Chapter 53
Four people were still struggling to load the boxes one by one onto the carriage. Soon, they filled up two carriages. Everyone was exhausted and sweating profusely, but before they could even wipe their sweat, the devils immediately chased them away with bayonets, then hammered lead seals on the doors of the carriages, sealing them shut.
Due to the strict guard of the devils, Wang Erlang was unable to find out what this thing was loaded with. But judging from the degree of importance attached by the devils, it can be confirmed that it is a relatively valuable thing, at least for the devils.
Wang Erlong immediately reported this situation to the underground party organization. Soon, the news reached Li Tie's desk.
Adhering to the principle of "what the enemy values, we must value too", Li Tie decided to rob this train to see what it was that made the devils attach such importance to it.
Because the railways in the occupied areas were all controlled by the devils, important material transportation relied on these railways, so the railway guerrilla teams emerged. Almost every railway line had the shadow of the railway guerrilla team. They climbed onto trains as if they were walking on flat ground. Of course, one main reason was that the speed of trains in this era was generally slower, with the fastest being around 40-50 km/h, so it was easy to climb aboard. Now imagine modern trains, which often run at speeds of over 100 km/h, or even several hundred km/h. Try climbing onto one? You wouldn't even get close to the train before being blown away by the wind generated by its movement.
These guerrilla troops were active on every railway line, never letting the devils have a moment's peace.
Through contacts with scouts and underground party organizations, Li Tie soon made contact with a railway guerrilla unit in this area.
This small guerrilla team was on the same level as other regional guerrilla teams in terms of armament, and they hardly had any weapons, so they didn't dare to confront the devils head-on. They only engaged in small-scale skirmishes, stealing food, coal, and other supplies from trains that the devils weren't particularly concerned about. As for the armored trains, they never dared to attack them because these trains were difficult to board, although it was possible to climb on, the doors of the carriages opened on one side and had lead seals, which made it hard to open them, so even if they managed to get on, they might not be able to get anything. Moreover, there was a major problem: the devils on these trains were usually more numerous and had stronger combat capabilities, and if they weren't careful, they would end up being counterattacked by the devils.
It's said that Li Tie and the others are going to get a tank, this small guerrilla team is both excited and nervous. They're excited because finally someone wants to get a tank to satisfy their cravings; they're nervous because they don't know if they can take down the devils' armored vehicle or not.
But when Li Tie appeared in front of this small guerrilla team with his reinforced independent regiment, their tense mood dissipated. Apart from the three eight-style guns each person had, there were also some people carrying short guns and submachine guns, who looked like old veterans who had been through many battles. Moreover, with Li Tie's arrival, their originally scarce weapons suddenly increased: Li Tie provided them with ten rifles. This was something they hadn't dared to think about before, and each rifle came with one hundred bullets. What a great gift this was!
With the weapons, these guerrilla fighters who were already reckless became even bolder. They intensified their efforts to gather intelligence on the enemy's train movements. By capturing and interrogating one by one of the puppet soldiers, they finally obtained the exact departure time of the train when they captured the fourth puppet soldier. Due to the limited number of devils at the train station and strict management, if they randomly caught one, there was a possibility that the devils would detect it, causing the troops to be exposed prematurely. The puppet soldiers were much worse, and their management was not very strict. Also for this reason, many puppet soldiers did not know the enemy's movements, but only did what the devils asked them to do, and they knew nothing about other things. That's why they captured so many, and in the end, they had to capture a small team leader of the puppet soldiers, which is how they finally learned the enemy's movements.
The devils will be on the train tonight when the independent chain is connected.
That night, after the enemy's armored patrol car had passed by, Li Tie led the independent regiment in coordination with the guerrilla troops, ambushing a slope far from the train station, waiting for the arrival of the enemy's tank.
This slope is quite steep, when the enemy's train comes, it will slow down a lot.
After a while, a bright light flashed in the distance, and the enemy's train arrived.
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When it came to the uphill section, the train indeed slowed down, and even Li Tie, who was climbing the train for the first time, got on easily. After getting on the train, they controlled the locomotive first.
Li Tie was on the coal car behind the locomotive, through the glass of the train door, he saw four or five devils on the locomotive, one driver, one stoker, and the stoker was busy filling coal into the furnace. Two devils were holding a Type 38 rifle chatting, two devils were carrying a light machine gun with the muzzle pointing forward. There was also a devil sitting on an ammunition box, staring at something.
