November 25, the twenty-sixth year of the Republic. The Battle of Shanghai had only recently ended, and the smell of blood lingering in Shanghai had yet to fade...
Yet Shanghai, the city known as the Paris of the East, was like an old man with Alzheimer's, having forgotten every last bit of that pain!
The cosmopolitan city remained as glamorous as ever. The horse racing, singing, and dancing went on...
Late at night, in a two-story house in Zhabei District.
"Bang, bang! Bang, bang!" Clear gunshots rang out beyond the window, jolting Chen Fan awake.
Muscle memory forged through years of training made Chen Fan react instinctively, his right hand reaching beside him.
He found no gun. Instead, his hand met something astonishingly smooth and soft.
"Sir, what's wrong?" a languid, sultry voice asked.
It was too dark to make out a face, but that voice instantly conjured an image in Chen Fan's mind!
Anyone into anime knew that a two-dimensional girl's figure could be visualized through her voice actress's voice. Judging by the voice Chen Fan had just heard, she had to be at least a D cup!
"N-nothing." Chen Fan drew a breath. Besides a faint scent of vegetation, the room carried the fragrance of osmanthus-scented cold cream.
The woman on the bed threw back the covers, rustled into her clothes, and lit the kerosene lamp on the table.
Chen Fan looked up. She had a round face and a voluptuous figure. She was not particularly pretty, but she had a great deal of charm.
"Sir, you must be new to Shanghai?" The woman had simply slipped on a thin top, and her exposed skin shone as white as jade in the lamplight.
"Yes, I'm here to do a little business, earn a living." Chen Fan answered casually, pulling over the pillow beside him and stacking the pillows together.
"No wonder you reacted like that. These days... ah..."
"Don't worry. I've paid protection money here. It's very safe," the woman reassured him!
"Heh." Chen Fan chuckled. A faint rumble came from his stomach, and he instinctively rubbed his belly. "Is there anything to eat here? I'm hungry."
The woman raised her head. "I don't usually serve food or drink here."
"But seeing as you've come such a long way, sir!"
"Mother did bring over some coarse noodles this morning. If you don't mind, sir, I'll cook you some."
Chen Fan gave a casual instruction. "Sure. Make it quick..."
"Oh, and make me a cup of tea!"
The woman paused slightly. She knew about dumplings paired with liquor, but which province ate noodles with tea?
Still, she asked no questions. These out-of-town itinerant traders always had some strange habits. Relatively speaking, Chen Fan was already a very good customer.
The woman put on a thin coat and went downstairs to cook the noodles.
This was a two-story wooden house, with the kitchen separate from the bedroom.
A woman like her was a little higher-class than the women in establishments beside the docks or kilns.
Naturally, she charged a little more too...
Watching the woman leave, Chen Fan felt through the clothes hanging nearby and took out a cigarette.
The cigarette had no filter and tasted harsh and spicy...
He exhaled a mouthful of smoke, his brows unconsciously knitting into a deep furrow.
Chen Fan was actually a transmigrator...
All told, he had been in this world for only five days.
On the first day after transmigrating, he learned his identity: a Military Statistics Bureau agent, codename Buddy.
On the second day, his team's leader, Guo Mu, and deputy leader, Lu Ming, were targeted by the Tokkō one after the other and died for their country. A textbook decapitation strike!
On the third day, with no one left in command, his team was wiped out by the Tokkō. If Chen Fan had not grabbed a local thug to die in his place, he would not have survived either!
On the fourth day, he evaded pursuit and hid in this brothel!
Those few days had been more eventful than his entire previous life. Well, "eventful" was not quite the right word. "Perilous" was more like it!
In his previous life, he had merely been the creative director of a game company. Before transmigrating here, he had been responsible for designing built-in scripts for a war game called Global Domination: Rise of the Empire.
He still remembered the day of the accident very clearly. Headquarters had called, telling him to bring the USB drive containing all the design materials to Hangzhou for a meeting the following day!
But as his car passed through the Hangxinjing Tunnel, a tanker truck rear-ended him, smashing the entire car to pieces.
In that instant, he felt as though he had become Shang Yang, his body scattered in pieces!
The next moment, he discovered that he had transmigrated and become a low-ranking operative in the Fuxing Society!
As they said, fortune and misfortune went hand in hand. Fortunately, heaven had not treated him too badly. After he transmigrated into this world, all the game data on that USB drive actually began running successfully inside his head!
He had no idea how it worked. How could this thing run without an energy source? After thinking it over, he supposed brain waves might be a form of energy too...
Speaking of which, he really did owe his narrow escape to the friend-or-foe identification feature added during the game's design!
On the screen of light before his eyes, the green dots representing friendly forces kept disappearing.
A mass of red dots representing enemy forces appeared on the map. If he did not run then, was he supposed to wait to be captured...?
But that was getting off track.
Soon, a simple bowl of plain broth noodles was brought up. Supplies were extremely scarce in this era.
Naturally, a woman in her position could not afford white flour.
These were just ordinary buckwheat noodles, slightly yellow in appearance...
The woman had cooked them with nothing more than water, a spoonful of soy sauce, and a spoonful of lard, with a token sprinkling of chopped scallions for garnish.
Though the flavor was light, Chen Fan ate with great relish...
After finishing the noodles, Chen Fan lay on the bed, wondering how to account for himself to his superior.
There had clearly been a traitor involved in their operation.
Eleven veterans dispatched from Jinling had teamed up with more than a dozen rookies put through crash training in the Songjiang Qingpu Class!
Twenty-seven men formed three teams, tasked with going undercover in Shanghai and gathering intelligence on the enemy.
A group of veterans leading a group of rookies, and the Tokkō had targeted them in less than a week.
There was simply no explaining it unless there was a mole.
Fortunately, Chen Fan had reacted quickly when he saw so many new red dots on the overview map.
He immediately tied up a local thug, knocked him unconscious, and changed into the man's clothes.
Then, as the two sides exchanged fire, he shot the thug who bullied people and extorted local businesses, deliberately knocked over the kerosene lamp in the room, and used his corpse to set a great fire.
Once the flames rose and thick smoke billowed, he took advantage of the fire to make his escape.
It had all been seamless, but now he faced a thorny problem.
The whole bunch of Fuxing Society veterans and the rookies from the Qingpu Class were dead. He was the only one left.
How was he supposed to explain to his superior that he had broken out of the encirclement?
Everyone had died, yet he was unharmed. If his superior trusted him that easily, he could never have risen to that position.
Chen Fan feared that submitting his report would not only fail to clarify the situation, but instead bring a traitor-execution order from the Fuxing Society down on him.
Living in this era, if he fought the Japanese to the death, he had nothing to complain about, whether he lived or died. It was all for China!
But if he died at the hands of his own people, Chen Fan could never accept it!
Yet what could he do, even if he could not accept it? After weighing it over and over,
Early the next morning, Chen Fan still picked up his luggage and entered the French Concession, sending intelligence back to headquarters through the dead drop on Luban Road in the French Concession...