After a month of secluded training nestled in the mountain valleys, the special training team mbers of Eastern Province each underwent a significant transformation.
Initially, they were slightly tan, a healthy sun-kissed color, but after being buffeted by sea winds, soaked in seawater, and rcilessly sunburned for a month at the coast, they shed several layers of skin and beca shiny black, their white teeth strikingly visible when they smiled.
Ling Chengyan already knew how to swim and adapted to the sea in just two or three days. She didn’t train with the team but followed her own routine of training and studying, spending more ti in the barracks, so her tan wasn’t as pronounced.
After morning exercises and breakfast, the team mbers boarded the ship for training as usual. After a half-hour shooting practice with a silencer-equipped weapon, Ling Chengyan stepped out of the shooting range and saw an old woman and a girl carrying bamboo baskets walking in.
"Hello, Granny, Sani!" Ling Chengyan cheerfully greeted them.
Sani was a relatively shy girl, about fourteen or fifteen years old, attending middle school, and helped her grandmother with farm work in her spare ti.
Her mother passed away a few years ago from illness. Her family still had her father and brother, who went to the city to work during the off-seasons and only returned ho during the busy farming seasons.
Although Granny wasn’t very old, a little over sixty, she had lost most of her teeth, leaving her mouth sowhat sunken. Her smile revealed a toothless gum, she was a petite and slightly hunchbacked old lady, very optimistic, always smiling when greeting people.
Sani smiled back, "Hello, Commander Ling."
Ling Chengyan ca over, took a basket of vegetables off Granny’s shoulders, and carried it into the ss hall.
The base was backed by mountains and faced the sea, with an isolated geographical location, accessible only by a narrow road built by the military.
The grandmother and granddaughter ca from a village behind the mountain. It was inconvenient for the military to buy vegetables frequently. By chance, Ling Chengyan learned that Fang Sani was forced to drop out of school due to poverty. Since their village was nearby, only an hour’s hike over the mountain, the military decided to support Sani’s education by purchasing vegetables.
It was a weekend, so Sani helped her grandmother deliver vegetables, which was a smaller load than usual. Usually, granny carried a basket piled high with vegetables alone.
Ling Chengyan assisted Granny and Sani with the vegetable delivery, then helped them reload the baskets with leftover food from the ss hall, which Granny would carry back ho to feed the pigs, saving so grain.
The grandmother and granddaughter slowly walked out of the base, waving goodbye to Ling Chengyan at the gate before vanishing from sight. Ling Chengyan then turned back to her temporary office to handle so matters.
Helping Granny up a relatively steep slope, Sani suddenly spoke, "Commander Ling is so admirable. I want to get into a military academy too and be like her."
Granny smiled at her granddaughter with a face full of love, "Good!"
Granny couldn’t speak Mandarin and spoke with a heavy accent, rarely speaking at the base, often just smiling. Because most tis, the soldiers couldn’t understand her. But this didn’t hinder the mutual trust and harmony. Sotis, during their free ti, the soldiers would cross the mountain to help Granny with the harvest and heavier tasks. During holidays, Granny would make so food herself and bring it for the soldiers to taste, like family with each other.
In the evening, when the sun wasn’t so scorching, Ling Chengyan would change into her training outfit and head to the sea for an hour of water training.
She wasn’t doing it for swimming but to keep familiarizing herself with the sea and the waves, allowing her to swim freely in the ocean.
The training was carried out with intense but orderly steadiness, and other joint training teams had not been seen, as if they were here just for concentrated training, not for a real battle exercise.
The event ca suddenly, after a month and four or five days. At around one in the morning, the warriors who toiled during the day were sound asleep when an ergency assembly call rang out abruptly.
The soldiers leaped to their feet, quickly but orderly dressing and packing, then ran outside, assembling at the training ground not far from the gate.
Even seeing the piled-up equipnt at the gate, no one realized real battle was at hand. They only thought it was a weight-bearing cross-country training.
"Drop the backpacks, each person takes a gun, ready to depart."
Ordinary weighted training sotis involved carrying equipnt, sotis just backpacks, aning there were tis without equipnt, but never dropping backpacks and carrying only equipnt. Everyone faintly sensed sothing different.
The group ran out of the base, not heading towards the mountains but towards the seaside.
Could it be night beach training? Just thinking of rolling in that ankle-deep mud brought despair to the soldiers.
Training at midnight was bad enough, but getting muddy was inhumane!
Many cried out in their hearts, yet no one fell behind, following orders to run to the coast. Without a halt command, the soldiers continued running toward the mysterious ocean in the night.
The nightti seawater had chilled. When the freshly awakened bodies touched the water, it felt bone-chilling cold. Yet, without a mont’s pause, the soldiers continued forward despite shivering.
The water rose above ankles, knees, thighs, waist, and chest...
Everyone had to hold their equipnt over their heads as they waded purely with their feet forward.
The past days’ training showed its results. Even amidst surging waves in the ocean, with only their legs to propel them, the soldiers maintained formation without a single person falling behind.
Forward, forward!
Fortunately, they didn’t have to swim far, as small wooden boats quietly appeared on the water.
With a command, the soldiers skillfully clambered aboard the boats. Small, each could only carry five or six people.
The small wooden boats drifted on the ocean, truly resembling leaves scattered, light and insignificant.
Luckily, the boats weren’t as fragile as they appeared. Equipped with motors, they traveled faster than expected, cutting through the sea and slicing through waves toward the deep ocean.
After traveling about two or three nautical miles, the mountains’ indistinct shadows and the shore’s distant lights had vanished. Surrounded by water, only darkness lay further on.
In the world, apart from the engine’s hum, wave sounds, there was only the breathing of comrades and their own heartbeats.
They seed to feel they would soon rge into this darkness, like lard lting in a hot pan. In the darkness, the vague outline of a large ship appeared.
Though called a large ship, it couldn’t compare to a giant vessel, but compared to the small wooden boats they rode, it was like an ant to an elephant.
A short distance away, the small boats’ engines stopped, and all around fell silent.
From the team leader’s walkie-talkie ca orders. Everyone retrieved the paddles from between the deck boards. Then, divided into two sides, they paddled together, closing in on the large ship.
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