Courtyard House: I only wiped out 30,000 Japanese pirates

Sasaki sat in his office for the entire morning.

The ashtray was overflowing again, the tea had gone cold and no one was changing it, and the windows were closed.

Sunlight squeezed in through the gaps in the curtains, cutting a thin strip of light across the floor, within which tiny dust particles silently churned.

He sat there beside the light, motionless, like a stone statue forgotten in a corner.

The map of Beijing on the wall was covered with his drawings.

The steel mill, Jingxi Park, the mountain pass ambush point, Jingzhou Park—every place circled in red represents an attack, and each attack is like a slap in the face.

Now there's another ring road. On the street right outside the factory gate, the wreckage of Kazuo Yagyu's jeep has been towed away for a week, and the scorch marks from the explosion are still visible on the road.

The phone on the table rang several times, but he didn't answer it once.

One of the calls was from the military headquarters, but Suzuki blocked it for him outside, saying that Major Sasaki was holding a war council meeting.

In reality, Sasaki simply sat there, staring at the red circles on the map, as if he were looking at a game of chess that had reached a dead end.

For Kazuo Yagyu, the death of Yagyu was not just the death of a Special Higher Police chief.

Yagyu Kazuo was his sharpest blade in Beijing, but it was broken before it could even be drawn. The way it was broken was brutal yet precise.

A grenade was thrown into the back seat of a jeep. Of the three people inside, two died instantly, and the other is still lying in the hospital unable to speak coherently.

What kind of attacker could accurately throw a grenade into a moving jeep on the street in front of the factory?

Either they were incredibly lucky, or they knew this road like the back of their hand.

Sasaki doesn't believe in luck.

He had seen too many lucky people in his life, none of whom survived to the end.

He stood up, walked to the window, and drew back the curtains, revealing the factory area.

Workers were busy on the ruins. The sounds of hammering and shoveling stones came through the glass, muffled, like someone beating a broken drum from afar.

Sasaki thought of He Dajun again. He Dajun's two major schemes were progressing well.

It is very likely to have a significant effect.

That's why Sasaki was worried that the rebels might resort to desperate measures and attempt an assassination.

In this situation, it's best to give the rebels a chance to escape.

Encircle without attacking, deliberately leaving an opening, is a common occurrence on the battlefield.

Now Sasaki is preparing to do the same.

This is actually related to Sasaki's pride; he also wanted to find a better solution than to rely on He Dajun.

Thinking this, Sasaki tapped his fingers lightly on the windowsill, one tap at a time.

……

Similarly, He Dajun was also working very hard.

He then brought out all five hundred puppet troops.

More than 500 people were divided into ten squadrons, each responsible for a certain area, and they searched house to house starting from the upper district.

Moreover, they conduct repeated searches; they search today, and they might search again tomorrow.

In this way, the scale of the operation was even greater than when the Japanese themselves conducted the search.

This shows that you have the right attitude, and the results are actually quite good.

He Dajun gave each company commander the same instructions: the more thorough the search, the better. Bring all suspicious persons back to the courtyard for interrogation. But there is one rule: no private torture or robbing of civilians is allowed. Violators will be dealt with according to military law.

The second half of this sentence was meant for Sasaki's spies planted in the team, while the first half was meant for his own people.

After listening, Liu Haizhong nodded vigorously, his back straighter than ever before. He then turned and led his men into the innermost courtyard house in Nanluoguxiang.

This is my third time visiting this courtyard house.

It's estimated that the residents of these courtyard houses wish they could kill Liu Haizhong and his gang.

These days, He Dajun has been patrolling back and forth between the various search areas, leaning on a wooden stick, his expression both serious and diligent.

Wherever he went, the people lowered their heads, not daring to look at him. Someone muttered "lackey" under their breath, but was quickly silenced by someone pulling on their sleeve.

He Dajun heard this but didn't react. He just kept walking forward with his cane, without even stopping.

He's Sasaki's most loyal dog now; what's there to get angry about when a dog gets scolded?

