SHADOWS OF THE VALLEY
Chapter 8: The Test of Blood and Trust
Date: September 12, 1936
Location: The "Stone Maze" - A labyrinthine region of eroded sandstone pillars, Southwest of Site Delta
They called it the Stone Maze. A five-square-mile region where wind and water had carved the soft sandstone into a surreal city of towering pillars, deep canyons, and natural tunnels. It was a place of profound silence and confusing echoes, and it was here that Li Fan chose to conduct the unit's first integrated live-fire field training exercise (FTX). The objective was simple on paper: Team Alpha (Zhao Quan, Chen Rui, Xu Hong, Lin Mao) would defend a simulated ammunition cache in the central canyon. Team Bravo (Li Fan, Liu Feng, Zhang Wei, Wang, Bao) would infiltrate the Maze and capture or destroy it within 24 hours.
Weapons were loaded with blanks—precious gunpowder and primer wasted, Li Fan knew, but the cost of realism was non-negotiable. Blanks would provide the noise, the smell, the distraction. Judges (the men not actively engaged in a phase) would use chalk-tipped rounds to mark "kills."
"Rules of engagement are permissive," Li Fan briefed them at dawn, the strange sandstone formations casting long, twisted shadows. "Use all infiltration and assault tactics we've trained. Communication by whistle and hand signal only. A chalk mark on torso or head is a kill. A limb wound means you are out of the exercise. Capture is possible. The goal is to think, to adapt, and to fail here, in safety." He looked at both teams. "Do not make it easy for each other."
Team Alpha moved out first to establish their defense. Zhao Quan, taking his role as defender seriously, immediately began arguing with Xu Hong about positioning.
"The high ground on Pillar Three gives clear fields of fire," Xu Hong insisted, drawing on his conventional army experience.
"And makes you a perfect target," Zhao Quan countered. "Li Fan taught us: a shadow cannot fight from a silhouette. We defend from the edges of the canyon, in the cracks and shadows. We make them come to us, and we see them first."
Chen Rui, meanwhile, was rigging simple noise-makers—tin cans with stones—on the likeliest approaches. Lin Mao was carefully sweeping their backtrail, eliminating signs of their passage.
Four hours later, Team Bravo entered the Maze. Li Fan let Liu Feng take tactical lead. The scout immediately split the team. "Zhang Wei, you're our base of fire. Set up the Type 11 here, at the mouth of this gully. Cover the main approach to the central canyon. Wang, Bao, you're with me. We'll flank to the east through the 'Tunnel of Whispers.' Commander, you act as our free safety and final judge."
It was a sound plan. But the Maze had its own ideas.
The "Tunnel of Whispers" was a narrow, winding crack in the stone. Liu Feng, Wang, and Bao entered in single file. A hundred meters in, the tunnel forked. Liu Feng pointed left. As they moved, a low, almost subsonic rumble vibrated through the stone—a distant rockslide, or just the strange acoustics of the place. It masked the sound of their footsteps, but it also masked other sounds.
They emerged into a small, circular chamber with three exits. Liu Feng paused to consult his bark-map. In that moment of stillness, a figure detached itself from a deep shadow in a recess they had all walked past.
Chen Rui.
He didn't fire. He pointed his rifle, its chalk-tipped round ready, at Liu Feng's back, and gave a soft, clear tweet on his whistle—the signal for you are dead.
Liu Feng froze, shoulders slumping in shock and professional shame. Wang and Bao, caught completely unawares, turned. From a ledge five meters above, Zhao Quan and Xu Hong rose, their rifles leveled. "Drop your weapons. You're all prisoners," Zhao Quan announced, trying to hide a grin.
The flanking element was captured, intact, without a shot fired.
Back at the mouth of the gully, Li Fan and Zhang Wei heard the pre-arranged signal for "mission compromised"—three rapid whistle blasts from Liu Feng's position. Zhang Wei cursed, swinging the heavy Type 11 around.
"Don't," Li Fan said quietly, his binoculars to his eyes. He had seen a flicker of movement on a distant ridge—Lin Mao, repositioning. "They've taken the flankers. They'll be expecting a desperate frontal assault or a rescue attempt. They won't be expecting silence."
He tapped Zhang Wei and pointed to a narrow, vertical chimney in the sandstone to their right. "We go up. And over."
It was a brutal climb, requiring them to haul their weapons and gear on ropes. It took an hour. They emerged, sweating and dust-caked, on a high plateau that overlooked the central canyon from an oblique angle. Through his glass, Li Fan could see the "cache"—a painted rock—under a lean-to. He saw Zhao Quan and Chen Rui guarding two of the three obvious approaches. Xu Hong was presumably with the prisoners. Lin Mao was the roving lookout, but his pattern was predictable; he checked the same three vantage points in a rotating circuit.
Li Fan mapped the pattern in his head. He scribbled a note on his bark-map and handed it to Zhang Wei. When Lin Mao passes the western pillar, we move. You provide covering fire from here. I go down the fissure, mark the cache, exfiltrate up the north draw. Fire three blank bursts the moment you see me clear the lean-to.
