Chapter Fifty-Three: Dark Clouds Gather

  Tōyama Kanken, the head of the Japanese spy agency in Fengtian, is having a terrible day today. This spy chief with a stupid-looking face and cheekbones like a bulldog has lost his temper, even slashing at one of his subordinates with his sword! His most trusted subordinate, Tanaka Hisashirō, is dead! He died a miserable death!

  Tōyama Kazuo was the most radical of all Japanese espionage chiefs in China, advocating for the strongest possible attitude and methods to deal with the Nanjing government and other warlords. For example, the assassination of Zhang Zuolin, who refused to cooperate, had his planning involved. His reach was very long, although he was the head of the agency in Fengtian, all Japanese espionage activities in China seemed to have his shadow. In cooperation with the Guangdong-Guangxi warlord, he was directly responsible for plotting and planning. Tanaka Hisakazu was his loyal follower and admirer, so Tanaka Hisakazu was also very enthusiastic about assassinating Chinese leaders, such as Tan Xiang. Tōyama Kazuo highly appreciated Tanaka Hisakazu, considering him to be his own arm, always able to reach where he wanted to go, doing what he wanted to do. But now, this most favorite subordinate of his had been brutally murdered by the Chinese!

  This morning, someone left a package at the entrance of the government office with "Tsuchiya Genji" written on it. Inside, there was only a photo: Tanaka Hisashirō's dismembered body!

  According to the photo's numbering, Tanaka Hisashirō was dismembered alive by two masked men! Starting from his toes, he was dissected piece by piece from his body, and even when Tanaka Hisashirō became a human skewer, he was still alive - - - - Those dismemberment workers used a large number of hemostatic forceps to make it difficult for him to die quickly due to excessive blood loss! They even roasted the cut-off organs and stuffed them into Tanaka Hisashirō's mouth...

  The last photo, numbered 209, was a neatly arranged circular display of various human organs, with Tanaka Hisakazu's head in the center; next to it were several starving dogs that had already rushed into the frame... The disgusting degree of those photos made more than half of the Japanese special agents vomit during the viewing process! Of course, they were beaten by Tofu Genjiro, and one of them was even slashed!

  "I'll make those Blue Jacket bastards pay a hundred times over!" Tsuchihashi roared, well aware of who was behind this. Of course, he hadn't expected them to go so far!

  Now, Tōyama is no longer the head of the Fengtian Special Agency. The transfer order has been issued and he will soon be transferred to the North China agency as its head; in fact, he has already made a plan to provoke Chinese people in the Hebei-Chahar region and then take over both places on a large scale. He is eager to go to North China and work with Lieutenant General Tada Hayao to strike at the Chinese in the front line against China. However, he must first hand over his work at the Fengtian Special Agency clearly.

  The most difficult thing to hand over clearly now is the connection with Liangguang, so he wants to go south and personally introduce his successor to Chen Lianbo, the middleman in Hong Kong, as well as the contact person of the Guangdong and Guangxi armies. On this trip south, he also has another task: to protect the safety of a group of royal family members. Due to the mining closure event in Hunan, all Western countries including Britain, France, the United States, and Germany took a firm stance on China's side, making Japan's diplomacy extremely passive; therefore, the Japanese government also realized that after withdrawing from the League of Nations, Japan's international relations were really too poor. This time they arranged for a group of young people from the Fushimi-no-miya family, the pillar of the Japanese Navy, to go to the British Navy to study, hoping to slightly repair the relationship between the two countries.

  This time, except for the family's eldest son, Navy Major General Fushimi Hiroyoshi, who did not go, his wife will lead a group of women from the family to send their men to Hong Kong and meet with British naval personnel. As for the role arrangement of this accompanying tour, Tofu was originally quite resistant - he had an important mission in Hong Kong! However, there is no way, even the current Japanese Emperor actually also adopted from Fushimi's house, being able to protect the safety of this family should be the honor of every Japanese person!

