Spy game? Stop guessing, I really am an undercover agent!

Chapter 262 Guess what I found?
Two days later, in Shanghai, in the Japanese quarter, at the Imperial Army Hospital.

Three o'clock in the afternoon is the time for the doctor's routine rounds.

A "doctor" wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a white coat, and carrying a folder appeared in the special care ward area.

His name tag read "Attending Physician, Kazuo Nohara." He appeared calm, but his pace was somewhat hurried, just like the other doctors in the hospital who were rushing around.

The guard at the entrance of the special care ward checked my ID and then waved me through.

Inside the ward, Yoshida Hirohiro lay half-reclined on the hospital bed, his face still pale, but he seemed a little better than a few days ago.

He was resting with his eyes closed when he heard the door open, and he slightly opened his eyes.

"Dr. Nohara? My attending physician isn't Dr. Watanabe? No one notified me that I was changing doctors?" Yoshida was a little confused. He vaguely remembered that his attending physician wasn't this one.

“Yes, you’re right, Colonel Yoshida.” Xiang Fang bowed slightly, a professional and gentle smile on his face. “This was a last-minute notification from Dean Matsumoto. Director Watanabe has to attend an emergency meeting, so I’m conducting the inspection in his place.”

"Please rest assured, Colonel Yoshida, I will not participate in your treatment process. My responsibility is to record your physical condition accurately and provide it to Director Watanabe for judgment. How are you feeling now? Is your chest still tight?"

As he spoke, he naturally walked to the bedside, picked up the medical record hanging above the bed, and looked at it with great seriousness.

At the same time, he cleverly used his body to block the view that the guards at the door might cast.

"It's alright... I just don't have much strength." Yoshida didn't think much of it, after all, it was common for doctors in military hospitals to rotate shifts.

Xiang Fang put down the medical record and took out a stethoscope: "Let me listen to your heart and lung sounds again."

He bent down and placed the stethoscope on Yoshida's chest, and Yoshida took a deep breath in response.

"Take a breath, is it stuffy here?" At that moment, a thin, bluish-green poison needle appeared between Xiang Fang's fingers, seemingly holding a stethoscope.

He moved with lightning speed, using the stethoscope head as cover, and precisely pierced a very hidden acupoint in Yoshida's left chest precordial region.

“You…” Yoshida’s body stiffened abruptly, his eyes widening as if he wanted to say something, but Xiang Fang was already prepared. With his back to the guard, he quickly covered the other’s mouth with his right hand, and Yoshida let out a very slight “hoh” sound.

An indescribable angina attack suddenly struck, far more intense than when I vomited blood before!
His pupils dilated rapidly, and his consciousness was quickly swallowed by darkness.

"Patient! The patient's condition is not right!" Xiang Fang had already experimented with the effects of this poisoned needle and was able to accurately determine its onset time. Therefore, when he saw Yoshida's breathing gradually stop, he immediately took a step back, put on a "panicked" expression, and shouted loudly towards the door, "Quick! Rescue! Rescue!"

The guards and nurses at the door rushed in upon hearing the noise, and the ward immediately descended into chaos.

The doctor in charge of Yoshida didn't have time to ask about Xiang Fang's identity; he and the nurses were completely focused on Yoshida, making futile attempts to resuscitate him.
No one noticed that, amidst the chaos, "Dr. Nohara" quietly slipped a crudely made counterfeit badge into the side pocket of Yoshida's hospital gown.

At the same time, with extremely fast movements, he used a specially made carving knife to carve a small Kuomintang anti-traitor mark on the back of the bedside table.

After doing all this, Xiang Fang took advantage of everyone's attention being focused on the rescue, and like a drop of water merging into the ocean, quietly retreated, left the ward, and disappeared at the end of the hospital corridor.

When the doctors who had been trying to save him finally announced that Yoshida Hirohiro had died from "sudden malignant arrhythmia despite all efforts to save him," someone "accidentally" discovered the Kuomintang badge and the inscription on the back of the bedside table while sorting through his belongings.

When the news reached the headquarters of the Kwantung Army and the South Manchuria Railway Company, it immediately caused a huge uproar!

Colonel Yoshida Hirohiro was assassinated by agents of the Military Intelligence Bureau despite being under tight protection at the Army Hospital!
This is simply a shame!
The Mei Agency and the Special Higher Police were furious and immediately launched a large-scale internal investigation and external manhunt, with all suspicion pointing to the elusive "Military Intelligence Bureau" agents.

The news that Yoshida Yoshihiro had been assassinated by the Military Intelligence Bureau in the special care ward of the Army Hospital caused an uproar among the high-ranking Japanese and puppet regime officials, like ice water thrown into boiling oil.

This is not just a matter of losing a high-ranking official; it is the ultimate mockery of the Imperial Security Forces!
The Expeditionary Army Headquarters was furious and ordered the Mei Agency and the Special Higher Police to jointly establish a special task force to solve the case within a specified time and to bring out the hidden "Military Intelligence Bureau" agents as a warning to others.

