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

When the duty officer at headquarters received the call, he thought it was a joke. A fully-equipped rest and recuperation camp, with over five hundred elite soldiers preparing to go to the Shanghai front, had been completely wiped out overnight.

The attackers also posted a note on the camp gate.

Such a thing had never happened on the battlefield of Daxia. The resistance fighters usually fired one shot and ran, bombed and then withdrew, occasionally taking down a pillbox and bragging about it for months.

This time, they targeted an entire camp, bombed it, and left a warning note afterward.

This level of arrogance goes beyond the scope of guerrillas and scattered soldiers.

The duty officer wrote down the contents of the note word for word and then delivered it to Commander Ōfuji's desk overnight.

Ofuji was tall and thin, with graying temples and wrinkles on his face that looked as if they had been carved with a knife.

He held the note and looked at it for a long time, then asked the staff officer next to him what it meant.

The staff officer was silent for a few seconds, then carefully explained, "If you dare to slaughter the people of Great Xia again, the next camp will be your family quarters." The attackers were responding to the Imperial Army's previous retaliatory massacre of civilians in the capital.

Ofuji Makoto didn't say anything. He placed the note on the table, picked up his pipe, took a puff, and the smoke slowly rose in the lamplight.

He certainly remembered those retaliatory massacres. After the fall of Beijing, in order to deter resistance fighters, the Imperial Army had publicly executed some so-called "traitors" in several city blocks.

Those executions were carried out without any legal process; they simply dragged people to the street, made them kneel down, and then stabbed them with bayonets.

He naturally felt that this was war, and war requires necessary measures. Now, someone is settling scores, not on the soldiers who directly participated in the massacre, but on the families in the rear.

Ōfuji tapped his pipe on the table and then issued an order: From this day forward, all retaliatory actions against civilians must be approved by a commander at the regimental level or above, and civilians must not be executed without authorization.

The staff officer paused for a moment, wanting to ask why, but swallowed his words after seeing Fujima's expression.

Ofuji Makoto didn't explain. He simply folded the note, put it in the drawer, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

There was nothing we could do; the other side's retaliation was too ruthless. Actually, retaliation itself was one thing, but the key point was that, how should I put it, the other side still had the capability.

That's what's fatal.

The news reached Sasaki's ears at nine o'clock the next morning.

The expression on Suzuki's face when he walked into his office with the telegram was even more unpleasant than when he heard the news of Yagyu Kazuo's death.

Sasaki took the telegram, read it once, and then sat in his chair in silence for a long time.

The intelligence report contained only a few lines: The 3rd Division's rest camp outside the city was attacked last night, resulting in over 500 deaths and the camp being burned down. The attackers left a warning note on the camp gate. The note's contents have been reported to military headquarters. Military headquarters has ordered a halt to retaliatory actions against civilians.

Sasaki placed the telegram on the table, picked up his cigarette case, took one out and put it in his mouth, striking the match a beat slower than usual. He took a drag and then asked Suzuki, "How many attackers were there?"

Suzuki said he didn't know; there were no eyewitnesses. All five hundred-plus people in the entire camp were killed; not a single survivor was left.

"Where's the weapon? Were there any traces of it at the scene?" Sasaki asked.

"Hand grenades. A lot of hand grenades, and spent cartridges from Type 91 machine guns." Suzuki paused. "Most of the shrapnel the forensic pathologists took from the bodies were fragments of Daxia hand grenades. Those Type 91 machine guns were also ours."

Homemade grenades, Imperial Army's Type 96 machine guns—yet another attacker who used the enemy's own methods against them.

The attack was exactly the same as the ambush at Yamaguchi, Kyoto Park, and Kyoshu Park. The attackers used Imperial Army weapons to fight Imperial Army troops, and then ran away, scattering leaflets and sticking notes as they fled.

Sasaki stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, stood up, walked to the map, and stared at the location of the stubble field on the outskirts of Beijing for a long time.

Five hundred men, a fully organized camp, were an elite force preparing to go to the front lines of the Battle of Shanghai.

These men went to Shanghai and could have killed at least several thousand elite regular troops of the Great Xia army, but while they were resting outside the city, they were all wiped out overnight.

Sasaki tapped his finger on the map, then turned to Suzuki and asked, "What exactly did the note say?"

"If you dare to slaughter the people of Great Xia again, the next camp will be your family quarters." Suzuki repeated the contents of the note, his tone even more somber than usual.

Sasaki fell silent after hearing this.

Then, leaning back in my chair, I felt my head start to hurt again.

At the same time, the order from the Beijing Command began to be relayed to various strongholds in Beijing.

The Japanese soldiers reacted in much the same way wherever the news reached.

First came shock, then anger, and finally silence.

For the first time, they realized that the people of the Great Xia Dynasty were not people they could kill at will.

If you can kill his people, he can find out where your home is.

This note changed a rule of war, a rule not written in the treaty, but written in the instincts of the survivors.

When the Japanese soldiers patrolled the streets, the way they looked at the Daxia people walking briskly along the walls changed.

Before, they looked at their prey with the same eyes; now they look at their neighbors with the same eyes.

It's not that I've had a change of heart, it's that I've started to feel afraid.

He feared that one night, his wife, children, and elderly parents might be killed in bed by a grenade that fell from the sky.

This fear was more effective than any moral preaching, because He Dajun didn't try to reason with them.

He Dajun directly shattered reason into shreds right in front of them, making them pick up the shreds one by one and swallow them.

That afternoon, Lou Bancheng also received the news. The steward's voice trembled as he reported that a Japanese camp outside the city had been wiped out, with over five hundred dead.

A note was also posted on the camp gate, warning the Japanese soldiers not to massacre civilians anymore.

Lou Bancheng stood by the study window, holding a cup of cold Longjing tea in his hand, the cup hovering at his lips for a long time without drinking it.

He recalled what He Dajun had said to him in the study a few days earlier: "I will lead people to bomb it again."

At the time, he thought that when He Dajun said "bring people," he meant bringing a few accomplices to carry out a small-scale sneak attack.

Now he understood that "bringing people" did not mean launching a small-scale ambush, but rather mobilizing at least a thousand people, or even more, to carry out an ambush.

"We actually have so many elite troops here in Beijing!" Lou Bancheng was overjoyed.

He then placed the teacup on the windowsill, walked back to his desk, sat down, took out the thin notebook from the drawer, and turned to the last page.

The journal already has several pages filled with details: the first bombing of the steel mill, the second of Jingxi Park, the third ambush at the mountain pass, the fourth of Jingzhou Park, the fifth bombing of the new machine and ammunition depot, the sixth of Yagyu Kazuo, and the seventh of the camp outside the city.

Each move landed on a different spot, but each step caused the darkness in this fallen city to recede a little.

Lou Bancheng picked up his pen and added another line below Yagyu Kazuo's entry: "Eighth operation, night raid on the camp outside the city, annihilation of 500 enemy soldiers, leaving a note as a warning. The Japanese military headquarters has ordered a halt to retaliatory actions against civilians."

He put the journal back in the drawer and locked it, leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh, and then smiled.

The richest man in Daxia was being protected by a traitor in the occupied territory. What kind of nonsense is this?

Of course, it was still a secret code.