The desert wind howled relentlessly, sending up fine grains of sand that stung the skin like thousands of tiny needles. Atop the ruins of a Ming Dynasty border fortress, Hu Yanzhen stood defiantly, his robes billowing wildly behind him. The fortress, once a symbol of imperial power, was now a pile of shattered stone—a perfect reflection of the remnants of the "Desert Wolves" unit.
Below, in the sheltered courtyard of the fortress, the remnants of his men sat in heavy silence. They were no longer a valiant cavalry force; they were a mass of wounded men, haunted by the shadow of defeat. Their once sun-kissed, spirited faces were now covered in a layer of dust and apathy. They cleaned their weapons with sluggish movements, their eyes blank, as if a part of their souls had been left behind and died with their comrades in Death Valley.
Rage was the only thing keeping Hu Yanzhen standing. Not the hot, explosive anger, but the cold, heavy kind that settled in the pit of his stomach like a stone. Every order from headquarters in Lanzhou was now read with venomous suspicion. Every messenger was viewed as a potential messenger of death. They had been betrayed, and Hu Yanzhen swore on the bones of his soldiers that he would find out who held the knife.
His current focus was a crumpled piece of paper he kept in his breast pocket, right above his heart. It had been found in the uniform pocket of Lieutenant Zhou Qihang, his brilliant young officer, who had died trying to protect his flank. The paper contained a series of seemingly random numbers, hastily scribbled on. It was Zhou's last will, a riddle left in the midst of the chaos.
For weeks, Hu Yanzhen spent sleepless nights by the flickering light of a lamp, trying to decipher the code. He tried all the standard methods he had learned in the academy—Caesar ciphers, simple substitutions, transpositions. Nothing worked. Frustration gnawed at him. He felt like he had let Zhou down once again.
Then, with the wild intuition that was often his best guide, he tried something different. What did Zhou know that he didn't? Zhou was an amateur poet. He was obsessed with history. Perhaps the key wasn't something logical, but something personal and poetic. Hu Yanzhen began trying keys based on famous battle dates, their old regiment numbers, even lines from Zhou's favorite poems. Night after night, she found nothing but dead ends.
While her brain wrestled with the numbers, her other hand was moving. She couldn't just sit and wait. She activated her personal network of informants, a collection of unlikely people who owed her a favor. There was a traveling merchant she had once saved from muggers, beggars whose all-seeing eyes met on the city streets, and even a famous opera singer in a nearby town ruled by Liang Zhenhai, whose career she had once saved from scandal.
She gave them one task: find out everything they could about the mysterious Japanese adviser working for Liang Zhenhai.
Information began trickling back, bit by bit, often contradictory. Some said the adviser was an old samurai, others a cunning diplomat. But one name kept coming up in whispers in teahouses and opium dens: "Lord Oda."
The descriptions were consistent: a brilliant strategist, ruthlessly cruel, and highly respected Liang Zhenhai and his officers. He was the architect behind the ambush at Death Valley, a war artist who painted with blood and fire. The name burned into Hu Yanzhen's mind. Oda. He now had a name for the ghost that haunted him.
The biggest breakthrough came from the opera singer. With her charm, she managed to sneak into a party of high-ranking officers in Liang Zhenhai's camp. Hiding behind a silk curtain, she overheard a conversation that sent shivers down her spine. The officers laughed and toasted Lord Oda's "success" in crippling the Republic's cavalry unit. They spoke of a "special gift" that was on its way from Nanjing as a token of gratitude.
The singer, with a memory trained to memorize complicated musical scores, remembered every detail. The gift consisted of several cases of very expensive Château Margaux wine and a box full of Havana Montecristo cigars. More importantly, the sender was a Nanjing trading company called the "Great Wall Trading Company, "who was known to have connections with high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Defense. As proof, he had even managed to smuggle out a wooden label from one of the empty wine crates he had found in the trash.
When the informant handed the small wooden label to Hu Yanzhen, it felt like holding a hot iron. His blood boiled. The traitors were not just in Lanzhou. They were in the heart of government, in Nanjing. They had not only betrayed their soldiers, they had celebrated with French wine and Cuban cigars. The deaths of his men had become a cause for toasting among the capital's elite.
The anger gave him new clarity. That night, he returned to Lieutenant Zhou's code notes. With the new information in his mind, he tried a different key. Not a date or a poem. Something more commercial, more modern. The Great Wall Trading Company. G-W-T-C. He tried using the alphabetical order of the name as a substitution key.
And suddenly, the numbers began to make sense.
It was a modified substitution code, where each letter was shifted according to the order of the letters in the company name. Slowly, with trembling hands, Hu Yanzhen began to translate Zhou's last message.
"...LANZHOU ORDER FROM INSIDER N... WATCH THE COMMUNICATION LINE... ODA... DANGER..."
The message was incomplete, as if Zhou had been killed before he could finish it. But it was more than enough. "Insider N." Nanjing. The name "Oda" appeared again, confirming everything he had heard. And "Watch the communication line." It was a warning. The false order that had trapped them had come through official channels.
Hu Yanzhen was certain now. Lieutenant Zhou had discovered something very dangerous before he died. He had discovered that the order to kill them had not come from Lanzhou, but from a traitor in Nanjing, an "Insider" working for Oda.
This thought brought him back to thinking about the false telegram accusing Lee Junshan. For weeks, the accusation had bothered him, planting seeds of doubt and hatred. The rigid Lee Junshan, who always put principles above all else. Could he really be in cahoots?
His instincts screamed no. Lee Junshan might be annoying with his upright and uncompromising attitude, but he was no traitor. Still, the doubt lingered. What if Lee Junshan himself didn't know he was being used by this "Insider N"? Or worse… what if Lee Junshan was "Insider N"? No. He pushed the thought away. He had no proof, only poisonous suspicion. He needed more.
He had to act. His blind rage had now turned into a focused purpose. He could no longer sit in this ruined fortress and wait for the truth to come to him. He had to go get it.
He grabbed a pen and paper. He knew there was only one person in the entire Lanzhou command that he could trust without hesitation: Old Sergeant Major Qian. Qian was a veteran of decades of service, a man who hated corruption as passionately as he loved the Republic. Qian had access to the communications archives and knew every officer in the headquarters.
In his firm handwriting, Hu Yanzhen wrote a secret message. He did not ask for help or complain. He issued an order disguised as a request. He asked Sergeant Qian to secretly investigate all records of communications between Lanzhou and Nanjing headquarters during the week before the ambush at Death Valley.
Specifically, he asked Qian to look for any anomalies, unusual orders, or telegrams authorized by unknown names. He emphasized two things to look for: any mention of the names "Oda" or "Advisor Wu" in any records, and the name of the trading company that sent the gifts, "Great Wall Trading Company," as well as the names of the Ministry of Defense officials associated with it.
After carefully folding the letter and sealing it, he called his most trusted soldier. "Take this to Sergeant Major Qian in Lanzhou. Do not hand it over to anyone else. Wait for his reply. Your life depends on it."
As the soldier disappeared over the eastern horizon, Hu Yanzhen stood once more on the fortress wall. The wind still howled, but now the sound was no longer a cry of defeat. It sounded like the drums of war had just begun. He had found the echo of the valley of death, and it had led him to the trail of the traitors. His hunt was about to begin.
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*****to be continued chapter 6