During the Anti Japanese War, there was a hero named Ling Jienfong who lived in the western mountains by himself. Orphaned at a young age when roving bandits killed his entire family in Inner Mongolia, Ling practically lived the forest, eating whatever he could hunt or coming to a town once a while and earn some money as a poor shoe shine or beggar. Soon, he found that his natural expertise lay in shooting. During that time, China was practically ruled by the Guomingdang (Nationalists), with the Communists occupying the northern provinces.
One day, he stole a pair of pistols from a drunk and sleeping Guomingdang officer. A pair of C-96 Mauser carbines and a haversack of halfmoon clips.
Soon, he started to earn money by showing off his shooting skills in many towns along his travels. He was able to throw plates and teacups and bottles into the air and blast them to pieces with dreadful accuracy, one shot for each item. He drew huge crowds, and soon, amassed enough money for him to purchase a rail ticket to travel to Beijing, or possibly Shanghai, where he might have been able to find a better and long term job.
However, fate once again intervenes. In 1937, Japanese forces swarmed into mainland China from Manchuria. After fierce fighting at Luguochiao, the Guomingdang was destroyed. City after city fell to the Japanese. Finally at Nanjing, the Japanese military committed one of the most horrific crimes against humainty, the cold blooded massacre of over 300,000 unarmed civilians and prisoners of war.
By 1939, the Japanese had reached the edges of Szechuan. Around the same time, the Communist Party fully entered the war against Japan, and deployed the entire Red Army into the field to fight them.
Ling Jienfong had no affiliations at that time, with neither CCP or KMT, and he had no political views whatsoever, but he recognized a hated enemy when he saw it, and when he saw a Japanese convoy rumble down a lonely mountain road in 1940, he realized them as the "same ones who perpetrated the Nanjing atrocity". They were another division of troops, but Ling decided to release his hatred on them anyways, since he figured that these troops were going somewhere to kill more people. Whatever they were, their intentions cannot be good.
He drew his Mausers, took careful aim at the lead vehicle, and squeezed the trigger. Suddenly, a cloud of blood and bone fragments erupted across the shattered windshield of the truck. It stopped suddenly, the second truck slamming into the first one, spilling the troops all over the ground. The next vehicles also collided, and caught fire, terrified soldiers running everywhere. In the chaos, another officer fell, the back of his head completely blown out, then another officer, a round straight through the neck. Then 4 soldiers, who were shot as they were running. In the heat and chaos of the collisions, nobody even realized what was going on. Someone heard gunfire, when he looked up, his head also exploded, showering another soldier with fragments of skull and blood. He screamed, also looking up. A second later, he was down as well. A round struck the fuel tank of one of the flaming trucks, causing a massive cloud of flame to envelope the vehicle. That explosion ignited all the spilled fuel from the other trucks on the ground, casuing a devastating chain reaction.
As flames roared all around, Ling Jienfong took the time to reload. He took aim again, this time firing straight into a crowd of confused and shocked soldiers, taking them down with dreadful skill. As the first ones were shot, they fell, tripping up those running behind them. In turn, they were shot as well. Within 15 minutes, every single soldier and officer from the convoy was shot to death. Over 200 enemy dead. One shot for each, nothing more. And none of them even realized that they drove into an ambush.
All by one single man, Ling Jienfong.
It was almost a month before the Japanese high command realized what was going on. By that time, over 1,000 Japanese lay dead, all from ambushes on convoys. The survivors from these attacks all told the same story: a single black clad man on horseback, two pistols, firing with terrifying accuracy.
The Japanese tried all methods to capture this man, but with little success, although he almost always hides amongst the local peasant population. However, the peasants all resented the Japanese occupiers, and they welcomed Ling Jienfong as a hero. At daytime, he would usually rest, but at nighttime, he rides, and kills, always with dreadful skill and accuracy.
When the Japanese finally realized that he attacks by night, they tried to set up an ambush at the edge of a small village. However, a villager sneaking past the headquarters of the enemy officers overheard a couple of Chinese traitors talking about the plan to kill or capture Ling Jienfong, and ran back to the house Ling was hiding and told him of the plan.
That night, while the ambush convoy thundered down the road with guns drawn, a silhouetted horseman rode straight up to the headquarters in the village, where the Japanese officer was drinking wine with his staff.
Unnoticed by the guards, Ling crept to the front door, where he thrust a bayonet into the neck of the first guard. As he fell, thrashing, the second turned around, only to take a single shot full to the face. Before the sharp report of that shot faded, Ling kicked in the front door, and unleashed a barrage of fire into the room before him. When he stopped, almost 10 dead officers lay on the floor before him.
He then walked into the rear, where another room lay, with it's door closed, it's edges stuffed with pillows. The commander was in the room along with a whore, and was just at the peak of his pleasures when the barrage of gunfire rang out in the room behind him. However, he was at the height of his sexual pleasure, way too mindf*cked to realize what was going on.
Within two seconds, Ling was in the room, having kicked the door down. Without a single word, he leveled his pistol at the officer and fired three times. The whore screamed, and scurried to the farthest side of the room, her body covered in the blood of the dead officer, his shattered body in a heap on the floor.
The Japanese were bewildered. They could not, as hard as they tried, to kill whatever was stalking them like a great, dark bird of prey, picking off soldiers and officers with unseen accuracy....................
The year is now 1945. The war was almost over. Ling Jienfong had killed almost 7,000 enemy troops. Just a few weeks ago, he killed over 100 Japanese during a night attack on a compound.
Ling Jienfong never saw the war's end though, he died several weeks before Japan's surrender........................
In 1949, the People's Liberation Army defeated Chiang Kai Shek's Guomingdang and founded the People's Republic of China. Following the liberation was a time of rebuilding. The fleeing Nationalists took with them every single gold piece and precious jewelry in China's imperial coffers. The Communists literally had to build China again from scratch.
In 1958, the Great Leap Foward was instituted.
In 1964, the People's Republic of China exploded their first atomic bomb.
In 1966, the Cultural Revolution began.
In 1967, China tested it's first thermonuclear weapon.
In 1978, the Cultural Revolution ended, and Comrade Deng Xiaoping was named the head of state. Finally, during this period of economic stabilization, historians could devote their time to unearthing the great mysteries of the past.
Until this time, only few people heard of Ling Jienfong. During all thsi time, he had been a unsung and nameless hero.
However, in the 1980s, Chinese historians discovered the remains of a well preserved diary hidden in the trunk of hollow tree in Shanxxi. In that diary contained the bloodcurling accounts of Ling's nighttime rides. Towards the end, the writer had an entry about a severe illness. It is now known that Ling Jienfong died from typhoid fever. In his last days, he suffered agonizing stomach cramps, fever, vomiting, and delirium. Perhaps what he saw in these visions was the image of a girl he once loved and lost many years ago, so beautiful even after all these years. Beyond her was a field of primroses casting their delicate fragrance into the spring air. The war was somewhere so far away now, so far away that the air smelled like it should always smell.......
At the edge of the field, she stood, her sweet smile beckoning him to come. Suddenly, he was free of all pain, as he walked towards her. He felt nothing but happiness and joy at seeing her, his long lost love............................
His body was never recovered, although a tattered haversack filled with ammunition and a pair of 7.62 mm semiautomatic pistols, along with a rusty old kerosene lantern were found nearby. These items, including the diary today sits in the People's Liberation Army Museum in Beijing................
