On the day he failed the college entrance exam, Lin Dazhu slapped palms with his childhood friend in the wheat field.
"If I don't make something of myself, I won't come back."
With his bedding roll on his back, he boarded a military train heading west. He had not a cent in his pocket, only a promise in his heart.
At recruit training, he scored a perfect fifty with five bullets, stunning the whole brigade.
In the reconnaissance company, Old Zhou threw him three times in hand-to-hand combat. He got back up and charged again.
He couldn't flip over the bar on the horizontal bar. After lights out, he went alone to the training ground, leaving bloody handprints on the iron bar.
During an armed swim, his left leg cramped, but he made it to the opposite bank by backstroke.
At the Snow Wolf selection, more than half were eliminated during Hell Week. He endured seventy-two hours without sleep and survived seven days and nights in the polar wilderness.
The Nanping manhunt. The Jiangyuan counterterrorism operation. The street battle in Nanwa City.
Da Xiong took shrapnel for him, then pulled the pin on a grenade and died alongside the enemy.
He hung Da Xiong's goggles on his scope and, shot by shot, settled the score for his brother.
Eight hundred meters away: wind drift, temperature, ballistic corrections. The cold-faced instructor called out the wind himself.
He held his breath and squeezed 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 a sniper.
It took him ten years to keep that promise.
The Western Front Sniper: Beneath the moon on the frontier, someone is always keeping watch.
