Gu Beichen is the fourth generation of his family to serve in the military.
His great-grandfather took three bullets and still crawled forward across the scorched battlefield of Huaihai. His grandfather pressed a finger to his chest and said that the souls of all four generations were forged into him. He watched the three scars on his father's back grow up with him. For decades, he asked how they got there, but no one would tell him.
Yet on the day he enlisted, he had only one thing on his mind: how to run away.
He came last in recruit training and collapsed during the five-kilometer run. Someone kicked him in the backside and shouted, "If you can't run, crawl."
Back then, he didn't understand. Only later did he realize that some words were not orders, but spells. They weigh you down, and they hold you up.
From recruit training to the reconnaissance battalion, from the boundary marker at the camp gate to gunfire deep in the rainforest, he crawled forward step by step, continuing the path four generations had left unfinished.
It wasn't that he wasn't afraid.
He was afraid, and still had to keep going.
