It was raining in the sky, and Iwamoto, who was in his teens, fell into a puddle, and passers-by walked past him indifferently because of the young man's gold, without any of them reaching out to help.

Because of the rain, Iwamoto sobered up a lot, wiped his forehead with his wet sleeves, and his already tattered sleeves were stained with a lot of muddy water.

Iwamoto lifted his face from the icy puddle, and it was a gang of orphans of five or six people who had attacked him just now, mistaking Iwamoto for an American and rushing over.

In Shanghai in 2o78, there were countless orphans who committed suicide because their parents couldn't pay off their debts.

Poor people too.

But Iwamoto is used to days like this.

It is not the first time that he has been attacked by a gang of orphans like this, he lives in a slum in Shanghai, and he is used to seeing violence, but it is the first time that he has been beaten so badly like today.

Normally, I would only punch so many times and then snatch all the money, but today I don't know what the reason is, but I actually put such a heavy hand.

Iwamoto didn't want to die here, he didn't want to give up here, he knew, he died here, but in a minute, a cleaner would come and collect his body, no- the cleaner would be troublesome, maybe he would throw him into the garbage mountain with the corpses of cats, dogs, and crows, and take them to the incinerator in the suburbs to be burned to ashes.

I want to live well, this is Iwamoto's mother, who told Iwamoto before she was stabbed to death by a drunk, and it was for this sentence that Iwamoto lived to this day.

Iwamoto shook his head, got back to his feet, and walked towards his place of residence step by step.

Fortunately, he only suffered skin wounds, and did not break two or three bones.

Holding his aching head with one hand, Iwamoto held his empty stomach and crossed the narrow stone-paved road, which was littered with rotting vegetables, house garbage, horse manure, and horse urine because of its proximity to the slums. On the side of the road, people who had never been born to bathe, drinking liquor in clothes they had never washed, and mouths that smelled of alcohol were talking to each other with their mouths open, which had never been brushed since birth.

On the road filled with all kinds of body odors, sometimes black and filthy things fell from the sky and splashed out, which were the contents of the dirt buckets that had fallen from the windows of people's houses.

If you are unfortunate enough to be hit directly, you will have to take a shower even if it is a few tens of degrees below zero.

Iwamoto does not walk on the side of the building as much as possible.

Now Iwamoto shivered as he breathed in the cold air while looking up at the invisible sky

After walking slowly for more than ten minutes, and all his clothes were soaked, Iwamoto finally returned to his residence.

The so-called place where he lives is just an old and dilapidated house.

Because the dilapidated house had a huge gap, and there was no sealed relationship, not a single homeless person wanted to come and live here, and the group had no intention of dying quietly at night in Tokyo.

It is also thanks to this reason that Iwamoto can live here alone.

And, he liked the gap that wasn't sealed.

After Kozo Iwamoto walked into the house, the rain stopped and the gray clouds gradually dispersed.

Many people walked out of the door and looked at the rainbow after the rain, and what Kozo Iwamoto saw through the gap in his eyes was the blue sky.

Looking at the white doves flying in the sky, Iwamoto stretched out his hand to grab the white doves.

But after a few attempts, Iwamoto lowered his hand, and the white dove faded from his sight.

A man muttered to himself.

——

"I really want to fly."

——

Life will go on, the brutal routine, and nothing will change.

Until that day.

The steel warships of the Soviet Union broke through the harbor that had long been blocked.

The tragedy brought about by the war began a cycle of terror.

For Iwamoto, he had only two options, one was to be killed by the Soviets as a target, and the other was to serve as cannon fodder for the Provisional Government Army and join a certain faction, which was his way of life.

The broken, powerless, and untrained Provisional Government Army, consisting of a group of civilians with no military training at all, was undoubtedly defeated in the face of weaponry that the Soviets had superior for more than an era.

After three months of war, the Provisional Government Army announced its unconditional surrender, and this was the day Iwamoto completed his improvised military training.

The Soviets took over the place, and soon they appeared, this once prosperous Shanghai, has long been in ruins, they have no way to get any resources from this former economic city, the angry Soviets killed all the officials of the provisional government, and they still felt that they were not enough to vent, and after shooting all the bullets at the civilians, they evacuated Shanghai.

This is where the real hell begins.

In the past, even if it was only a provisional government, it was a legitimate government, and they also had a certain prestige and authority, at least, they could support the operation of the entire city normally.

And on that day, after the departure of the Soviet Union, Shanghai was a ruin in the truest sense of the word.

Power is everything, everything, everything that has been in the past, has been destroyed.

People and people are caught in a cycle of killing and being killed.

Luckily for Iwamoto, he was one of the last government-trained military personnel, and even at a young age, he was incorporated into the ranks of the warlords, barely needing to worry about starving to death.

This warlord is a smart man, and many people are glad that they are with the right person.

The fact is also that the power of the warlords is getting bigger and bigger, and the weapons and equipment that I don't know where to get them are getting better and better, and there are fewer and fewer people who dare to have conflicts with the warlords.

The situation in Shanghai is slowly being brought under control, opponents are purged, and more and more people are forced to support it, even if it is not pleasant, but everything in Shanghai is moving towards stability.

Just when everyone thought that the night was coming to an end and the dawn was coming.

Fate played a joke on everyone.

The warlord was assassinated during an outing.

His assassin was the son of an opposition purged by warlords.

The warlord who has been pointing his gun at others, the warlord who has tens of thousands of troops, cannot fall for the rest of his life.

With the death of the warlord, the civil war began once again.

The army was divided into dozens of factions, and Iwamoto, who had no choice, was suddenly found by someone.

The person who looked for him was a foreigner who was protected by all parties in Shanghai.

"You're an American, aren't you?"

Iwamoto, who instinctively sensed the opportunity, immediately nodded.

Purely instinctively, he felt an unusual opportunity.

Through this contact, Iwamoto learns about the origin of the warlord's weapons in the past.

(End of chapter)