In the twenty-seventh year of the Republic, during the bloody battle at Tengxian, Sichuan Army soldiers held a solitary city for three days and nights with nothing but their bodies!
Five hundred brothers went to their deaths, and fewer than forty remained. Their rifles were old bolt-actions, and they had no ammunition to spare. They staked their lives to withstand the Japanese elite’s relentless bombardment, only to be abandoned in the end!
Li Deming crawled out of a mountain of corpses, was blown into a dry well by an artillery shell, and suffered a grievous injury that cost him an arm. With food and water gone, he held on for the sake of his wife and children. Three times he tried to climb out, surviving against all odds before finally escaping!
The city lay in ruins, with corpses everywhere. Civilians were slaughtered, and traitors aided the enemy. Watching his comrades die and his countrymen suffer, he felt rage consume his heart!
From struggling to survive in the dry well at Tengxian to wandering through a war-torn land in search of a way forward, he went from a lone, scattered soldier to shouldering a rifle and joining the ranks of the Eighth Route Army, tempered into steel!
He trained recruits, killed Japanese soldiers, rooted out traitors, and protected civilians. From an ordinary soldier to a battle-hardened platoon leader, he carried the pride of the Sichuan Army and the last wishes of his comrades, fighting bloody battles behind enemy lines and putting his life on the line in every one!
He wasn’t born a hero. He simply refused to live as a slave in a conquered nation!
This land lay beneath his feet, and his family was behind him. Even if he were torn to pieces, he would drive the Japanese out of China!
Through eight years of resistance and a battle-hardened journey, he crawled out of the heaps of the dead, searched for his origins, protected the one he loved, and fought for his country, until at last he saw the Japanese surrender and began the journey home!
✨An intensely thrilling and tearjerking story, honoring the souls of countless Sichuan Army soldiers. Never forget those turbulent years when the land was shattered and the nation defended with blood!
✨Your heart will break at the battle of Tengxian, race as he fights to survive against all odds, and fill with tears when he returns home victorious. This is the kind of war-of-resistance novel every Chinese reader should read!
