang, thanks to the help of the bandits from Mount Liang! And even, some bandits achieved great success and sat on the throne! Dong Limao seemed to have made up his mind: "We don't do the kind of banditry that overthrows dynasties, we only do the kind of banditry that kills little devils. To put it nicely, we are guerrilla fighters fighting in the enemy's rear; to put it crudely... haha... actually, we are just bandits roaming the mountains and forests! Who cares what they call us, whether it's a guerrilla team or bandits? As long as we can kill little devils, that's all that matters!"

  Liu Yudong was infected by Dong Li Mao's bold words: "Right! As long as we can kill the little devils, being a bandit is better than being a coward!"

  Dong Li Mao gathered all the comrades in the regiment and told them about the decision he had just made.

  "If anyone is unwilling to be a bandit who kills ghosts, you can leave now. I won't stop you, and I'll even give the brothers who want to leave travel expenses and living expenses. You have ten seconds to consider." Dong Li Mao looked at all the soldiers of the whole battalion.

  More than a hundred people remained silent, each with their head held high and chest out, but no one stood up to say they wanted to leave.

  "Alright, since no one wants to leave, I'll set three rules for being a bandit. As the saying goes, 'an army has its laws, and bandits have their own rules.' From now on, whoever breaks any of these rules, including myself, will be dealt with according to the rules!" Dong Li Mao paused before speaking slowly and clearly: "First, anyone who robs ordinary people's property will be killed! Second, anyone who betrays us by informing the Japanese or acting as their running dog will be killed! Third, anyone who is afraid of death and deserts in battle will be killed!"

  Bald-headed Ma stroked his bald head and laughed: "I knew from the first time I met Big Brother that you were a material for being a bandit. From now on, my brothers will follow you, eat meat and drink wine, to hell with Chiang Kai-shek! My brothers won't have to listen to Chiang's orders anymore, just listen to yours! How happy we are! Isn't it, brothers?"

  The brothers of the Special Forces team burst out laughing after hearing what Bald Horse had said.

  Dong Li Mao's eyes widened and he shouted loudly: "Nonsense!"

  The laughter stopped abruptly, and more than a hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on Dong Limao.

  Dong Li Mao took a deep breath, slowed down his tone and said: "We are bandits who kill little devils, not those who rob the rich to help the poor. What we need to do is to kill little devils! The special agent company's organization still exists, and it still takes the class as the combat unit. We have to rely on the local people for survival, so my three killing orders first stipulate that it is forbidden to loot the property of the local people... We don't establish any stronghold, we should treat those who live in the mountains as our parents, they are our home, and we have the responsibility and obligation to protect them from being bullied by little devils... You all remember, we are bandits who kill little devils, not bandits who occupy the mountain!"

  Baldy Ma rubbed his bald head and grinned: "So the bandits you were talking about, Brother, aren't the kind I used to be."

  His words triggered another burst of laughter, and Dong Li Mao thought that Guang Tou Ma was quite lovable. Smiling, he said to him: "You're a local, you know the customs and people here best. In the future, we'll still have to rely on Brother Ma."

  "Commander Lian, where should we go now?" Zhao Yong asked.

  "Good question!" Dong Li Mao had already thought it through: "We'll return to Tengchong, where the Sino-Burmese border is a major thoroughfare for merchants coming and going. The continuous Gaoligong Mountains and vast primeval forests will become our most advantageous hiding place. From now on, my strategy for fighting against the little devils can be summarized in 16 characters: only hit the weak, don't hit the strong, wait for an opportunity to strike, and after striking, hide!"

  "Should we still be in contact with the military department?" asked Pan Guangzu.

  "In order not to expose our existence, from now on we'll try to use the radio as little as possible and there's no need to actively contact the military department. At critical moments, someone will help us get in touch." Dong Li Mao thought of Li Yuanyuan, with her help, he wasn't worried about being unable to contact the military department.

  "Then where do our ammunition and supplies come from?" As a military supply officer, Pan Guangzu's first thought was of ammunition, which could not be obtained from the ordinary people and had to be provided by the military.

  "No guns, no cannons, the enemy will give them to us! We can get them from the little devils, take their weapons and kill the little devils. Is there a more enjoyable way to kill the little devils than this?" Dong Li Mao smiled and replied: "And we still have an ammunition depot cave, the ammunition in it is for when we can't replenish it later."

