had begun. Night had fallen, and the enemy's long-range artillery fire was sporadic, flashes of light occasionally streaking across the distant night sky. The booming cannon fire sounded like muffled thunder, seemingly foreshadowing the impending storm.
"Have we taken the wrong path?" I led my company through waist-high weeds when someone shouted, "This path doesn't look like it's been walked on!"
"That's right!" Jin Qiulian replied, "Just past this meadow are the rice paddies, and the road is over there!"
Before she finished speaking, our feet suddenly gave way, revealing a vast open space ahead—the rice paddies Jin Qiulian had mentioned. However, the rice had long since been harvested, and the fields were covered with a thick layer of snow. A road snaked through the rice paddies, bend
