Working Overtime of His Own Accord

Shen Yan was sick of it!

Anyone who had spent a lot of time in hospitals knew that, setting aside the pain and illness, the first three or four days were quite enjoyable.

Away from the troubles of the world, you could lie there with nothing to do and let your mind go completely blank.

But after two weeks... everything started to get on your nerves.

That was exactly how Shen Yan felt now. He was restless and just wanted to get out and move around.

And so, Shen Yan made up his mind. He was going to stir things up! He had to get out and stir things up!

That morning, the doctor came to the ward to examine Shen Yan's injured leg.

The bullet had passed through without damaging the bone, and the wound was healing much faster than the doctor had expected.

His attending physician was a Shanghai native in his fifties named Wang, who had studied in Germany. He wore round-framed glasses and spoke in a slow, measured manner.

He studied Shen Yan's X-rays for a long time, clicking his tongue in amazement. "Young people have strong constitutions. I hardly saw any wounds heal this fast even in Germany."

Shen Yan smiled but said nothing.

After the doctor left, the ward fell quiet. A long blast from a ship's horn on the Huangpu River drifted in through the window, like someone sighing. Shen Yan leaned against his pillow and leafed through that day's New Shen Bao. The front page reported that Japanese troops had occupied a certain place, accompanied by a large photograph of several Japanese officers sitting arrogantly atop tall horses.

He turned the newspaper over and stared at a few lines of small print in the center column.

It was a notice: "To my younger brother Xiaochen, our family and I have left Shanghai. I deeply regret that I could not bid you farewell in person. Please take care of yourself!"

It seemed the people from the Military Statistics Bureau had successfully evacuated Shanghai and had asked someone to place the notice to let him know they were safe.

Shen Yan folded the newspaper and tucked it under his pillow.

The cooldown on Clone Technique had ended that morning. The upgraded clone could last for forty-eight hours, enough time to get a lot done.

But before that, he needed two more things.

He silently recited, Open the shop.

A pale blue panel unfolded before his eyes. Good and Evil Points: 6,600. He had saved them up over this period, and they were enough.

He first went to the space expansion option.

[Portable Space expansion]

[Current capacity: 10 cubic meters]

[Expand to 50 cubic meters: 5,000 Good and Evil Points]

[Expand to 100 cubic meters: 10,000 Good and Evil Points]

Fifty cubic meters was roughly the size of a small truck's cargo bed. It couldn't hold an entire arsenal, but it was enough for dozens of crates of the most valuable stuff. He selected the expansion.

[Ding! 5,000 Good and Evil Points deducted. Current Good and Evil Points: 1,600]

[Portable Space expanded to 50 cubic meters]

Then he went to the skills section. Basic Combat, Precision Shooting, Stealth and Concealment, Japanese Language Mastery, English Language Mastery-he already had all of them. But to infiltrate a heavily guarded place, Stealth and Concealment wasn't quite enough.

He kept browsing, and when he reached the third page, his finger stopped.

[Skill name]: Optical Camouflage (beginner)

[Effect]: Upon activation, enter an optically invisible state for 30 seconds. Movement speed is reduced by 30% during this time. The effect automatically ends if the user fires a gun or is attacked.

[Cooldown]: 1 hour

[Price]: 1,500 Good and Evil Points

Invisibility. Real invisibility. Thirty seconds wasn't long, but it was enough to do a lot: climb a wall, slip past two sentries, and hide in an empty corner.

"Purchase."

[Ding! 1,500 Good and Evil Points deducted. Current Good and Evil Points: 100]

[Optical Camouflage (beginner) unlocked. Activation method: mental command]

A cool sensation spread from deep within his mind. Shen Yan closed his eyes and sealed the memory away.

He ran through the plan one last time in his head.

If he achieved all his intended objectives, the Japanese would definitely go mad.

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly. He rolled over and closed his eyes.

It was late at night.

The nurse had already finished her last ward round after dinner.

Shen Yan lay in bed with his eyes closed, breathing evenly. On the bedside table sat a glass of cooled boiled water, half an apple, and a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms with half its pages turned.

Everything looked no different from an ordinary patient's room.

On the minimap, a white dot was moving slowly down the corridor-the nurse was heading back to the nurses' station, getting farther and farther away. Several more dots were farther off: the doctors on duty, stationary in their office. No one was paying attention to his ward.

He silently recited, Activate the clone.

After a barely perceptible spell of dizziness, his consciousness split into two streams. One remained in this body, lying in the hospital bed and listening to the wind outside the window; the other was in an abandoned warehouse several kilometers away.

The clone opened his eyes and stood up.

He took a short gray cloth jacket and trousers from his space and put them on, tucked the trouser legs into his cloth shoes, and jumped in place a few times to check his condition.

Then he walked out of the warehouse and vanished into the night.

