Snow Leopard: Iron-Blooded Dawn

In May of the 21st year of the Republic of China, the bluestone road in Zhouzhai, Suzhou was shiny from the overnight plum rain, and the air was filled with a damp musty smell and sandalwood incense coming from the ancestral hall. Zhou Chen opened his eyes with a severe headache. What he saw was the dark pattern on the top of the carved bed, and a strange smell of disinfectant mixed with Chinese medicine lingered on the tip of his nose. "Brother! Are you awake?" A crying teenage voice blasted in his ears. Zhou Chen turned around and saw a half-year-old child wearing a middle school uniform lying next to the bed. His eyes were as red and swollen as a rabbit, and the cuffs of his school uniform were still stained with dried mud - this was the original owner's younger brother, Liu Zhihui. Memories flooded into my mind like a flood: Zhou Wen, a law student at Fudan University, witnessed a Japanese ronin molesting his girlfriend Chen Yi in public on the streets of Shanghai after the "128" Songhu Armistice, and stabbing his classmate Zhang Chu with a samurai sword. With blood boiling, he broke into a Japanese martial arts gym with a handful of Brownings. After two gunshots, the two ronin fell in a pool of blood. Notes from the Japanese consulate flew like snowflakes to the Nanjing National Government. On the day the death sentence was handed down, his father Zhou Jixian, a veteran of the Tongmenghui who had followed Sun Yat-sen, walked into the office of the Shanghai mayor on crutches. Three days ago, a prison van stopped at a mass grave outside Suzhou, and a death row inmate wearing Zhou Wen's prison uniform was shot. And he, Zhou Wen, put on a pair of coarse clothes and was stuffed into the Zhou family's carriage.