"Let's do it." Toltkin said softly. The sappers began to hinge the barbed wire with large scissors, when the flares flashed again, followed by a number of tracer bullets, which were very dazzling in the thick darkness.

Toltkin could see the German breastwork, some logs piled up nearby, the edge of the forest behind the second trench, and the large trees that had been scraped off the skin of the shells, all of which were the usual orientations for his observations. Now he was slightly to the right, and the compass with the luminous light pointed him in the dark.

The silence of the night hung over all around. But Sun Hui knew that the silence was actually an illusion, and there might be many eyes staring at them in the dark. The hand of one of the sappers touched his shoulder, and he even trembled slightly. At this point, the barbed wire was broken. Sun Hui knew that if Toltkin and his scout soldiers planned to retreat, the sappers would stay here to guard the gap. If all is well, they may crawl back to their positions in another half an hour.

—A sapper holding Toltkin's hand tightly as he parted. Toltkin looked at him carefully with his eyes, accustomed to darkness, and he saw the kind glint of eyes in the sockets of two large beards and a pair of black holes. It was Menichvalov, whom Toltkin recognized, one of the best sappers in the division.

Sun Hui and the scouts climbed through the gap in the barbed wire, almost next to the German breastwork, when they suddenly stopped, and an explosion was heard on the left, and the earth shivered heavily. In the blink of an eye, the sound of an explosion came from the right again. Sun Hui guessed that it should have been done by the mortar operators of the Soviet army.

He heard a German talking on his left. By this time Semenov and Markov had already entered the trenches. The conversation was getting closer. Sun Hui held his breath as he saw two Germans walking along the traffic trench, one of them was eating, and he could hear his loud chewing sound. They go in the other direction. Semenov peeked his head out of the chest wall and helped Sun Hui jump.

In a short time, all five men stood side by side in the German trenches.

Toltkin listened carefully, and then walked along the communication trench where the two Germans had just passed. At this point, the traffic trench forked. At the corner, Toltkin suddenly felt Semenov, who was walking in front, touch him with his hand as a warning. It turned out that a German was walking along the breastwork. The scouts clinged to the walls of the trenches. The German disappeared into the darkness. Sun Hui knew that so far, everything was going well, as long as he found an opportunity to go into the forest.

Toltkin climbed out of the trench and looked around. He recognized the vague outline of the ranger's hut, which he often saw through the artillery mirrors. Next to the house was the point of German machine-gun fire, and from that side came the sound of the Germans arguing enthusiastically. There was originally a road leading to the forest. To the left of the road was a hill with three pine trees, and on the left side of the hill was a muddy low-lying area that they could only walk through.

After about an hour, the scouts finally made their way into the forest.

It was a cold, foggy dawn, and even the reverberating bird's cries were chilly.

Contrary to the information received by the division, the forest was crowded with German troops. Wherever Sun Hui looked, he could see huge trucks, tanks, and bulky two-wheeled carriages, with the Germans sleeping all over the floor. Bands of patrolmen walked along the forest paths, talking to each other in guttural voices. The Scout's only protector is the heavy darkness, but it can also betray them at any time. After a match and a flashlight flickering in the night, Toltkin, Sun Hui and the rest of the people fell to the ground one after another. They spent an hour and a half in a heap of fallen logs, among the branches of a prickly spruce tree. A German dragged a pair of heavy feet and turned on a flashlight, and approached Toltkin and Sun Hui. The flashlight almost shone directly on Sun Hui's face, but the sleepy-eyed German didn't notice anything. He crouched down and began to hum and unwind.

Sun Hui pulled out the dagger. Although Toltkin didn't see it, he felt Sun Hui's lightning movement, so he stopped his hand.

The German walked away. As he was leaving, he shone his flashlight on a corner of the forest, and Toltkin bowed slightly, taking the opportunity to choose a path from the bushes where he might encounter fewer Germans.

You must get out of this forest as soon as possible.

They climbed almost from the sleeping Germans, crawling for about a kilometer and a half, and on the way, they worked out a clear countermeasure. Whenever they noticed a patrol or a passing enemy, the scouts would lie still. On two occasions, the flashlight even shone on them, but as Toltkin had expected, they were treated as one of their own. They crawled for a while, pretending to be sleeping Germans, and then continuing to crawl, finally escaping from the forest. When they reached the edge of the forest, they came across this foggy dawn.

Then something happened to Kebo. They suddenly bumped into three Germans, three Germans who had not slept. The three men were reclining on top of a truck, wrapped in a quilt, and were talking. One of them stumbled upon a glance at the edge of the nearby forest and couldn't help but be stunned. Five men in peculiar costumes marched quietly and unsquintingly along the path in a strange procession, and in the morning light they did not look like men, but five ghosts dressed in broad white coats, their faces unusually serious, and a little green in the extreme pale.

The strange appearance of the scouts, or the vague outlines of their bodies in the misty morning fog, made the German feel that they were surreal, demonic things. He did not think of the Russians at once, did not associate this illusion with the concept of "enemy".

If Toltkin, Sun Hui, or one of his men had made even the slightest gesture of surprise or panic, the slightest attempt to attack or defend, the Germans would have sounded the alarm, and the edge of the foggy forest would have become the site of a brief bloody battle. And Sun Hui knew that except for himself, in such a battle, all advantages would belong to the enemy with a large number of people. Toltkin's composure rescued them. He immediately concluded that only three Germans had seen them, and that it would do them no good to rush forward and attack the enemy first, and that when they reached the nearby grove, where perhaps there were no Germans, even if the three men tried to make amends afterwards and raise the alarm, they would have a chance to escape. Toltkin didn't run, not so much by reason as instinct.