The shockwaves caused by Yoshida Hirohiro's death within the upper echelons of the Japanese puppet regime could not be quelled by a mere conclusion of "assassination by the Military Intelligence Bureau."

The Empire's intelligence agencies are not idiots; they will not be easily lured by a badge left by a military intelligence officer.

Both the Mei Agency and the Special Higher Police agreed that the Military Intelligence Bureau had no reason to target a transportation officer.

In a sense, they should have preferred Yoshida to live, because the Empire's move against the Soviet Union would not only have diverted Chinese troops but also relieved the pressure on the Nationalist government. Why would they do something so thankless? Clearly, someone was deliberately trying to draw attention to the Military Intelligence Bureau.

Those who now have a conflict of interest with Yoshida are undoubtedly the people in the transportation department.

However, the Ministry of Transport would not target a deputy minister without a reason.

The Special Higher Police Commander, Fujita Tsuyoshi, meant that there might be a problem with what Yoshida was in charge of.

However, this claim was quickly refuted by Haruki Yoshitaka, the deputy head of the Mei Agency.

The Ume agency believes that many people in the transportation department fell ill and were sent to the hospital because Yoshida's transportation was inefficient.

In this transportation incident, Yoshida was the loser, and the Southern Transport Department had no reason to take action against a loser!
Crucially, just before the incident, Chen Yang had visited Yoshida at the Army Hospital on behalf of all his colleagues from the Transportation Department.

If we insist on saying that Minister Chen has a problem, he could have avoided it entirely. Why would he take time out of his busy schedule to visit Yoshida, thus increasing suspicion on himself?

For a time, the two sides argued endlessly.

Ultimately, the order was given by Commander Ogu Unshichi of the Shanghai Gendarmerie Headquarters.

This case will be handled jointly by the Special Higher Police and the Mei Agency.

The Special Higher Police (TAT) is responsible for reviewing Yoshida's work and material matters, while the Ume Agency is responsible for sorting out Yoshida's personal belongings, balancing public and private matters, in hopes of finding the cause.

Both sides immediately began their investigation after receiving the order.

The Special Higher Police assigned the audit task to Yoko Minamida of the Special First Division.

Nantian immediately assembled a small but highly professional special audit team, drawing on the most skilled accounting experts and experienced auditors familiar with railway operations.

Their mission was nominally to "review the work of Vice Minister Yoshida Hirohiro before his death, ensure smooth transportation connections, and identify potential management risks!"
In reality, he has extremely high authority and can access all documents from the Transportation Coordination Headquarters and related departments of the South Manchuria Railway since Yoshida took office, including receipts, records, and material allocation lists marked "Top Secret," "Confidential," or even "Military Top Secret."

The audit team’s temporary office was located in a relatively secluded wing near the Maigen Road warehouse. The windows were covered by heavy curtains, and the lights were on day and night.

Boxes and cabinets of files, dispatch logs, goods lists, and inbound/outbound vouchers were delivered in a steady stream.

The air was thick with the scent of old paper and ink, and a sense of oppressive tension. The clatter of abacuses, the scratching of pens across paper, and the low murmurs of the auditors created the dominant atmosphere.

For the first few days, the work seemed to be progressing smoothly.

As a professionally trained military officer and senior transportation expert, Yoshida Hirohiro's documents were clear in their procedures, meticulous in their annotations, and neat in their handwriting, with almost no obvious flaws.

All material applications, dispatch instructions, and wagon allocations strictly adhere to the principle of "Nomonhan priority," and all records are internally consistent.

However, Yoko Minamida is not an ordinary auditor; her own experience has given her a keen intuition and insight that goes beyond the numbers themselves.

She was not fooled by the seemingly rigorous process, but instead proposed a key auditing approach: “endpoint backtracking” and “cross-validation”.

She asked her team members not to just check the consistency between documents, but to go beyond the paper!
This will coordinate the final dispatch instructions and material lists issued by headquarters with the actual station passing records and temporary storage documents of major marshalling yards and hub nodes along the railway line, as well as the final destination...

For example, the official receipts from logistics locations such as the Hailar supply depot, the supply depots of various divisions and regiments at the front, and the field hospital warehouses were compared in three independent rounds.

Nantian's meaning is very clear: "Any perfect lie will always reveal irregular edges in the three-dimensional space composed of data."

The audit team also adhered to this principle, comparing a large amount of data...

Time continued to pass, and the Special Higher Police had made no effective progress. However, the Mei Agency was the first to discover something unusual...

The person in charge of investigating Yoshida's death is still Haruki Yoshitane, the deputy head of the Ume Agency!

As a core member of the task force, he personally led a team to conduct a thorough search of Yoshida Hirohiro's residence, a detached house located in the South Manchuria Railway senior staff dormitory area.

