Chapter 71 - The Mannerheim Line Welcomes You (1/2)

Chapter 71: The Mannerheim Line Welcomes You XIII

Though Zhang Heng spent most of his time brus.h.i.+ng up his shooting, he made sure that he would not neglect s...o...b..arding as well. Unfortunately, training on the s...o...b..ard didn’t go as smoothly as the shooting practice. Simone’s s...o...b..arding skill was decent, but it didn’t come close to her shooting skills. Besides, as she was still recovering from her injuries, it was a terrible idea for her to do such vigorous exercise. Hence, she sat it out most of the time and watched Zhang Heng practice instead.

Maji stayed with them for only two days. After that, she grew impatient and bored with the translator job. Before they even realized it, Maji had already made a quick escape, running to deal with other more pressing matters.

Luckily, Zhang Heng and Simone only needed to communicate with each other during training. Though they did not share a common language, hand signals were sufficient for Zhang Heng to understand most of her instructions. Most of the time, there was an awkward silence between them.

Simone would watch Zhang Heng from the side when he practiced shooting. It was almost always freezing, up here in the north. As a snowflake landed on her nose tip, she could not help but sneeze.

…..

Along with that, Zhang Heng found out that Simone had started to learn English from Maji. Ironically, the first sentence that she learned was, ‘can you kiss me?’.

So, the next morning, as Zhang Heng was brus.h.i.+ng his teeth, he suddenly heard Simone’s first English words.

Shocked and taken aback, he almost swallowed the toothpaste in his mouth when he heard Simone asking him to kiss her! Later on, he discovered that Simone actually intended to say ‘good morning’ to him. Undoubtedly, only Maji could fool around with her in such a silly way.

Zhang Heng himself wanted to learn Finnish as well. After all, it was never a bad idea to learn a new language. Besides, he could communicate with the people around him.

However, there were very few consonants in Finnish. Instead, it had long words, rich vowels, and very complicated grammar, little wonder why it was considered as one of the hardest languages to master. With all things considered, this seemed to be the wrong time to learn a new language, a very hard one at that. In order to survive the war, he first had to improve his shooting and s...o...b..arding prowess.

Of course, it wasn’t impossible for him to learn if he put his heart into it. He soon realized that there were some crucial words that had to be acquired instantly. Words like ‘open fire, ceasefire, retreat, and, cover’ were critical on the battlefield.

So here he was, trying to learn some words that were frequently used daily. Although such a short time would prove impossible for him to come up with full sentences, a single word would surely help a lot to express what he was trying to say. Maji naturally became the busiest person in the base camp, having to teach Simone English and Zhang Heng Finnish at the same time while being the doctor as well.

The good thing here was that Zhang Heng was very productive by nature. He transformed from a man who had never held a gun in his life to a lethal mercenary that could shoot accurately. At the same time, he s...o...b..arded well now, swiftly sliding through the icy lands like a white phantom.

He had undoubtedly improved by leaps and bounds during this period. Though he still couldn’t be compared to a full-blown Finnish guerilla, most members, including Maji, were secretly impressed by his rapid improvement.

Simone’s good teaching contributed most to his improvement. As Zhang Heng had previously spent a great deal of time honing his archery skills, he had a good grasp of the basics of aiming. Regretfully, his goal of getting his shooting and s...o...b..arding to Level 1 seemed impossible to achieve.

On his 13th day here, something that was bound to happen finally took place.

Simone had almost fully recovered from her wounds. If it was not for Zhang Heng, she would have left the base camp three days ago. In order to make sure he received the best training, she elected to stay behind for a few more days.

Today was the day that the guerilla troops received a message from the villagers nearby, informing them that a platoon of Soviet soldiers rus.h.i.+ng somewhere had been spotted. Immediately, Ah Ji summoned all the available guerillas to discuss taking out the troops. Predictably, every single one of them concurred. Simone, too, had asked for approval to join this mission.

Zhang Heng did not attend the meeting but sensed that the guerilla members were filled with excitement. All of them were cleaning their weapons, checking their backpacks, and discussing strategies. Clearly, the atmosphere at the base camp had changed. Even lunch was a lot better than the usual.