Chen Shouyi didn't drift off to sleep until after one in the morning, and even then his sleep remained light. He woke several times during the night.
When a loud crash startled him awake for the last time, he sat up.
He checked his watch and saw that it was only four thirty in the morning.
He went to the window. The night outside was still hazy, and dawn was more than two hours away.
Gunfire and cannon blasts had been ringing out in the distance for most of the night without pause. If anything, they sounded fiercer now. From here, he could occasionally see flashes of fire flare up nearby, brightening and dimming against the darkness.
Chen Shouyi watched for a while, then was about to lie back down and catch a little more sleep.
Just then, a dull rumbling like an old-fashioned train gradually grew louder as it approached, and the ground began to tremble faintly.
Before long, a steel behemoth rolled along the street near the residential compound. Chen Shouyi peered at it in the moonlight.
It was a gigantic Steam Tank, a meter or two taller than the walls outside. Its long cannon barrel pointed straight ahead, and six enormous machine guns, each like a small cannon, were mounted around it.
Its ugly rear end, shaped like a locomotive and spewing white steam, was especially striking.
Chen Shouyi had seen plenty of tanks in the garrison district along the passage, but none had been anywhere near as huge and bulky. The heavy tanks that had once seemed massive looked like babies beside it.
It was nearly complete. Though bulky, its construction was compact, and its surface was flawless. Green jungle camouflage covered its exterior.
Clearly, this tank hadn't been designed just recently.
In peacetime, an important