My years as a soldier

The wind in northern Xinjiang is harder than a knife. When it blows on the body, it doesn't feel like a blowing wind, but like countless steel needles stabbing in the face. No matter how many layers of clothes you wear, when the strong wind comes, it can pierce people instantly.

A young man from Luoyang City, only in his early twenties.He had never been out of Luoyang City before being crowned, and he had never experienced such a harsh winter. He had just been in the Han Navy for half a day, and he was frozen.Sitting on the edge of the fire trembling, not to mention how much he regretted being transferred here, but at least the expression on his face was reluctance.

"Hey, don't be so sad, be careful when the captain comes to show you some embarrassment."

He was also a recruit in his early twenties, and the young people beside him were obviously much more optimistic than him.

"You are not cold anymore. You are wearing fox fur under your military uniform. The general is not as rich as you." The young man by the fire gave the man a blank look.It was supposed to be time to go out on patrol. There were ten people in the team, and they were the only ones who stayed at the camp to guard.The reason is that the backgrounds of these two people are unusual.

The sad-faced man next to the fire was a young master from Luoyang City. His ancestors were former Korean nobles with deep roots in the court. Therefore, the army specially asked him to take special care of him.As for the "Fox Fur" youth standing aside, he was a wealthy businessman from the Northeast, and his family gave money to the directly subordinate officer to stay in the camp to rest during this short gap.

Both of them knew that even if they didn't join the army, they could rely on their family power to find a stable and rich job to do.They had the right to choose from the very beginning, but at this moment, both of them voluntarily chose to blow the cold wind in the thousands of miles of ice in the vast sea.

"But... Seriously, you are a young master from a rich family, what are you doing in this kind of place?" The young man beside the fire asked aloud.

"Do you know how much my family spent to get me into the military? The life of a businessman is not as easy as you think." The fox fur youth also sat down by the campfire.

Their camp is set up in a sunken corner under the snow mountain. Today is the day when the legion goes out to patrol. This camp is one of the many footholds controlled by the Tang army in the snow mountain area. The location is hidden, easy to defend and difficult to attack. There are rocks in the north Can shelter from the wind.But despite this, staying in such a camp without moving for a long time is still a very painful thing.At this temperature, if there is no fire, people will freeze to death in less than two hours, let alone fighting in such an area.

But even so, being left in the camp to wait is still the easiest task among the many divisions of labor. Two recruits are sitting around the campfire, in a tent tens of meters away from them, are the guards left by other teams of the legion. Army, they were evenly distributed within a hundred meters of the camp, guarding the supplies of the army.

"Then there's no need to come to Beiting specially." The young man put his hand on the fire, "This damn weather, it's so cold!"

"You ask me...but since you have already regretted it, why did you come here in the first place?" The young man in fox fur had a smile on his face.He didn't go to the fire on purpose, but just sat casually by the campfire and looked at the face of his companion in front of him.Just looking at this fair and tender face, he knows that this young master from Luoyang has never suffered, and even his complexion is paler than his peers.

"Of course I have my reasons. Also, I didn't say I regretted it."

The young man's expression was indifferent, and there was still a hint of arrogance in his eyes.

The young man in fox fur at the side looked at him fixedly, and when he caught sight of that expression, he smiled.

"Okay, okay... Since you don't regret it, let's get to know each other first, how about it? Maybe we will put our lives on each other in the future, and building a good relationship now will not be a loss-making business."

"Tsk tsk tsk... a philistine!"

The young man who was roasting on the fire clicked his tongue in disgust, but he still raised his hand and turned over the name tag hanging on the light armor, so that the other party could clearly see the words on it.

"Luoyang Chen Fan, how about you?"

"Liaodong Yanzhaozhong."

----

The winter in northern Xinjiang is cold and long. Under the snow-shrouded night, the sound of metal crashing into flesh and blood, and then pulling out, can be heard more clearly than ever.On the snow-covered wasteland, a little moonlight can illuminate the surroundings, and the snow reflects the moonlight, casting it on the soldiers after the fierce battle.

