Courtyard House: Time Traveler Not Yet a Ghost

Beiping, a winter night. Lead-gray clouds hung low over the city walls, and a cold wind swirled fine snowflakes, howling through the desolate alleyways. A secret outpost of the Military Intelligence Bureau's Beiping station was hidden in an inconspicuous courtyard house, its walls high and its doors tightly shut, like a wild beast lurking in the darkness.

The Military Intelligence Bureau's Beiping Station, a secret outpost.

Inside the rear room, the curtains were drawn tightly shut, leaving no room for air. A lone white candle burned silently on a brass candlestick, its wick occasionally catching a spark that cast flickering shadows onto the mottled walls, twisting and dancing like ghosts. A faint smell of kerosene, the musty odor of old paper, and a barely perceptible tension filled the air.

The stationmaster, "Black Fox"—a man around forty years old with a sharp face and a short beard—was facing away from the door, staring intently at several pages of paper that had suddenly appeared on the octagonal table. The candlelight outlined the tense profile of his face; his eyes, which usually gleamed with shrewdness and ruthlessness, were now narrowed with extreme focus, his brows furrowed into a deep frown, as if they could trap a mosquito.

The few pages were ordinary straw paper, with somewhat rough edges, yet they were filled with writing in a neat, almost printed style of small regular script. The ink was even, the strokes steady, exuding an unusual calmness. Black Fox's gaze, like that of a hawk, swept across the paper word by word, each character like a pebble thrown into a still lake of his heart, stirring up ripples.

The paper detailed precise intelligence regarding the Japanese military police's planned searches of Kuomintang (KMT) infiltration points over the next week: four addresses—even including a temporary contact point backstage at a theatrical troupe in the southern part of the city, complete with a marker indicating an old locust tree near the entrance; the specific search times; the names and ranks of the officers leading the searches; and even… one officer had a habit of picking his teeth after meals, and another sergeant always bought a pack of "Sakura" brand cigarettes from a street corner stall before his shift ended. What alarmed him most was a faint red cross drawn next to the last address, with the annotation: "Trap, fake news, intended to lure the enemy out."

"The source?" Black Fox slowly turned around, his voice extremely low, as if squeezed out from between his teeth, with a barely perceptible hoarseness. In the candlelight, his eyes were filled with fine blood vessels.

The deputy standing to the side, a young man in his late twenties, also wore a face full of confusion and shock, with fine beads of sweat even forming on his forehead. He subconsciously rubbed his cold hands and answered in a low voice, "I don't know, station chief. I came back tonight at the agreed time to check the secret room, and as soon as I opened the door, I found these pages of paper neatly tucked under the door. I immediately questioned the brothers on the outer perimeter, and they said that from dusk until now, apart from a few familiar residents, they hadn't seen any suspicious people approach this alley, let alone someone slipping something under the door right under their noses."

The deputy swallowed hard, his voice trembling with disbelief: "This is too bizarre, station chief. This is absolutely not the style of our agents planted within the enemy—they always have fixed codes and channels for transmitting intelligence, and they would never be this...detailed. The level and detail of this intelligence...it's terrifying! Even the Japanese officers' quirks and shift changes are written down clearly, as if...as if someone used a magnifying glass to dig them out of their brains."

Black Fox turned his gaze back to the pages, his eyes sharp as knives, as if trying to pierce through them. "Investigate!" he uttered decisively, then added, "But be extremely cautious. Use only the outermost layer of forces, without alerting anyone." He paused, his tone complex, "If this is a trap, it's set up far too realistically, so realistically that it's hard not to believe it. If… if this is real…"

Black Fox took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling slightly. "We owe a life to some extraordinary person, no, four lives, or even more." He picked up the few pages of paper, brought them close to the candlelight, and carefully examined the age of the ink and the texture of the paper, trying to find the slightest clue. However, apart from the cold, precise words, there was nothing.

Such scenarios are not isolated incidents. Similar inexplicable events have recently occurred frequently at other Kuomintang intelligence stations scattered throughout North China, as well as among the various guerrilla forces active in the vast plains and mountains. Sometimes it's a map marking the precise routes of Japanese sweeps, troop deployments, and planned encampments; sometimes it's a convoy transporting munitions or supplies, detailing its departure time, route, escorting forces, and even the fact that one of the trucks had a brake malfunction; sometimes it's a list of traitors who have just defected to the Japanese puppet regime but haven't yet taken action, along with summaries of their meetings with the Japanese, including the time and place of their secret talks… This intelligence always arrives quietly when most needed, with terrifying precision, yet it always seems to vanish without a trace, its origin shrouded in mystery.

A certain intelligence group of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics.

Inside a slightly dilapidated villa on the edge of the French Concession in Tianjin, the fireplace had long since died down, leaving only cold ashes. The air was thick with the pungent smell of coal smoke and cheap tobacco. Several men in long gowns or suits sat around a round table covered with a dark tablecloth, their faces grave.

In the center of the table sat an unassuming brown paper bag. The bag was slightly ajar, revealing several meticulously drawn architectural diagrams and a few sheets of printed paper inside. The group leader, a middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses who appeared refined, was holding one of the architectural diagrams, his fingers trembling slightly, his eyes wide behind his glasses.

"This...this is simply..." He gasped, his voice trembling with excitement, "It's ten times more detailed than the bits and pieces of information we managed to pry out of a puppet army company commander after sacrificing two brothers! No, twenty times more!"

