Spy Wars: Red Shopkeeper

Chapter 121 Three Days
In the evening, a welcoming banquet was held in Hongkou.

The Japanese surrounded the new commander, flattering him.

The group of people from the municipal government found a corner and gathered together to chat.

Fu Xiao'an, confident in his status, picked up a glass of wine and drank. Ling Xianwen originally wanted to drink as well, but suddenly remembered something, coughed, and put the wine glass down again.

As soon as he put it down, the remaining people seemed to realize something, their expressions changed slightly, and they also put down their wine glasses. Some even secretly spat to the side, afraid of being poisoned too much.

The shadow of the Iron-Blooded Assassination Corps is still too terrifying.

"No way?" a bureau chief asked, sounding distressed.

Ling Xianwen smiled slightly: "I simply don't want to drink. It has nothing to do with what happened last time. You can do as you please. After what happened once, the Japanese have definitely strengthened their defenses. How could they possibly fall into the same trap twice?"

"Yes, yes, the Japanese will definitely investigate thoroughly."

Everyone laughed and agreed, but no one drank a drop.

As soon as he mentioned it, Fu Xiao'an remembered the incident, his face froze, he wanted to put down his wine glass, but felt embarrassed, so he just kept swirling the glass around.

That was pretty awkward.

If we're not drinking, let's chat.

"If you ask me, Lieutenant Colonel Kobayashi's arrival was really timely. He solved a big problem for us right away, and we finally have money."

The person happiest about this is the Finance Bureau Chief. With two more sources of tax revenue—customs duties and drug tax—he finally has financial autonomy, making his position much more valuable.

When this matter was brought up, no one present was unhappy.

Gu Yansheng was very pleased and suggested, "Let me make the suggestion first. Now that the municipal government has money, the first thing to do is to change the food in the canteen. It's too bad. They even brought out moldy rice. How are the people supposed to feel about this? How can they be motivated to do their jobs properly?"

"Is that so?" The bureau chief's eyes widened; this was someone who never ate in the cafeteria.

"It's obvious you haven't been eating in the cafeteria," Gu Yansheng recounted his experience of encountering moldy rice in the cafeteria.

Ling Xianwen said, "The Japanese are clearly telling us to be self-reliant. If we do well, trade will be good, and with good trade comes more tax revenue, which in turn means more bonuses. This strategy is actually quite good. We'll work hard so we can eat better, right?"

"Yeah."

"That's absolutely right. It should have been done a long time ago. If the economy still doesn't pick up after this, then we have no one to complain to. We brought it on ourselves."

"That's why they say he has a PhD in economics. You can tell he knows his stuff just by looking at him. Do you think the effort you put in working for someone else is the same as the effort you put into working for yourself?"

The tax bureau chief joked, "Director Gu, this matter depends on you. We won't see results from customs duties for a while, but drugs bring in money quickly. If you make a good result, we'll immediately receive a sum of money. The first money will all go towards buying rice for you—first-class rice. Everyone in the municipal government will eat first-class rice, and we'll write on it, 'Director Gu's grace.'"

"Hahahaha." Everyone burst into laughter.

Gu Yansheng rolled his eyes, thought for a moment and said, "This is not impossible. I'll think of a way. Instead of waiting to see the results before asking for money, I'll have them pay a sum of money first to improve our meals. This way, the people below will benefit and be more motivated to work."

"That works."

The group exchanged glances. "They must have made at least several hundred thousand, right?"

Just as they were talking, a loud bang was heard, followed by a violent explosion that shook the earth!
"what happened?"

"what happened?"

Everyone's expression changed instantly, and everyone stood up.

Before they could even get their footing, there was another loud explosion, even bigger than the first one!
The Japanese had already run outside.

The people from the municipal government looked at each other, all with the same thought in their minds: The Military Intelligence Bureau is here again.
Every time they met the commander, he was assassinated. Were the Japanese commanders cursed?
Bang! Suddenly, all the lights went out.

"what happened?"

"Why is there a power outage?"

"Let's go, let's go outside, there are military police there."

People from the municipal government were afraid to go outside because they thought there were Kuomintang agents outside, but now it's pitch black inside, and the gloomy atmosphere is even more frightening.

Gu Yansheng and the others arrived at the entrance and witnessed a spectacular scene.

As far as the eye could see, the entire Hongkou area was shrouded in darkness, while in the distance, out of sight, a thick, fiery cloud billowed and churned, its flames tearing through the darkness of the sky, dazzlingly bright.

