Chapter 340: Port Opening (7)

Night fell, and the desolate beach was plunged into pitch darkness.

Wu Meng and his gang, gathered inside the shack, were now sitting in a circle around an oil lamp, conspiring in secret.

At this moment, Wu Sanye's face was grim, no longer bearing that expression of wanting to charge in recklessly: "Er Qi, tomorrow you go to the county town to see your granduncle, and carefully find out everything about that fellow surnamed Xiong."

"Aye!"

"Bingcai, call back all the brothers and get the gear ready. Looks like we're in for a big fight this time."

"Aye!"

"Hong Fu, you go and give those Da Hang good-for-nothings a proper warning. Make sure that Xiong fellow can't hire a single soldier."

"Aye!"

"Gouzi, you make a trip to Taihu. Tell Hu Laoda clearly that I might need men at any time, and have him stand ready."

"Aye!"

Having laid out the plans, Third Lord rubbed his hands together, then cast a vicious glare around the circle: "We men have never feared anyone on this desolate grass beach. If that Xiong fellow wants to come looking for death, let him come. When we slaughter him, it'll be a perfect dish to go with the brothers' wine!"

"We'll fight them to the end!" With the big brother's arrangements so thorough, the gang of followers were naturally roused to fervor and roared their assent.

While grand schemes were brewing in the thatched shed, the distant private port was not idle either.

The fast ship moored beside the jetty began its operation as soon as darkness fell: a boatman nimbly slipped under the jetty, then took walnut-sized objects handed down by others and tied them one by one to the support pillars.

After all this work was done, two more men stepped onto the jetty. One carried several large gourds; upon reaching the jetty, he pulled out the stoppers one after another and poured some kind of liquid all over the deck.

The other man headed straight for the "sentry post."

The sentry post was a grass shed at the head of the bridge, lit by an oil lamp, with only a single blockhead inside drinking cheap liquor. The private dock was usually like this: goods that couldn't see the light of day had long been moved into earthen pits deep in the grass, and only a few broken boats remained near the jetty, so normally there wasn't much need for a guard.

Reaching the door of the grass shed, the man wearing a bamboo hat unhesitatingly fired two shots inside, then bent down, picked up the hot shell casings, tossed them into a pocket, turned around, and returned to the ship. The pistol, fitted with a silencer, was not loud amid the night's tidal sounds, so even as the fast ship hoisted its sail and sailed out of the port, no one here had yet noticed anything amiss.

The next moment, the black-clad man named Gu Le stood at the bow, extended his arm to draw his bow, exhaled with a forceful breath, and loosed a rocket arrow, which landed squarely on the jetty fifty meters away.

With a boom, the gasoline-doused jetty instantly ignited into a fiery dragon, shooting up towering flames.

"Third Lord, disaster! The dock is on fire!"

The firelight immediately startled Third Lord and his men gathered in the shack. When he rushed out at the sound and saw it, he instantly shouted: "Put out the fire, quick!"

Then Third Lord charged out at the very front.

By the time the group rushed to the jetty, they found the fire already raging fiercely. The deck was burning violently, and on the distant river, a fast ship was just vanishing into the night with its final silhouette.

There was no time to investigate the cause of the fire now. Everyone frantically searched for buckets... After dragging a few wooden buckets and basins from the grass nests where goods were hidden, the men, carrying vessels full of water, howled and charged onto the jetty.

After several rounds of water were thrown, the flames at the bridgehead were somewhat extinguished. Encouraged, the men pressed further onto the deeper parts of the deck.

Then the explosives on the pillars were successively detonated by the flames. The bowl-thick wooden posts were blown apart one after another, the jetty was destroyed in an instant, and several brave firefighters immediately plunged through the collapsing deck, crushed to death on the water's surface by the wooden posts and burning planks.

At the same time, in the distant grass, a gray-clad figure slowly lowered the night-vision goggles in his hand.

After Comrade Liu Qingyun saw the jetty collapse in the firelight, he turned and walked toward where the horse cart was hidden. At the same time, he took out his walkie-talkie: "Mission complete. All units return to base."

"Gu Le, understood."

The straight-line distance between Jiading Xiancheng and Zhang Sutan was over eighty li, with the Huangpu River lying between them, so it was the afternoon of the next day before Liu Qingyun returned to Luo Garden.

Liu Qingyun's real name was Liu Wang. He was previously a waiter at a tea house, and now he was an intelligence agent assigned locally by Hangzhou Station.

Although Liu Wang was young, he had already participated in many operations and was considered a veteran agent. Due to his strong professional capability, he had even been sent to Dayuan for "advanced training" some time ago. After returning from this trip, Liu Wang's mental outlook had greatly improved, and his revolutionary will had grown ever firmer. Thus, he was dispatched to Jiading by Lu Cheng, the Station Chief of Hangzhou, to assist Xiong Dao in completing the port-opening mission.

After entering the main hall, Liu Wang swept a glance at the people packing up, knowing in his heart that they were moving today. So he hurriedly turned to the study to request an audience with Xiong Dao.

Xiong Dao received him promptly and then listened to the report on the previous night's operation.

"Mm, now we'll see how this Wu Sanye reacts. Will he keep butting heads with us, or will he back down? Heh heh, we'll just have to wait and see."

