War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1800: Rubber Band Skipping

"Mr. Shibata"

Without waiting for the person who opened the door to come in, a man with a steady voice said in Japanese, "Based on your understanding of the Chinese, tell me what you think."

"Mr. Yokoyama"

Another voice said with a hint of respect in its tone, "I think this matter is related to the recent assassination attempts on Chairman Zhang."

"Oh?" The middle-aged man named Yokoyama sat on the sofa in the main seat of the study room and said, "Go on."

"Hi!"

Shibata, who was wearing a set of Japanese uniforms, bowed and responded, then sat down and said while making tea, "Chairman Zhang has a very good relationship with us, and he has helped us do a lot of things.

But because of this, he has been assassinated many times. So I analyzed that the main target of the actions in recent days should not be us, but Chairman Zhang of the Anqing Gang.

The person behind the scenes hopes to stir up conflict between Chairman Zhang and us, and may even want to use us to eliminate Chairman Zhang."

"The people who came to negotiate are still waiting in the reception room," the middle-aged man called Yokoyama asked calmly, "Does Shibata-kun have any suggestions?"

"President Zhang is quite loyal to us"

Shibata said, "We can take this opportunity to ask them for a large sum of compensation."

"Where is the real murderer? What should we do with the real murderer?" Yokoyama asked.

"Let President Zhang go find it. He will find the real culprit."

Shibata gave a second suggestion, "You can make as many requests as you want to the person sent by President Zhang. I think he will agree to it."

"In that case, let him wait."

Yokoyama said, "I like to negotiate with people who lose their patience. I hope I won't waste Mr. Shibata's time."

"Mr. Yokoyama is joking."

Shibata responded respectfully, "The night is long, how about I invite the geisha who just performed to come up and have a drink with us?"

"I'll follow Mr. Shibata's arrangements," Yokoyama said in a pleasant tone.

"Please wait a moment." Before Shibata finished speaking, he stood up and walked towards the study door.

Hearing the sound of the door closing again, Wei Ran used his fingers to open the curtains a little and waited patiently until the man named Yokoyama put down the teacup in his hand. Then he strode behind the sofa where the other person was sitting like a ghost and hit him hard behind the ear with the handle of the Mauser bayonet in his hand.

After successfully knocking out the middle-aged Japanese soldier, Wei Ran subconsciously looked at his sideburns, then disassembled his jaw joint, thrust the slender bayonet into his mouth, and cut left and right on his vocal cords.

Wei Ran stuffed a towel on the table into the other person's mouth to help stop the bleeding, and then skillfully pinched the other person's elbow and knee joints.

Under the stimulation of severe pain, the middle-aged Japanese soldier naturally woke up, but as soon as he woke up, he was knocked unconscious again by Wei Ran.

Turning around and pulling the curtains, Wei Ran stood close to the door frame, waiting patiently.

Soon, the door of the study was knocked, accompanied by the sound of wooden clogs hitting the floor.

"Mr. Yokoyama, I am..."

"Click"

Without waiting for the person outside to finish speaking, Wei Ran had already opened the door for him.

Standing outside the door was a young woman wearing a kimono, with a pillow on her back and a layer of white putty on her face.

Wei Ran even had time to look at the environment behind the woman before he reached out and grabbed her collar and pulled her in. He covered her mouth before she could scream, then turned around and gently pushed the door shut with his foot.

"Shh-"

Wei Ran covered her eyes with the hand that was originally covering her mouth, and at the same time put the Mauser bayonet on her neck, successfully causing goose bumps.

"Who is on the first floor?" Wei Ran asked in a low voice in Japanese, while also putting his fingers into the geisha's mouth and touching her teeth.

"First floor. First floor."

The geisha didn't even dare to avoid Wei Ran's sheepskin-gloved fingers, and replied in a mosquito-like voice, "There are only two bodyguards and two cooks on the first floor."

"What about the second floor?" Wei Ran continued to whisper in the other person's ear.

"There is only a gentleman in the room opposite on the second floor, and Shibata just entered that room." The geisha answered honestly.

"Very good, what about the third floor?" Wei Ran continued to ask softly.

"No, I don't know," the geisha whispered in horror, "I was hired temporarily to perform."

"Crack!"

With a crisp sound of bone cracking, Wei Ran directly broke the geisha's neck.

Wei Ran picked up the light and almost weightless body and placed it on the sofa. She was even kind enough to help her sit on Mr. Yokoyama's legs, and she put her arms around Yokoyama's neck and tied her hands with Yokoyama's tie.

"Have fun"

After whispering in the ear of the unconscious Mr. Yokoyama, Wei Ran stood up and went back to the door. He gently opened the door and observed for a moment. Then he walked out boldly and came to the door of a room where sounds of conversation came from.

"I have tried hard to persuade Mr. Yokoyama to suppress this matter."

In the room, Mr. Shibata said in Chinese with a haughty tone, "Chairman Zhang can continue to stay in his position, but he must pay the compensation he deserves."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Shibata, please rest assured."

Another voice in the room said respectfully, "It would be best if the misunderstanding could be resolved. We at Anqing Gang will do our best to compensate the families of the casualties.