They hoped to find clues about Yoshida's suspicious connections with the outside world, or other traces that the murderer might have left behind.

The search was conducted meticulously yet brutally.

The bookshelves were emptied, the drawers were pulled open, and the floors and walls were tapped to check for hidden compartments.

Qingqi Qingyin stood in the center of the living room with a gloomy expression, watching his subordinates sort and inspect the items one by one.

Most of the items were befitting of a high-ranking Imperial officer and executive of the South Manchuria Railway: military books, internal South Manchuria Railway documents, some ordinary family letters, and financial records.

However, when an agent pulled an unmarked hardcover folder from the bottom shelf of the study, beneath a pile of seemingly insignificant old newspapers and magazines, Haruki Yoshitaka keenly sensed something unusual.

He stepped forward, took the folder, and opened it.

Inside were not the classified documents or records of communications with the Military Intelligence Bureau that one had expected, but several poorly printed booklets with yellowed paper, and some handwritten notes.

"The Tale of Genji, The Hirata Family Letters..."

There seemed to be nothing suspicious. Qingqi Qingyin casually flipped it open, and the next second, his pupils suddenly contracted, and even his breath caught in his throat!
He flipped through the booklet and its associated notes with incredible speed. Without exception, the handwriting on the notes, after a preliminary comparison with the letters, was confirmed to be Yoshida Hirohiro's own!
Above are some annotations and thoughts he wrote while reading. Although there are some critical remarks, they are more traces of... in-depth study and an attempt to understand!
"This... how is this possible?" Qingqi Qingyin felt a chill run from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head, and his hand holding the folder trembled slightly.

Yoshida Haruhiro, a colonel in the Imperial Japanese Army, one of the high-ranking officials in the South Manchuria Railway Headquarters, and the powerful vice minister of the Transportation Department, was secretly reading such books!

This is even more chilling than discovering his collusion with the Military Intelligence Bureau! The Military Intelligence Bureau is an enemy, but it is, after all, a clear adversary.

However, the things he possessed were always explicitly prohibited by the empire.

Hiss, he immediately realized that the seriousness of this matter far exceeded the "assassination case" itself.

This is no longer just a sabotage operation by hostile forces; it may also involve ideological infiltration and the "ideological wavering" of the internal leadership!
"Everyone! Stop the search immediately!" Qingqi Qingyin shouted sharply, his voice trembling with extreme shock and realization of the gravity of the situation.
"Seal off the scene! Everything discovered here is classified as top secret! No one is to divulge a single word without my order! Anyone who disobeys will be executed!"

"Hai!" The agents of the Mei Agency didn't know what had happened, but Qingqi Qingyin's actions themselves proved that there was something unusual about this matter!
Ignoring everyone's opinions, Haruki Yoshitane ordered his assistant, Tamura Shotaro, to immediately seal the materials, and then took them directly to the office of the Vice Minister of Transport in the Southern Region!

At this very moment, Qingqi must report to Chen Yang immediately!

The death of Yoshida Haruhiro is probably far more complex than it appears on the surface.

Could it be that he was killed by the "cleaners" inside because he was reading these things?

Was it because he came into contact with these ideas that he met his demise?
Or... his death was part of a deeper conspiracy, and the Military Intelligence Bureau's cover was just to cover up this even more unspeakable secret.
Haruki Yoshitaka felt a wave of dizziness. He didn't dare to delay and personally escorted the folder full of "forbidden books" and notes, quickly leaving Yoshida's residence.

Office of the Deputy Minister of Transportation of Southern China, Shanghai.

After a period of combined sea and land transportation, the backlog of supplies has been greatly alleviated.

Chen Yang's cooperation with the South Manchuria Railway's professional transportation team was quite good, and those people were deeply impressed by Chen Yang's abilities.

Now, they only need to follow Chen Yang's transportation plan step by step, which is not as tiring as before.

With a loud bang, the door was violently pushed open, startling Chen Yang. He looked up to see Qing Qiqingyin barging in.

"Chen Sang, something terrible has happened! Guess what I found?"

Qingqi Qingyin closed the office door behind him and placed the folder containing several notebooks and books on his desk!

"The Tale of Genji, Hirata Family Letters, these are all normal books, Haruki-kun, what's wrong with them?" Chen Yang was somewhat confused.

"Mr. Chen, please take another look!"

Chen Yang opened the book with a puzzled look on his face. What came into view was either the Tale of Genji that he remembered, or this content. Hmm, why does it look so familiar?

Wait, this can't be...

Chen Yang shuddered, as if he had grabbed a hot potato, and quickly threw the book aside.

"Haruki-kun, what did you show me? Could it be that..."

Qingqi Qingyin nodded and said, "Chen Sang, you're not mistaken, this is the one from Yan'an who personally wrote 'On Protracted War'..."

"Yoshida, Yoshida might be the problem..."

(End of this chapter)