Tang Bing, a team of ten people, stood in full armor on the wasteland, and three Hu people's corpses fell on the ground. In the team, one person also fell, and several others were injured.

"Quickly check them and take away any suspicious things!" The tall Tang Bing beside him said decisively.

As his words fell, the uninjured people bent down and quickly checked the objects on the corpses. Finally, the tall man moved the three barbarian corpses to a sunken wasteland among the chaotic rocks, and ordered them to carry them on their backs. The comrades who have died return to the direction they came from.

"Let's go, pay attention to concealment!"

He gave orders, but the real leader of the team was not him.

While the tall Tang soldier was dragging the barbarian's body, the man who had just killed the barbarian soldier was wiping the blood from his horizontal knife with a silk handkerchief.He was the captain of the Tang Soldier Team, but the fellow soldiers would rather follow the tall man to drag the corpse than stand beside him.

The tall man waved his hand to signal the whole team to set off. The captain with the knife didn't care about it, and just walked in the front of the team on his own.The tall man chased after him in a few steps, and followed beside the indifferent captain.

"Hey... I said you, there is no need to keep a straight face. The old Zhao is dead, and the four newcomers are terrified." The tall man reminded in a low voice, but the captain didn't seem to care. As if hearing it, he just looked ahead coldly.

"Old Chen, don't be like this. Our team is newly formed. If this continues, how can you be the captain?"

The team leader with an indifferent face was Chen Fan, and the tall man beside him was Yan Zhaozhong, who joined the army with him a year ago.

"Yeah, I can't compare with you. You are kind to them, and you can share the fox fur with them to keep warm, but I can't do that." Chen Fan's voice was as cold as his expression, and he quickly withdrew himself knife.The once fair and clean son, now his face is also engraved with wind and frost, his face is rough, on the once smooth jaw, now there is a slightly curly black beard, with ice crystals hanging down all the way to his collar.But he is still the same as a year ago, with the superior arrogance on his body, even walking in the wilderness, it makes him look unusual.

"You care about this?"

Without the fox fur on Yan Zhaozhong's body, his physique is much stronger than a year ago.Young businessmen from the Northeast always have a kind smile on their faces.In just one year, he had a few frostbite on his hands that could not go away, but his temper became more gentle than before. A few trembling recruits followed behind him, and they only looked at him.

"I don't care." Chen Fan still had a cold face and stubborn eyes.Even though a soldier had just been lost in the squad, the expression on his face was not shaken in the slightest.

"You..." Yan Zhaozhong looked really helpless.He moved to Chen Fan's side, and comforted him with a very low volume that only the other party could hear.

"Old Chen, I know. You are in a bad mood when someone in our team dies, but as long as we are still in the army, this kind of thing is unavoidable. Unless we all go home, no one should continue to serve in the army. Look at you now, those four newcomers can't even say a word to you. Just now, Lao Zhao did it just to protect them... Hey, I won't say much, just think about the next time if there is a big war, you What should we do? Our team can’t keep doing this.”

"Don't you still have you..." Chen Fan responded in a low voice, his voice was quite disdainful.

"You are more suitable to be the captain than me." He said lightly, "Lieutenant Wang was promoted to my position just to please my old father in Luoyang. Otherwise, I don't know when I will be promoted to captain. "

"Hey...don't say that." Yan Zhaozhong grabbed Chen Fan's arm and tugged at the sleeve.

"One thing to say, Lao Chen, what you have done for this team, others don't know, don't I know? You didn't have such a good kung fu in the first place, didn't you practice hard all by yourself during the rest Did you come out? I know you are not the kind of person who only cares about yourself, you want to keep them, you don't want them to die, right?"

"What does this have to do with whether I want to or not? You are contradicting yourself. Didn't you just say that this kind of thing is inevitable?"

Chen Fan's rebuttal made Yan Zhaozhong even more confused. He grabbed Chen Fan's sleeve and walked quickly a few steps, allowing the two of them to distance themselves from the team by a few meters.

"That's true, but you can't stop contacting people in the team because of this."