Also, these are some gifts we prepared for Mr. Shibata, I hope you will accept them, and let us say a few good words for you in front of Mr. Yokoyama."

“You can do things”

Shibata said, "Wait here for a moment. Mr. Yokoyama needs to take care of some official business and will be here soon."

"No hurry, no hurry," another person in the room said respectfully.

"How can you take advantage of the negotiation to get your hands on both sides?"

While Wei Ran was secretly complaining, he had already hidden behind a piano in the living room and watched Shibata walk out of that room carrying a small suitcase and walk towards another room.

Seeing this, he waited patiently until the other party pushed the door open and closed it, then immediately followed.

However, he did not push the door open. Instead, he stood against the wall by the door again and waited patiently.

In less than half a minute, the door opened again and the unsuspecting Shibata walked out with a happy smile on his face.

However, before his other leg could leave the room, a cold bayonet with a strong smell of blood was placed on his neck. Immediately afterwards, he was pushed back into the room by someone outside the door.

"you"

As soon as Shibata finished speaking, Wei Ran knocked him unconscious with the handle of his knife. But then he woke up again because of the severe pain.

But in just a moment of blackout, his vocal cords were also cut. However, compared to the strong smell of blood in his mouth and throat, the severe pain in his limb joints made him unable to care about figuring out what had happened.

After knocking him unconscious again, Wei Ran casually cut a piece of cloth from the man's sleeve and stuffed it into his mouth, tying him up. Only then did he have time to look around the room.

This was a storage room without even a window. On the wooden shelves on both sides of the wall, there were bottles of red wine or Japanese sake and plum wine lying diagonally. At the very end, there was a safe, and the small suitcase that the other party had just brought in was now placed on top of the safe.

After opening the small suitcase and taking a look, Wei Ran couldn't help but snort. Inside was a small wine pot and two small wine glasses used by the Japs to drink. Without exception, all three items were made of gold, especially the wine pot, which had the words "Coexistence and Common Prosperity" engraved on it.

After weighing the wine jug, Wei Ran put it back in its place, then dragged the unconscious Shibata over and tied him to the safe with the kimono he had torn off his body.

Turning around and leaving the storage room, Wei Ran returned to the door of the room where Shibata had just "asked for kickbacks" and knocked gently.

After just a second or two, a man who looked to be about thirty-five or thirty-six years old and wearing a suit opened the door with a nod and a smile, and looked at Wei Ran with a slightly puzzled look.

"Mr. Yokoyama invites you to talk in his study."

Wei Ran spoke in Japanese and pointed to the study room not far away. The man, who obviously understood Japanese, bowed and thanked him, and followed Wei Ran to the study room.

The door opened with a "click" and Wei Ran made a "please" gesture. The man in the suit also walked into the study and then saw the geisha riding on Mr. Yokoyama.

This suggestive scene made him stunned for a moment, and then he was pushed into the room by Wei Ran behind him.

But before he could say anything, Wei Ran hit him behind the ear and neck, knocking him unconscious, and then tied his hands with a belt.

He came here to kill the whole family, not to torture them for information. He also knew that although these people might be important, there was a high probability that he would not be able to get anything valuable out of their mouths, and it would only waste his precious time.

After additionally checking Mr. Yokoyama's condition, Wei Ran took the samurai sword that served as decoration in the study, turned around and left the study again and went to the third floor of the villa.

This floor was decorated entirely in Japanese style. The paper-covered sliding door was not soundproof, but the tatami under his feet made the sound of his footsteps almost disappear.

Because of this, he easily heard the sound of a child crying in a room, as well as a Japanese lullaby that was suspected to be sung by the child's mother.

"whispering sound"

Wei Ran snorted in disdain in his heart. He was almost certain that his father was deliberately trying to disgust him, or rather, to test him.

Unfortunately, it didn't work this time.

Pushing open a sliding door, Wei Ran saw a young mother lying on her side on the tatami. In front of her, lay a child who looked about one or two years old.

The other person also saw Wei Ran, and there was a moment of surprise and fear in her eyes.

"bang"

Before the woman could scream, Wei Ran kicked her in the ear.

"Plop" the woman's eyes went dark and she lost consciousness.

After carefully checking the rooms on this floor and making sure that no one was alive except the baby, Wei Ran squatted beside the woman who was knocked unconscious by him.

She was also wearing a traditional Japanese kimono, but even so, Wei Ran could still see her slightly bulging belly.

"You're lucky"

Wei Ran whispered, asked the woman to lie on her back, and placed the baby in her arms.

"puff!"

The sharp and slender samurai sword stopped the crying of the toddler, and also ended the young woman and the perhaps innocent life in her belly.

"I won't torture you anymore. I'll give you a quick death."

Wei Ran said the second half of the sentence softly, then turned around and left the third floor which had become extremely quiet, and returned to the storage room on the second floor.

At this time, Shibata had woken up. He was struggling violently, and his face was full of fear.

"I'm here for revenge"

Wei Ran whispered in the man's ear, "On behalf of the 30 innocent souls in Jinling, your wife and children upstairs have already paid the interest they owed, and it's your turn next."

