Qin Shuli walked out of the room and looked up at the night sky. He truly could not fathom what was going through the minds of these Nationalist military officials. If the common people were all harassed and wiped out, who would grow their crops? Who would pay their military salaries? Did they expect to rely on aid from the United States forever?
He wandered through the Japanese encampment once more to ensure nothing had been overlooked, then brought out several large satchels of explosives and ignited them. After a series of thunderous blasts, the den of iniquity was reduced to ruins. The surviving villagers in the town scrambled out of their homes in a panic, just in time to see thick black smoke billowing into the sky amid flickering flames. As Qin Shuli left the town, he saw the survivors packing up their belongings and leading their families away toward the mountains. This was for the best; if they had stayed, once the news of the Japanese soldiers' deaths spread and Nationalist troops arrived, the villagers would likely have suffered even more.
The next morning, as Ma Hanshan was eating breakfast, Gan Qing walked into the dining room with the latest intelligence. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he said in a low voice, "Station Chief, we just received word: the Third Regiment under the 109th Division, which had just arrived in Huaiqing, met with an unnatural death in the early hours of this morning."
Chapter 248