Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 277 Interrogation
"Woo...Woo...Woo..."

A piercing, heart-stopping alarm suddenly blared from several high points in Wutai County!
This was not the intermittent warning of an air raid siren, but a continuous, heart-wrenching wailing filled with the highest level of emergency.

Like an invisible hand, it instantly gripped the throat of the entire county!
The previously peaceful atmosphere in the county town was instantly shattered.

Countless ordinary people who had just picked up their rice bowls and were about to take a midday nap were startled out of their houses by the sudden, terrifying noise. They looked up blankly, exchanging bewildered glances, their faces filled with fear and confusion.

"What's going on? Have the Japanese invaded?" A noodle shop owner dropped his bowl of noodles on the ground with a "thud," spilling scalding hot soup all over the floor.

"Wait a minute, I didn't hear any plane!"

Before they could react, a huge roar of an engine came from the end of the street!

"Look! It's the military!"

Military trucks painted with the Kuomintang flag roared through the streets like enraged beasts, kicking up clouds of dust.

The vehicle was filled with soldiers whose faces were ashen and who exuded a murderous aura. The safety on their rifles was off, and the dark muzzles of their guns were pointed warily at both sides of the street.

Immediately afterwards, squads of police officers wearing red armbands rushed into the streets.

The soldiers, who were usually kind and amiable, seemed to have become different people. They shoved the crowd roughly and smashed the shop doors that had not yet been closed with their rifle butts.

"Everyone! Go home immediately! Lock your doors and windows! No going out! No peeping! Anyone who disobeys... will be killed without mercy!"

The cold, ruthless command echoed through the streets, carrying an undeniable stench of blood.

Fear spread among the people like a plague.

People screamed and cried as they scrambled back to their houses, locking their doors tightly and trembling with fear.

But what terrified them even more was yet to come!
"Clang... Clang... Rumble..."

A heavy, rhythmic metallic crushing sound came from the ground, and the earth trembled slightly.

Several Chaffee light tanks and M3 armored reconnaissance vehicles sped past, their massive steel bodies rumbling over the cobblestones with a sickening roar. Their rotating turrets and menacing machine gun muzzles proclaimed to everyone that the city had entered its most severe state of war!
at this time……

"Da da da... Boom... Da da da da..."

Outside the county town, in the direction where Su Yaoyang had just been attacked, came bursts of intense gunfire! Although the gunfire didn't last long, the intensity and the occasional grenade explosions clearly told everyone in the town... a fierce battle was taking place outside!

In just a few minutes, the entire Wutai County was transformed from a peaceful rear base into a completely sealed-off, murderous steel cage!

Less than ten minutes after Su Yaoyang was attacked, the flames of revenge swept across the hills outside Wutai County with unstoppable force.

The agents, who were just immersed in the frustration of the "failure" of the mission and the tension of the retreat, soon discovered that they were not facing a pursuit, but a one-sided, predictable massacre.

"Rumble--"

The earth trembled from afar as dozens of M24 Chaffee light tanks formed a wide semi-circular encirclement, their tracks crushing through bushes and rocks like a group of steel behemoths crawling out of hell, completely sealing off the agents' last escape route.

Closely following behind were the soldiers of the guard battalion, who used M3 half-track armored vehicles as cover to set up one M2 Browning heavy machine gun after another. The dark, terrifyingly large muzzles of the guns were aimed at the agents' last hiding place, which was only a few thousand square meters in size.

"Fire!"

With a battalion commander's bloodshot eyes issuing the order, a disproportionate destruction began.

"Dong dong dong..."

Dozens of vehicle-mounted and mounted heavy machine guns roared simultaneously!

The 12.7mm bullets, with their visible, intensely hot trajectories, formed a deathly iron curtain that instantly enveloped the area.

Earthen slopes, rocks, trees... were easily torn apart like paper under the terrifying power of heavy machine gun bullets. Soil and gravel were thrown high into the air, and wood chips flew everywhere.

An agent hiding behind a rock didn't even have time to scream before he was shot in half by a series of bullets. His upper and lower body separated in a mist of blood, and his internal organs and bits of flesh were scattered all over the ground.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The 57mm main gun on the Chaffee tank also joined the feast.

Each shell that landed created a huge crater in the ground. In the orange-red flames, the agents hiding nearby were torn to pieces by the shockwave and countless steel balls and shrapnel.

Their proud Bushido spirit and superb assassination skills seemed so laughable and powerless in the face of this absolute and overwhelming firepower.

The entire process was less a battle and more an industrialized execution. Ten minutes later, when the gunfire finally ceased, that small area had been completely transformed into a living hell.

