Chapter 11: Rising Through the Ranks and Getting Rich (Part 2)
"What, you dug out the Japanese military expenses? How much?" Cheng Jiaji looked at Wen Songyuan with an incredulous gaze, who was standing in front of him and trying to report his achievements. He even doubted whether he had just been woken up and his mind wasn't fully awake, so he misheard what Wen Songyuan said earlier.
"Older brother, it's true! It was that Yamada who took me to dig, don't believe me? Look!" Wen Songyuan saw the older brother looking at him with a face of not quite believing, feeling disrespected, his temper originally being explosive, he hastily threw a heavy cloth package onto the table.
Cheng Jiaji opened the unassuming package and, oh my! The small package was filled with many good things. For a moment, Cheng Jiaji's eyes shone brightly like a 100-watt light bulb, constantly flashing with excitement.
After a stick of incense, several core members of the Chengzhi team gathered in the flower hall of the branch department again. This time, everyone's mood was much more relaxed than when they were counting casualties earlier.
This is because they are doing one of the happiest things in this world - counting money!
Of course, the most proud of these people is Wen Songyuan. He was helping to count the money while proudly telling how he tore open the mouth of Kou Shannan, which basically made everyone understand the beginning and end of things from his words.
At that time, the supplies and military pay of the Japanese invading army were still fully allocated by the domestic finance, but only in the later period of the war did Japan's national finance fail to support the increasingly expanding expenditures of the army, which allowed the invading army abroad to solve the problem of supplies and rations locally. This policy is also known as the notorious "war-nourishing-war" policy.
This time, the Cheng Jiaji detachment basically annihilated the Japanese Fifth Division's Yamaki Brigade. The military expenses and several months' worth of salaries that were originally kept by the quartermaster officer under Yamaki's direct supervision were secretly taken from the quartermaster officer by Yamada, a Chinese-speaking Japanese officer who loved money like his life, and buried in the mountainside temple. After Yamaki and other officers committed suicide, Yamada led a group of remaining soldiers to surrender to the Chinese army, not only to save their lives but also because he knew that as a knowledgeable person about China, he would be safe if he fell into the hands of the regular Chinese army. Moreover, the Chinese people have always been generous and would treat him well, especially since he was a rare Japanese officer who spoke Chinese. As long as he had the opportunity, he could sneak back to the mountainside temple and retrieve the package, and then he, Yamada, would be free to roam the world.
Yamada's abacus was really precise, at that time the Chinese army could hardly capture Japanese soldiers, let alone officers. Normally, it would be impossible to have torture or interrogation, usually they would be handed over level by level until the highest authorities dealt with them. Even if there were field trials, a regimental unit wouldn't be involved in such trivial matters. However, in Cheng Zhi's team, there was an exception - Wen Songyuan. This morning, he came out of Cheng Jiaji's place, and because his subordinates had suffered heavy casualties, the head of the battalion, Wen, chose to entertain himself by beating Japanese prisoners of war. He didn't have any Geneva Convention in his brain, and even if he knew about it, Wen Songyuan wouldn't care. If not for his habitual respect for his superior Cheng Jiaji, according to his temperament as one of the two evil young masters from Nan'an, he would have had those dozens of little devils shot with machine guns immediately.
Yamada, being both an official and a Chinese expert, was naturally the first target for Wen Dashi's amusement. In Wen Dashi's own words, "We can't just beat up a little devil without understanding what he's saying when he begs for mercy, that wouldn't be any fun!"
Originally, Wen Congyan thought that Japanese military officers were all made of iron, but as soon as he started interrogating Yamada, he used some 21st-century law enforcement methods that Cheng Jiaqi had mentioned to him. First, they used several layers of paper to cushion the blows as soldiers struck Yamada's chest with the butt of their rifles. Then, they shone a high-powered flashlight directly into Yamada's eyes. This was not enough for Wen Congyan, who then ordered someone to paste several pieces of paper on Yamada's face and spray water on them. Every time Yamada almost suffocated, they would tear off the paper to let him breathe, only to repeat the process again and again. In reality, Wen Congyan did not dare to kill Yamada; he was just using the interrogation as an excuse to vent his anger. An ordinary soldier would not have resorted to such tactics, but this young master had joined the army without receiving any regular military education or training in ideology and morality. As long as he didn't kill the little Japanese devil, Yamada's body wouldn't show any signs of injury, and no one could touch Wen Congyan. Besides, wasn't Cheng Jiaqi backing him up? In Wen Congyan's world, from a young age, Cheng Jiaqi had been an all-powerful figure who could solve any problem, and as long as he followed closely behind him, there was nothing to fear.
Yamada opened his mouth, not knowing that the Chinese military officer in front of him, who was two heads taller and had a fierce aura, was just making fun of him. The interrogation was just an excuse to get him to reveal military intelligence. Yamada was an unusual Japanese soldier, or as people would say in the 21st century, he loved life and his own life very much. In those days, it could be said that this Yamada lieutenant was a thorough coward. If not, he should have followed Lieutenant General Yamaki to death, and wouldn't have surrendered with his troops to the Chinese.
Under Wen Congyuan's strange but effective torture methods, Yamada couldn't hold on for more than an hour. First, he revealed the number of troops and equipment of the Japanese Fifth Division in Linyi. His rank was not high, and as a grassroots officer, he didn't know much, so the information wasn't very valuable, but it was still somewhat useful to the Chinese military. Yamada had hoped that by revealing this information, he could avoid further suffering.
Unfortunately, Wen Congyuan was far from satisfied at this point. On one hand, he ordered someone to record the information revealed by Yamada, and on the other hand, he continued to experiment with various torture methods on Yamada, as taught by Cheng Jiaji. As for Yamada, once he had opened his mouth psychologically, he no longer resisted. Wen Congyuan used a variety of methods, and Yamada confessed one thing after another.
In the end, not only did he reveal the private matters that were unique to Japanese people, but even the money he had hidden in the mountain temple for his old age was exposed.
Other things were not so tense, but this money matter was the most important to him. As soon as he heard that Yamada had mentioned it, he stopped beating Yamada and personally led a dozen or so people to escort Yamada to dig up a package.
"How much is the total?" Looking at Gao Shiying, who had just finished counting and calculating the large package containing a large number of Japanese gold tickets, French currency, yuan, and various other Chinese currencies, Cheng Jiaji asked excitedly. Behind him, Wen Songyuan and Yu Juncai's eyes were equally hot enough to melt steel plates.
"Altogether, it's worth around 650,000 yuan, damn it, this is really a windfall!" It seems that even the normally composed Gao Shiying was excited to the point of losing his composure over this unexpected fortune, and he couldn't help but blurt out some profanity.
Cheng Jiaji didn't have time to laugh at Gao Shiying's embarrassment, his mind only had three words: "Got rich!"
