Chapter 27

  "In fact, I am an undercover", Li Tie continued.

  "Since last year, I have been carrying out missions in this area according to the instructions of the Army General Headquarters. Recently, however, the Eighth Route Army's activities have become rampant in this area. First, an entire outpost of Imperial troops was poisoned, and then the Sakura King Special Forces squad mysteriously disappeared, probably all sacrificing themselves for the Empire. The Army General Headquarters suspects that there must be a main force unit of the Eighth Route Army operating in this area, so I was sent to infiltrate the Eighth Route Army and thoroughly investigate the causes and consequences of these incidents."

  "I have now approached the core position of this Eighth Route. The Empire has paid a heavy price for this, and it is estimated that after some time, I will likely come into contact with the main force of the Eighth Route."

  "But your arrival has basically disrupted my deployment! And now, Captain Zhao has already suspected you, and you need to take a necessary action to prove your innocence."

  Li Tie said that Wang Jia's victory was 80% true and 20% false. Completely fake words can't deceive people, only when most of it is true, with one or two occasional false sentences, can make people confused.

  。

  Wang Jia Sheng seemed to have completely believed that the person in front of him was indeed the legendary Sakura Ou-sama, so he showed great respect and courtesy towards him.

  "Reporting to Sakura ōkoku-sama, we are under the command of Watanabe Chūsa from the county town. Recently, the Ryūjin train station was attacked by a mysterious weapon of the Eighth Route Army, resulting in heavy losses for our side. After Watanabe Chūsa's sweep, no main force or base of the Eighth Route Army was found in the vicinity. Therefore, Watanabe Chūsa is puzzled about this situation. Coincidentally, the Tōkai County Brigade annihilated a guerrilla unit of the Eighth Route Army, and all personnel were eliminated. So, I was ordered to lead a small squad, disguised as that guerrilla unit, to operate in this area and see if we could find any leads on the Eighth Route Army. Unexpectedly, we encountered Sakura ōkoku-sama, and I apologize for the intrusion. Please take care of us, sir." Another bow.

  "I'm telling you for the last time, in special circumstances, do not use your native language, or else you will die miserably. Now your main task is to stand firm and not let others get a handle on you."

  "I now know that this 8th Route Army has not only this camp, but also an arsenal. I estimate that the weapons used in the last raid on Liu Town railway station came from this secret arsenal. However, for some reason, I don't have the authority to know more about it yet. The arsenal is top-secret."

  "Ah, Arsenal?"

  Wang Jia Sheng was completely stunned. When did a small district team have an arsenal? This is too exaggerated!

  "Hai! Don't worry, we won't bring shame to the Empire."

  "Alright then, suit yourself."

  Li Tie finished speaking and turned around to leave.

  As Li Tie's figure disappeared into the distance, a thoughtful expression appeared on Wang Jia Sheng's face.

  This small team has its own way of contacting the superior, and for today's matter, Wang Jia Sheng will definitely ask Watanabe for proof. The information provided by Li Tie today will also be reported to Watanabe together with Wang Jia Sheng. As for what Li Tie said, Wang Jia Sheng asked Lieutenant Commander Watanabe to send someone to cooperate with the key action.

  Li Tie returned from Wang Jia Sheng's place and went straight to the office of Er Gou District Captain. When he told him about today's situation, Er Gouzi immediately got furious, pulled out a pistol and wanted to call people to capture those little devils and kill them.

  Li Tie finally calmed down Er Gouzi after a lot of effort. Then, he whispered something in Er Gouzi's ear, and eventually, the team leader's face turned around, revealing a hint of a smile.

  。

  "Alright, alright, you go and have fun then. Anyway, I'm not good at playing tricks on people, but be careful, don't get fooled by those little rascals."

  "Don't worry, I'm just playing a trick on him, he won't be tricked, so you can rest assured."

