The Great Bandit of Guandong Mountain

(Not a wish-fulfillment novel, not a wish-fulfillment novel, not a wish-fulfillment novel. No System, no transmigration, no superpowers.) We were originally a family of tenant farmers. During a famine, we joined the crowds heading east to seek a new life. My kindhearted mother even took in an orphan along the way, who later became my big sister. At last, after enduring natural disasters and man-made calamities, our boatload of fellow villagers reached this land of forests and mountains, where we finally saw a chance to survive. We eventually settled in a place called Kuandian in eastern Liaoning. Under the protection of Linjiazhai, we worked hard to reclaim wasteland, and life gradually improved. Father joined the army and never sent word again, leaving us unsure whether he was alive or dead. Only I knew he had made a new home in Fengtian and was living with my stepmother. When the Japanese launched the September 18 Incident, they killed him. In order to seize our land, their army attacked civilians. Everyone in Linjiazhai fought back to the death, but against their superior weapons and vastly greater combat strength, dying seemed an insignificant matter. My big brother, a dozen or so boys from the village, and I had gone hunting in the mountains to help secure enough food for winter. We heard the gunfire and hurried back, only to find the land we called home reduced to scorched earth. From that day on, the twelve of us were sworn enemies of the Japanese. Whether we became bandits or joined the Fengtian Army, we followed anyone who fought the Japanese. You crossed the pass into China, but I stayed behind. I led my brothers in continuing the fight. What did it matter if only one of us was left by the end? You Japanese fought for eight years, but we fought for fourteen years beyond the Great Wall.