The air was thick with the smells of gunpowder, scorched earth, and a nauseating stench of blood. No intact corpses could be found on the ground; instead, there were severed limbs and mangled flesh everywhere.

The bodies of several guardsmen who rushed forward too quickly and were shot and killed were mixed with the fragments of the invaders, forming this tragic scene.

……

Meanwhile, just as the flames of revenge were burning fiercest outside the city, inside the city, at the "Old Wang's" breakfast shop...

Dozens of counterintelligence agents, like ghosts, jumped from several trucks that were quietly parked on the street corner. They moved swiftly and silently, and within seconds they had blocked all the exits of the breakfast shop.

Without the slightest hesitation, the captain kicked open the thin wooden door!

"Don't move!"

Two sharp gunshots rang out, and the sounds of tables, chairs, bowls, and chopsticks being smashed inside the store brought the brief but intense arrest to an end.

A few minutes later, a breakfast shop owner, his face bruised and blood trickling from his mouth, was dragged out of his shop by several soldiers like a dead dog. His eyes were filled with terror and disbelief. He clearly hadn't expected the retaliation to come so quickly and so brutally.

He was roughly thrown onto the truck, which then started up and sped away, leaving behind a ransacked shop and the terrified stares of the neighbors peeking through the cracks in the doors.

The underground interrogation room of the counterintelligence department, located in the basement of the militia headquarters, is the darkest place in the entire Wutai County.

There are no windows here, and the air is perpetually filled with a nauseating musty smell, a mixture of rust, blood, and despair.

The walls were covered with all sorts of interrogation tools, from barbed whips and rusty pliers to branding irons of various sizes and hoses used to inject chili water. Each item gleamed with a cold and evil luster, silently telling the story of the tragedy that had taken place here.

At this moment, a bloody, mangled "thing" that was almost unrecognizable as human was tied to a thick wooden pillar in the center of the interrogation room.

If it weren't for the tattered, blood-stained dark red uniform of the logistics officer on his body, probably no one would recognize that this "thing" was Liang Shaobin, who had recently returned in glory with the squadron and was responsible for handing over intelligence.

His hands were tied behind his back to the pillar, and his entire weight was suspended by ropes, with his feet barely touching the ground.

On his back, the skin and flesh were torn open, and deep, crisscrossing whip marks revealed the bone. Fresh blood was slowly flowing down the wounds, forming a small, sticky pool on the ground.

The person who personally tortured him was none other than Wei Jin, the head of the counterintelligence department.

At this moment, Wei Jin had long lost the composure and confidence that he once possessed, hidden beneath the shadows.

He took off his officer's coat, leaving him in only a white shirt soaked with sweat, the sleeves rolled up high to reveal his strong, veiny forearms.

His hair was disheveled, his eyes were bloodshot, and his gaze burned with a flame that was a mixture of fear, madness, and cruelty.

When Wei Jin heard the news that Su Yaoyang had been attacked on his own turf and was missing, he felt as if his whole world had collapsed.

He knew better than anyone what this meant.

If Su Yaoyang dies, he, as the section chief in charge of intelligence and counter-espionage work in the entire base area, will be the number one culprit.

There's no need for the Japanese to lift a finger. Pi Ruoyu, Li Gaoyuan, and their group of arrogant and fierce soldiers who are loyal to the commander would drag him out immediately and machine-gun him into a bloody mess to vent their hatred.

But if Su Yaoyang is alright... this outcome terrifies him even more.

He knew his boss too well. He wouldn't roar or yell; he would just look at you with those calm, cold eyes. That disappointment and indifference was more chilling than any torture.

Then, what awaits them is a punishment more painful than death.

Now, the only way to save his life, and even his position, is to pry open the mouth of this traitor as quickly as possible, and dig out the mastermind, all the contact points, all the lurking spies... everyone on this damned chain! Give the enraged boss and those officers outside who are already going crazy an explanation!
"Huh...huh..."

Wei Jin threw away the blood-stained leather whip in his hand, his chest heaving violently. He walked to the corner of the wall and poured a ladle of cold water over his head; the icy stimulation cleared his chaotic mind slightly.

He turned around, staring intently at Liang Shaobin, who was almost unconscious, and picked up a branding iron from the red-hot charcoal brazier with tongs.

The swastika pattern on the soldering iron glowed with an ominous orange-red light under the dim light.

He walked over step by step, his voice hoarse as if two pieces of sandpaper were rubbing together:

"Liang Shaobin... I'll ask one last time. Who... told you to leak the CEO's itinerary?"

(End of this chapter)