An Unspoken Monument to Old Mountain

In the winter of 1979, the smoke of war had yet to clear from the southern frontier. A mysterious unit codenamed “Special Operations Company” was quietly assembled to cut through the Vietnamese army’s spy network of “moles,” lying in wait like venomous snakes.

Company commander Ning Hao was ordered to gather a team of “outsider” talents: Chen Fangyan, fluent in a hundred varieties of Vietnamese but afraid of blood; the taciturn hunter Zhao Dashan, who could communicate with the mountains and forests; Li Xiaolei, the “troublemaker” obsessed with explosives; and Shen Mo, a code genius burdened by a shadowy past. Their battlefield was not the blazing front line, but the back alleys of market towns, the depths of dense forests, and the fog of radio waves. From their first arrest at a border relay station to a deadly pursuit through a cross-border forest, the team used their wits, blood, and sacrifice on a silent front to build an invisible shield for their homeland.

On the eve of the major assault on Laoshan, an intelligence showdown that would determine the fate of thousands erupted in the heart of enemy territory. When their covert achievements were finally absorbed into the towering border monument, they proved with their lives that some victories need no songs of triumph: their monument had already been raised in silence.

This book is dedicated to all the unsung heroes who lit up the land from the darkness.