Courtyard House: Home Alone

And so, Lin Yifan waited by the sea until 6 a.m. on the 6th, when the first light of dawn appeared in the east, before he steered the 022 speedboat along the route that B29 had taken. An hour and a half later, he was more than 70 nautical miles from the Hiroshima coastline. He stopped the speedboat and turned on the search radar.

At 7:40 AM, a bright spot finally appeared on the search radar screen of the Type 022 submarine: 200 kilometers away, speed of 520 kilometers per hour, and altitude of 9,800 meters. It was it!

Lin Yifan stared intently at the bright spot, his heart pounding uncontrollably, and cold sweat began to appear on his palms.

He took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, and stared at the approaching bright spot on the radar.

The distance of 200 kilometers is only a little over 20 minutes for the B-29. He must time his move precisely, and the key is not to let the crew send any signals.

As the bright spot drew closer, and the distance shrank to twenty kilometers, Lin Yifan no longer hesitated. With a thought, he struck all eight crew members, including the pilot, bombardier, and machine gunner, with two bullets simultaneously—one to the forehead and the other to the heart.

At the same time, the aircraft engines were shut off, and the spatial capture was activated directly. The entire bomber carrying "Little Boy" disappeared from the original airspace, leaving only a few wisps of clouds swept away by the airflow.

Standing on the deck of the 022 submarine, Lin Yifan used his mental power to look at the atomic bomb and bomber lying quietly in the space warehouse. The anxiety that had been hanging over him for several days finally subsided. The first atomic bomb was in his hands.

At that time, Hiroshima was in the middle of rush hour, and all the men over the age of fourteen had been drafted into the army. The remaining people had no idea that a catastrophic disaster had just been averted by the "ghost" they spoke of.

The streets were still bustling with pedestrians as usual, shops were open, and students were walking into school with their backpacks on their backs. No one could have imagined that just a brief second had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the entire city.

Lin Yifan didn't linger. He immediately maneuvered the 022 boat to change course and head towards Kokura along the inland sea. There was a second "fat man" waiting for him there, and he had to intercept it before it was dropped.

At this time, at the US Tinian Island base, the officer in charge of the bombing was still waiting for the crew to send back a telegram confirming the successful bombing. After waiting for a long time without receiving a signal, he assumed that there was a radio malfunction and did not pay much attention to it. He was just waiting for the plane to return to confirm the results.

Lin Yifan sped forward and arrived at Xiaocang before dawn. He landed on a deserted beach and entered the space.

Lin Yifan had stored the first atomic bomb and the plane that dropped it into his spatial storage. He could only gamble that the Americans would continue with their plan, because most of the high-ranking American officials believed that the quickest way to end the war was to make the island nation feel despair.

To the disappointment of the US military commanders and the White House, they received no news of the aircraft carrying out the bombing mission until nightfall, nor did they receive any news of the island nation being bombed with atomic bombs.

Just like that, a B-29 Superfortress bomber and an atomic bomb mysteriously disappeared, while another bomber scheduled to fly to Kokura remained on the tarmac at Tinian Island, causing complete chaos at the US command headquarters.

They convened all intelligence personnel overnight to analyze the situation, considering all possibilities, but they never expected that someone could intercept the entire bomber along with the atomic bomb silently from thousands of miles away.

Lin Yifan waited in Kokura for two whole days. On the second day, he received a system warning confirming that the US military was still preparing to bomb Kokura as planned.

He knew that Kokura was the US military's primary target because it housed the island nation's largest arms factory and aircraft manufacturing plant. In the original timeline, visibility was low in Kokura on the day of the bombing, so the pilots diverted from Kokura to Nagasaki and dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the secondary target.

Lin Yifan arrived at the designated airspace ahead of time and ambushed the crew using the same method, successfully taking down the second B29 along with "Fat Man" into space.

Both ambushes were swift and clean, leaving no trace. By the time the Americans realized something was wrong, both atomic bombs were already in Lin Yifan's hands.

The American high-ranking officials who were waiting for the atomic bomb to be detonated on Tinian Island and at the White House inevitably waited in vain once again, without even a single piece of news about the explosion coming from the island nation.

The two B-29s vanished into thin air over the Pacific Ocean without even sending a distress signal, leaving no trace of wreckage.

Truman, who was originally full of confidence and wanted to force the island nation to surrender with atomic bombs, was so angry when he saw the intelligence handed over by his staff that he slammed his fist on the table. He cursed the intelligence department and the air force, but he couldn't make sense of it at all. He could only suppress the news and strictly order a thorough investigation, not allowing any information to leak out.

As for whether to continue using atomic bombs against the island nation, we can only wait for the results of a thorough investigation before making a decision. After all, we don't even know why the atomic bombs and bombers went missing. Sending planes out again rashly might lead to some unexpected accidents.

If the third atomic bomb were to fail, the United States would be utterly humiliated and unable to hold its head high in front of its allies.

Moreover, many people in China now know about the atomic bomb. After two consecutive incidents, it's impossible to cover it up for long. We must first stabilize the situation and find out where the problem lies.

After much deliberation, Truman could only order a halt to all plans to bomb the island nation with atomic bombs, waiting for the investigation team to clarify the situation before taking further action.

Lin Yifan, who had intercepted the two atomic bombs, had already quietly returned to Tanggu in his 022 submarine, returning to his small courtyard without anyone noticing.

The US military, which could not be found anywhere in the Pacific Ocean, was left completely bewildered by the empty airspace.

Time flies like an arrow. Six months later, the United States completed the production of two more atomic bombs and restarted its nuclear bombing program. The mushroom cloud, which was six months later than in the original timeline, finally rose over the island nation.

In the six months that followed, the Communist Party basically controlled all the land north of the Yangtze River, and the National Revolutionary Army also recovered large swathes of land in the south. The Japanese invaders were compressed into the Yangtze River line from Wuhan and Nanjing to Shanghai.

They barely managed to hold off the attacks of the Red Army and the Nationalist army thanks to the support of naval guns on the river. Even so, they suffered heavy casualties, and the number of Japanese troops in China has now been reduced to just over 210,000.

When Lin Yifan, who was in Beiping, heard the news that Japan had been bombed with atomic bombs, he could no longer sit still. If the Japanese announced their surrender, wouldn't the more than 200,000 Japanese soldiers in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River escape to safety? How could that be allowed?

Without saying a word, he called Commander Chen, told Wenxiu and the others, and left Beiping City, heading towards Nanjing.

The troops preparing to attack Nanjing were Li Yunlong and Kong Jie's forces, along with the newly formed Fourth Army, which had been fighting in northern Jiangsu. This was also an anti-Japanese armed force led by the Red Party.