  Last night, when meeting with the women of Fushimi Palace, Tofuya suddenly had a strange idea: what would it be like to sleep with those porcelain doll-like women? He had slept with all the imperial concubines in Manchukuo! Although they were commoners, they were still imperial relatives, and sleeping with them was a kind of conquest! However, he himself did not expect that when facing the women of Fushimi Palace, he would have such an absurd thought.

  Alright, let's put the anger aside for now and focus on completing this task first! Tsuchihashi thought to himself that he would get his revenge, but it would have to wait until he returned from Hong Kong. He was set to depart tonight.

  Many people are rushing to Hong Kong, and from Lingling, a special operations team of nearly 50 elite members from the Hubei Revival Society's Special Affairs Office and the Military Intelligence Office of the First Army, led by Ding Luoshan, also set out.

  Ding Lushan was thrilled to be appointed as the leader of this operation. Originally, his usual bad habits of whoring, gambling and drinking were not tolerated in the military; almost all the big shots looked down on him, except for Tan Xiao. Tan Xiao thought that Ding Lushan was extremely bold and meticulous, with unusually ruthless tactics, making him a valuable asset. Although he had many bad habits, in the special environment of the battlefield, who's to say they were necessarily bad? As long as this man was loyal to the Wild One Army, to him, and to China, that was all that mattered! According to Mo San's introduction, there was once an instance where Ding Lushan had fled after being caught, but he still voluntarily returned a large sum of money he owed Mo San, allowing him to continue living a luxurious life while on the run. This man seemed to have principles after all!

  Ding Rushan was originally from Shandong Province. Before he became a smuggler, he had been an honest merchant trading goods between the north and south. However, after being robbed by bandits once, he had no choice but to become one of them himself. He didn't get used to the strict discipline of the Wild Army's military camp life, so when he arrived at the Action Department, he finally felt that he could do this job for a long time. Now, sending him to Hong Kong was perfect! He loved the prosperous and complex environment of Hong Kong, with its mixed crowd of fish and dragons.

  This time, I must get the best result, so that Lord Jun will let me stay in Hong Kong... Ding Lushan decided to exceed his tasks this time, no matter what. In addition to Tofu Island, he also wanted some other spoils of war. To add strength to his actions, Ding Lushan proposed to the Military Intelligence Bureau to let Mo San, an old comrade from "Shan Gui Lian", join him. This perverted killer himself also wanted some new playthings, so at the last moment, he took the General Staff's military order and boarded the ship.

  Tan Xiao came in person to see them off today, for this group of elites who will soon make history in Hong Kong and then be permanently sealed away by China.

  Later today, another group will depart for Shanghai. Rong Hui's European legion will take a military plane from Europe to Hong Kong and then directly to Shanghai to gather. So they also need to set off today, but they will be taking Sasha's private yacht up the Yangtze River to Shanghai.

  Yesterday, He Shaotang's injury inadvertently helped Ye Junyi a great deal, and Ye Xiangyun's espionage activities were also forced to be temporarily suspended. Such a large-scale personnel adjustment can smell something in the general staff department, but now Ye Xiangyun can only stay in the hospital. Due to fractures and physical exhaustion after fractures that relied solely on willpower to support, Ye Xiangyun is now extremely weak, and even looks worse than He Shaotang's condition.

  He Shao Tang now has a plaster cast on his chest, looking like an iron-clad warrior from the future. He is watching Ye Qian Yu sleep peacefully. To thank Ye Qian Yu for saving his life and also to keep an eye on her, He Shao Tang suggested that he personally take care of Ye Qian Yu in the hospital room. Of course, the doctors and nurses had different opinions, but they still allowed someone to push his bed into Ye Qian Yu's room.

  Yeshan's extremely weak body lay quietly on the bed, her pale face no longer had its usual cold arrogance, but instead had a few more tender expressions. Unknowingly, she must have dreamed of something heart-wrenching, as her eyebrows suddenly twitched rapidly several times before relaxing again, but her brow still retained a hint of worry... At that moment, He Shaotang also felt a pang of anxiety.