He pointed to a location circled in red on the structural diagram: "Look here, this is one of the three safe houses in the Japanese concession where the Japanese intelligence agency secretly detained and interrogated our agents. It's down to the street, the house number, even the building's orientation, the window locations, and where the load-bearing walls are! And this," he picked up another sheet of paper, "the guard shift schedule, the arrangement of sentry posts, even which guards at which times and locations would doze off, and which corners had blind spots—it's all clearly marked! And finally, this," he picked up a forecast chart, "the time of the most recent 'prisoner' transfer is precise down to 3:15 PM the day after tomorrow!"

The room was deathly silent, save for the heavy breathing of a few people. One of the younger intelligence agents couldn't help but speak up: "Team leader, who...who sent this? Was it a comrade from the Red Party? Or...could it be a traitor within the Japanese ranks, and one of unimaginably high rank?"

The person in charge put down the blueprints, rubbed his throbbing temples, his eyes filled with confusion and a hint of inexplicable excitement: "I don't know. It was yesterday evening, a milkman left it in the milk box by the door, between two bottles of fresh milk. Our people watched it all day, but didn't find anything unusual."

Ultimately, driven by immense temptation and an urgent desire to save lives, they decided to take the risk. Following intelligence instructions, they chose the dead of night when guards changed shifts and defenses were weakest. Using concealed passages and blind spots marked on the building's structural plans, they successfully infiltrated one of the safe houses, cleanly and efficiently eliminating two drowsy guards. They rescued two comrades who had been tortured to the point of near death and were almost deemed sacrificial by the organization. Before leaving, they planted a bomb, reducing this spy hideout stained with the blood of their compatriots to ruins.

The entire operation went incredibly smoothly, as if an invisible eye was watching over everything from above, clearing away all obstacles and pointing them in the safest direction. During the retreat, the young intelligence officer couldn't help but glance back at the direction of the burning safe house, his heart filled with shock and confusion: "Who on earth is helping us?"

The backyard of Manager Luo's grocery store in the Pingxi base area of ​​the Red Party.

In a remote village near the Western Hills west of Beiping (Beijing), Manager Luo's general store was the only business in the village, usually bustling with people. But now it was nearly midnight, and the store had long since closed, with a heavy cotton curtain hanging over the front door, keeping out the howling wind.

In the side room of the backyard, a dim oil lamp flickered, its tiny flame swaying gently as the cold wind occasionally seeped in through the cracks in the window. The air was thick with the earthy smell of soil and the bitter aroma of herbs. Manager Luo—a man who looked to be in his fifties, with a dark complexion, calloused hands, and unusually bright eyes—sat on the edge of a simple wooden bed, his eyes fixed on the small note that had just been delivered to him at great risk by the courier.

The note was a yellowed and brittle corner torn from a student's exercise book, with a few words and seemingly meaningless numerical codes written on it in pencil. Manager Luo pulled a worn-out Kangxi Dictionary from under the bed, then took out a small oilcloth bundle from his pocket containing several pages of a codebook filled with corresponding relationships. He compared the dictionary and the codebook, his fingers tracing the rough pages, his lips moving silently.

As each character was deciphered, Manager Luo's previously calm breathing gradually became rapid, his chest heaving violently, and his fingers gripping the paper so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The dim light of the oil lamp illuminated his face, revealing the fine beads of sweat on his forehead and the barely suppressed shock and ecstasy in his eyes.

"The Japanese 110th Division has secretly dispatched an infantry battalion, attached to an artillery company, with plans to launch a surprise attack on our Xishan Printing House and logistics warehouse at dawn five days from now, disguised as bandits from 'Black Wind Village'. The intelligence is conclusive."

These few words struck Manager Luo like a thunderbolt. The Xishan Printing House housed the base's most important propaganda equipment, printing presses, and a large quantity of undistributed documents; while the logistics warehouse held winter provisions, clothing, and life-saving medicine for the base's soldiers and civilians. An attack on it would have unimaginable consequences! The value of this intelligence was immeasurable; it concerned the lives of dozens, even hundreds, of people, and the base's operation for the next few months!

"Source?" Manager Luo suddenly raised his head, his voice hoarse with excitement. He looked at the courier standing in the shadows by the door. The courier was dressed in short clothes, his face covered in mud and ash, clearly having traveled a long distance and crossed a dangerous blockade.

The courier shook his head wearily and said in a low voice, "Boss, it was found in the usual place—in the crack in the stone under that crooked old locust tree outside the city. There were no markings or codes. Our comrades on guard nearby didn't even see a shadow of the person who delivered the intelligence. It was like...like he appeared out of thin air and disappeared into thin air. But boss, do you remember? The intelligence we had about the small groups of Japanese 'mopping-up' operations before was also found there, and it all came true, without the slightest error."

Shopkeeper Luo remained silent for a long time before carefully bringing the small piece of paper, which carried such a heavy burden, close to the oil lamp. The flame licked at the corner of the paper, quickly engulfing it, turning it into a wisp of smoke, carrying the acrid smell of burnt paper ash, which dissipated into the cold air. He gently crushed the ashes, making sure no trace was left.

"Immediately issue the order," Manager Luo stood up, his voice regaining its composure, but his speech was extremely rapid. "Move all the printing press's machines and documents, and all the grain, medicine, and cotton-padded clothing from the warehouse overnight, leaving nothing behind! Tell Captain Li to lead his team to set up an ambush on the Japanese's likely route, giving them a 'surprise'!"

He paused, his gaze sweeping across the deep night outside the window, a deep confusion mixed with an indescribable awe in his eyes: "Also..." He looked up at the courier, "Use all our connections in the city to find out if anything unusual has happened in or around Beiping recently, or... if any unusual people have appeared."