Chapter Thirty-Two: The Small Island

  As soon as the door opened, Cai Lingyu suddenly sat up from bed, her upper body straightened, and her thin clothes were tightly attached to her delicate body, which was soaked in cold sweat. As she panted with her chest rising and falling, it even more set off her slender figure. She looked at us with a terrified expression, her hair disheveled and her face full of fear.

  She came back to her senses in an instant, found herself tightly bound hand and foot, calmed down immediately, and said to us: "What do you want?"

  "Alas, you were once a noble person, how did you end up as a thief?" I sighed.

  "Cai Lingyu, you traitorous woman, actually colluding with the Japanese!" Xu Lai cursed as he began to undo his belt: "I'll strip your clothes off and let the brothers have a good time! Serving the brothers well is also a great achievement, atoning for the country's sins. Maybe I can even leave your corpse intact!"

  "It's also too shameless." I thought to myself, isn't Xu Lai's righteous words just for that thing?

  "What Xu Lai said is not bad, mother's, hehehe, I've been holding back for a long time." Nie Kun's old face was full of lewd smiles, and he also followed suit to undo his belt.

  I really couldn't bear it anymore, and hastily blocked the two thugs: "Wait a minute, we haven't interrogated them yet!"

  "Screw it, just execute him on the spot." Xu spat a wad of phlegm into his palm and rubbed it in, drooling.

  "Speak up, old corpse." I looked at the two rascals and couldn't take it anymore, so I sought help from the old eunuch. He grunted and said, "What's there to say? Are you mocking me for being unable to do anything?"

  What kind of people are these? As soon as they see a beautiful girl, they forget about the main issue.

  At this time, Cai Lingyu smiled.

  "Hmm, it seems this girl has resigned herself to her fate, haha, give me another smile." Xu said with a lewd grin, licking his lips.

  Cai Lingyu coldly said: "If you dare to come near, I will bite my tongue and die."

  Seeing her tone was extremely resolute, Xu Lai's face sank, but Nie Kun said with a big smile: "It doesn't matter, even if we die." We all looked at him in shock, and he realized his mistake, hurriedly waving his hand: "Don't take it seriously, I was just scaring her."

  We have unconsciously drifted apart from him.

  "Haha, a bunch of rabble, I didn't think I'd fall into your hands." Cai Lingyu's heroic face flashed with regret, and then her eyes narrowed, coldly laughing: "But even if I die, you won't live either. The Taiping wheel is equipped with timed bombs, only I know where they are, once I'm dead, you'll be buried with me."

  "You're cheating!" We were shocked and our first reaction was that this woman was trying to swindle us.

  "What's the time now?" asked Cai Lingyu very calmly.

  I looked at my watch: "Five o'clock in the evening."

  "Heh heh, in 24 hours, the Golden China Wheel will explode, believe it or not. Cai Lingyu smiled disdainfully and continued without waiting for our response: "When we made the plan, to prevent accidents from causing the mission to fail, we also prepared a backup plan. That is, either I or anyone else can delay the Golden China Wheel's entry into port, wait in the designated waters for the timed bomb to explode, and let the enemy, treasure, and all passengers sink with the Golden China Wheel to the bottom of the sea. This way, those who arrive at the scene first to salvage will definitely be our people."

  "There are hundreds of innocent lives on the ship!" I roared.

  Cai Lingyu furrowed her brow, turned her face away so that her expression couldn't be seen, and only heard her say in a low voice: "This is all because of you guys forcing me. However, as long as you don't move, let me go, I'll tell you where the timed bomb is hidden before I leave. After all, no one wants to die."

  The four of us fell silent for a moment.

  Nie Kun was the first to ask: "What makes us believe you!"

  I'm going to translate it for you:

  "My secret's out, Niekun this idiot, with what you just said, no matter how hard your tone is, it shows that you've spilled the beans. Clearly tell Cailiuyu we believe her words now."

  As expected, Cai Lingyu's mouth corners slightly rose upon hearing this, revealing a sly smile. To be honest, her smile gave us a somewhat snake-like beauty feeling.

  No matter how we threatened her, Cai Lingyu refused to utter another word. And whenever we approached her, she would make a gesture of biting her tongue, which really intimidated us.

  We've been stuck here for over ten minutes, I stamped my foot: "You scoundrel, go out and discuss it again."

  We left Cai Lingyu's room with a huff, returning to our original place. Several people looked at each other, their expressions indescribably wonderful. Especially Nie Kun and Xu Lai, those two lechers, the evil fire in their lower abdomen was stirred up but had nowhere to vent, their faces were red with suffocation, and they kept cursing in their mouths.

  "If I had known she would bite her tongue and kill herself, I should have stuffed her mouth earlier!" Xu Lai gritted his teeth and said.

  "Hmph, we're going to interrogate her, not give her a chance to speak freely, there's no difference." I said impatiently, glaring at the two of them: "Look, you were so anxious just now, and things have ended up like this because of your fault. Now, forget it, don't even think about getting any information out of her mouth!"

  "Is what those women said true?" Nie Kun was visibly uncertain.

  "It's better to believe it exists than not. Now we ourselves don't know where we are, even if we escape on a life raft, the vast ocean, one wave comes and we'll feed the fish together. I dare not take risks." I utilized my police expertise, lit a cigarette, and calmly analyzed: "Cai Lingyu has already handed over all the treasures, in principle, her mission is over, and she's lost her usefulness. The key is that now the Golden Flower ship is nowhere to be found, Cai Lingyu herself doesn't know either, her behind-the-scenes forces can't possibly come to rescue her. To save her life, she can only cooperate with us. So what she says has a certain degree of credibility."