  Are you worried about your mission? He Shaotang thought, why do you have to be a Japanese? If everything on your resume is true, that would be great... He was a little infatuated. Now, he could only do one thing to express his gratitude to this lifesaver, which was not to hand her over to Mo San after she fell into the net, nothing more.

  He Shaotang was recuperating in the hospital, and his work could only be handed over to others to follow up. Today at noon, it was a very busy time: A large batch of military aid from Germany arrived! Most of them were directly delivered to the Military Affairs Department in Nanjing, except for the equipment of the Wild One Army. The Wild One Army finally tasted the excitement of changing equipment with other armies today: Due to Chiang Kai-shek's generous donation, one-third of the heavy weapons in Hitler's additional military aid were allocated to the Wild One Army, which made them even more prosperous! The Wild One Army had another large-scale smuggling operation, using half of the manpower from last time to quickly transport the equipment from Qinzhou Bay to Lingling. This batch of heavy equipment included 20 88mm heavy anti-aircraft guns, 34 57mm old-style anti-aircraft guns, and 66 37mm and 20mm small-caliber anti-aircraft guns; in addition to the original British-made anti-aircraft guns and the 40 twin-mounted 20mm anti-aircraft guns sold by the Americans, the Wild One Army now has more than 500 anti-aircraft guns of various types! If the Japanese didn't have air support, in a field battle between the two sides, their field fortifications would be destroyed by the Wild One Army's flat-shooting cannons in the first round of fire! As for those thin-skinned tanks? Once they entered the anti-aircraft ambush area, even if the entire tank division was pressed up, it wouldn't last ten minutes!

  As for the 20 75mm cannons to be installed on tank chassis as mobile anti-tank guns, they are temporarily all allocated to Field Army No. 1. They will be distributed later, but Field Army No. 1 will get at least six of these new products.

  Ye Jianjun's thirty tanks had to detour via the Yangtze River - it was impossible to transport them by land. This would take a few more days, but the arrival of these anti-aircraft guns had already made the division commanders who came to watch the exercises envious and drooling!

  These superiors also discovered that the steel helmet was particularly different from other departments, and the proportion of soldiers equipped with steel helmets in each army was about 20% before. Now it's better, like these first batch of troops, the proportion of steel helmets is over half; However, the Wild One Army is too powerful: all combat troops have a steel helmet on their heads! Although the model is also more miscellaneous, but basically can be unified to the same model for each regiment and above.

  "Helmets are good stuff!" Guan Linzheng sighed: "In the battle with the devils at the Great Wall, I realized that this thing looks like a decoration, and when it comes to the trenches, there is not much difference between having it and not having it! When the devil's artillery fire came over, soldiers without helmets were sometimes injured by just a small piece of mud... Ah, how many helmets did Germany give us this time?"

  "It's probably around 250,000 helmets or so!" Tan Xiao said. As for the steel helmet, he knew it was a good thing, but as someone who had never been on the battlefield in his later years, he really didn't have that kind of experience hiding from cannons in trenches. Now hearing Guan Linzheng say this, he felt it was a big problem. Although the Germans would provide China with more than 200,000 helmets this time, the first batch of troops to be trained already exceeded 400,000 people, and these helmets were really too few! He had to think of a way to get more, and in his heart, he added another thing - perhaps he should go after those French helmet makers...

  Those soldiers who were assigned to the artillery in various parts of the Wild One Army were all delighted, but not necessarily the officers. Li Bizhan and Chen Guangzhong, for example, were filled with mixed emotions. After this period of training and observation, Li Bizhan knew that his 23rd Division would absolutely not be able to defeat the Wild One Division and the Tax Police Corps, which meant that he would definitely not be able to stay in the position of division commander in the future. Chen Guangzhong was also uneasy because his independent brigade's exchange plan had not received a response from Tan Xiao for a long time. Similarly, those low-quality officers at all levels were also worried - after this training is completed, there will be an assessment!