Li Tie waved his hand, and the two soldiers aimed their guns at the devils on the train head. They then slowly opened the door, and the devils inside were still unaware of what was happening. Li Tie shouted in Japanese: "Surrender or be killed!" However, instead of surrendering, the devils on the train head not only refused to give up their guns but also immediately raised their guns at Li Tie, ready to shoot. Moreover, the two devils had already turned their machine gun around and were about to unleash a hail of bullets at Li Tie and his men! The two soldiers behind him saw that things were taking a turn for the worse, so they quickly fired their rifles, and several devils immediately fell silent.
Upon hearing the gunfire from the locomotive, all the other cars that people could enter took action together and quickly eliminated the devils inside.
Li Tie wanted to stop the train, but he had no idea where the brakes were. He looked around and saw that two soldiers were also staring blankly, unsure of what to do. If only he had called the two guerrilla fighters over, this was his first time seeing such a thing, and he hadn't even seen a steering wheel or clutch before, let alone know how to operate it. And looking at this thing running so fast while lying down, if it were standing up, who knows how fast it would run!
Two people, including Liu Lao Lao, entered the Da Guan Garden. Li Tie fiddled with everything on the train's control panel that could be flipped, pressed every button, pulled every lever and turned every knob several times. As a result, the train let out a loud whistle, even spewing out a mouthful of thick smoke, but in the end he didn't know how to stop it either. Anyway, the train finally came to a halt, still panting heavily.
Hurry up and send a signal, get the mobilized fellow villagers to come over quickly, no matter what, first finish moving the things in the train, can't spit out the meat that's already in your mouth.
These devils who were captured are really stubborn, not a single devil prisoner was caught. Every devil resisted to the end and was killed in the end. However, this also saved Li Tie's heart, saving him from having to escort prisoners of war, what a hassle.
With everyone breaking the seal, they didn't care what it was, and quickly moved things onto the ox cart. Big boxes, small boxes, wooden chests, iron chests... soon the five compartments were emptied. Then each person carried some, and hastily retreated. When you've looted something, you have to run, otherwise the owners will come and scold you.
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This train originally had seventeen cars, but ten were freight cars and only five were passenger cars. The ten freight cars were loaded with coal, which was difficult to transport. Li Tie led his men in opening the doors of the freight cars and dumping some of the coal onto the side of the tracks, then pushing the cars over on the other side. Normally, dozens of people would not have been able to push a single car over, but the railway guerrillas had a method - they dug out the ground under one of the rails, creating an uneven surface that made it easy for the heavy coal to tip the car over. There were also two passenger cars with Japanese soldiers inside, who became the focus of attention for the independent regiment. The entire car was riddled with bullet holes! A few undisciplined soldiers even threw a few hand grenades inside, blowing the Japanese into a pile of flesh. The Japanese hadn't even had time to fire many shots before they were all killed.
They picked up the enemy's weapons and the warriors protected the ox carts as they hastened their retreat.
Row upon row of boxes filled the threshing floor. In addition to the boxes, there were dozens of rifles and several machine guns, but now the rifles were slung over the guerrilla fighters' shoulders, and the machine guns were being hugged by a few comrades like treasures.
He opened the box, and they were all treasures stolen by the devils from our country. It seems that the little devils really have the potential to be thieves. Each wooden box was packed full, apparently ready to be transported back to Japan. There are jade, stone, iron, and a large number of gold and silver utensils inside. Most of them are stone, iron, and jade cultural relics, which seem not easy to carry with them, so they were loaded onto the train to be taken away.
As these cultural relics were difficult to transport over long distances, especially under the strict surveillance of the devils, Li Tie entrusted them to the local party organization for protection and would hand them over to the state after national liberation.
Although this action did not get the cotton clothes, it seized a large number of national treasure cultural relics. Li Tie was still very happy in his heart and praised Wang Er's actions for this time. Wang Er's morale became even greater.
At the same time, other independent regiment soldiers active in the enemy-occupied areas around the base area were also actively looking for devils' cotton and other winter supplies.
Among them, the foreign firm became a fat meat in some people's eyes. Without saying anything else, just looking at the things that were transported in and out of the car all day long, it can be seen that there are not many materials in these firms.
Although these foreign firms mainly targeted some shops, they were also open to ordinary people, allowing ordinary people to buy some condiments or other daily necessities such as a small amount of foreign nails, matches and soap.
The Daiwa Yanghang is the largest foreign firm in Yicheng, where all high-ranking members are held by devils (Japanese) officers, and only a small number of low-ranking employees are held by Chinese people. These people are closely monitored at all times, with no personal freedom whatsoever. For the same position, Japanese people earn much more money than Chinese people, but do much less work or even don't work at all.
