The son of a hunter in the Taihang Mountains. On the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month, when he was fourteen, his father came home.
He was covered in blood, with a hole torn in his belly. His intestines were wrapped in a strip of cloth and hanging out.
His father handed him a Mauser rifle that wouldn't fire and a letter he couldn't understand.
“It's worth more than your life,” his father said.
Before dawn, the pursuers arrived.
His father was forced over a cliff. Chen Jiu was fourteen that year. He didn't cry. Clutching the silent rifle, he went deep into the mountains: one rifle that wouldn't fire, one letter he couldn't understand, fourteen years.
Fourteen years later, he came down from the mountains with a peddler's yoke on his shoulders and walked through the gates of his enemy's city.
His enemy sat inside, drinking tea. The soldiers who had fired the shot back then stood at his side, and he even had an entire inspection bureau at his disposal. Everyone thought the silent rifle couldn't fire. Everyone thought the son of the Taihang hunter had died in the mountains long ago. Everyone was waiting.
Chen Jiu was waiting, too.
Waiting to plunge the knife he'd spent fourteen years sharpening into the back of the smiling tiger. Waiting for the moment he pressed the silent rifle to the pale-faced soldier's brow
The gun fired.
Your father died. Your father was one life. Your father was an undercover agent. Your father was a secret letter. Your father was the fuse of fourteen years of silence. Three bullets, fourteen years, one life.
There are three kinds of gunshots in the Taihang Mountains:
A hunter's, a soldier-bandit's, and one that won't fire!
The third kind rang out tonight.
…
Like, it's that simple.