The Little Demonic Cultivator in the Courtyard: Borrowing 100,000 Japanese Pirates to Heal

That afternoon, Qian Youfu went to a grain store near Nanluoguxiang again.

The owner of that grain store, surnamed Chen, was in his sixties and had run the grain store for most of his life. After the Japanese entered the city, he refused to join the cooperative association.

This was the third time Qian Youfu had come to see him. The first two times, he had been kicked out by Boss Chen. This time, he brought two puppet soldiers with him.

Two puppet soldiers stood at the door, neither going in nor leaving, just standing there with their rifle butts on the ground and their bayonets gleaming coldly in the setting sun.

Qian Youfu sat across from Boss Chen at the counter, his tone more forceful than the previous two times, and said, "Old Chen, how many years have you been running this shop? Almost forty years, right? Think about your grandsons."

"Don't you care about your own old bones? Don't you care about them either?"

Mr. Chen sat behind the counter, his hands on his knees, his fingers trembling.

Qian Youfu stood up, patted Boss Chen on the shoulder, and said, "I'll give you two days to think it over."

Then he left with the two puppet soldiers.

Xu Jiande, who was secretly following, saw all of this, his eyes following Qian Youfu's back as he turned the corner of the alley.

He did not go out that night.

He was waiting, waiting for Qian Youfu to go to the next place, waiting for him to expose his whereabouts again.

Afterwards, Xu Jiande went back to the courtyard house, had dinner, and at 10 p.m., he told Bai Ling that he had something to do and had to go out that night.

Bai Ling glanced at him and sensed from his tone that this time was different from usual, but she didn't press him for details.

I just said "be careful."

Xu Jiande changed into a dark-colored old short jacket, tucked his bayonet into his waistband, and tucked his pistol into his back waistband.

Tonight we're not going to fight, not to fight the Japanese, we're just going to kill people.

Kill someone.

As usual, Xu Jiande easily climbed over the wall and left the courtyard, walking along the base of the wall towards the west of the city.

He is now at the third stage of Qi Refining, making travel even faster.

Qian Youfu lived in a narrow alley in the western part of the city. It was a detached house with a metal plaque displaying his "good citizen certificate" hanging on the door; the lettering on the plaque was polished to a gleaming shine. Xu

Instead of entering through the main gate, Jiande went around to the side of the courtyard and climbed over the wall.

There was no one in the courtyard. In the corner, there were several wooden rollers used for making cloth, and there was a faint smell of dye in the air.

He squatted in the corner for a moment to confirm that Qian Youfu was not the only person in the house.

It doesn't matter, the families of traitors are basically not good people anyway.

Xu Jiande gently broke the wooden lock, pushed open the door, entered the room, and went to Qian Youfu's bedside.

He covered his mouth, plunged the bayonet into his neck with his right hand, and Qian Youfu's body stiffened abruptly. He let out a muffled "ooh" sound, and then went limp.

Xu Jiande stood there for a while, confirming that he had passed away.

He didn't leave immediately.

He took out a small half-bucket of kerosene that he had prepared in advance from his pocket and poured it on the wall in front of Qian Youfu's house.

Then they used the deceased's blood to write four large characters on the wall.

He wrote those four characters very large, so large that everyone in the alley could see them clearly the next day at dawn.

After doing all this, he threw the kerosene can into the garbage heap at the alley entrance, wiped the blood off his hands with his sleeve in the darkness, and quickly returned along the pre-planned evacuation route.

When I climbed over the wall and returned to the courtyard, it was just past three in the morning.

Bai Ling was waiting for him behind the door. Xu Jiande pushed the door open and went in, saying with a smile, "Thank you for your hard work."

Xu Jiande said with a wry smile, "There are too many traitors like this, we can't kill them all. We need to increase our deterrent power."

Bai Ling didn't say anything, but gently hugged him. Then she went to the bedroom, lay down next to him, and neither of them spoke.

The next morning, Qian Youfu's body was discovered by his neighbors.

The Japanese soldiers arrived at the scene quickly. The military police squatted down next to the body and examined it for a while before standing up and looking at the four blood-red characters on the wall.

Someone muttered "Baka!" under their breath. More and more people gathered around, and the whole alley was alerted.

Someone secretly glanced at the blood-written words on the wall, then quickly looked away, lowered their head, and hurried away.

Some people stood in the crowd, their lips twitching slightly as if they wanted to say something, but then swallowed their words back.

Some people didn't say anything, but silently repeated those four words in their hearts.

Xu Jiande still patrols the nearby streets every day, wearing a blue short jacket with the word "Guan" printed on it, walking on the bluestone slabs of Nanluoguxiang, nodding and greeting every neighbor.

When I passed by Qian Youfu's alley, I glanced at the Japanese soldiers surrounding the alley entrance from afar, and then continued walking forward.

No one connected him to what happened last night. How could such a cowardly traitor, so eager to become a collaborator, do such a thing?

……

News of Qian Youfu's death spread throughout the Shangcheng District at noon that day.

The sun was blazing, making the bluestone pavement scorching hot, and steam rose from the cracks in the ground.

Upon hearing the news, several merchants chatting at the alley entrance simultaneously fell silent, their faces changing visibly. Some turned white, some turned pale, and some were so stiff they couldn't even blink.

Qian Youfu was an active member of the Business Cooperation Association, acting as an advocate for the Imperial Army, going door-to-door to persuade people to surrender.

When he was trying to persuade them, he was followed by puppet soldiers. They stood up straight, spoke loudly, and had the confidence that the entire Japanese Empire was backing him up.

He died at the entrance of his own outhouse, stabbed in the lower back, with four large characters written in his blood on the wall.

The Japanese military police stood in the alley for a long time.

Some people were drawing a diagram of the scene, while others were squatting on the ground examining footprints on the bluestone slabs with a magnifying glass.

The leading sergeant's face turned ashen because Sasaki Maki's adjutant had personally driven over to ask if the general was very concerned about the matter and wanted to know if the murderer had been caught.

The sergeant stood at attention with his head bowed and said that they were investigating with all their might. The initial assessment was that it was the work of resistance fighters. The killer's methods were clean and efficient, indicating that they must have received professional training.

"Professionally trained." When these words came out of the sergeant's mouth, the puppet soldiers standing next to him exchanged glances, but none of them said a word.

They were thinking the same thing: Qian Youfu was killed in his own home.

It's a detached house with an intact courtyard wall, but the door lock was broken by the earthquake.

The murderer scaled the wall and crouched in the yard for an unknown amount of time before going in and killing the victim with a single blow. He then wrote four characters on the wall and climbed back out the same way he came, without alerting anyone.

Qian Youfu's neighbor said he didn't hear anything unusual last night, not even a dog barked.

This killer is incredibly skilled. Remembering how someone killed many Japanese soldiers a while back, I couldn't help but feel terrified. How could someone be so powerful?

That afternoon, the news spread to all the merchants in Shangcheng District.

The Japanese hadn't officially notified them yet; it was the merchants who spread the word privately.

When they were passing on the message, they kept their voices extremely low, bringing their mouths close to the listener's ear. After speaking, they would glance left and right, as if afraid that a passing Japanese soldier would hear them.

"Qian Youfu is dead. He's the same Qian Youfu who acted as an intermediary for the Imperial Army. He died in his own bed, his mouth was covered, and he was slaughtered like a duck."

"He wrote words on the wall in his blood, and you know what it said. Don't talk nonsense, let's not mention this again."