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The daily necessities here are relatively rich, and the usual customers are also more numerous, but mainly some wealthy bosses or "friends" of foreigners. As for poor people coming to buy some daily necessities, the people inside don't care about you at all, and even directly drive you out. The main purpose of foreigners in foreign firms using some Chinese people is to serve those who come to patronize, at least someone can do some work, it's impossible to let all the bosses' followers do it. So the status of these Chinese people in foreign firms, put nicely, is employees, put not so nicely, that is coolies in foreign firms, high-level coolies.
Yang Qing Shan had been working in this foreign firm for some time. The young man was quick on his feet and efficient at work, so everyone in the firm liked him. The Chinese liked him because he often helped them with their tasks, while the Japanese liked him because they hoped he would do more work. Some Japanese people sometimes took him to the warehouse to help them carry things. The warehouse was a forbidden place for the foreign firm, and ordinary employees were not allowed to enter, especially Chinese employees. Even in the warehouse, there were different levels of access, with some areas storing valuable items that Chinese people were not allowed to approach within a certain distance. If they did get close, the consequences would be severe - death by gunshot within the forbidden area of the warehouse, without even a body to collect.
The young man was seen to be unsociable and only loved to work, so the devils took him to some warehouses that stored ordinary goods to move things. As time went on, he went more often and became familiar with the devils inside, so he began to go to some relatively valuable warehouses, but there were still many high-value warehouses that he couldn't enter.
Since receiving the order from Lian Zhang, Yang Qing Shan had set his sights on the foreign firm's warehouse.
There are also some fabrics in the ordinary warehouse, but very few. Only a small amount is not enough for the troops to make clothes. And other warehouses can't go and see by themselves, what to do?
There is another problem, that is, generally very few customers come to buy a large amount of cloth, because ordinary people all buy their own woven cotton cloth. In the face of these high-end goods brought from the mainland by the devils, they just take a look and can't afford to buy them at all. And some rich men who come to buy are not many either, the quantity is relatively small, so you can hardly see any cloth in the foreign firm.
It seems that in extraordinary times, one must take extraordinary measures.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to move things with the devils to the foreign warehouse, Yang Qing Shan wanted to figure out what was in those warehouses.
That day, a Japanese devil summoned Yang Qing-shan to the warehouse. As it happened, the warehouse that this Japanese devil was going to was near those mysterious warehouses.
Arriving at the warehouse entrance, just about to enter, Yang Qing-shan suddenly clutched his stomach and told the devils he wanted to relieve himself.
That devil was so angry that he hurried him to go and come back quickly.
The toilet is in the warehouse and there's only one, right next to those mysterious warehouses.
Yang Qing Shan covered his stomach and headed towards that toilet, while that ghost was watching at the warehouse door.
He went into the toilet, and since this toilet was in a warehouse, except for the devils, there were generally no other people using it, so it was relatively secluded. As soon as Yang Qing saw that there was no one around, his stomach didn't hurt anymore. He climbed up the wall of the toilet to see if there was anything or anyone active in the opposite warehouse.
However, looking from the wall of the toilet to the inside made Yang Qing Shan greatly disappointed. The other side of the wall was still a wall, and the small window of the warehouse was still on the high wall of the warehouse. He couldn't see anything at all.
Just as Yang Qing Shan was disappointed and came down from the wall, he thought of going out, but saw a black thing hitting his head, and then he knew nothing.
When Yang Qing Shan woke up, he found himself tied up.
I was tied to a pillar against the wall. I was quite familiar with this pillar, as I had seen two of my colleagues being flogged while tied to it. On that occasion, all Chinese staff were summoned to watch, a classic case of killing the chicken to scare the monkey. But I never thought that I would have such a day myself.
There is a devil next to me, a devil I have never seen before.
He pulled out a whip from his hand, and in his small triangular eyes, a fierce gaze appeared, staring at Yang Qingshan like a wolf eyeing its prey.
"What's your job?" At last, the ghost spoke.
"Tai Jun, I'm a clerk at the foreign firm." Yang Qing Shan said without thinking.
"Bah! Your conscience is thoroughly rotten!" As he spoke, the devilish man lashed out with his whip at Yang Qing Shan. A lash mark immediately appeared on Yang's chest, and his white shirt was ripped open to reveal a gash that quickly turned red with blood. After several more lashes, Yang's chest was a bloody mess, with skin and flesh stuck together with his shirt, fresh blood dripping onto the ground, forming a large puddle.
Yang Qing Shan gritted his teeth and remained silent.
He finally fainted and fell unconscious.
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"Ahh!" A bucket of cold water was suddenly poured over his head, Yang Qing Shan shivered and woke up again.
