Chapter 268: Closing The Net
Pi Ruoyu pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose, the lenses reflecting the orange light of the command post. His eyes were sharp as knives, fixed on the director of the Military Intelligence Department in front of him.
“Have the backgrounds of these people been thoroughly investigated?” His voice was calm but carried an undeniable pressure.
A fine sheen of sweat broke out on the forehead of the director of the Military Intelligence Department. He swallowed and replied in a low voice, “Commander, the situation of these people… is very complicated.”
“Through secret investigations, we found that these people do not seem to be under unified command.”
“Among this group are members of the Kuomintang’s CC Clique and Central Party Bureau, and even many Japanese spies.”
“They don’t seem to be under unified command, and their objectives are all different, like a pot of boiling, rotten porridge. It’s difficult to screen them out completely for now.”
“Oh? CC Clique? Central Party Bureau?”
The corners of Pi Ruoyu’s mouth curved into a cold arc, his smile devoid of any warmth, instead filled with a chilling murderous intent:
“Are the flies from Chongqing and Nanjing also drawn by the scent to our poor, remote corner? And the Japanese bugs… truly interesting.”
He was not troubled by the complexity of the intelligence at all. Instead, he seemed to have heard a boring joke. In his view, no matter which faction was stirring up trouble on his territory, they would only have one outcome.
“Since you can’t differentiate them, then don’t bother.”
Pi Ruoyu turned around, his voice not loud but clearly reaching the ears of the director. “Since the Commander-in-Chief entrusted Wutai County to me before he left, I have the responsibility and obligation to guard his foundation. No one will be allowed to harm even a single hair!”
“Order!”
He said resolutely, “The reinforcement regiment responsible for city defense will mobilize immediately!
The Military Intelligence Department and the Gendarmerie will form a joint arrest team. You have one night to round up these rats hidden in Wutai County, one by one! Find out their hiding places, and then, arrest them!”
He paused, his cold gaze sweeping over the director of the Military Intelligence Department. “Bring them back to the Military Intelligence Department and interrogate them thoroughly.
I don’t care who they are. As long as they enter our doors, they will spill everything they know. Remember,”
His voice lowered further, filled with a bloody aura, “Anyone who dares to resist arrest will be killed on sight!”
“Yes!”
The director of the Military Intelligence Department snapped to attention and replied loudly, his back already drenched in cold sweat. He knew that Wutai County would see bloodshed tonight.
…………
That night, the moon was dark and the wind was high.
South of Wutai County town, an inconspicuous shoe shop had long since closed. The shop’s door was tightly shut, appearing dark from the outside.
However, the inner courtyard of the shop was brightly lit, with figures moving about.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of leather and tung oil, and a faint whiff of gun oil.
Dozens of men in coarse cloth shirts were gathered in the courtyard, heads bowed, intently cleaning their weapons.
Broomhandle pistols, Nambu pistols, sharp daggers… under the dim light of the lanterns, they gleamed with a cold, sharp light.
In the back room of the shop, several figures who appeared to be leaders were gathered around a square table, discussing in low voices over a plate of peanuts and a pot of poor-quality liquor.
The leader was a middle-aged man with a mustache and sinister eyes, named Kawashima Yu. He was the person in charge of this infiltration operation.
“Are you all ready?” Kawashima Yu asked in a low voice. “Have you clearly mapped out the residence of that Su Yaoyang and the route?”
“Your Excellency Kawashima!”
A man with a scar on his face next to him replied with a grim smile, “We have been watching for several days. That courtyard is heavily guarded, so a direct assault is impossible.
However, we discovered that his two women, the one named Song Mei and the one named Xiao Lu, occasionally go to the cloth shop on East Street. This is our chance!”
“Yosh!”
Kawashima Yu nodded with satisfaction, a greedy and lewd glint in his eyes. “Doesn’t Su Yaoyang care a lot about his women?
Once we capture his main wife and concubine, strip them naked, tie them up, and take photos to show him… Hehehe, then, whether he hands over the list of American arms dealers he’s colluding with, or chops off an arm himself, it will all be up to us!”
“Captain, your brilliance!”
Several leaders let out lewd laughter, as if they could already see Su Yaoyang in a fit of rage.
Just as they were lost in their own sweet dreams, a low rumbling sound, approaching from afar, reached their ears.
“Hmm? What’s that sound?” The scarred man tilted his head, listening in confusion.
“Probably the militia’s patrol truck, don’t mind it…” Kawashima Yu waved his hand dismissively.
But the sound grew louder and closer, transforming from a single engine noise into a chorus of dozens of engines. The ground began to tremble slightly, and the liquid in the wine glasses on the table rippled.
“Something’s wrong!” Kawashima Yu stood up abruptly, his expression changing.
The next second, blinding beams of light pierced through the cracks of the shop’s doors and windows, illuminating the entire back room to a stark white.
This was followed by the grating noise of metal tracks crushing flagstones and the sharp screech of vehicles braking.
Kawashima Yu stumbled to the window, parted the gap, and looked out. Just a glance was enough for his pupils to shrink to the size of needle points, and his blood seemed to freeze.
The street, it seemed, had been completely surrounded at some point.
