During the war years, we were born and died, ready to pierce the enemy's heart like a sharp knife. In the era of construction, we shouldered the mission with iron shoulders. We are a group of monsters, crossing the desert sea, crossing the Gobi, and crossing the swamp...... We are fearless, and our purpose is to plant the red flag on the Tianshan Mountains!

- Luo Zhengxiong

Jeeps gallop across the Gobi Desert.

The scorching sun is scorching, the scorching sun is like fire, and the Gobi Desert in September seems to be about to burn.

It was the summer of 1951, a very ordinary day. Two hours ago, Luo Zhengxiong suddenly received an order for him to rush to the division headquarters to accept the appointment.

Appoint? Luo Zhengxiong, who was talking to Jiang Wanyin in the low bungalow of the 14th Regiment, looked puzzled, and now he was no longer the predator of the large regiment, let alone the commander of the 14th regiment. He had already taken off his military uniform, and soon he would leave the vast Gobi with Jiang Wanyin, who had come to pick him up, and leave the frontier territory where the mainlanders were terrified when they heard it, and go to a county called Wangshui to serve as the county magistrate. Wangshui is really beautiful, the mountains and rivers are beautiful, the land is fat and the cattle are strong, and more importantly, Wangshui is Jiang Wanyin's hometown. As soon as the democrat Jiang Mohan heard the news, he brought his daughter Jiang Wanyin and rushed over, and hired five camels and four horses, saying that he wanted to take him, a hero, to Wangshui in this special way.

"Wangshui's fathers and fellow villagers are looking forward to you, Camp Commander Luo." Jiang Mohan shook his beard and said in his full baritone. Compared with six years ago, Jiang Mohan is a little old, but his complexion is far better than when Wangshui was liberated six years ago. This old master, who devoted his whole life to the education of his hometown Wangshui, was not pedantic at all, he grabbed Luo Zhengxiong's hand and told him about a series of changes that took place there after the sharp knife camp left Wangshui, including the construction of the people's school.

"Okay, now the people are the masters of the country, and if you go, you will definitely make a difference."

When the two were talking, eighteen-year-old Jiang Wanyin stood on the side reservedly, a pair of apricot eyes sneaked over from time to time, and after a glance, they quickly swept away, and a shy red cloud flew out of her white cheeks from time to time. It's really a female college with eighteen changes, and the more she changes, the better she looks. In Luo Zhengxiong's mind, Jiang Wanyin was still the little girl six years ago with bangs and two pigtails, who was lying in the crook of his arm at night, pestering him to tell stories. Unexpectedly, in six years, she was so dazzling, and her heart was pounding at a glance. Luo Zhengxiong, who claims to have experienced countless bullets and bullets, has been forged by the flames of the revolution and is not afraid of swords and guns, and is not frightened by the wind and rain, in front of the eighteen-year-old Jiang Wanyin, he showed his heart for the first time. The two of them didn't say much, but every sentence seemed to be wrapped in a strange smell. It's no wonder that Jiang Mohan's purpose this trip is to marry his daughter Jiang Wanyin to Luo Zhengxiong, according to his words, this is called a hero with a beauty, which is very suitable.

"County Magistrate Luo, no, I'll still call you Camp Commander Luo. Back then, I blamed me for having no eyes and not treating heroes as heroes. This time is different, I must use a big red sedan chair to carry you to Wangshui, and let those people in Wangshui who give me advice see, I, Jiang Mohan, respect heroes more than anyone else. ”