It has finally arrived, and it came so suddenly. Tonight, as long as Gu Yansheng sees this ball of fire, he will be able to sleep well.

If the armory is bombed, the plan can be said to be 90% successful.

The Japanese panicked. Many of the military police who came to defend the area were immediately transferred away, and the advance troops rode three-wheeled motorcycles towards the direction of the explosion.

"say what?"

"It seems they're saying the armory was bombed."

"Is it the Military Intelligence Bureau again?"

"Who else could it be but them? It couldn't have been the Japanese who were careless, could it?"

They were still in the mood to chat, while the Japanese were busy running around, doing security, reporting, and giving orders. As a result, the telephone lines were also blown up, and they couldn't make any calls. They had no idea what was going on over there.

The long wait continued, one hour, two hours passed, with firefighters battling the blaze, rescuers saving lives, and searches being conducted. The fire burned all night, and as dawn broke, it was finally extinguished by the fire department's small water hoses.

On his first day in office, the new military police commander encountered this kind of thing, and it's certain that someone will be punished.

Everyone in the city government waited in the same spot all night, and finally, after dawn, they were notified that they could go to the military police headquarters.

When they arrived, Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun, along with Wu Sibao, Liu San, and others, were already in the conference room.

However, none of the Japanese officers of lieutenant rank or above saw it.

"What's going on?" Gu Yansheng stepped forward and asked.

“I don’t know.” Li Shiqun frowned and shook his head. “Yesterday, when we heard the explosion, we called Hongkou, but we couldn’t get through. So I spoke with Director Ding and brought people over. We got in, but we were stopped shortly afterward. They said we’re not allowed to move around now, not even our special agent headquarters, because they want to seal off the entire area and check everyone at dawn.”

"We were initially detained as suspects, and we were only released after we contacted Lieutenant Colonel Haruki." Ding Mocun shook his head speechlessly.

Li Shiqun asked, "Does Director Gu know the current situation?"

Gu Yansheng shook his head: "We don't know either. The banquet was going well when it suddenly exploded. They said it was an armory explosion. We were too scared to leave, so we waited there all night. We were only just called here now." As he spoke, the door opened, and Ying Zuozhenzhao walked in with his men.

"Please sit down." Yingzuo sat down in the main seat, looked at everyone and said, "Last night's explosion at the arms depot killed hundreds of our citizens and destroyed dozens of houses. The damage is still difficult to estimate. It has been confirmed that this was a premeditated terrorist attack."

“Overseas Chinese? How could so many overseas Chinese have died? Wasn’t it supposed to be an armory?” Li Shiqun asked, frowning.

Kagesa said without hesitation, "Because of the greed of some people!"
Normally, a large number of residential buildings would not be built around an armory, but as we took control of Shanghai, more and more Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese moved to Hongkou.

Because there wasn't enough housing in Hongkou, a construction company set its sights on the land surrounding the armory and built houses there. As a result, during the explosion, many of these people, for various reasons, couldn't escape the blast; they were crushed to death by collapsing buildings or burned alive by the spreading fire!

Now everyone understood; they deserved it.

“They will get what they deserve, but what about you!” Yingzuo looked at Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun.

"The military approved 30 yen in funding for the Special Operations Headquarters every month! How could you not receive any prior warning of such a massive attack by the Military Intelligence Bureau? Are you all incompetent?"

Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun immediately stood up, bowed their heads, and admitted their mistake.

Li Shiqun explained, "Mr. Yingzuo, it's not that we haven't done anything. In fact, we've already destroyed the Military Intelligence Bureau's Shanghai branch once. The people who came this time should have just been transferred from Chongqing. They have the experience of the previous failure in the Shanghai branch, so they will definitely be more cautious. In addition, they just arrived, so we didn't get the news for a while."

"Just arrived?" Yingzuo raised an eyebrow. "You mean our armory in Hongkou was breached by a newly arrived team? Deputy Director Li, shouldn't you go get your head checked at the Army Hospital?"

Li Shiqun shut up.

Kagesa didn't scold him much, and was very pragmatic. "Three days. Give me an answer within three days, or you two can prepare to go to a military court."

"Yes!" Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun's expressions became even more unpleasant.

Li Shiqun immediately asked, "Mr. Yingzuo, was there a search operation conducted? And what about yesterday's operation? Were any people apprehended?"

