Memories flooded into her mind like a tide, instantly bringing her back to the bitter past filled with gunpowder smoke. The air seemed to still be filled with the smell of blood and rust, clearly dragging her thoughts back to May 6, 1919.
The Haihe River breeze in May brought with it the dryness of early summer, making the white cloth banners in the hands of the girls’ school students rustle.
Zheng Wanqing clenched the paper flag that read "Give Me Qingdao Back" and rubbed her thumb across the rough edges. They had secretly pasted it on the back of a classroom map last night and had hurriedly brought it here before it was completely dry. The cheap ink left a dark blue mark on her palm.
Not far away, the guards of the consulate were changing shifts in an orderly manner. The bayonets of the Type 38 rifles in their hands flashed a dazzling cold light under the scorching sun, revealing a cold deterrent.
The student at the front of the team suddenly stepped onto the stone pillar swiftly, her neat short hair flying in the wind. Her eyes were burning with anger and determination, and she raised her arms and shouted: "Do you remember? The blood of the Beijing comrades has not yet dried!" Her voice was high-pitched and passionate, resounding around like a huge bell.
She held up high the newspaper of the day. The front-page photo of students protesting indignantly passed through the newspaper like sharp blades, burning everyone's eyes and stinging their hearts.
At this moment, a rotten egg took the lead in drawing a parabola in the air, and with full of indignation, it accurately hit the chrysanthemum emblem in front of the leadership hall, which symbolized aggression.
In a few moments, more than a dozen Japanese ronin armed with bamboo swords rushed out of the side door of the hotel like evil beasts. Their wooden clogs stepped hurriedly on the bluestone slabs, making dense and harsh "clicking" sounds, like the footsteps of a demon, approaching step by step.
Zheng Wanqing witnessed with her own eyes that a man in a blue cloth shirt was kicked hard in the knee by a ronin, but he still held the ronin's legs tightly.
His glasses shattered to the ground during his struggle, and the broken lenses reflected countless flying leaflets. The mimeographed "Twenty-One Demands" fell like snowflakes, and several of them stuck to the ronin's shiny bun. The ink gradually spread under the infiltration of sweat, just like a scar of shame that could never be erased.
"Get down!" A shout suddenly sounded, like an alarm piercing the sky. Then, the pressurized water gun blasted the crowd like a shotgun, and the strong water flow brought a huge impact that caught people off guard.
Zheng Wanqing's moon-white shirt was instantly soaked by water, becoming transparent, revealing a hint of flesh color, and sticking wetly to her body. Her braids were also washed away by the surging water column, and her long black hair was entangled around her neck like messy seaweed, and every time she struggled, it tightened, as if to suffocate her.
She suppressed her physical discomfort, staggered in the chaos, and anxiously looked for her companion.
Not far away, a woman's hairpin was blown off by a police baton, and bright red blood instantly oozed out of her forehead and splashed onto the slogan "Boycott Japanese Goods". The original word "goods" was dyed into the shocking word "blood".
Someone threw a smoke bomb, and in an instant, the dusk sky was dyed a strange purple-red. The thick smoke quickly engulfed the entire square like a surging tide, and visibility dropped to less than a fraction of a second. The surroundings were immediately plunged into chaos and panic.
In the choking smoke, Zheng Wanqing heard anxious but determined shouts coming one after another:
"Retreat to the French Concession!"
"The ambulance is at the back door of Gordon Hall!"
She was pushed by the crowd in the chaos, and suddenly felt the sharp wind of the baton breaking through the air on the back of her neck.
At the critical moment, a hand in a white glove appeared from the darkness filled with gun smoke. The hand had distinct joints, and its five fingers clamped the iron-clad baton accurately like a pair of pliers. The force was so great that the wooden handle made a "creaking" sound, as if it was groaning in pain.
"A smart person should know how to judge the situation." A low and slightly hoarse voice, mixed with the pungent smell of leather and gunpowder, gently brushed past her ears. When the thick smoke dispersed a little. When the thick smoke dispersed a little, she only had time to catch a glimpse of the back of a soldier in uniform, and the silver tassels on the epaulettes swayed like a stream of light in the sunset.
When she arrived at Zheng's house, her moon-white shirt had been stained with mud, blood and sweat, and her original color could no longer be seen. She was then confined for three days and then sent on a cruise ship to Marseille.
"It's you." Zheng Wanqing finally loosened her clenched napkin, leaving five clear and deep fingerprints on the originally smooth fabric.
She stared at the man in the neat military uniform in front of her with burning eyes, trying to find a trace of familiarity on his stern face, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not reconcile him with the figure in her memory who had rescued her like a god descending from the sky in the thick smoke.
She clearly remembers the shocking photo on the front page of the Beijing-Tianjin Times.
In the picture, there was a blurry silhouette of a man in military uniform, with the muzzle of a gun pointed ruthlessly at the unarmed students, and the accompanying text was even more eye-catching: "Young Marshal Xie Yun personally ordered the shooting to suppress the protest." These words were like a sharp dagger, piercing her heart.
"Thank you, Marshal," Zheng Wanqing's eyes were full of undisguised scrutiny and questioning, "I'm really curious, why would a man who was so cruel as to order the shooting when suppressing students take the risk to save a protester?"
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