Zhang Wei read it, his eyes wide. "Alone, sir?"
"One man is a smaller shadow than two. And you," he tapped the Type 11, "are our thunder. Make it convincing."
They waited. The sun beat down. Lin Mao completed his circuit, disappearing behind the western pillar. Now.
Li Fan slithered over the edge, descending a near-vertical fissure using pressure and friction, his boots finding tiny purchase. It was a technique he'd learned for urban assault—close-combat climbing. He reached the canyon floor, a grey ghost against the grey stone.
He moved in a low, weaving crouch, using the stark midday shadows as cover. He reached the lean-to. He could hear voices from a nearby cave—Zhao Quan joking with the captured Bravo team. With a piece of chalk, he drew a large 'X' on the cache rock. Objective destroyed.
He turned to exfiltrate. At that moment, Lin Mao emerged from his patrol route early, directly into Li Fan's path. Both men froze, rifles coming up.
Lin Mao fired first. The chalk round struck the sandstone an inch from Li Fan's shoulder, puffing white dust. Miss. Li Fan didn't fire. He dropped his rifle, closed the distance in three swift strides, and before Lin Mao could cycle his bolt, Li Fan had a practice knife (a carved stick) pressed to his throat. "You're dead," he breathed. "Stay quiet."
Above, on the plateau, Zhang Wei saw Li Fan's figure break from the lean-to and head north. He braced the Type 11 and fired. BRRRRAP! BRRRRAP! BRRRRAP! The blank-fire was deafening, echoing madly through the Maze, simulating a ferocious covering barrage.
Zhao Quan and Chen Rui dove for cover, shouting in confusion. In the cave, the prisoners whooped. In the chaos, Li Fan vanished up the northern draw.
The exercise was called. Team Bravo, despite losing its flanking element, had achieved its objective through decisive, unilateral action and the exploitation of a single timing error.
---
That night, around a communal fire, the after-action review was intense.
"Liu Feng," Li Fan began, his tone not accusatory, but analytical. "You were tactically sound. But you forgot the first rule of the Maze, which is the first rule of any enemy territory: clear your immediate area. You assumed the tunnel was a transit corridor. You did not secure it as a defensive position. Chen Rui was there, waiting, because he understood the value of patience and the deepest shadow."
Liu Feng nodded, his face tight. "A costly assumption."
"Zhao Quan," Li Fan turned. "Your defense was clever. Your use of prisoners as a distraction was excellent. But you became predictable. Lin Mao's patrol route was a metronome. In a real engagement, a sniper would have plotted his path and killed him on the third pass."
Zhao Quan accepted the critique. "We became complacent with our early success."
"Lin Mao," Li Fan said. "You fired and missed under pressure. Then you froze. Immediate action: if your shot misses at close range, close and fight. Do not stand there waiting for him to shoot back."
Finally, he looked at Zhang Wei, who was beaming with pride at his thunderous covering fire. "Your fire was well-timed. It was also wildly inaccurate. You were firing near your comrades, not past them to suppress a distant enemy. You could have gotten them killed with friendly fire. A machine gunner's discipline is control, not volume."
The smile vanished from Zhang Wei's face.
"And me," Li Fan said, surprising them. "I gambled everything on a single, difficult climb and one man's timing error. It worked. It was also high-risk. If Lin Mao's shot had been true, or if Zhang Wei's covering fire had been delayed, the mission fails. A good leader weighs risk, but does not rely on luck."
He let the lessons settle in the crackling silence. "Today was not about winning or losing. It was about seeing the cracks in our armor. Here, in the Maze, a chalk round is a lesson. On a real battlefield, it is a hole in your lung. Learn the lessons."
The next morning, as they broke camp to return to Delta, Liu Feng approached Li Fan. "Sir. The Red Army map. The machine gun nests. They are along the river, near the Kuomintang battalion. It is… similar terrain to the Maze. Less dramatic, but similar bluffs and gullies."
Li Fan understood the unspoken suggestion. "You think we should test our lessons in a live environment. A low-risk harassment."
"A practical examination," Liu Feng nodded. "We know their patterns. We could disable one of those nests. Not by destroying it, but by… making it untenable. Using Maze tactics."
Li Fan considered. It was aggressive. It was crossing a line from observation and nuisance to direct, military action against a formal Kuomintang unit. It would draw sharper attention. But it would also be the ultimate test of their training, under real threat. The men needed to see their skills applied against a true enemy, to cement their confidence and their trust in each other's abilities.
"Draw up a plan," Li Fan said finally. "A surgical strike. Minimum exposure, maximum psychological effect. We are not starting a war. We are giving a masterclass in insecurity."
As they marched out of the Stone Maze, the unit moved with a new cohesion. The hierarchies of teacher and student were blurring. They were becoming peers, a band of specialists who had failed together and learned together. The trust forged in simulated combat was about to be tempered in the fire of a real, dangerous mission. The shadows were ready to become hunters once more.
End of Chapter 8