Seeing Xiong Dao's expectant expression, Liu Wang couldn't help but voice the doubt he had been pondering the entire journey: "Deputy Station Chief, last night, with the strength of my team and Gu Le's, we were fully capable of wiping out Wu Meng's entire gang, as long as we were willing to use bullets... Why did you order us to only burn the jetty?"

"Heh heh, that's a good question." Xiong Dao stood up and extended a finger toward the young man before him: "It was actually a test."

"Our coming to Shanghai this time is different from our usual covert operations. This port opening cannot be concealed, so we can only do it openly and aboveboard... This is undoubtedly a new mode of struggle. It's the first time the Empire's power has formally declared its name in the heartland of the Great Ming, openly requisitioning land and infringing upon the interests of the gentry and various other factions."

"So under these new circumstances, how our team adapts to dealing with officials, gentry, bandits, and commoners in broad daylight is something all personnel, including you and me, must learn and adapt to."

Hearing this, Liu Wang couldn't help but nod: "This is a training exercise."

"Correct, it's a training exercise." Xiong Dao patted Liu Wang on the shoulder: "A nest of local thugs — if we really used guns, we could wipe them out casually."

"But this Wu San is actually a very typical local bully: colluding with the authorities, illegally occupying official land, smuggling private salt... I actually just want to spar with this group, to see what methods these traditional bullies have, as a reference for the future."

Liu Wang: "I understand."

"Mm, you must realize, this time we're not just facing bullies, but also many landlords and commoners living normal lives. When these people oppose us, we can't just rely on pistols to solve everything, can we?"

"Therefore, we must apply a combination of various methods. We're here this time precisely to train our troops. We need to integrate resources like pistols, poisons, the authorities, and silver. When the port opens in the future, all these experiences will be compiled and sent to headquarters."

After thinking for a moment, Xiong Dao spoke to Liu Wang again with earnest gravity: "You are a trained armed intelligence agent, an elite of the Intelligence Bureau. So you should know that the Empire will sooner or later occupy the cities of the Great Ming and govern them ourselves. When that time comes, the experience we gain in Shanghai today can be promoted and applied. This is very important reference material."

After Xiong Dao's conversation with Liu Wang concluded, everyone's belongings in Luo Garden were also packed up. So, after Master Xiong went next door to bid farewell to Luo Shizhi, the team drove their carts and horses and headed for the new residence.

A new residence was a necessity.

Xiong Dao's group coming to Shanghai this time was originally an advance team, and many more Action Team members would join later, including some transmigrators. Therefore, Xiong Dao's team, which possessed many secret devices and needed to carry out numerous covert operations, had to have their own private residence. Staying long-term at someone else's place simply wouldn't do.

Fortunately, this was Jiading, one of the wealthiest regions of the Ming Dynasty, so there was no shortage of houses, not even of gardens.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jiading was an economically developed area in Jiangnan with a very strong literary atmosphere. Large numbers of gentry, literati, and court officials came here to discuss literature and art, and to construct gardens. Many private gardens of considerable scale appeared successively over time. In later generations, no fewer than a hundred famous gardens were recorded by name in local gazetteers.

This was also the reason Xiong Dao could quickly purchase a garden after arriving in Jiading: in the Ming Dynasty, gardens were truly not a rarity, and the inventory of existing properties in the Su Hang and Hangjiahu regions was quite large.

The garden they bought was named Crane Tower, the property of a local gentry family. The family's patriarch had died of illness the previous year, leaving two sons fighting over the inheritance. The dispute dragged on until this year, when they finally listed it for sale: cash only, so the two brothers could split the proceeds.

Thus, Crane Tower happened to be bought with silver by Xiong Dao's side.

Crane Tower's location was rather remote, already five li outside the county town. But how could Xiong Dao's people care about remoteness... On the contrary, being remote made it easier to conduct their affairs.

Though it sounded like a single tower, Crane Tower was actually the general name for an entire garden complex. A river enclosed Crane Tower, which had a total area of fifteen mu, within its walls. Inside the garden were small bridges over flowing water, rockeries and ponds, pavilions and terraces — nothing was lacking. It was exquisitely beautiful and the scenery was delightful.

However, no sooner had Master Xiong moved in than he began burning the zither and cooking the crane: all vegetation within a certain distance on the riverbank outside the walls was uprooted — this was called clearing the field of fire.

Inside the walls, it was much the same. The exotic flowers, rare plants, and valuable trees in the garden were all chopped down for firewood. The cleared land would soon be planned by architects coming from Dayuan into "architectural models that meet societal expectations."

Simply put, it would be a fortress capable of garrisoning a thousand troops — after all, the garden was as large as fifteen mu.

Never mind how Master Xiong was making a fuss in his new house — early the next morning after the jetty collapsed, Wu Sanye stood on the riverbank, looking at those shattered, broken wooden piles and the bridge planks floating on the water, truly wanting to weep but having no tears left.

After the jetty exploded last night, he knew it was beyond saving and immediately ordered his men to fish out everyone who had fallen into the water — dead and alive alike — and send them to a doctor; along the way, he spotted that sentry in the grass shed whose skull had been cracked open by a bullet.

In that one moment, Third Lord understood everything.