Four M24 Chaffee tanks, marked with the Blue Sky White Sun emblem, were parked not far from the shoe shop. Their dark muzzles were pointed at their small shoe shop, and their turrets rotated slowly, exuding a silent sense of pressure.
Behind the tanks were seven or eight similarly menacing armored vehicles, with machine gunners in position on their roofs. Surrounding these steel behemoths were hundreds of fully armed soldiers, wearing bulletproof vests and carrying Thompson submachine guns and M1 Garand rifles. They had formed a tight cordon, with black gun barrels pointed at the shoe shop from all directions, sealing off all escape routes.
“Baka… What… What is happening?”
Kawashima Yu’s voice became sharp and distorted with extreme fear. His meticulously planned operation was facing its doom before it even began.
At the same moment that Kawashima Yu’s small shoe shop was completely engulfed by the steel flood, similar scenes were unfolding simultaneously in various corners of Wutai County.
In the city’s east, at a teahouse called “Tongfu Ji,” in a private room on the second floor, several well-dressed men were gathered around a square table, seemingly sipping tea and chatting, but in reality, exchanging intelligence.
The leader was the station chief of the Central Party Bureau’s Wutai station, a stout man named Qian. He was stroking his greasy mustache, expounding his views on the latest directives from Chongqing.
“Bang!”
The wooden door of the private room was violently kicked open, sending wood chips flying.
Station Chief Qian’s mouthful of tea was directly sprayed out, drenching the face of the person opposite him.
Before they could react, seven or eight militiamen armed with Thompson submachine guns charged in like wolves, their dark gun barrels aimed at each of them.
Station Chief Qian’s face instantly turned from red to white, then from white to green. He slammed the table, forcibly regained his composure, and, adopting the characteristic arrogance of a bureaucrat, sternly roared:
“How dare you! Which unit are you from? Do you know who we are? We are people of the Party-State, we are from the Central Party Bureau! What do you want to do? Rebel?!”
The officer leading the group, a company commander with a scar on his face, looked at him as if he were watching a clown. He didn’t even bother to raise his eyelids, merely gritting out a few words through his teeth: “Central Party Bureau? Never heard of it.”
The soldiers behind him let out suppressed chuckles.
“You… you!”
Station Chief Qian trembled with anger, pointing at the company commander’s nose. “I want to see your superior! I want to lodge a solemn protest with Su Yaoyang! You are undermining the Anti-Japanese United Front!”
The company commander finally looked up, his eyes on Qian as if he were looking at a dead man, then impatiently pointed to the ground with his gun:
“If you have anything to say, save it for our Chief of Staff. Now, hands behind your head, squat down for me! Say another word of nonsense, and I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to the dogs!”
Outside the window, an armored vehicle slowly drove by, its heavy machine gun mounted on the roof like the eyes of death, coldly observing everything in the private room.
Station Chief Qian’s legs went weak, and his previously arrogant demeanor vanished without a trace. He obediently followed his subordinates, hands behind his head, squatting on the ground like a flock of quails.
Meanwhile, at a warehouse in the west of the city, Kuomintang agents met the same fate.
Their station chief, an operations team leader who considered himself skilled, after declaring his identity and attempting to resist, was struck in the face with the butt of a rifle by a soldier, his mouth full of teeth flying out mixed with blood. He was knocked unconscious and dragged away on the spot.
Compared to these relatively “lucky” comrades from the Party-State, the fate of the Japanese spies could only be described as tragic.
In another surrounded general store, several cornered Japanese agents’ eyes flashed with madness.
They roared unintelligible slogans and pulled out their Broomhandle pistols, attempting a final desperate struggle.
“Long live His Majesty the Emperor!”
As soon as they raised their guns, before they could even pull the trigger.
“Dong… Dong Dong…”
The response they received was not gunfire, but the heavy roar of a drumbeat of death. The Browning M2 heavy machine gun atop the turret of a Chaffee tank spat out a devastating burst of fire.
The 12.7mm caliber bullets, carrying immense kinetic energy, instantly struck the foremost agent. It could no longer be called a hit; the body, like a watermelon smashed by a giant hammer, caved inward with a “bang” and exploded!
Flesh, bone fragments, and internal organs mixed into a crimson mist, spraying outwards. The wall behind him was instantly smeared with an abstract and bloody mural composed of human tissue.
Half a twisted spine, still attached to shredded meat, “splatted” onto another agent’s face. The warm, viscous sensation and the strong smell of blood caused him to let out an inhuman scream.
The roar of the heavy machine gun did not cease. The chain of fire, like the whip of death, swept across. The second and third agents who attempted to resist were successively turned into scattered meat in the air amidst dull explosions.
Their bodies were torn apart and pulverized by the immense kinetic energy, leaving no intact corpses.
The remaining Japanese agents stood frozen, looking at the hellish scene before them, smelling the thick, nauseating stench of blood and burnt flesh in the air, and completely broke down. The weapons in their hands clattered to the ground, and one by one, they scrambled to kneel, hands raised high above their heads, their bodies trembling like leaves in the wind.
The entire Wutai County was, in one night, completely cleansed by this unreasoning force.