  In the past, there have been rectifications of the army, and they often had loopholes to exploit. But this time it's definitely not possible. Moreover, trying to intimidate by threatening to pull out troops like before won't work either. It's not just because of the large gathering of troops, but also because there's nowhere to go; the key is that the current atmosphere of the Wild One Army, especially their management and attitude towards soldiers, makes it impossible for them to mobilize people! As for those fellow military slackers, do they want to leave? The Wild One Army welcomes them at any time!

  "Your Excellency!" Li Bizhen came up and greeted Tan Xiang with a smile. He was still the commander of the 23rd Division.

  "Li Shizhang is good! This troop is trained quite well, I've heard Wen Canmou mention it before!" Tan Xiao was no longer as polite to these old-fashioned military men as he used to be. As long as they were his direct subordinates, he would speak directly: "But I heard that a few battalion commanders want to desert?" His eyes turned cold.

  Li Bizhen looked at Tan Xiao and suddenly turned gloomy, his heart also tightened: he wanted to probe Tan Xiao's attitude, not as a superior, what would happen later, didn't expect that several worried about the assessment of the company commander made a small disturbance, unexpectedly was known by Tan Xiao.

  "Report to Your Excellency! Those several battalion commanders have all been reprimanded by me!" Li Bizhen hastily replied, he didn't dare say there was no such thing.

  "Blame?! These deserters can be shot, and you blame it on someone who led them to run? I'm telling you, Li Shizhang, leading troops is not a joke. If someone dares to say they'll lead the troops away, and you still let him lead, aren't you afraid they'll really leave?" Tan Xiao glared at Li Bizhan.

  It should be a capital offense, but it's common for the National Army to use troops to coerce and intimidate. Li Bi saw Tan Xiao holding on tight and knew trouble was coming; could he really execute those few battalion commanders? They were his trusted subordinates who dared to shout in front of him!

  "Looks like I've already removed a lieutenant general, haven't I?" Tan Xiao said with a smile, bringing up the matter of removing Wu Sheng as well: "I don't care about removing a few more!"

  These words were intimidating, but Li Bizhen really didn't dare to disobey. In his observation, Tan Xiao could shoot him dead at any moment, and it wasn't impossible. He had no choice but to stand there motionless, silent, and watch how Tan Xiao would deal with him.

  "Are those your old subordinates?" Tan Xiao asked: "There's still sentiment, can't bear to take action?"

  Li Bizhen suddenly knelt down with a bent knee: "Please, Your Honor, have mercy... Zi Xi is willing to give up this position as commander... Anyway, this commander will be eliminated sooner or later, Li Bizhen might as well trade it for the lives of his old subordinates."

  "Li Ziqi, you scoundrel!" Tan Xiao retorted sharply: "Is the commander-in-chief of the party and state someone who can be appointed or dismissed at your whim? Those officers who should be punished will be punished, whether you are the commander or not is another matter! Tan Xiao paused for a moment: "Get up! A big man like you, always kneeling down, what's the point?! You go back and expel those few battalion commanders from the 23rd Division! The Wild One Army wants soldiers, not bandits!"

  Li Bizhen had no choice but to obey and retreat, but Chen Guangzhong, who was watching from the side, was scared stiff. He knew that his own superior would also be finished, and estimated that the independent brigade's affairs would not come to fruition either... Without military power, what could he do?! Now Chen Guangzhong began to regret his past actions of being too ruthless, as everywhere were now enemies...

  Tan Xiao glanced at the several Huangpu comrades who witnessed this scene: "This is how to govern the army with an iron fist! Anyone can talk about prices, I'd rather go do business! How come you guys didn't encounter these when you were recruiting troops?……I really want to find someone to kill, but the company commander is too young!" He finished speaking and walked towards a nearby 88mm anti-aircraft gun that had been pulled over, wanting to see what made this type of anti-aircraft gun so famous in Rommel's hands.

  The division commanders of Huangpu looked at each other and made a wry face, as for Chen Guangzhong, his face was already ashen.