Jiang Mohan told the truth, back then, when Luo Zhengxiong came to his house, he disguised himself as a fortune teller. At first, Jiang Mohan was very disgusted with this young man, what he did not do well, he wanted to deceive people with these ghosts and gods. In a fit of rage, he drove Luo Zhengxiong out. If it weren't for Lao Huang, the head of the underground party organization, doing the work, eighty percent, Luo Zhengxiong's fate with him would have been stopped there. Later, although I was not so disgusted, I still looked down on this poor Xiucai who carried a blanket all day long and mysteriously went in and out. According to Jiang Mohan's principle, a person who is poor cannot be short-sighted, and a scholar with clear eyebrows and beautiful eyes should do something serious, even if it is to teach in the school he runs. Luo Zhengxiong rejected him, and claimed that he was comfortable eating this bowl of rice, and all the people who asked him for divination were rich people or high-ranking officials of the Kuomintang. Jiang Mohan was so angry that he ignored him for several days, and did not let his daughter Jiang Wanyin enter his room, for fear that this charlatan would teach his daughter badly. Who knew that when the People's Liberation Army attacked the city, Luo Zhengxiong turned into a commander of the Sharp Knife Battalion. In those days when he was in the Jiang family, he was not originally a fortune teller, but was ordered to break into the enemy and rebel. With his unremitting efforts, the 27th and 28th regiments of the miscellaneous army guarding Wangshui County defected one after another, and took the initiative to abandon the city and surrender, leaving the stubborn 22nd Regiment. The regiment is a descendant of Chiang Kai-shek and is known as the Death Tour. Luo Zhengxiong adopted the tactic of luring the enemy out of the city, luring the 22nd Regiment to the Black Wind Valley twenty miles outside Wangshui City, and the two sides launched a flesh-and-blood battle. The battle lasted for seven days and seven nights, relying on the help of the underground armed forces and the covert support of the progressives, the Sharp Knife Battalion successfully annihilated one of the enemy's main regiments with the strength of one battalion and captured the regiment commander Hu Da Pole alive. In the case of not a single shot fired in the city, Wangshui was liberated. Since then, Luo Zhengxiong has become a well-known hero, and some progressives in Wangshui took the initiative to write to the relevant authorities after the founding of New China, requesting that Luo Zhengxiong, who was brave enough to be both civil and military, return to Wangshui and serve as the chief executive of Wangshui. It's a pity that at that time, the sharp knife battalion had to go west first, all the way to Xinjiang, Jiang Mohan didn't have time to apologize to Luo Zhengxiong, Luo Zhengxiong's steps had already embarked on the journey to the west.

Democrat Jiang Mohan is a relatively stubborn person, over the years, he has been constantly inquiring about Luo Zhengxiong, first heard that he has made meritorious contributions in Xinjiang, and has made great contributions to persuading Tao Zhiyue, commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang in Xinjiang, to lead the army to revolt, and then successfully quelled three rebellions, and has made great achievements in defending the fruits of the revolution in the frontier. Later, when I heard that the Xinjiang Corps was going to be restructured as a whole, and the soldiers were going to take off their uniforms, reclaim the frontier, and stick to the frontier for a lifetime, Jiang Mohan became anxious, kept running, kept appealing, and through layers of relationships, he insisted on hitting the commander Wang Zhen in the hands of the commander, and brought this tiger general to Wangshui. Of course, in this, it is not only Jiang Mohan's love for talent, but also more secret things, but Jiang Mohan himself does not say it. Luo Zhengxiong didn't know all this. When his superiors informed him that he would be transferred to a local job, they simply told him that the whole country was now in a period of socialist construction, and that a tiger general like him was needed everywhere, and that when he arrived in Wangshui, he must maintain the glorious tradition and fine style of a soldier and lead the people of Wangshui to fight against the sky and the earth to build a new socialist Wangshui.

Luo Zhengxiong himself never said anything about the organization's arrangement, he was used to obedience, and he was also used to rediscovering himself from obedience. It's dry everywhere, and deep down, he still prefers Wangshui's place. So he happily agreed. Unexpectedly, just as he was about to pack up and leave the Great Gobi, he suddenly received such a strange order.

Don't you want me to go? Luo Zhengxiong, who was sitting in the car, thought so.

The Great Gobi in September is the hottest time of the year, and its temperament is far stronger than that of men, dozens or hundreds of times stronger. Soon after the car hit the road, it was so steaming by the heat wave that it was impossible to sit still. Luo Zhengxiong asked the driver to stop and took off the canvas canopy, the wind was clear, but the vicious sun quickly burned his body to peel. Luo Zhengxiong scolded an unpleasant word and urged the driver to drive faster. When the car drove out of Baibantan and jumped onto Line 2, Luo Zhengxiong saw a group of yellow sheep, about fifty or sixty, clustered together, putting their heads against each other's crotches and heading towards the Tianshan Mountains. Baibantan used to be a place where yellow sheep haunted, and when Luo Zhengxiong and his team first drove into the Great Gobi, they were often surrounded by flocks of yellow sheep. Yellow sheep don't hurt people, but if you hurt them, they will also wait for an opportunity to retaliate. Luo Zhengxiong and they had the experience of being besieged by thousands of yellow sheep overnight, that was four years ago on the way to chase down the rebel Ulazbai, they were brought into the nest of the yellow sheep by the cunning Ulazbai, and almost became the sacrifice of the yellow sheep. After that time, Luo Zhengxiong understood that the first thing to learn in the uninhabited Gobi was how to get along with these wild animals.

