DDT - Chapter 115
Chapter 115: Tycoon's Daughter (Side Story)
One year since the founding of the New Dragon Kingdom.
The nation was in ruins, waiting to be rebuilt. After the railway bridge bombing that shocked both the Dragon Kingdom and the Japanese Army, the Secret Party of the Dragon Kingdom and the Huaping City Defense Army launched a lightning-fast assault. The Japanese Army was caught completely off guard. With their supply lines cut and military provisions dwindling, the Japanese forces soon suffered one defeat after another.
After the railway bridge incident, it took only ten months for the Dragon Kingdom to achieve final victory, completely driving the wicked Japanese Army from its territory and reclaiming the cities that had been colonized by Japan and several other nations.
The original leader of the New Government intended to claim all the credit for this victory, but the people of the Dragon Kingdom had witnessed the Secret Party's outstanding leadership and combat prowess firsthand. Ignoring the objections of his subordinates, the head of the New Government insisted on going to war with the Secret Party to fight for ultimate control of the Dragon Kingdom.
"He who wins the hearts of the people wins the world" is a timeless truth.
The farce of the New Government's rule finally ended when its leader, in a desperate flight, lost his footing and fell from a cliff to his death. The Huaping City Defense Army naturally pledged its allegiance to the Secret Party.
After several months of rest and preparation, the Secret Party selected dozens of songs from numerous submissions. Following a democratic vote by the people of the Dragon Kingdom, one piece was chosen. The Secret Party's leader, Zhou Hua, personally wrote the lyrics, and the national anthem, "Revitalize the Dragon Kingdom," was born.
The Secret Party designated the recaptured central city of Zhongdu as the capital of the Dragon Kingdom. Huaping City, for its immense contributions during the counterattack, saw its status rise significantly.
On June 1st of that year, Secret Party leader Zhou Hua held the Dragon Kingdom's first military parade in the capital's largest public square and announced that on this day, the New Dragon Kingdom was officially founded!
Zhou Hua became the first leader of the New Dragon Kingdom.
In many of the cities ravaged by the Japanese Army, the New Dragon Kingdom gradually established memorials for the victims of the war of defense. The names of hundreds of thousands of slaughtered citizens, those that could be traced, were listed on the high walls within. Because some cities had been completely wiped out by the Japanese, the New Dragon Kingdom's army could only collect what relics they could find while clearing and rebuilding. They ultimately established a mass grave on the mountain behind the memorial.
The railway bridge had not yet been rebuilt. Of the long bridge, built at great expense by the old Dragon Kingdom, only ruins remained after the war.
The New Dragon Kingdom was rebuilding from scratch and lacked the extra energy and funds to reconstruct the railway bridge in the short term. However, the victory in that battle played a crucial role in defeating the Japanese Army and reclaiming the nation's territory. Thus, the New Dragon Kingdom preserved the ruins of the war-torn bridge and erected a monument to the Secret Party martyrs who sacrificed their lives in the battle.
But to Yi Shuhan, no matter how many titles of "martyr" or military honors were bestowed, they were all meaningless.
Ah Yan was gone. All of this felt illusory. These so-called honors were like bubbles. As time passed, perhaps only Ah Yan's old butler, she herself, and the comrades who had fought and died alongside them would remember the living, breathing Ah Yan.
From then on, Ah Yan would be just a symbol among the ruins of the broken bridge. She hadn't even left a single photograph behind in this world.
Perhaps decades later, when everyone was old and gray, the last image of Ah Yan's face would fade along with their memories, vanishing from this world completely.
Twenty years had passed since the founding of the New Dragon Kingdom.
The conflicts between the world's nations gradually subsided. The great war, later known as the World War, slowly drew to a close.
The few major powers that had developed well during the war gradually gained more influence on the world stage, and the New Dragon Kingdom was among them.
Because different countries used different calendars, the leaders of the major powers gathered to promote global harmony and development. They designated the day the overt warfare officially ended as the first year of the New Era.
In the fifth year of the New Era, the New Dragon Kingdom's development accelerated. Technology across the globe advanced at a breakneck pace. This period was later called the First Great Technological Explosion of the New Era.
Yi Shuhan's father, Yi Ming, broke with tradition. Facing a national crisis, he no longer abided by the ancestral precept of self-preservation.
After the battle where the Dragon Kingdom blew up the railway bridge, the Yi family went from cautiously dealing with the military to providing lavish support. In the decades that followed, the Yi family practically gave their all to support the Dragon Kingdom's war effort and the development of the New Dragon Kingdom after its victory.
After the war ended, Yi Shuhan left her post as a soldier in the Secret Party and began to take over the Yi family's businesses. Due to an agreement between Yi Ming and Hou Wanxing, the family's enterprises gradually transitioned to serve the military, but that is a story for another time.
Influenced by Yi Shuhan, her younger brother enlisted in the army as soon as he came of age, becoming a soldier of the New Dragon Kingdom.
Her younger sister, under the guidance of Yi Ming and Yi Shuhan, gradually took over the family business.
Yi Shuhan never wanted to manage the family business. Yi Ming knew how deeply the railway bridge battle had affected his daughter. As a father, seeing her pain broke his heart, so he never forced her.
Huaping City was where Yi Shuhan and her Ah Yan had met, where they had spent wonderful times together. Although they had only truly been together for a few months, she already considered Ah Yan her dearest friend.
Ah Yan's departure took many things with it. For a long time afterward, Yi Shuhan never smiled. She also stopped having the strange and peculiar dreams of her youth.
Yi Shuhan had the inexplicable feeling that the world was slowly erasing every trace of Ah Yan's existence.
She stubbornly remained in the old Yi family residence in Huaping City. As the family business became more intertwined with the military, the rest of the family had no choice but to move to the capital, Zhongdu City.
