If you were given the chance to trade a mission you were certain to die on for countless peaceful sunrises in the future, would you dare take it?
In 1938, amid gunfire in Japanese-occupied territory, cryptographer Shen Linyuan wielded an abacus like a sword and planted a spark for the troubled times, codenamed “Morning Star.”
In 1945, agent Lin Suyi held down a bullet-hidden qipao under the enemy's guns, leaving behind one final sentence: “But forget hatred.”
They both thought they were the ones moving the pieces on history's chessboard.
Until 2015, when I cracked the final key and discovered, to my horror,
that what three generations had protected across seventy-seven years, with wisdom, sacrifice, and silence,
was not some world-shaking secret,
but the ordinary today that every one of us already possesses:
the morning sunlight, the evening cooking smoke, and the dreams never disturbed by the flames of war.
It turned out we had wagered everything
just so every “today” could arrive as usual.
