On the day he failed the gaokao, Lin Dazhu slapped hands with his childhood friend in a wheat field.
"If I don't make something of myself, I won't come back."
He boarded a military train heading west with his bedding roll on his back. He had not a cent in his pocket, only those words held close to his heart.
At recruit training, he fired five rounds and scored fifty points. The whole brigade was stunned.
In the reconnaissance company, Old Zhou threw him three times in a row during combat training. He got back up, charged again, was thrown again, and charged again.
He couldn't muscle his way over the bar on the pull-up. After lights out, he went alone to the training ground and kept at it, the blood from his palms staining the iron bar. He didn't come down even at daybreak.
During an armed swim, his left leg cramped. He rolled onto his back and swam, forcing himself to keep going until he reached the other shore.
The Snow Wolf selection. More than half were cut during Hell Week. Seventy-two hours without sleep. Seven days and nights of survival in the polar wilderness. He made it through with Mouse and Big Bear.
Later came the South Screen pursuit and capture, the Jiangyuan counterterrorism operation, and the street fighting in South Wa City.
Bullets whizzed past his ears. His comrades fell beside him.
Big Bear took shrapnel for him, then pulled the pin on a grenade and died taking the enemy with him.
He hung Big Bear's goggles on his scope and fired shot after shot, settling the score for his brother-in-arms.
Eight hundred meters away, he accounted for the wind, temperature, and trajectory. The stone-faced instructor called out the wind himself.
He held his breath.
He pulled the trigger.
One shot through the heart.
"If I don't make something of myself, I won't come back."
"I made something of myself, but those people can't come back."
From Qingshi Gully to the western frontier, from a mountain boy to the King of Marksmen.
It took him ten years to keep that promise.
The King of Marksmen on the Western Front: beneath the moon on the frontier, someone is always standing guard.