  However, she may also be lying. I changed my tone and continued: "From the police training I've done, fake threats are a type of extortion. Why did she say it would explode 24 hours later, rather than 10 hours or 48 hours? Because from a psychological perspective, 24 hours is just the right amount of time for a normal person to go through stages of disbelief, hesitation, belief, fear, doubt, and then belief again - it's the golden time for being deceived. If the time is too short, a normal person will be at a loss and do something stupid; if the time is too long, they'll have more doubts and think of ways to respond. So if Cai Lingyu is lying, she's taking a huge gamble - betting that we'll believe the Golden Dragon will sink in 24 hours!

  "Or... let her go, anyway, with or without her, it has nothing to do with us." Xu Lai and Nie Kun said in unison.

  I also had this idea, it's an unequal gamble. If we win the bet, Cai Lingyu will kill herself, and if we lose, Jin Hua Lun will be gone, and so will we.

  But just letting her go like this, we old men are not willing to be played by a woman.

  "Master Di, can you use the 'pointing at the acupuncture points' technique? You know, the one where you just touch a certain point with your finger and Cai Lingyu won't be able to bite her tongue anymore, and then we can use severe torture to force her to tell the truth?" Xu Lai suddenly had an idea and asked the clever old coroner for guidance.

  The old eunuch put on a pair of black sunglasses and said to Xu Lai with a serious tone: "Youngster, why didn't you ask me if I can fly swords? With just a point of my sword, I can bring you Chiang Kai-shek's head from a thousand miles away."

  "Are you kidding me?" Xu Lai's cheap mouth asked, and was immediately poked by the old eunuch's embroidered needle, letting out a loud cry.

  After some discussion, we decided to cool down Cai Lingyu first and play a psychological warfare.

  Cai Lingyu was difficult to deal with, but Xie Lao San was surprisingly cooperative. Xie Lao San answered whatever he was asked, and according to his account, he had joined the Japanese-planned operation purely for the money. The Japanese had given him 10,000 dollars, asking him to risk his life as a double agent. Xie Lao San's greed got the better of him, and after some struggle, he agreed. Moreover, he originally had ties with the Green Gang, making him the perfect candidate for this spy role.

  Xie Lao San said everything, and it sounds like there's no flaw. But I always feel that this bastard is deliberately hiding something, my intuition tells me that he must be lying somewhere. However, under severe torture, he only has this to say, and I have no way to deal with him.

  As for Zhang Jue, also known as Japanese Sakai Takayuki, it's a bit of trouble, but only slightly.

  The old corpse walked out of the room with a cruel smile on his face: "This devil's mouth is quite hard, but I'm good at dealing with hard cases! Hehe, I took out an embroidery needle to prick his catheter, and before it even touched him, he fainted. Hahaha..."

  "How did you manage to get yourself tied up like this?" I asked in surprise.

  The old corpse sneered coldly: "Foolish, it's precisely because I couldn't see him that he was scared stupid, hahaha..."

  I felt a chill run down my spine, it seemed that this old eunuch had also thought of doing the same to me before, fortunately I was lucky and escaped by a hair's breadth.

  From the confession of Ryūsaku Sakai, we learned that the code name of this mysterious organization is called "Qianlong Troop". It was secretly organized by a Japanese war criminal who escaped from the Tokyo trial. The backbone members were all young military officers who absolutely obeyed the original emperor and had extremely extreme ideas. Each of them was fluent in Chinese like Ryūsaku Sakai, familiar with Chinese customs, secretly hiding on the mainland and Taiwan disguised as Chinese people, secretly developing residual forces, and engaging in some extreme tasks. According to Ryūsaku Sakai's introduction, his troop was just a branch, and there were many other branches of Qianlong Troop that existed like his. He had no contact with other branches at ordinary times, and the organization's orders were all transmitted through a liaison officer. This liaison officer was directly responsible to the highest level of Qianlong Troop.

  The contact person in Sakai Takayuki's mouth was Cai Lingyu!

  The question has again entered a dead end, and the clue has been cut off once more. It seems that we can only pry open Cai Lingyu's mouth to obtain further information.

  Next, we turned over the huge golden wheel, but still couldn't find any trace of a time bomb.

  In anxiety and helplessness, ten hours passed. The Jin Hua ship had completely lost its way. We could only judge the direction by the rising and falling of the sun.

  The surrounding fog swirled around, and the line of sight was all blue ocean, calm and deep, but unable to calm our hearts. The unknown sea area hid what kind of danger.

  This time it's my turn to monitor the helm control room, sitting in the captain's chair, I'm thinking anxiously. Looking forward to becoming an officer after arriving in Taiwan, worried that a slight mistake will lead to death at sea. Under the impact of complex emotions, I couldn't help but smile bitterly. Before long, I felt very tired, my eyelids drooping, extremely sleepy.

  After about half an hour, a sailor shouted.

  "What's going on?"

  "Land ahead! Land ahead!" The three sailors pointed in unison towards the mist-shrouded distance.

  I felt a sudden thrill, hastily stood up and picked up the binoculars to take a look. What entered my eyes was a small island that was neither big nor small, with several seagulls flying back and forth in the air above it.

  What surprised me most was that a vague outline of a tower-shaped building suddenly emerged from the cliff on the island!

  "It's a lighthouse! This isn't an uninhabited island, we're saved!" I was overjoyed and burst into tears.