When it was dark, Luo Zhengxiong and the others entered the Yanqi Basin, and the Yanqi at night showed a virgin-like beauty, and in the distance, the vast Bosten Lake emitted a crystal light. In normal times, Luo Zhengxiong will definitely let the driver slow down, and he likes to stand in the night and stare at the mysterious Bosten Lake in a daze. But this time, his heart was more anxious than the stars in the sky that were eager to burst out. Jiang Mohan's father and daughter were still waiting in the low bungalow in Dasha Lake, and the division headquarters didn't know what important changes had happened.

Sure enough, as soon as he entered the division headquarters, Luo Zhengxiong heard the news that his order to transfer jobs had been withdrawn, and what awaited him would be an arduous and glorious task.

"Consider it, think about it, or you're the best." Tong Tieshan, political commissar of the division, said.

In consideration of the complexity of this appointment, division commander Liu Zhenhai first asked the political commissar to work with Luo Zhengxiong in private, and first eliminated the knots that might appear in his mind.

After listening to the words of the political commissar, Luo Zhengxiong bowed his head and remained silent. This decision was too unexpected, if it had been changed half a month ago, maybe he would have accepted it happily, but now that he was ready to go to Wangshui, he suddenly stopped him back, and the first to bear the brunt was to ask him to be the head of the Special Second Regiment. This is a character that is even more difficult than charging into battle during wartime-

"Political commissar, can you ......" After thinking for a long time, Luo Zhengxiong said hesitantly.

"What, cowardly? You Luo Zhengxiong is the most courageous in the whole division, and the old commander praised you as a sharp knife that is always stuck in the heart of the enemy. Wouldn't it be because the wind of the Gobi Desert would blow my heart to shake? "Political commissar Tong Tieshan is not a few years older than Luo Zhengxiong, and the two are fellow villagers in Gansu, so when they talk, they are naturally a little more peaceful.

"I want to ......" Luo Zhengxiong still hesitated, not knowing how to explain to Tong Tieshan.

"What do you think, can't you really be reluctant to that Jiang Wanyin, right? I can tell you, as a soldier, you must not let a female comrade hold her heart, although Jiang Wanyin is young and beautiful, but you are a soldier, you must first obey military orders. If you really like her, the organization can come forward and let her stay. However, if she is holding back her work, I can't spare you. ”

"No, no," Luo Zhengxiong hurriedly shook his head, his hesitation had nothing to do with Jiang Wanyin, "How old are people, don't think about it." ”

"It's not that I think, when did you Luo Zhengxiong hesitate, why did a Jiang Wanyin appear, and you became a mother-in-law. I'll just ask you one thing, obedience or disobedience? ”

Let the political commissar force him like this, Luo Zhengxiong had no way to retreat, straightened up, and replied very firmly: "Obey!" ”

"Good!" Political Commissar Tong Tieshan smiled, with a bit of approval in his eyes, "I knew that you, Luo Zhengxiong, would not disappoint the division headquarters, go, follow me to see the division commander." ”

On the evening of 20 August, the Special 1st Regiment, which was responsible for the Corps' forward surveying and mapping tasks, was hit by a strong black storm in the Takla Desert, which was the largest black storm in Xinjiang in 30 years, and the storm lasted for three days and three nights, destroying countless fertile fields, and threatening villages and troop garrisons along the desert to varying degrees. Nearly 20 days have passed since the storm, and the fate of the officers and men of the 1st Special Regiment is still uncertain. The headquarters estimated that it was unlikely that the soldiers would survive, and although the corps was still making every effort to rescue them, it was too easy for the vast desert to swallow up 100 lives. A black wind swept up, and herds of camels could be blown away, let alone people. Judging from the fact that the three jeeps were torn apart by the wind and could not be put together, the place where the special group stayed overnight happened to be in the center of the storm, and his logistics troops happened to walk to the edge of the Tarim River. If the Tarim River swallows up people, it will not be able to fill it with a few hundred people, and even if the entire corps is thrown into it, it will not be able to fill its stomach. However, the task of building the Corps was set at the beginning of the year, and a large-scale reclamation team was about to march into the desert and Gobi, and the front-line surveying and mapping work could not be stopped for a moment.

"We have never fought for the first division in the formation of the special first regiment, and this time the headquarters has entrusted the sacred mission of forming the second regiment to our division, which is a high degree of trust in our division." Political Commissar Tong Tieshan got rid of the shadow of an unexpected encounter and said passionately.