  Gunshots occasionally came from the Panshan Highway by the Nanjiang River at the foot of the mountain.

  "The little devils, they're still killing the fleeing soldiers and civilians!" Zhao Yong said indignantly. He now admired Dong Li Mao with all his heart, at first he didn't believe what Dong Li Mao said about the Japanese devils occupying the bridge, but the facts proved that it wasn't the Japanese devils who wanted to blow up the bridge.

  "Company Commander, why don't we just keep killing and wipe out those little devils who are bullying our compatriots?" Gu Hao said, shaking the submachine gun in his hand.

  "That will only lead to more little devils slaughtering the people, there are plenty of opportunities for revenge now. We must leave Longling before dawn and return to Tengchong. Two days later, a small group of Japanese devils will attack the ancient city of Tengchong, we can't let them occupy that ancient city with ease, we have to give them some trouble!"

  As soon as Dong Li Mao thought that the beautiful border town was about to fall into the hands of the Japanese, his heart ached with every beat. Although history books recorded that the Japanese devils swaggered into Tengchong City, he still wanted to strike back at the arrogant behavior of the Japanese devils.

  Luo Yongshan's garrison squad, only he survived, he had nowhere to go and was willing to follow Dong Li Mao as a bandit who killed Japanese devils, Dong Li Mao incorporated him into Zhang Dali's machine gun squad.

  It was a moonless and starry night, with gusts of wind blowing over the river, causing the leaves on the mountain to rustle.

  The highway is impassable, and almost all the mountain roads on Songshan Mountain have Japanese devils killing people. They shoot or stab to death any adult male they see, regardless of whether he's wearing a military uniform or not. As for women, almost all of them are brutally raped, including a large number of female soldiers who haven't even crossed the bridge yet. Although Dong Li Mao and others can't see these things, they can understand from the screams and gunshots that reach their ears.

  The commando unit advanced along the mountain forest beside the Tonglong Highway towards Tongchong, with refugees and soldiers hiding and fleeing everywhere along the way. The highway was littered with abandoned American or British trucks, some of which were on fire.

  The sky was slightly bright, and Dong Li Mao led the special agent team back to Tengchong. While others were fleeing for their lives, he brought his brothers from the special agent team back into this isolated city.

  The government office is empty, those police officers who were usually so powerful have gone missing, and the shops on the streets are all closed. In just a few days, a once prosperous county town has become desolate, leaving behind only the poor people with nowhere to go.

  "Commander, why must we enter the city?" Zhao Yong was somewhat puzzled by Dong Li Mao's intention: "If the little devils surround the city, we'll become the only defending soldiers."

  "We won't be staying here, just replenishing our ammunition and then destroying the ammunition and weapons that we can't take with us, we can't leave them for the little devils to use against us." Dong Li Mao knew that the Japanese devils wouldn't occupy Tengchong City until the 7th, today was the 5th, there was still time.

  In the city, it is almost impossible to find trucks and mules, so it is impossible to transport the ammunition and weapons left behind by the Sichuan troops.

  Pan Guangzu looked at the ammunition depot where supplies were piled up in a mess and shook his head, saying: "These bastards! Why didn't they destroy them all before running away? Isn't this obviously leaving them for the little devils to hit us?"

  "Fatso, let the brothers bring as much as they can, especially bullets and hand grenades. After dark, transport the ammunition and weapons to our own arsenal cave. Don't worry about food at home, with these things, in the future when we start killing devils, we won't have to worry about not having enough equipment. Also, give some money to Zeng Junyi, let him buy some sufficient medicine and bandages from local pharmacies or hospitals for storage. The ones we got from Bao Shi Keng military station are probably not enough." Dong Li Mao opened a box full of bullets and said with a smile: "These ammunition will be very useful in the next two years, we can only use our own stored ones when we have no other choice, most of them will still be seized from the little devils' hands."

  "Now I finally understand why you wanted me to bring so many ammunition and supplies back then, it turns out you had anticipated that our special forces company would end up like this today." Pan Guangzu gave a thumbs up and said: "Brilliant, Captain! You're too brilliant!"

  "Commander..." Liu Yudong led a man in, saying: "We've caught a spy!" After finishing speaking, he kicked the man's buttocks, making him kneel before Dong Limao.