"Hmph... Even if I get in touch with them, what can I do? Can I save their lives? Their lives are worth two taels of silver, and we can exchange ten catties of grain with a horizontal knife on the black market What! Do you know what we are in the eyes of those generals? When they reported the results of the battle, they didn’t use a single word for us, but in fact it was us who worked here—in this year, the dead, wounded, and wounded , Abolishing so many people, what did they get except two taels of silver? Hmph... what's the use of patrolling? Does the high-ranking officials in Chang'an care if this kind of wasteland is in our hands?"

"Then according to what you're saying...the things we're doing now are meaningless?"

Yan Zhaozhong's face gradually turned cold, he didn't know how the generals would report to the superior, and he didn't care about it at all.Because for him, and even for most people, joining the army is a very simple and honorable thing.The merchant's son was not qualified to fight, but now that he is here, it is already an honor.Regardless of whether he returned with honor in the end or died on the battlefield, it was all praiseworthy, and there was nothing wrong with it.

But what Chen Fan just said...

Indeed...you are a great nobleman in Luoyang, so of course you don't care about these things.After all, in this world, one's birth alone can determine everything about a person.A pariah who desperately wants to join the army, as long as he is allowed to wear the military uniform of the Tang Army, it is enough for him to be grateful. To be called "The Great Tang Iron Army" is an honor that the ancestors could not ask for, but the same It's these, put into another person's mouth, but it seems to be fooled...

There was anger on Yan Zhaozhong's face, and Chen Fan couldn't help but tremble in his eyes when he saw his expression.But in the end, he just clenched his fists and remained silent.

After all, no matter how much he didn't want to face the death of his companion, it couldn't prevent the same thing from happening again.Here, death is an extremely common thing, and the only thing he can reverse is to make every death have the meaning it should carry.

But think about it, can I really do such a thing?

At present, Chen Fan is still unable to answer.And his background also determined that he couldn't take an innocuous compliment as the goal of his struggle like Yan Zhaozhong.

"It's not meaningless..."

He said in a muffled voice.

"Then why don't you go get in touch with the recruits?" Yan Zhaozhong's tone was a bit preachy.

"I have not decided yet……"

Chen Fan frowned, and the unwillingness in his eyes became more intense.

"Is this worth thinking about?"

"Maybe it's not necessary for you...but I have to think about it." Chen Fan turned his head and looked at Yan Zhaozhong.

"Zhaozhong, when you first came here, didn't you ask me why you wanted to join the army? I can indeed rely on my family contacts to find a job in Jingzhao Mansion and live a leisurely life. But generations of my family have come here like this. If it’s still the case here, it’s meaningless.”

When Chen Fan said this, he couldn't help showing a helpless smile.

"Don't think I'm showing off my family background in front of you. The words Datang Tiejun... are not meaningless. But for you, for me, these words are really useless. I don't need Rely on this to prove yourself. But this is one thing. Fighting a war is another. Zhaozhong, let me ask you, did you kill those barbarians just now, or did I kill them? There is a difference ?"

He cast his eyes on Yan Zhaozhong's face, and Yan Zhaozhong was stunned.

"This... isn't it?"

He reacted for a while before opening his mouth slowly.

"Indeed not. So similarly, if it's not Lao Zhao who dies today, but you and me, does it make any difference to the entire Han Navy? Actually, there is no, right?"

With a slight smile on Chen Fan's face, he ignored the puzzled look in Yan Zhaozhong's eyes, and just spoke lightly.

"You are a businessman, and you should understand that on the battlefield, no matter what your background...our lives are actually only worth one price."

"But what do you say that has anything to do with what we are going to do now?"

Yan Zhaozhong became more and more puzzled, and even frowned unconsciously.For a moment, he felt that Chen Fan was crazy, he was driven crazy by the current battle.

"Of course it has something to do with it. Zhaozhong, my life should not be judged by anyone, and neither should yours. But I really don't know what to do so that each of you can break free from this... I can't figure it out Ah, so I haven't been able to face you, let alone those recruits. You see, they don't know anything yet... If I don't know anything now, that would be great, I won't worry about these things Are you troubled?"

Chen Fan had a heavy sigh in his mouth, but more of it was unwillingness and resentment after deep thinking.