"What are you doing?" The devil asked again, "What are you doing in the toilet?"
"Taijun, I'm really a coolie for the foreign firm. Matsumoto Taijun told me to go to the warehouse and move things, but I had diarrhea and wanted to ask Matsumoto Taijun for permission to have a bowel movement in the toilet, so I went into the toilet." Matsumoto was the one who called Yang Qing-shan to move things, this little devil is at the lowest level of the Japanese devils in the foreign firm, but even such a devil has a treatment that is many times better than people like Yang Qing-shan.
"Baga, you're lying! There's no trace of your crap in the toilet!" The devil struck again.
"Tai Jun, listen to me, I didn't do anything in the toilet. As soon as I entered the toilet, I saw that it was very clean, and I thought I couldn't dirty Tai Jun's toilet, so I endured it and decided to solve it when I got back. Just thinking of turning around and leaving, but then everything went black and I didn't know anything. When I woke up again, I was already here." Yang Qing Shan had already determined that this ghost did not see him sticking his head out the window to look outside.
"Yo Xi, is what you're saying true?" It seems like the ghost has started to believe a bit.
Just then, someone spoke outside the door.
"Yamaguchi-kun, I'm Matsumoto Jirō, may I have a word with you?"
The ghost's name was Yamaguchi.
Yamaguchi turned around and left.
Next door was two devils making a strange noise.
Before long, Matsumoto came in. "Yang-san, you've suffered, Yamaguchi-san misunderstood you." He said to Yang Qing-shan while untying him and then helped Yang Qing-shan out of the hut. ***, it seems that this beating was endured in vain. Can only wait for the Eighth Route Army to come back and find a chance to get revenge.
Because he was injured, Matsumoto gave Yang Qing Shan half a day off and let him go back to rest.
Yang Qing Shan's dormitory was in the attic of an old building next to the foreign firm. The attic was small, dark and damp. It was originally a small storage room, but the devils made use of it to house the six Chinese employees of the firm, forcing them to clean it up and move in. The space was tiny, only about ten square meters, yet six people lived there. Every day before dawn, the devils would drive them out to the foreign firm, where they would sweep the floors and tidy up the goods, never allowing them a moment's rest.
They didn't let him return to rest until the third watch of the night. Even meals were eaten at the foreign firm, where they had leftover food from the foreigners.
Back to the dormitory, Yang Qing Shan sat down at the corner of the wall next to the attic because it was too stuffy in the dormitory. He looked down at this piece of rooftop through the miscellaneous objects on the corner of the building.
Suddenly, Yang Qing Shan's eyes lit up. It was truly a case of "treading on iron shoes without finding the place, but getting everything without effort": from this corner of the building, he could see the courtyard of those mysterious warehouses!
Because I don't have time to sit here and look around during the day, and at night it's all dark and you can't see anything, so I didn't know that you could see the devil's warehouse from here.
Yang Qingshan carefully moved his body, trying to get as close to the mysterious warehouse's courtyard as possible, even if it was just a few dozen centimeters. But also tried to hide his own shadow, if he was seen by the ghostly sentry, then there would only be one dead end.
Through the broken baskets and rotten wood on the corner of the building, Yang Qing Shan saw that the yard of those mysterious warehouses in the foreign firm was bustling with cars coming and going. Groups of devils were patrolling back and forth, some devils only wearing military pants, bare-chested loading bundles of military uniforms onto horse-drawn carriages and automobiles, as well as large boxes of unknown contents, probably also good stuff.
Yang Qing Shan looked around the foreign firm, the warehouse was at the very back, surrounded by houses on all sides, and even two rows of houses away from the nearest road. Although the innermost warehouse was not far from the wall of the foreign firm, almost adjacent to it, there were electric wires on the high wall, which were electrified every night. The devils' searchlights would scan all suspicious places every few minutes, and the machine guns at the commanding heights moved with the searchlights. Once a suspicious person was found, a burst of bullets would be fired directly, rather than letting one go even if it meant killing three thousand by mistake! There was not just one machine gun on the commanding heights, and the devils' constabulary was less than two hundred meters away from here, making a strong attack not a wise choice.
Watching the devils coming and going, loading and unloading cotton garments and other things, Yang Qing Shan was both anxious and worried, his eyes fixed on the devils' military uniforms, afraid that the devils would take away all the military uniforms, leaving his comrades without clothes to wear.
We must quickly inform Lian Zhang and let them think of a solution.
He had just thought of going back to his room to think of a way to write a letter to Lian Zhang, when a voice behind him made him lose eight-ninths of his soul:
"What are you doing there?"
