Chapter 62: Wind and Snow in the Eastern Frontier

The train clattered along, and the scenery outside the window changed little by little.

After passing Shanhai Pass Pass, the world seemed to flash open for a moment, then suddenly tighten again. The boundless black earth was blanketed with thick white snow that stretched to the horizon, exuding a hard, desolate air. Bare branches jabbed into the gray sky with a harsh clatter, the wind howled across the plain, whipping up snow foam as if many people were sobbing softly.

Inside the carriage, the temperature visibly dropped, and every breath came out as white mist. Most passengers were bundled in cotton jackets, hunching their necks, speaking little, their faces bearing the wooden stare that comes from long exposure to cold and oppression.

Li Ping'an sat by the window, watching the barren fields and scattered villages flash by. Some hamlets lay desolate, broken walls and cracked tiles half‑buried in snow, with only an old crow occasionally alighting and croaking a few times. In other villages, the low earthen houses sometimes showed a thin wisp of smoke on their roofs, a dead‑ening stillness.

His mind began to wander. Fragmented memories from his previous life mixed with the sights he had seen along the way.

He recalled the story about the "Northeast King" Zhang Zuolin—how he once borrowed a billion taels from the Japanese Soldiers under the name of Fengtian. When the Japanese came to collect, Old Zhang glared and said, "Money borrowed in Fengtian has nothing to do with my Shenyang," and promptly renamed Fengtian to Shenyang. Whether true or fabricated, the tale vividly captured that reckless, grassroots cleverness and the unyielding ferocity of defending every inch.

Back then Dongbei, though under warlord control, possessed a lively vigor and a daring that feared neither heaven nor earth. The Grand Marshal's Office, the arms factory, Northeast University… at least it was their own territory, and they called the shots.

But now?

The view outside the window answered best. Since the three‑hundred‑thousand‑strong Dongbei army withdrew without firing a shot into the pass, this once fertile black earth has been completely transformed. Medicinal‑patch flags sprouted across towns and countryside, and the Japanese Soldiers' boots clacked fiercely on this formerly open land.

"Manchukuo?" Nonsense! It's a complete puppet nest! The common people's lives are soaked in fire and water. Food is forcibly requisitioned, strong laborers are taken as forced labor or even used in unspeakable experiments; any hint of dissent brings a whole‑family extermination. Schools force them to learn Japanese, sing Japanese songs, worship that "Amaterasu," carving the Chinese soul from its roots.

Li Ping'an's gaze grew colder, sharper than the biting wind outside.

He watched the railway line, where Japanese Soldiers Patrol Squads occasionally passed, leading wolf dogs, their bayonets flashing cold light on the snow. Occasionally a big freight truck roared by, its canvas tarps heavy, its cargo unknown—perhaps loot taken from this land or terrifying items bound for a secret base.

He stared at some large compounds bearing "Joint‑stock Company" signs, high walls topped with Electric Grid, guards standing scowling at the gates—these were the Japanese Soldiers' claws gripping Dongbei's economic lifeline.

He also watched, in the wind‑sheltered nook of the platform, huddled beggars, pale and gaunt, eyes empty. He saw Chinese laborers, berated and driven away by Japanese foremen, hunched like beasts carrying heavy bundles.

A smoldering anger began to kindle in his chest, growing hotter and hotter, nearly choking him.

This was a world apart from the Dongbei he remembered—the "First Son of the Republic," an industrial hub with a prosperous scene described as "beating a roe deer with a stick, scooping fish with a ladle."

All caused by these greedy, ruthless bandits!

The train halted at a small station. On the platform, a few Japanese women in kimonos chattered and laughed, while a bowing Japanese interpreter stood nearby. Not far away, a group of Chinese laborers strained under heavy bundles; a Japanese foreman, annoyed at their slowness, cracked his whip and cursed profusely.

Snap! The whip's strike on flesh sounded especially harsh.

The laborer shivered, gritted his teeth, made no sound, simply bowed his head and lifted the bundle, continuing onward. In his eyes lay numbness, endurance, and somewhere deep, a faint, unseen light.

Li Ping'an's fingers silently clenched, his joints turning white.

He closed his eyes, inhaled a breath of icy air into his frozen lungs, and forced down the impulse to act immediately.

One must not let a small grievance disrupt a greater plan. His target was not a petty foreman.

It was the Demon Cave called "731" hidden on the outskirts of Harbin. It was the beasts who used live humans for experiments, spreading plague and death. It was the factories and warehouses that supported the Japanese Soldiers' war.

The train set off again, its clatter pounding like a hammer on everyone's hearts.

Li Ping'an opened his eyes again, his pupils a bottomless deep pool; all his anger lay beneath the ice, turning into colder, steadier murderous intent.

Miyamoto Musashi, you'd better come along.

Look at what you comrades have wrought on this good land!

Enough—here, on this land stained black with blood and covered by snow, we'll settle the scores.

The train surged toward harsher cold and darker shadows. Li Ping'an's silhouette cast a clear image on the window, like a blade about to be drawn, silently pointing at the suffering land.

His journey through Dongbei was destined to be written in blood and fire.