Only during the New Year would Yi Shuhan travel to Zhongdu to reunite with her family.
The New Dragon Kingdom developed at an astonishing rate. The old buildings of Huaping City were gradually replaced by a forest of brick, concrete, and steel.
Since the Secret Party no longer operated in the shadows, the old training grounds and meeting rooms were razed by the local government.
Ah Yan's old butler, having lost his last relative, succumbed to depression and passed away a few years later.
The old butler and Yi Shuhan had once gone to the mountains where they had buried Ah Yan's sister during their escape years ago, searching for her grave. But with the passage of time, the changes in the forest, and the ravages of war, the small grave could no longer be found.
Thus, the entire Chi family had perished under the guns of the Japanese Army, their bodies never recovered.
The twentieth year of the New Era.
The fortieth anniversary of the founding of the New Dragon Kingdom. In just a few short decades, the rare period of world peace had brought about two great technological explosions.
On the morning of June 1st, the day of the Dragon Kingdom's fortieth-anniversary military parade, television stations were already preparing to broadcast the ceremony from Zhongdu City.
Yi Shuhan was nestled on the sofa. She had already hung the national and military flags by the living room door. A pair of reading glasses rested on her nose. She wore a faded, old-style military uniform, her medals neatly pinned to her left breast. With a solemn expression, she stared at the television, watching every pre-parade interview and commercial with rapt attention.
When the parade began, even though she was all alone in the vast old Yi residence, she stood up straight, saluted the flag as it slowly rose on the screen, and sang the national anthem along with the music from the broadcast.
Then came one military formation after another, marching past the review stand in perfect unison.
'Ah Yan, the country you gave your life to protect is growing stronger and stronger. It's wonderful.'
'Ah Yan, we've known each other for several lifetimes. You always leave me behind so early. But I feel like I know we'll be entangled for eternity. In one of those lives, I will hold your hand tightly and never let you leave me again.'
The parade was over. A documentary about the World War began to play on the television. Yi Shuhan relaxed her back, which had been held straight for hours, and leaned exhaustedly against the sofa behind her.
She picked up a framed portrait. It was only A4-sized. Simple lines sketched out the girl in the picture, and neatly cross-hatched shadows made her appear more three-dimensional and lively.
The girl in the drawing was her Ah Yan. On a night when her longing had become an illness, a strange impulse had driven her to pick up the fountain pen on her desk and sketch the face she had missed for so long on a piece of letter paper.
It was all too strange. Before Ah Yan left, she hadn't left a single photograph. The cost of photography was high back then, and Ah Yan, completely absorbed in training and countless missions, had no mind for such things.
Yi Shuhan had never imagined that she would be the one to bring that figure back to life on paper.
In all her years, she had never studied drawing. It was as if she had taught herself, yet in the back of her mind, it felt as if someone had once taught her.
She couldn't figure it out, so she stopped dwelling on it. This sudden skill had, at least, eased a small part of her regret.
The painting in her hands now was the first perfect portrait she had drawn after mastering the skill.
Yi Shuhan reached out and gently caressed the cheek of the girl in the portrait. The girl's smile was gentle and bright. Yi Shuhan's vision blurred with tears.
She was already sixty years old, but her Ah Yan was still so young and beautiful. She hadn't looked in a mirror for a long time. She couldn't fight against aging. Her movements grew slower by the day, and the image of that girl was gradually fading from her memory. Only by relying on the memoirs she had written in her early years could she slowly savor the past that included Ah Yan.
She had to admit she was old. Decades of heavy sorrow had caused her body to break down bit by bit. Her memory was fragmented, and she often forgot things. After getting lost more than a dozen times, she finally gave up on leaving the old Yi residence to search for traces of Ah Yan in the now-unrecognizable Huaping City.
Fortunately, every time she got lost, a kind person would help her home.
Yi Shuhan sat on the sofa, her hands clutching the portrait tightly. The television was still on, the documentary playing over and over. On this day of national celebration, only the blare of the TV filled the Yi residence.
Gu Qiuming pushed open the gate to the Yi residence as he did every day. He heard the television in the living room turned up a bit loud. Yi Shuhan liked to have the volume high when she watched TV and didn't find it noisy, but this was the first time she had turned it on so early in the morning.
Gu Qiuming placed the hot breakfast on the small table outside the living room. As he stepped inside, he saw Yi Shuhan in her military uniform, resting quietly on the sofa.
Her eyes were closed, her expression unusually peaceful.
Gu Qiuming's heart suddenly skipped a beat, and he hurried over.
The person on the sofa was no longer breathing. She was tightly clutching the portrait. On the coffee table in front of her, a thick, open notebook revealed a poem written in elegant fountain pen script:
"Longing, deep as the sea; old days, distant as the sky. A thousand, ten thousand lines of tears fall, breaking a heart already fraught with sorrow. I wish to see you, but there is no way; I try to let go, but it is impossible. If we were not fated in this life, then I pray we are bound together in the next."
Gu Qiuming closed the notebook, its pages already yellowed with age. He sighed and said in a low voice, "Captain North Goose, the mission to protect Comrade Sun is complete."
Comrade Ah Lang had fallen for the clever and mischievous girl called Sun on the training grounds long ago. He willingly protected her for a lifetime. Everyone thought he was merely dedicated to the mission of protecting a comrade, but only he knew that he was dedicated to her.
Comrade Sun never married, and he never took a wife. He had once mustered the courage to confess his feelings, but unfortunately, the girl's eyes had no room for anyone else.
Comrade Sun had been ill for ten years, forgetting many people and many things, yet she never forgot North Goose. So be it. He would help her one last time.
He would help her be buried with the person she loved so deeply.
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