Spy Wars: I am the Captain of the Military Police

Chapter 995 A Faint Spiritual Redemption

Hope ignites, only to be extinguished again, each time shorter and more powerless than the last, leaving behind a deeper, colder despair and a gradually spreading numbness.

Life, in the vast ruins of Nanjing, lost its original meaning.

They are no longer pages turned on the calendar, but have transformed into an endless, gloomy cycle.

On the fifth day of the first lunar month in 1938, there was no sign of the weather warming up.

The leaden sky, like a heavy iron plate, pressed down on the city and on the hearts of every survivor.

Li Shouren's search gradually evolved from an urgent journey undertaken with only a faint firelight to a mechanical, almost ritualistic trek.

In two days, he traversed almost every possible hiding place in this ruined city.

At dawn, when the first suppressed cough rang out in the refugee camp, he would get up, pack his meager food—usually half a moldy biscuit or a small handful of fried rice—and walk into the endless ruins.

His route no longer had a clear goal; it was more like an unconscious overlay.

From Zhonghua Gate and Yuhuatai in the south of the city, to Shuixi Gate and Hanxi Gate in the west, and then to Xiaguan Gate, Yijiang Gate, and the wide river beach outside Jiangdong Gate in the north, to the gloomy city wall at Hanzhong Gate, and the cold riverbank at Zhongshan Wharf.

Hope, the faint spark that had once sustained him, dissipated little by little in the two days of fruitless trekking, like a breath of warm air exhaled from the palm of his hand in the biting cold wind, leaving not even a trace of warmth behind.

He began to witness hellish scenes that were more concrete and horrifying than those of the first few days. These scenes were no longer a blurry background, but became cold chisels, repeatedly and precisely striking his already broken heart.

It was a newly dug sewer in the west of the city, where a large number of laborers under the supervision of the Japanese military police were cleaning it.

An indescribable, cloying stench mixed with intense rottenness wafted towards you like a tangible wall from afar, almost suffocating you.

He instinctively approached, and the sight before him made his stomach churn; he almost vomited.

At the bottom of the ditch, dozens of corpses were piled up like tattered sacks, their skin turned dark green, and their facial features swollen and indistinct.

What's even more horrifying is that most of these corpses are missing limbs or are incomplete, and many of them appear to have been gnawed by animals, exposing their bare bones.

This is not a sewer; it is clearly a forgotten, open-air mass grave.

Li Shouren stood frozen by the ditch, as if he could hear their dying cries.

He almost stumbled away from there, but the stench and the sight haunted him like a ghost.

On another occasion, before curfew, unable to get back to the refugee camp, he tried to find possible hiding places in a Catholic church that had been severely damaged by artillery fire.

The church's stained-glass windows were all shattered, leaving only twisted frames; a cross hung precariously from the ceiling. In a corner of the altar, he found several bodies huddled together.

Judging from the remaining clothing, they were a mother and daughter.

The mother held her child tightly in her arms, her back facing outwards, maintaining a protective posture until her death.

Their bodies were stiff and covered in dust, but the maternal love that burst forth in despair was frozen into eternity in a cruel way.

Li Shouren stood there, unable to move for a long time.

He thought of Xiu'e and Xiao Juan.

In a secluded alleyway, almost buried under ruins, he met an old man.

The old man was dressed in rags, his white hair was filthy and messy, and his eyes were unfocused.

He held an empty swaddling cloth wrapped in rags in his arms as if it were a priceless treasure, and kept humming a lullaby in a completely off-key, hoarse voice.

He lived entirely in his own world, showing no reaction to the surrounding ruins or to Li Shouren passing by.

The cruelty of war not only takes lives, but also destroys the spirit of the survivors.

The old man's appearance sent a chill down Li Shouren's spine; it was a despair deeper than death itself.

These scenes, one by one, accumulate to a weight heavy enough to crush even the most resilient nerves.

Li Shouren's changes were slow but precise.

He no longer ran away eagerly at the first sign of a vague clue, as he had at the beginning.

His steps became unusually heavy and slow, as if each step required a tremendous amount of effort.

The trek through the ruins was no longer a search, but more like a aimless wandering, a way to numb the pain in one's soul with physical exhaustion.

He would still ask around from the people he met, but that process had lost its soul.

His questioning voice no longer carried the initial tone full of longing and humble expectation; it became dry, flat, and mechanical, like a pre-programmed sequence.

Often, before the other person can even answer a question, his gaze has already drifted elsewhere, as if the answer is no longer important.

In the end, the questioning almost turned into talking to himself, his voice so low that only he could hear it. It was more like a psychological suggestion to confirm that he was still "carrying out" the search mission than a genuine inquiry.

His eyes are the best indicator of his inner changes.

The initial light within, the longing for reunion, was gradually extinguished by the shock and devastation of the tragic scenes unfolding.

Instead, there is a layer of gray, stagnant numbness.

This numbness was exactly the same as the look in the eyes of the other survivors he saw on the street.

It is a kind of self-protective dormancy of the spirit after being repeatedly crushed by enormous, irresistible disasters.

Emotions are suppressed and perception becomes dulled; only in this way can one barely maintain a state from complete collapse.

Just when Li Shouren was on the verge of collapse, a turning point appeared.

That was outside a collapsed air-raid shelter.

A little girl, about five or six years old, wearing a thin, tattered cotton-padded coat, squatted at the entrance of the cave. Her face was blue from the cold, and she was tightly clutching a dirty rag doll in her arms, staring blankly at the ruins.

Li Shouren felt as if he had been pricked by a needle.

He thought of Xiao Juan, who had gone missing.

He walked over, carefully broke open the last can of food in his arms, and handed half of it over.

The little girl looked at him in fear and dared not take it.

Li Shouren placed the canned food in front of her and stepped back a few paces. The little girl hesitated for a long time, but finally couldn't resist the temptation of the food and grabbed the can, wolfing it down.

Li Shouren looked at her and sighed.

He couldn't leave her here alone.

He tried to reach out his hand, and the little girl flinched, but didn't run away.

Ultimately, he took her back to the refugee camp.

Once you do it the first time, you'll do it a second and a third time.

He found a boy with a high fever and festering wounds on his legs under the broken wall.

They found a brother and sister huddled together for warmth in an abandoned stove.

He even saved a child from a pit filled with corpses, who was trying to eat the bodies out of hunger... Each child was like a mirror, reflecting the cruelty of war and also reflecting the unfillable debt he owed to Xiu'e and Xiao Juan.

Saving these children seemed to be the only, albeit weak, spiritual redemption he could offer.