Shadow 1979

"Some wars have no front lines, and some heroes have no names." In February 1979, at the mouth of a river in Yunnan, Lu Chen, a 25-year-old son of an Orion hunter from the Yao ethnic group, did not know that his fate had already turned. The haze of his parents' death in the border conflict still lingers, and the late-night visit of two soldiers drags him into a silent war. Lu Chen was secretly recruited to join the newly established "Border Intelligence Support Group" because he was proficient in Chinese, Vietnamese and three minority languages. From the Hekou ferry to the streets of Lang Son, from the jungles of Laoshan to the fog of Zheyin Mountain, in five years, he disguised himself as a mountain man, the son of a railway worker, a smuggler, and a survey team member, established an intelligence network behind enemy lines, guided artillery fire, rescued compatriots, and launched a life-and-death game with the Vietnamese army's ace agent captain Nguyen Van Long. He had comrades-in-arms: the optimistic overseas Chinese guide Ah Shui stayed on the Red River forever to protect him. The silent Doctor Zhao handed him his glasses before he died: "See more of these mountains and rivers for me." He also had concerns: the overseas Chinese girl Ruan Thi Huong waited for his safe return behind the counter of the small shop. That unspoken feeling became the only warm color in the war. In the rainy season of 1984, Lu Chen performed his last mission. When the young intelligence agent Wang Yufei crossed the border carrying the intelligence he had exchanged for his life, he lit his last cigarette in the cave and listened to the footsteps that were getting closer and closer. Forty years later, researchers at the Military Archives sorted out the declassified files. In the file codenamed "B-79", there were only yellowed mission records, hand-drawn maps and one comment: "The body is like a shadow, but the heart is toward the light. The success does not have to be mine, the success must be mine."