  When Li Tie returned to his dormitory, he arranged for the team members monitoring Wang Jia Sheng to report back to him. Wang Jia Sheng and another person did not leave their dormitory for an entire afternoon, but as night began to fall, the other person went to a tree on the mountain slope in front of them and placed something inside a hole in the tree. In order not to alert anyone, they did not disturb this person or touch what was inside the tree hole. They only sent someone to secretly observe who would come to make contact.

  In order to facilitate Li Tie's return, the district team specially reserved a single-person dormitory for him, which is not available to other small team leaders.

  Li Tie told everyone not to worry, everything has its own arrangement, let them take the lead first, all personnel from the temporary seventh squad next to each team must be closely monitored, ensuring they are under their control 24 hours a day.

  Wang Jia Sheng's sent-out intelligence, apart from asking Watanabe to confirm the identity of Sakura ō, also had an important item, that is, requesting Watanabe to send someone to cooperate with himself in performing a play, to move Zhao Er Gou's heart, dispel his doubts, and let himself first stand firm on this land, then at the right time, inside and outside, one move to eliminate all these bandits.

  Soon after, in a few days, Wang Jia Sheng received a reply from Watanabe in the same tree hole.

  Although Wang Jia Sheng sent someone to gather intelligence, he was being very careful and looking around everywhere, afraid of being seen by others. However, what he didn't know was that not far from the tree cave, on a big tree, there was a large magpie nest, which was bigger than usual, perhaps due to its age. Anyway, it was particularly large. And in this magpie nest, at this moment, a small figure was crouching, wearing a grass hat made of twigs, and from the gap between the branches on the edge of the nest, he was smiling and watching this person's clumsy performance, as if watching a clown.

  The person gathering intelligence pretended to urinate under the tree, holding up his pants and looking around. Seeing no one nearby, he quickly pulled out a small object and hid it in his waistband. After checking again that no one was watching, he turned back in the direction he came from. Meanwhile, a small figure agilely descended from the bird's nest in the tree and swiftly disappeared into the grass thicket.

  Originally, there was a special team in the district team's formation responsible for intelligence work. However, Li Tie set up another intelligence group within his own team to secretly gather intelligence. Lao Bao's team had a clear formation and task within the district team, so it was considered aboveboard. In contrast, Li Tie's group belonged only to Li Tie and was answerable only to him, making it an underground operation.

  This clarity and obscurity, mutual communication of existence and non-existence, verifies intelligence and invisibly increases the accuracy of intelligence.

  When the person who obtained intelligence in Wangjia returned to his residence, a small figure also arrived at Li Tie's dormitory and office. It was Li Qian, the head of the intelligence department of the Fox Team, known as "Sai Shi Qian". He reported everything he saw in the bird's nest on the tree just now to Li Tie, and handed him a small piece of paper.

  Actually, not all the bird nests on that tree were made by magpies. The magpie only made a small nest, but since this place was taken over by Li Qian, he occupied the bird's nest and artificially enlarged it to make himself fit in. By the way, Li Qian weighs about 70-80 kilograms, so his bird's nest doesn't need to be very big. So, members of the intelligence team take turns keeping watch in the bird's nest every day. Today just happens to be Li Qian's turn, so he gets to watch the clown performance for a while.

  Don't look at Li Qian as illiterate, but he can paint. He can draw what he sees with basic similarity, especially some line drawings, which are almost identical. After Li Tie discovered his strengths and praised him highly, he took the time to teach him to read and write. Since Li Qian was indeed clever, he soon learned to read books and newspapers, although he didn't recognize all the characters, but basically understood the meaning.

  Originally, with Li's exceptional memory, he didn't need to copy down the intelligence, but when he took it out from the tree hole, he was stunned - everything was in Japanese characters, which he couldn't recognize at all. How could he memorize them? Fortunately, the pencil lead that could recognize characters was still in his pocket, along with a piece of paper. The pencil lead was used for studying, and the paper was something he had asked Li Tie for, just in case he needed to jot down something. So, he carefully drew everything down, imitating the original. As it usually happens when someone writes Japanese characters for the first time, they tend to make mistakes, but since Li didn't recognize any of them, he copied everything down, big and small, without missing a single character. He even changed lines in the same places as the original, who knows if this was some kind of cryptic poem?

