You are ordered to support the War of Resistance against Japan; China enters Level 1 combat readines

Representative Li agreed.

He slammed the courtyard gate shut behind him, leaned against the door, and breathed heavily, repeatedly trying to justify himself in his mind.

It's not a big difference; not a single pound or ounce of grain has been lost. It's just that the new grain has been replaced with the old grain.

Anyway, grain will naturally deteriorate over time. Whether it's a few months earlier or a few months later, it's still grain that we eat. The government doesn't lose out, and neither do the people.

He repeated those words over and over again dozens of times.

In the following days, he used his authority as the person in charge of grain management to pave the way smoothly.

The entry and exit of grain depots in the south of the city depended entirely on passes signed by him. Every day, large trucks carrying grain would come and go, and when the guards saw his pass, they would at most lift the cover of the truck bed and glance at it, and then let them pass without asking any questions.

For the first two days, he was extremely worried. Every time Bai Ziqi's grain cart arrived, he would personally stand guard at the warehouse door to unload the goods, bending down to grab a handful of old grain and rubbing it repeatedly.

Seeing that it was indeed wheat that had been stored for a year, with whole grains, no sand or stones mixed in, and no mold or spoilage, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

But once the door of greed is opened, it will only grow wider and wider.

Three days later, seeing that everything was calm and no one was paying attention, he became bolder.

At first, I changed 200-300 jin a day, then gradually increased it to 500-800 jin, and later I was able to smoothly change over 1,000 jin a day.

Every evening after work, Bai Ziqi's men would punctually go around to the backyard and stuff a heavy cloth bag into his hands. The crisp sound of the silver dollars clinking inside sent shivers down one's spine.

Every night, with the door tightly closed, Representative Li would sit on the kang (a heated brick bed) and count the silver dollars one by one on the mat, counting them over and over again.

It's absurd to think about.

He was in charge of hundreds of millions of kilograms of grain, and the grain bins were piled up like small mountains; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call them mountains of gold and silver.

But for these few dollars, his heart was pounding like a drum, and he couldn't even sleep soundly.

They were farmers for generations, and they were terrified of hunger and poverty.

Representative Li never thought too deeply about what was hidden in these old grains transported from thousands of miles away.

They thought it was just those despicable merchants trying to make a profit from the price difference.

But in fact, at the deepest part of each bag of old grain, there was a waterproof oil paper package containing compressed high explosives, a time-delay fuse, and cotton wadding soaked in kerosene as ignition material.

One or two bags may seem insignificant, but when thousands of bags are mixed into twelve grain depots in batches, it's as if a giant spark has been planted in the heart of each depot.

On the evening of the seventh day, in a secluded house outside the city.

After listening to her subordinate's report, Guan Xue suddenly chuckled softly, her eyes crinkling into crescents, but a chilling coldness emanated from them.

"What did you say? That guy surnamed Li specifically instructed that the old grain obtained in the exchange be scattered and mixed into the twelve warehouses, because he was afraid that if they were piled together, the color and smell would be off and it would be easy for someone to discover it?"

"Yes, Chief, he specifically instructed us to sneak deep into the grain depot and cover it with new grain so that no one could detect it."

Guan Xue laughed even harder, tapping her fingertips lightly on the table, finding it all very amusing.

God help me too.

She was originally planning how to distribute the explosives evenly across the twelve grain depots without anyone noticing, so as not to blow up only one or two and fail to achieve the desired devastating effect.

Unexpectedly, this Representative Li personally helped her bury the bombs in the most central locations of every grain warehouse, and even took care of the cover-up work.

It's not that bad people rack their brains, it's that stupid people come up with a clever idea.

"The time is set for 2 a.m.

Guan Xue's smile vanished, and her tone suddenly turned cold.

"Notify everyone in the city to evacuate outside the city before midnight. Detonate on time."

. . .

late at night.

The city of Jiaodong was completely silent.

The sea breeze blew in from the harbor, carrying a salty, fishy smell and a faint scent of tung oil—the result of the newly applied protective paint on the shipyard construction site.

The moon was mostly obscured by clouds, and the masts of fishing boats by the dock swayed gently on the dark water.

Twelve granaries stood in the south of the city, like twelve silent behemoths.

The bluish-gray warehouse roof, covered with night dew, gleamed with a cold, hard light under the pale moon, while the wormwood at the base of the warehouse walls remained motionless.

The people in the city were all fast asleep.

The man, exhausted from a long day's work, leaned against the kang (a heated brick bed) with half a pipe in his hand. His wife blew out the kerosene lamp, and the half-pot of cornmeal porridge on the stove still held its warmth.

The broken-legged kang table was pushed to the corner of the wall. On the table were half-eaten pickled vegetable dumplings and half a coarse grain cake left for the child.

The child curled up between his parents, his little face buried in the blankets, his breathing even.

I slept very soundly.

They no longer had to worry about the Japanese soldiers banging on their doors in the middle of the night, nor about the chaos of gunfire and flashes of light. They hadn't slept so soundly in a long time.

Representative Li slept soundly tonight.

Before going to sleep, he counted the silver coins in the cloth bag again in the dark. The crisp sound of the silver coins clinking together made him feel comfortable all over. Then he carefully stuffed them into the deepest part of the kang (a heated brick bed) and moved half a brick to weigh them down.

He had already planned to stop after another half month.

As he thought about it, his eyelids grew heavy, but a slight smile remained on his lips.

Sudden--

"boom!!!"

A deafening roar suddenly shattered the tranquility of the night.

The earth trembled violently, and a blinding red light instantly shone in the south of the city, with flames shooting into the sky and illuminating half of the night sky.

boom!

boom!

boom!

The explosions went off one after another, like a string of invisible firecrackers being set off.

The whole city was trembling, the window paper was being torn apart by the blast of air, and waves of heat were hitting the city from the south.

The twelve granaries caught fire almost simultaneously, the flames illuminating the entire southern district and turning the night sky a dark red.

Dry grain sacks were perfect fuel; the rice and flour, torn apart by the explosives, flew through the blast wave and ignited instantly.

The entire grain depot area was engulfed in flames.

The acrid smell of burnt wheat mixed with the pungent smell of gunpowder drifted on the wind, filling half the city. Thick columns of black smoke billowed into the sky, completely obscuring the already dim moon.

The entire city was awakened.

The screams of women, the cries of children, and the shouts of men were all mixed together.

The female workers in the clothing factory rushed out of their dormitory, their hair all in a mess, while the migrant workers at the dock ran out of their mud-brick houses barefoot, some still holding their enamel bowls for eating, not even bothering to put on their shoes.

The emergency assembly call blared shrilly, but the fire was already too big to approach; the scorching heat could be felt even from half a street away.

Someone carrying a bucket rushed a few steps toward the warehouse but was forced back by the heatwave. The water in the bucket turned into steam before it could even be poured out.

The warehouse tiles crackled and shattered from the heat, and burning grain flowed out like a volcanic eruption, forming crimson rivers of fire on the ground.

The firefighters stood helplessly on one side of the inferno.

Representative Li was jolted awake.

He rolled off the kang (a heated brick bed), ran barefoot into the yard, saw the scarlet fire in the southern sky, and collapsed to the ground as if his bones had been removed.

He opened his mouth, and a muffled, distorted scream escaped his throat:

"Grain...granary!!"

"My food!!!"

"My precious ocean!!!"