Before he could finish his words, as Wei Ran was busy, Shibata's joints all over his body were successively opened by Wei Ran. He kept twitching in pain, and eventually he couldn't even twitch.

“This is just the beginning”

Wei Ran, who had been calculating the time, left the storage room after he finished speaking, returned to the study, picked up the traitor from the Anqing Gang, carried him upstairs, made him kneel beside the corpse, hold the samurai sword with both hands, and use the handle of the samurai sword to support his chest.

Then, Wei Ran pulled out the woman's hairpin, held the woman's hand and gestured for a while before slapping the man awake. While he was awake, he stabbed the hairpin into his heart, completely piercing his heart.

Seeing the pain on the traitor's face, Wei Ran did not rush to leave. Instead, he squatted aside and kindly helped to shake the hairpin repeatedly.

"thump"

Finally, the traitor fell down beside the female corpse with a look of pain on his face, and after twitching a few times, he became completely motionless.

Turning around and going downstairs again, Wei Ran returned to the storage room and opened the safe in front of Shibata.

This safe is not big, but there are a lot of things inside. There are four or five big yellow croakers and more than a dozen small yellow croakers. In addition to these, there are also gold and jade jewelry.

After a moment's thought, he took out his suitcase and put the unwanted gold and white items into it, but he did not touch the golden wine jug and set of wine glasses in the suitcase above the safe.

After taking a last look at Mr. Shibata, who looked like a piece of rotten meat, Wei Ran successfully packed up the suitcase and locked the safe again.

"Today, time is tight, so I can only play some classic games with you."

As Wei Ran spoke, he had already tied Shibata upside down on the wine rack. He used the bayonet in his hand to slash his bound wrists hard, and then placed the golden wine jug and the small wine glass underneath.

Leaving the storage room and walking into the study, Mr. Yokoyama had already woken up. He couldn't even stand up at this moment.

"You are a professional soldier, so I leave all my time to you."

As Wei Ran spoke, he touched the other person's temples again and looked carefully at the marks left by the military cap.

At this time, Yokoyama was naturally unable to speak because of his damaged vocal cords. Fortunately, Wei Ran did not expect him to say anything, but just took the still soft geisha's body aside. Then he took out a smaller but sharper knife.

"My anatomy is pretty good, I would even say it's excellent."

Wei Ran whispered in Japanese into the other person's ear, "So I will avoid your main blood vessels. According to this time and space, in about five years, I will complete my graduation project in Tianjin.

Before that, you will have the opportunity to experience a performance I prepared for graduation. I named it "skipping rubber bands". It is bloody and has no artistic value. "

Without caring about the other person opening his mouth to try to say something, Wei Ran took out his anti-Japanese sword and roughly knocked out all his teeth. Then he put the sword away, unbuttoned the other person's upper body clothes, then carefully cut the side of his stomach with a bayonet, and then reached his hand in.

"The human intestine is long enough to be used for skipping rubber bands."

Wei Ran smiled and said, "But don't worry, I won't break it for you. At most you will die from intestinal obstruction. It will be painful, but not long."

After saying that, he pulled out the rubber band longer and longer, until it was long enough for him to walk out of the room without any problem.

Comparing with the door handle, Wei Ran put down the rubber band in his hand, and also slashed Mr. Yokoyama's wrist hard, then stabbed his hand into the empty abdominal cavity through the wound.

Finally, he tore off the geisha's kimono and wrapped it around his upper body. Wei Ran picked up the rubber band again, walked out of the room, stuck the end on the door handle, and then closed the door.

"This is in response to what your Ministry of Water Supply has done in the Northeast, just interest."

Wei Ran muttered to himself as he found the bathroom on the second floor and went in. He carefully washed the blood off his gloves and checked himself again until he was sure that there was no blood on his body. Then he quietly climbed out the window to the first floor and left the garden that surrounded the villa.

When he groped his way back to the alley, the two little beggars were there. They had actually started a stove made from a tin bucket on the other side of the alley's corner.

There was a small pot on the stove, and something was stewing in it.

"Do you want to eat dog meat?"

The little beggar who had led Wei Ran on the road asked enthusiastically in a low voice, "It's freshly killed, it's guaranteed to be delicious."

"You guys eat," Wei Ran said with a smile.

"Return your clothes"

Another little beggar said this and took off his cotton jacket which was too big for him and gave it to Wei Ran.

"Thank you"

Wei Ran took it and put on the cotton trousers, then took off his round-toed cloth shoes and stuffed them into his arms, then put on the pair of cotton boots placed in the corner.

Before he could come out from the other end of the alley, a rickshaw driver dressed in the same attire whispered, "The rickshaw is on the other side of the road, go slower."

"Okay," Wei Ran responded and slowed down his pace as he walked out of the alley.

When he walked to his rickshaw and just sat down, Zhao Jingrong, who was drunk, came out of a store and got on the rickshaw with a Japanese expatriate, "Let's go. Hiccup - Lihua Opera Club."

"Please sit down"

As Wei Ran spoke, he pulled the rickshaw as fast as he could, with an uncontrollable smile on his disguised face.