  Li Tie took it over and looked at it, the basic meaning is as follows:

  The Sakura King matter involves imperial secrets and requires caution. For the time being, I, Nakasa, cannot confirm it and need to wait for confirmation from the Army General Headquarters. Since this person already knows about the Sakura King special forces team, if he is one of us, then he must be a high-ranking official; otherwise, there must be a connection between him and the disappearance of the Sakura King special forces team. Also, regarding the request for cooperation, it can be carried out soon, please pay attention to your actions.

  Li Tie was overjoyed, hahaha, he casually came up with a code name and didn't expect it to be real, and it might even be the enemy's secret agent. Taking advantage of the fact that the devils haven't suspected him yet, he must show off more. Heh heh.

  Sure, here is the translation:

  "Sure enough, three days later, the Er Gou District team leader received intelligence that the devils might be planning to conduct a small-scale sweep around the base area recently. It's called a small-scale operation only because there are very few devils going out this time, just one squad of devils plus one company of puppet troops."

  And there are no heavy weapons, not even a grenade launcher - this is the intelligence provided by the local guerrilla team, as the sweeping devils and puppet troops have already begun to gather and will soon set out, and it's possible that they're already on their way.

  Li Tie understood that this was Watanabe's plan to cooperate with Wang Jia Sheng's action. Since that's the case, then we'll just play along with them.

  At the pre-war mobilization meeting attended by all squad leaders convened by Er Gou District Captain, except for Zhang Dazhu from the artillery squad, all other squad leaders were present. At the mobilization meeting, Er Gou District Captain briefly introduced the situation of the devils and puppet troops to be swept this time, requiring everyone to take the enemy seriously in their thinking.

  After the introduction of the Er Gou district team leader, just as he was about to solicit everyone's opinions, Wang team leader from the temporarily formed seventh squad stood up, saluted everyone, and began his speech:

  "District Captain, all captains, our temporarily formed 7th squad has just arrived at the base. We haven't made any contributions yet. I sincerely hope that District Captain can give us an opportunity to let us go and meet this enemy army (he didn't say 'little devils', but replaced it with 'enemy army', everyone usually calls the enemy army 'little devils'). Let's consider it as our gift for joining the Eighth Route Army."

  Li Tie gave Er Gou District Captain a wink, and Er Gou District Captain understood.

  "Alright, since this little devil doesn't know what medicine he's taken and dares to come sweeping with just a few people, it's really infuriating. This time, the Seventh Squad will take care of it. Be careful on the road, we're waiting for your good news. Dismissed."

  Captain Wang left in high spirits after seeing the successful completion of the task.

  And the other team leaders, except for Li Tie, were all confused and bewildered. What kind of meeting is this? Why doesn't it have anything to do with us? And even if they did send the seventh team, shouldn't they at least resupply their ammunition? It doesn't seem like they're going to fight, but rather go on a tour. Are they supposed to be careful on the road, but not on the battlefield?

  Seeing Captain Wang leave, Er Gou District Captain said to everyone:

  "Today's meeting, all contents are top secret! No recording is allowed! No disclosure to outsiders is allowed! In addition, everyone should be prepared for battle at all times after returning home. Guard against devils! Guard against traitors! Guard against the Temporary Seventh Squad! And remember, today's entire content is top secret! Top secret!!! Everyone go back and prepare!"

  Seeing the captain of the second dog district repeatedly asking for confidentiality and emphasizing it, and requiring everyone to guard against the seventh small team, it seems that this seventh step team really has a problem. This time, going out on a mission may indeed be just an accident on the road, such as spraining or straining one's neck, and other "serious injuries".