Chapter Thirty-Seven: The South Manchuria Railway Warehouse

October 15, 1938 — Jiangcheng Umbrella Corporation

After kneeling before Alexei several times, Aoki Yosuke finally managed to conclude the deal. The two sides agreed to complete the exchange that very evening. What Aoki Yosuke could never have imagined was that the black bodyguard standing in the corner of the room, hood pulled over his head, had been using the conversation between Alexei and Aoki Yosuke to perform a mind search all along.

As it turned out, Alexei’s lines had been agreed upon beforehand. They seemed disjointed and irrelevant, yet each was designed to stir Aoki Yosuke’s thoughts and make Wang Yue’s mind search easier. Asking Aoki Yosuke whether he needed to conduct the transaction at the other party’s warehouse, for instance, was meant to prompt him to think about the warehouse’s location.

After Aoki Yosuke drove away from Umbrella Corporation, Wang Yue changed his clothes and followed him. After changing disguises several times, he appeared before an elementary school. It was hard to imagine that, barely a dozen miles from the Military Affairs Commission, the Manchurian Railway had hidden a secret warehouse. The only fortunate thing was that the Japanese artillery could not reach the Military Affairs Commission.

The area around the school was unusually open. There were probably watchers behind several half-open windows, while the tea stall at the gate also seemed suspicious. In such a rundown place, whom could the owner possibly be selling a whole cauldron of tea to every day? And there were the steamed buns in the bamboo baskets—pork-filled ones, no less. The local civilians could not afford pork buns. At the very least, there was no way all those buns could be sold.

Wang Yue found a large poplar tree farther back. Bracing himself with his toes, he sprang into its branches, drew out a monocular telescope, and looked toward the school. The Japanese had clearly learned their lesson. Flash suppressors from light machine guns protruded from behind several windows. Looking more carefully, he saw that the sights mounted on the weapons were fitted with sapphires. They were probably the Japanese Type 96 light machine guns, equipped in this way for easier nighttime aiming.

On the side he could observe alone, four light machine guns had been deployed, creating a crossfire that sealed off the street in front of the school. Given the Japanese level of tactical training, even a full company of Nationalist troops would be useless here. And this was surely not the entire complement—there had to be more than four light machine guns inside.

The elementary school itself had a rather complicated layout. The main building was a two-story structure, with two rows of tiled houses lining either side of the playground. There were also two gatehouses at the entrance. Beside the main building stood what might have been a boiler room or a cafeteria, while behind it were a school workshop and a warehouse. That made sense; the grounds were too cramped to be used entirely as storage space.

Soon, it was time for lunch. Just as Wang Yue had expected, the owner of the tea stall pushed a handcart around to the rear of the school and wheeled several baskets of steamed buns in through the back gate. Guarding the front entrance while sneaking supplies through the rear—what a ridiculous way for the Japanese to think. And what fools our intelligence agents were, to let the Japanese hide their supplies right under their noses.

Wang Yue would have preferred to strike at night, but there was no time. If he truly waited until evening, would he not end up handing the medicine over to Aoki Yosuke? The Japanese had become exceedingly shrewd. Every day, they used seaplanes from the French Concession to transport away anything important, leaving him no chance to take advantage of the chaos.

Wang Yue glanced around. Tall poplars surrounded the school, each standing fifteen or twenty meters high. Their crowns were well above the buildings and did not obstruct the view from inside the school. Although the trees stood barely two meters from the school wall, the nearest buildings were more than fifteen meters away. An ordinary person could never use those poplars to infiltrate the school.

But Wang Yue was no ordinary man.

With Lan Xinde’s lightness skills, enhanced by the abilities of a corpse cultivator, he was unquestionably a grandmaster by the standards of the present age. After practicing them for so long, he had become thoroughly proficient. With a light leap, he landed on the shaded side of a row of tiled houses beside the playground, then vaulted again and slipped through a damaged window into the school.

Armed with a C93 pistol fitted with a scope and shoulder stock, and carrying a goose-feather saber, he cleared the Japanese from the school in barely half an hour. Lan Xinde truly deserved his reputation as one of the Stick-Wielding Office’s finest assassins. He cut through the Japanese as effortlessly as slicing melons and vegetables. From beginning to end, he gave them no opportunity to call for help or fire a shot.

Wang Yue still could not determine how many Japanese soldiers were stationed outside, but the thirty-seven men inside had all been beheaded by him. Damn it, one of them had even worn a steel collar. Perhaps his habit of cutting off people’s heads had left the Japanese traumatized, prompting them to devise this useless countermeasure. In actual combat, however, it made no difference. A goose-feather saber from the Imperial Household Department’s Armory Bureau could still decapitate them with ease. At most, it left a few more scratches on the blade.

The Japanese firepower was also far greater than Wang Yue had initially assumed: two Type 3 heavy machine guns, eight Type 96 light machine guns, two Type 97 sniper rifles, twelve Type 38 cavalry rifles, four Type 44 cavalry rifles, and twenty-one Nambu Type 14 pistols. Wang Yue revised his earlier judgment. With such a weapons complement, even a full Nationalist battalion could not overrun the school quickly. They would probably need an entire regiment supported by heavy weapons. The school buildings were, after all, quite sturdy.

Before long, Wang Yue found the artillery pieces and shells mentioned by Qingchuan Yosuke. The quality of the equipment abandoned by that wastrel was beyond question, and it had been well preserved. The Japanese artillery units on the Jiangcheng front currently possessed very little firepower capable of matching it. Their vanity had made them suffer for nothing.

Next came the opium. There was somewhat less of it this time, but there were still twenty-three tons. Who knew how much opium the Japanese had stockpiled in Jiangcheng? Had they not claimed to produce only six or seven hundred tons a year? How much had Wang Yue already encountered? And should not something this profitable have been sent first to the Shanghai market?

Of course, Wang Yue had no idea how complicated the business truly was. Other branches of the Manchurian Railway, such as its arms-trading operations, also purchased considerable quantities of opium from warlords and regional power brokers. Apart from the small amount supplied to Japan itself, the rest had to be sold. Then there were the spoils seized since the war began. Japanese units at the grassroots level had captured enormous quantities of the stuff. They could not smoke it all themselves, so they had to sell it as well.

What surprised Wang Yue most was that everything remaining in the warehouse consisted of soybean cakes. He checked the Japanese inventory records and found that there was a full ten thousand tons, all transported from the Northeast. Unlike the commonly seen round soybean cakes, these were all square, making them easier to transport.

Many of the cakes still bore the stamps of the Kwantung Army. From the memories of the body he inhabited, Wang Yue could determine that these were horse fodder for the Kwantung Army. An ordinary draft horse consumed eight kilograms of feed a day, while a warhorse needed more than ten kilograms. That was assuming it was also grazing normally. The soybean cakes stored here would probably sustain the Japanese for only about half a month.

Japanese soldiers could survive by living off the land, eating whatever they seized—or even going hungry. Horses were different. They could not simply be deprived of food. Stockpiling fodder here in advance, just in case, was understandable.

Still, apologies to them—the ten thousand tons of soybean cakes now belonged to Wang.

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