Luo Zhengxiong's heart suddenly became heavy, and when he formed the Second Special Regiment and went to the forefront, what would be tested would no longer be one person's wisdom and courage, but whether the great dream of the whole corps to reclaim and garrison the frontier could be turned into reality in the harsh and cruel natural environment.

Five days later, another team also set off from Dihua. Sitting on the hump and walking in the front is the political commissar Yu Hai.

According to the order of the division headquarters, Yu Hai and Luo Zhengxiong's troops divided into two routes, set out from Dihua and Hongshawo respectively, and met at Honghaizi, the land of death, a week later. The reason why the division headquarters decided to choose the first stop in Honghaizi was to test whether this newly formed team could persist in the harsh desert. Now is no more than in the past, during the war years, no matter how great the difficulties and dangers encountered, as long as there is an enemy situation, every soldier can rush to the forefront. Now the dawn of peace is shining all over the earth, and everyone's hearts are relieved to varying degrees. Whether or not it can withstand the second test has become the only criterion for the division headquarters to judge this special unit. Besides, the origin of this team is complicated, and some of them have never worn military uniforms at all, and they don't know what hardship tastes like. With the deepening of the work of the Corps, there will be a large number of fresh blood to add in, whether they can take this special trip is the biggest test for Luo Yu and the others.

Under the scorching sun, political commissar Yu Hai's face was a little gloomy, and even a little depressed. He was in his thirties, not tall, but stocky, with a swarthy face that rarely smiled, and a pair of thoughtful eyes that always shone with an unpredictable light. He joined the army at the age of 16, fought countless beautiful battles, made a lot of military exploits, and studied at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University for a year during the Anti-Japanese War. This time he was selected to the special second regiment, Liu Zhenhai and Tong Tieshan also took a lot of painstaking work, Luo Zhengxiong is good in other aspects, but his temper is too violent, he can't physically punish people at every turn, and even likes to engage in a word. After all, the Second Special Regiment is not a wartime corps, and the mission it shoulders is far more important than the mission undertaken by a sharp knife regiment in wartime, and every move will have a bearing on the overall situation of the Corps' cause. Liu Zhenhai and Tong Tieshan discussed and discussed, and decided to put aside the report on the promotion of Yu Hai to the deputy commander of the Second Division, and send him to Luo Zhengxiong's side to build this special forces in the new era.

Yu Hai himself has a grudge against this appointment, but he will not say his true thoughts. This man in northern Shaanxi in his thirties was still optimistic and firm in front of the division commander and the division political commissar, and as soon as he walked out of the gate of the division headquarters, his face turned gloomy. At this time, the yin had an obvious emotional color, especially when he saw the first batch of elite soldiers sent to him by the division headquarters, the two sorrowful eyebrows were locked tighter.

On the desert baked by the scorching sun, the thirty-peaked camel was pulled apart, which was bought by the logistics department from a very famous local camel team, and its endurance and walking speed were first-class, but the camel sat on it, but it made Yu Haizhi sigh. In addition to the two guides and four logistics soldiers, the rest, if he is asked to pick by Yu Hai himself, I am afraid that he will not be able to pick one, especially the one sitting on the short camel in the middle, it is simply an embroidered pillow!

This person's name is Wan Yue, 25 years old, recruited from Dihua after the liberation of Xinjiang, and it is said that he is good at mathematics and can fiddle with many instruments. The division commander Liu Zhenhai introduced her to Yu Hai like a baby, and repeatedly emphasized that no matter what situation is encountered, the first thing is to ensure the safety of Wanyue. Yu Hai snickered at the time, such a weak woman, when she arrives in the desert Gobi, what safety is there? When Wanyue arrived under him, after a few days, he found that this woman was not only pampered, but also arrogant, indifferent, and extremely difficult to get along with. No, the other female soldiers on the hump were talking and laughing for a while, and it was strange to see anything, only she had a cold face, an eyebrow, like a daughter, and looked cold and arrogant who rejected people thousands of miles away. Yu Hai has been a political commissar for many years, and he is most afraid of dealing with female soldiers, especially female soldiers with personality. He really couldn't understand what the division sent him to do with so many female soldiers, and he also sent such a cold beauty!

The caravan slowly walked westward, and the noon sun roasted people who did not dare to raise their heads, but they did not dare to stop. Walking in the desert, whether it is a person or a camel, you have to work hard, if you slack off your steps, the heat wave can immediately melt you. In the sound of camel bells, the Taklamakan Desert was like an overwhelming magic net, and the team was hidden in the blink of an eye.