  Today, Tan Xiao's temper was indeed bad, because he had to part with his loved one again. I'm probably too clingy, if it were in the future, I'd probably drive my girlfriend crazy... Tan Xiao muttered to himself, he decided to go to another dock, the one where he saw off Wu Deqiang before, today, he was going to see off Rong Hui who was heading to Shanghai.

  An aide rushed over with a document on the ground, Tan Xiao took a look and it was a notice from Falkenhausen. A mountain battalion and a special warfare training battalion of the German army who arrived with the military fire had already arrived at the base camp, and would be hosting a banquet at the German delegation's residence tonight to entertain Tan Xiao, please make sure to attend.

  "I'll go, but I need to send someone, maybe later, you go back and reply to the consultant team leader." Tan Xiao replied to the staff officer. He casually went to flip through the personnel list attached to the file.

  "Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel!?...... From the special training camp of Brandenburg!?...... Theodor von Hippel!?...... Oh my god!! Are all the famous German generals taught by me!?" Tan Xiao was confused about where these famous generals learned to fight in the original timeline...

  However, he now has a new idea: those Brandenburg training camp guys are all elites who can speak several languages and have received certain special warfare training behind enemy lines. They can be considered a decent combat force, a quasi-special forces unit. If they were sent to Shanghai and disguised as the naval infantry of a certain country to put pressure on Song and Kong at the right time... Haha, even if old Chiang wanted to help them, he wouldn't be able to! Hmm, just tell them that all members of China's special warfare team have been deployed for real missions, let's see how they react! He remembered the scene where Goodrian insisted on participating in the No Name Mine raid.

  "Go ask General Goodrian if he will come tonight, and if not, hurry up and inform him to come!" Tan Xiao hastily instructed his deputy to take care of it. Thinking that this could bring great help to Rong Hui's big battle in Shanghai, Tan Xiao's depressed mood began to improve a lot. He walked lightly on the road to another dock.

  Yoshikawa Shuzo's feet were not for the first time on Shanghai dock, he should say, he is a frequent visitor to Shanghai.

  This time, because their North China Special Agency was going to have a new agency chief, Tōyama Kenji, he was very excited. He had worked under Tōyama Kenji before and was well aware of his extreme attitude towards China; so he immediately made a plan to take advantage of the Song-Kong rice speculation opportunity to disrupt China's grain market, and it was immediately approved by Tōyama who had not yet taken office.

  In this plan, the 150 million funds that were mobilized had actually emptied out all of the expenses for the Japanese secret service organs in North China and Fengtian, and also borrowed two-thirds of the gold reserves from the Japanese banks in Manchuria through Tofei's influence in the Kwantung Army. This matter was of great importance, so this old spy who wanted to be promoted to deputy director personally came to Shanghai to take command. Now, Yoshikawa Shuzo, who was full of dreams of getting rich and being promoted, really had a lot of confidence - he still had in his pocket the letters that his superiors had given him to bring with him to the two Japanese-funded banks in the concession, the Yokohama Specie Bank and the Taiwan Bank; he knew what they said, which was to ask the two banks to give him as much financial assistance as possible.

  How much can it be? Three billion? Maybe not enough? At least five billion is needed! Kijikawa Osamu's plan was to first use the 1.5 billion from Tianjin Gang to help Song Kong drive up grain prices and make a profit, then they would short sell at the top and kill Song Kong together! This way, they can not only gain huge profits but also have the opportunity to become Song Kong's creditors and control them directly! As for concerns about Song Kong's political power? Joke! Does Shanghai still have China's political power? Not even the right to station troops! When the time comes, the Marine Corps will land, are you afraid of unfair competition?!

  Shanghai Beach, war clouds gather!

  "Who guessed the outcome of Tufei Yuan? Thursday will reveal... Everyone, throw more recommendation tickets, don't be stingy!!!! Still can't get on the recommended list!!!!! Big brothers, save me!!!!!"