Yingzu shook his head: "Many people died at the scene, some of them were even killed by mistake. Now it's burned to the ground, and we don't know if there are any Kuomintang agents' bodies inside. No one forced their way out of Hongkou last night, but there were indeed boats passing through the Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River."

Last night, the military issued an order for indiscriminate arrests; anyone who resisted was to be shot dead. Therefore, it was uncertain whether these people on the river were agents of the Military Intelligence Bureau or smugglers; they are now all corpses.

That meant there were absolutely no clues, and Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun frowned even more deeply.

However, Yingzu gave them a piece of information: "You two know that Vice Chairman Wang's special envoy has been in Shanghai these past few days. I actually guessed that they would be interested in the special envoy, or even assassinate him, so I set up a few traps."

But for some reason, they actually found the real envoy and even found out where he lived, instead of falling into the trap I set.

If you're stuck, you can look into this lead.

Li Shiqun raised an eyebrow: "Are you saying that the special envoy I saw that day was a fake?"

Yingzuo was very straightforward, "That was a test for you. Vice Chairman Wang was in Hanoi, and his special envoy was traveling from Hanoi to Shanghai. It's impossible for Hanoi to keep this a secret. They might sell the information to anyone who wants to know. So I guess Chongqing will definitely find out."

Vice Chairman Wang's published statement would also make Chongqing want to kill him.

So I set traps in three hotels in Hongkou, so you could see what would happen, and so could the municipal government. But I didn't expect that they wouldn't choose any of them.

Give me an answer in three days. Remember, you only have three days.

After saying that, Yingzu left.

After he left, Nobuo Kobayashi came in.

He looked at the municipal government officials and said: "It is unfortunate that an explosion occurred, but I hope that your emotions will not be affected by the explosion. The investigation is not your responsibility. Your primary task is to restore the economy and stabilize Shanghai."

The explosion can be described as an accident to the outside world. Don't let the outside world think Shanghai is unsafe anymore, do you understand?

"clear."

"The Finance Bureau Chief will come with me to collect the money. The rest of you can go back now. We need to quickly boost Shanghai's economy."

"Yes."

For the city government officials, this was nothing short of a shocking experience.

However, the work still had to be done. Xiaolin was right; the investigation was none of their business, so they could finally leave.

"Director Gu, wait a minute." Li Shiqun called out to Gu Yansheng, pulled him aside and whispered, "Mr. Yingzuo said you were also tested. Which hotel was it, and when?"

Gu Yansheng explained what he knew: "We only met once, chatted for a while, and that was it."

After listening to Gu Yansheng's brief explanation, Ding Mocun frowned. "Then this is strange. What you saw was fake, what we saw was fake, the people were fake, the accommodation address was fake, everything was fake. So how did the Military Intelligence Bureau know where the real one was? There was no source of information leak."

“How could there not be? There are real attendees,” Gu Yansheng said.

Ding Mocun scoffed, "Are you even capable of attending the meeting?"

"No."

"That settles it then. If you can't, neither can we. How could anyone at a meeting of this caliber leak information? Those are the core members of the Japanese government."

"What about the people around them? Their families? Their drivers? Could they be big mouths and leak the information?"

“That’s not impossible, but how do we investigate the Japanese?” Ding Mochun frowned and remained silent.

Li Shiqun breathed a deep breath: "We don't need to worry about the problems on the Japanese side. Mr. Kagesa and Lieutenant Colonel Haruki will definitely investigate on their own. The part they handed over to us is actually the part that they think is fine and shouldn't have any problems. They want to use our eyes to see if they have overlooked anything."

“That makes a lot of sense,” Gu Yansheng nodded.

"Besides, if we really can't find out, the two of us will take the blame." Li Shiqun chuckled and shook his head helplessly.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Ding Mocun nodded with a stern face.

Gu Yansheng accompanied him as he pondered deeply for a while.

"Sigh, you guys can investigate yourselves first. I still have a bunch of cases to handle. The foreign companies are waiting for payment, and the Japanese are pressing me hard. I'm leaving now. If there's any progress and you need my advice, we'll have to wait until you've done your investigation. What am I supposed to do now?"

Gu Yansheng was busy going back to find out more information and didn't want to chat with them.

Anyway, Liu San will eventually find out about any progress.

As for buying a house in Nanjing, that's obviously not even worth mentioning now. If the person is gone, then buying a burial plot is more appropriate.

(End of this chapter)