February, the twenty-seventh year of the Republic.
Aboard the Daiei Maru oil tanker sailing from Yokohama, Japan, to Shanghai.
At midnight, the liner was cruising steadily across the sea when, all at once, a bolt of lightning illuminated the pitch-black night. A peal of thunder followed close behind, exploding above the ship.
If anyone had been standing on deck and looking up at the sky, they would have seen an extremely bizarre sight: the dark clouds were like a flowing vortex, churning without cease.
“Rumble!” Another clap of thunder detonated. In a luxurious room on the top deck, a young man in a silk sleeping robe shuddered all over and abruptly sat up.
The young man stared blankly at the unfamiliar scene before him.
Beep, beep, beep. A familiar sound suddenly rang out in his mind. Before he could react, fragments of memory surged into his head like a tide.
“Chen Yang, you are the most talented student I have ever seen. The mission you are to carry out this time will last a very long time, and the danger level is extremely high. You may choose not to accept it.”
“You have three days to consider whether you are willing to accept this mission.”
“Since you are willing, from today onward, you must forget everything about this place. This is your code name: Mount Fuji.”
“Chen Yang, you must remember: when the Party-state needs you to sacrifice yourself, you must do so for the Party-state without hesitation.”
“Comrade Chen Yang, let me remind you once more. Your identity is extremely special. You must keep this jade Guanyin on you at all times. You must never lose it. It is the only token that can prove your identity.”
“Chen Yang, the men of the Qingpu Class are all warriors. You are different from them. You are a hero.”
All manner of jumbled information poured in like a flood, making Chen Yang’s head feel as though it were splitting apart. Relying on his hazy memories, Chen Yang groped around and poured himself a glass of liquor, then downed it in one gulp.
The fiery sensation rushed down his throat and straight into his stomach, but it was precisely that feeling that managed to slightly ease the pain in his head.
It took a full dozen minutes or so before he completely digested the memories from before.
A hero? An undercover agent? What the hell? Wait, I’ve transmigrated? And to the Republic era, no less.
No way. Wasn’t I working overtime at my desk? How did I suddenly transmigrate to the Republic era? This joke has gone too far.
Chen Yang rubbed his head and forced himself to calm down. He walked to the window and looked outside. Sure enough, the liner he was on was a product of the Republic era. Though all sorts of hardware and facilities were quite new, in his eyes they carried a dense flavor of history.
How to describe it? It was like he had suddenly arrived on the set of a period drama set in the Republic era.
Heh. He really had transmigrated, and he had arrived in the darkest era of modern Chinese history—the twenty-seventh year of the Republic.
On July 7th of the twenty-sixth year of the Republic, unable to restrain their ambitions toward China any longer, the Japanese launched the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.
One month later, on August 13th, the full-scale war of aggression against China broke out. The Japanese Army, escorted by naval artillery from the Japanese Navy, landed in Shanghai, and the Battle of Shanghai erupted immediately after.
After that, ignoring all voices of opposition from the international community, the Japanese launched large-scale military aggression against China.
Sugiyama Gen, the Japanese Minister of War, even clamored that China would be destroyed in three months.
Japan had long coveted China’s territory. The incompetence of the Manchu Qing government allowed them to see China’s accumulated weakness, China’s poverty, the meek endurance of the Chinese people, and the muddleheaded incompetence of those in power. All Japanese believed China could not hold them off—but reality gave them a vicious slap across the face.
The blood and courage the Chinese people unleashed in the face of invaders was something no other nation could compare with.
Seven hundred thousand soldiers of the Nationalist Army fought a bloody battle in Shanghai, forcibly halting the Japanese advance.
It was precisely this courage that made the entire world begin to reassess this impoverished and weakened country. There was no denying that the reason China had not fallen was because there were many hot-blooded young men who feared no death.
Chen Yang was one of them, but he was still somewhat different from the others.
His mission was to lie hidden. He was to walk a road tens of millions of times harder than dying a heroic death.
Beep, beep, beep. That familiar sound rang out again, and only then did Chen Yang sense that something more had appeared in his mind.
With a slight movement of his thoughts, a familiar image appeared in his mind. Uh, isn’t this the AI program I designed? What’s it doing here?