Furthermore, the harsher these people's insults were, the more Sasaki's spies felt that He Dajun was not on the same page as the common people.

The more securely the dog skin is worn, the better.

On this day, He Dajun arrested five more suspects and handed them over to the Japanese immediately.

Sasaki flipped through the densely written account book, his expression shifting from exhaustion to surprise, and then from surprise to a degree of satisfaction.

He didn't expect He Dajun to be able to capture so many people, and he didn't expect He Dajun to record the confessions in such detail. Every question was recorded, and every clue was marked as verified.

"He Dajun, you're quick." Sasaki closed the ledger and looked up at him.

He Dajun bowed, his face bearing the standard respectful expression, his voice tinged with fatigue but mostly with satisfaction: "I dare not neglect the task assigned by the commander."

……

At the same time, it wasn't just the Japanese who were taking action, it wasn't just He Dajun who was taking action, the underground Communist Party was also taking action, and the Kuomintang was also taking action.

Soon, Old Yang delivered intelligence that the Japanese were deliberately letting people leave.

Sensing this was a trap, He Dajun acknowledged that this was clearly a case of alerting the enemy.

Another piece of information came from the Guo Party: it was Donglai, the little girl that He Dajun had let go that day.

The note contained only a few lines of text, but it was packed with information.

Twenty miles outside the city, north of the Jingxi Highway, there was a temporary camp of Japanese soldiers. It housed about five hundred elite soldiers who had withdrawn from the Songhu direction for rest and reorganization, belonging to the Japanese 3rd Division.

The camp was surrounded by simple fortifications and barbed wire, but there were no heavy artillery pieces, only machine guns and light armored vehicles.

The Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (CBIS) believed that this might be the Japanese preparing to reinforce the Battle of Shanghai. The reason was that the Japanese navy and army had a conflict, and now the army was worried that its strength was not enough.

Bai Ling asked him if he was going.

He Dajun said he wouldn't go.

Bai Ling was taken aback, thinking he didn't believe the information.

He Dajun smiled at her puzzled expression and said it wasn't that he didn't want to go, but that he couldn't go right away.

Wait two days. This group of Japanese soldiers is preparing to leave, probably still handling logistics or something. The security will definitely be at its tightest. We'll go after they feel it's safe outside the city and that the Great Xia Resistance Army is only active inside the city.

"That way, it'll be even more fun when it explodes."

Bai Ling looked at the slight smile on his lips and knew that he was already calculating the time in his mind.

Two days later, in the early morning, He Dajun came out of the side room, climbed over the courtyard wall and landed in the alley.

He changed into a Japanese military uniform he had redeemed through the system. It was made of coarse yellow-green cloth, and his military boots were the standard Showa 5 style, with leather soles that crunched on the gravel.

He moved quickly through the dark alleys, bypassing all the checkpoints, then stole a motorcycle, rode for a while, and left immediately, taking a route he knew well before leaving the city.

The air outside the city is more comfortable than inside. The wild grass on the ridges of the fields is covered with night dew, making it wet to walk on.

The camp was set up on an open area on the north side of the Jingxi Highway, surrounded by stubble fields left after the harvest, offering a wide view.

The Japanese chose this location with good reason. There was no terrain around to hide in, and the stubble field was as flat as a tabletop. Anyone who approached within 200 meters of the camp would be spotted by the sentries.

A wire fence was strung around the perimeter of the camp, with makeshift alarms made from empty tin cans hanging on it.

At each of the four corners of the camp stood a wooden watchtower, with searchlights mounted on them, their pale beams sweeping back and forth across the ground.

Sandbag fortifications were piled up on both sides of the camp gate, and two Type 92 heavy machine guns were mounted behind the sandbags.

He Dajun lay down behind a field ridge and counted the number of people in the camp by taking advantage of the gaps in the searchlight.

The intelligence from the Kuomintang was correct; there were about 500 people preparing to withdraw to the Shanghai-Nanjing front. They were resting and preparing for logistical support.

These Japanese soldiers were different from those he had killed in Beijing; they smelled like they had just crawled out of a pile of corpses.

These are the elite.