Courtyard House: Ten-year-old Master Zhu reorganizes the entire courtyard

The main hall of the He family.

Once the door was closed, it shut out all the probing gazes from the courtyard.

Xu Fugui was still kneeling, his face covered in snot and tears, trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind.

"Master Zhu..."

"Get up." He Yuzhu's voice wasn't loud, but it was firm.

Xu Fugui dared not disobey, and stood up shakily, leaning on the door frame, his legs still trembling.

"Sit down," He Yuzhu said, pointing to the stool next to the table.

Xu Fugui dared not sit down, standing there like a wooden stake, his head bowed so low it was almost buried in his chest.

He Yuzhu ignored him, poured himself a glass of cold water, and took a sip.

The room was eerily quiet.

Only the old grandfather clock on the wall ticked away, its ticking echoing in Xu Fugui's heart.

A full minute passed before He Yuzhu finally spoke.

"Speak. Who's looking for you? What do they want from you?"

Xu Fugui trembled as if he had been whipped, and spilled the beans, recounting in detail the threats made by the Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS) agents at his door the previous night.

He dared not hide anything in the slightest.

This includes the intelligence chief codenamed "Viper," and the fact that they wanted to keep an eye on He Yuzhu themselves.

By the end, his voice was trembling with tears, and he was on the verge of collapse.

"Master Zhu, I...I'm not human! I'm worse than a pig or a dog! But I have no choice! They're threatening me with the lives of my whole family! I..."

"Alright," He Yuzhu interrupted him.

His face was expressionless.

There was no anger, no surprise, only a calm, ancient well.

But when Xu Fugui looked at this face, he felt it was even more terrifying than the faces of those two spies.

It was a kind of calm that was completely unfathomable.

Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS).

Venomous snake.

interesting.

He Yuzhu was making plans in his mind.

A direct confrontation would be suicide. I'm just a ten-year-old child; even with a system, I can't possibly fight against a professional intelligence organization.

The Xu Fugui storyline must not be broken.

But we can't let him actually work for spies.

There's only one way then.

Feeding false information.

Feed this venomous snake a bunch of seemingly useful but actually worthless false information, and make it lie dormant for the time being.

"Uncle Xu," He Yuzhu suddenly changed his form of address.

Xu Fugui suddenly looked up.

"I can help you with this."

Xu Fugui's eyes suddenly flashed with a huge light, like a drowning person grabbing a plank.

"But you have to obey me completely, word for word. If I tell you to go east, you can't go west. If I tell you to beat the dog, you can't chase the chicken. Can you do that?"

"I can do it! I can do it!" Xu Fugui nodded vigorously. "Don't even mention beating a dog, you could ask me to die, I wouldn't even blink!"

"No need for death." He Yuzhu stood up and paced around the room.

"If 'Viper' wants information, just give it to him."

"Huh?" Xu Fugui was dumbfounded.

"What I give you, you give back to him." He Yuzhu's eyes were cold. "From now on, your brain and your mouth are under my control. You are just a tool for relaying messages."

Xu Fugui swallowed hard and nodded emphatically.

"Remember, you must get the information out within three days. Otherwise, I can't save you."

……

That afternoon.

The backyard of the grocery store.

After hearing He Yuzhu's plan, the shopkeeper frowned deeply.

"That was too risky." He shook his head, stopping the two walnuts he was fiddling with in his hand. "Let Xu Fugui be a double agent? That kind of opportunist can't be trusted. Once he's exposed, and the trail goes back, our entire operation will be over."

"Shopkeeper, it's not a question of whether we believe him or not, it's that 'Viper' has already set its sights on him." He Yuzhu looked at the oil lamp on the table, the flame flickering.

"Xu Fugui is bait. Now, two fish are eyeing this bait at the same time. If we don't pull him over, he will be completely swallowed by the other fish. At that time, in order to survive, he will spit out the entire yard, and even everything we know."

The shopkeeper fell silent.

He knew that He Yuzhu was telling the truth.

"What do you want to do?"

"Sacrifice the pawn to save the king," He Yuzhu uttered four words.

"We'll fabricate a piece of intelligence. It can't be too valuable, or it will arouse suspicion. Nor can it be too low, or we won't be able to deliver. Ideally, it should be about a small-scale transfer of supplies, with the location and time somewhat vague, but sounding very realistic."

The shopkeeper's eyes lit up. "You mean...?"

"Yes. We'll direct our own play." He Yuzhu tapped his fingers lightly on the table. "We'll arrange for a small team to stage a 'guerrilla ambush' scene outside the city. The timing will be after Xu Fugui sends out the intelligence. We'll deliberately lose some insignificant things, like a few bags of grain or a few bolts of homespun cloth."

"In this way, from 'Viper's' perspective, it would appear that Xu Fugui's intelligence was accurate, but we detected it and took timely remedial action. The intelligence was true, but the operation failed. This way, Xu Fugui could get away with it without incurring any substantial losses for us."

The shopkeeper stared at He Yuzhu for a long time.

This boy's mind is frighteningly meticulous.

Every step was calculated.

"Alright." The shopkeeper finally nodded. "I'll arrange it right away. Have you thought about the details of the intelligence?"

"I've thought it through." He Yuzhu pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. "Just say that this Friday night, a batch of medicinal herbs and homespun cloth transported from the Xishan base will be secretly smuggled into the city via Lugou Bridge. The rendezvous point is a grain store near Baiyun Temple."

"Xishan? The comrades there have already been moved."

"The point is to make them miss their target. But to make the scene look real, there has to be gunfire on Friday night at Lugou Bridge."

……

Two days later.

Xu Fugui wandered around the house like a headless fly.

He had already sent out the forged intelligence through a dead mailbox, as instructed by He Yuzhu.

He memorized the rhetoric He Yuzhu taught him perfectly.

The story goes that when a private movie was being shown to a high-ranking official at a movie theater, the official overheard a conversation between himself and his entourage.

Now, all he can do is wait.

Awaiting trial.

Every minute and every second was torture.

He dared not go out, dared not see anyone, locked himself in the house, and was terrified by any sound outside.

Seeing his appearance, Xu Zhaoshi and Xu Damao were so frightened that they didn't dare to breathe.

at night.

Xu Fugui didn't sleep all night again.

As dawn approached, he could no longer stay awake and just drifted off to sleep, leaning back in his chair.

"Father! Father!"

Xu Damao kicked open the door and scrambled in, his face a mixture of fear and excitement.

"Something terrible has happened! Something drastic!"

Xu Fugui suddenly woke up with a start, jumped up from the chair, and turned pale.

"Is it...is it them?"

"No!" Xu Damao gasped for breath, pointing outside. "It's outside the city! I heard there was fighting at Lugou Bridge last night! Gunfire lasted half the night! The police were all out this morning, saying that the Red bandits outside the city robbed a caravan! They stole several boxes of penicillin!"

Xu Fugui was stunned.

penicillin?

The information He Yuzhu gave him clearly mentioned medicinal herbs and homespun cloth.

His mind raced.

He got it.

This was a smokescreen deliberately released by He Yuzhu.

The fact that it was publicly claimed to be precious penicillin further proves the value of this intelligence.

high!

That's brilliant!

Xu Fugui felt his legs go weak and collapsed to the ground.

My back was completely soaked with cold sweat.

He was saved.

He was pulled back from the brink of hell by that ten-year-old boy.

He turned his head and looked in the direction of the He family in the Central Court.

The sky was bright.

Xu Fugui got up from the ground, walked into the courtyard, and bowed deeply, deeply in the direction of the He family's house.

Starting today.

He Yuzhu is Xu Fugui's second parent.