The image that emerged in his mind was precisely the AI program his tiny, broken-down company had worked overtime day and night to develop.
This program had been designed by Chen Yang. Like most AI programs, it could carry out intelligent tasks that required human cognition, such as learning, reasoning, decision-making, big data analysis, natural language processing, image recognition, and so on.
Huh. After transmigrating to this world, I didn’t bring anything else, but I did bring a program with me.
Woo—woo. Suddenly, the liner’s whistle sounded. Immediately after, there came a knock at the door: “Knock, knock, knock.”
“Mr. Chen, we’ll be arriving at Huishan Wharf soon. Please pack your belongings and prepare to disembark.”
“All right, I understand.”
The sky gradually brightened. Chen Yang wiped his damp hair, walked out of the bathroom naked, and put on his clothes piece by piece. Looking at the handsome face in the mirror, in that instant, the two different souls within his body had already fused perfectly into one.
Shanghai, Huishan Wharf.
Shanghai had many wharves, but not many were controlled by the Japanese. Huishan Wharf was one of them.
This wharf was located in Shanghai’s Yangshupu District, and was also known as Yangshupu Wharf.
At the entrance to the wharf, a black Buick sedan was parked by the roadside. A young man in a trench coat, his hair slicked with pomade, was craning his neck as he looked toward the wharf.
In this era, the cars most favored by political, commercial, and wealthy figures were American-made Buicks. Among the registered motor vehicles in Shanghai, almost one in every six was a Buick, which had also become a symbol of status.
Before long, a large crowd appeared on the wharf. Old Uncle Qi, the experienced driver in the Buick’s driver’s seat, stuck his head out and said, “A’Ren, go see if Young Master Cousin’s ship has arrived.”
Before the young man could speak, Uncle Qi pointed at a man in a black trench coat among the crowd and shouted excitedly, “A’Ren, look! Isn’t that Young Master Cousin?”
Lin Yongren followed the driver’s gesture and looked over. That figure carrying a suitcase was indeed Chen Yang.
Chen Yang in the distance had clearly also seen the two of them. After waving to them, he quickly came up to them.
Lin Yongren took the luggage from Chen Yang’s hand in one motion and said, “Young Master Cousin, were you used to the voyage? It must have been tiring.”
Chen Yang lightly punched Lin Yongren on the shoulder and said, “A’Ren, we haven’t seen each other in a few years, and you’ve already become so distant? Just like before—call me Brother Yang.”
“Uncle Qi, it’s been a few years since we met. You’ve put on a little weight. Is Auntie doing well?”
Uncle Qi replied with a smile, “Thanks to Young Master Cousin’s blessing, our whole family is doing well.”
“Young Master Cousin, please sit tight. I’m going to start driving.”
Chen Yang smiled and said, “No rush to go home yet. Uncle Qi, please trouble yourself to take me to the Osaka Chamber of Commerce office on Chuanbei Road.”
Shanghai, Chuanbei Road, Osaka Chamber of Commerce office.
Chuanbei Road spanned the two districts of Zhabei and Hongkou. This was what the people of Shanghai called the Japanese Concession.
Strictly speaking, Shanghai had not originally had a Japanese Concession. There had only been the French Concession on Jinxian Road and the International Settlement jointly administered by Britain and America.
At the end of the last century, foreigners had blasted open the gates of the Manchu Qing government with their powerful ships and cannons, and more and more foreigners entered China to do business.
Among them were also many Japanese expatriates. They had gathered for years in the Hongkou District and Zhabei District, and their numbers were no fewer than those of the expatriates from Britain, America, France, and other countries.
In order to find a place to settle, the leader of the Japanese expatriates at the time, Watanabe Murajiro, with support from the military, bribed the Municipal Council of the International Settlement with a large sum of money, thereby obtaining two seats on the board of directors.
Then, through their maneuvering, the Municipal Council designated this area for the Japanese to live and do business in.
As time passed, this place naturally became what people called the Japanese Concession.
Yangshupu Wharf was not far from the Osaka Chamber of Commerce office in Zhabei District. The Buick drove along the road and soon stopped in front of a small building.
Chen Yang got out of the car. Looking at the signboard of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce hanging beneath the building before him, a solemn expression appeared on his face.