First target: the arsenal

Time: 20:30

During the War of Resistance, the core of the Japanese arsenal in Shanghai's Hongkou district was the Japan Special Naval Landing Forces Headquarters at 1 East Jiangwan Road / 2121 Sichuan North Road. The main arsenal area occupied its ground floor and surroundings. The building stood at the heart of Hongkou's Japanese expatriate community. Nominally, it was in the extraterritorial road area of the International Settlement; in reality, it was a Japanese military state within a state. North Sichuan Road was about twelve meters wide and paved with asphalt, normally lined with shops, cafés, and Japanese restaurants. In wartime, it had been completely sealed off and packed with barricades. Telephone poles along the street bore Japanese warning signs and barbed wire. Concrete anti-vehicle barriers, sandbag fortifications, and machine-gun nests stood at intersections. Japanese landing force soldiers wearing steel helmets and carrying Type 38 rifles or Type 14 Nambus manned posts every few steps, conducting extremely strict inspections. Chinese people and non-Japanese expatriates were strictly forbidden to approach; anyone who crossed the line faced warning shots or even being shot dead.

Three- and four-story Japanese-style Western buildings and shikumen lanes lined both sides of the road. Many had been occupied by Japanese businesses and expatriates, their windows sealed and converted into firing slits and their outer walls reinforced, forming clusters of street fortresses. Sparse plane trees stood bare-branched beneath a tangle of overhead wires. The air carried a constant cold smell of coal smoke, gunpowder, machine oil, and damp masonry.

By this point in the Sino-Japanese War, ammunition consumption at the front was growing, and transport convoys entered and left the arsenal almost twenty-four hours a day. Even in the dead of night, trucks rumbled in from the docks and rumbled away again.

Shen Yan's clone crouched behind a plane tree by the roadside. In the distance, two headlights pierced the darkness.

A military truck approached from the direction of the docks, a Japanese military flag hanging from its cab. Its tires were somewhat flattened, clearly weighed down by a substantial load.

Two Japanese soldiers sat in the cab. The one in the passenger seat had a cigarette between his lips, though he hadn't lit it.

The truck was full of munitions; no matter how badly he wanted a smoke, he didn't dare court death.

Shen Yan watched the minimap. There probably wouldn't be another vehicle coming along for a while. He picked up a small stone from the ground, and the moment the truck drew near, he flicked his wrist, striking the passenger-side window with perfect accuracy.

"Tap."

The truck screeched to a halt. The Japanese soldier in the passenger seat pushed the door open and jumped out. Gun in hand, he looked around, then glanced up at the window. Cursing, he kicked a tire and crouched to check underneath the truck. He gave it a hurried glance and saw nothing.

"Come on, come on! What's taking so long?" the driver called, leaning out.

"Wait! I need to relieve myself."

The passenger could hardly resist his craving for a smoke anymore. He found a corner far from the transport truck and stood there, eagerly lit the cigarette between his lips, took a deep drag, and grunted with satisfaction. Then he slowly undid his belt, completely unaware that a shadow had quietly taken up position behind him, holding a suspicious rectangular object aloft.

"Bang, bang."

The impacts were quiet, like eggs tapping against a table.

The Japanese soldier fell at once. A pair of hands caught him gently and dragged him into the darkness.

The Japanese soldier in the driver's seat waited and waited. Just as he decided to get out and check, he saw his companion walking back, humming a tune and pulling up his trousers.

"Baka! Hamada Yuichi, if you hadn't come back, I was going to fire a warning shot! If you do this again, I'll definitely ask the company commander to give me a passenger who doesn't smoke!"

Knowing he was in the wrong, Hamada didn't argue. He chuckled and climbed into the passenger seat.

As soon as he was settled, he suddenly pointed out the driver's window. "Look! A pretty girl!"

Ōtomo, in the driver's seat, readily turned to look. The street was cold and deserted, without even a cat in sight.

"Bang, bang."

Full of questions, Ōtomo went to meet Amaterasu Omikami.

Hamada calmly took Ōtomo's soldier's ID from his body, studied it for a few moments, then looked carefully at his peaceful face.

"Disguise!"

The muscles in Hamada's face rippled. A minute later, another Ōtomo appeared.

After putting the body into his space, Shen Yan started the truck and drove steadily toward the arsenal.

He rounded a corner, and the arsenal gate appeared ahead. It was an electric iron gate, about six meters wide and four and a half meters high, made of heavy, dark gray steel plate. Normally kept shut, it admitted only military vehicles and supply convoys. Permanent guardhouses stood on either side, their machine guns facing outward, and twelve Japanese sentries were responsible for security.

"Halt! Inspection!" A sentry walked in front of the truck and saluted. Another crouched down, sweeping a flashlight beam beneath the vehicle.

"Identification!"

Shen Yan calmly took out the soldier's ID, and the sentry began examining it carefully.

At that moment, the squad leader at the guard post walked over.

"Ōtomo? It's you. Where's Hamada? Don't your transport team's rules require two men per truck?"

"Don't even mention that damn smoker!"

Shen Yan was indignant.

"He's always finding excuses to get out and smoke on the road. I've been slapped plenty of times along with him because of it! This time I left him four blocks back. Let him smoke his fill and run the rest of the way himself! I'm going to teach him a lesson this time!"

The squad leader smiled in understanding and waved him through.

The truck drove through the arsenal gate and followed the signs to a stop in front of a munitions warehouse deep inside the base.

A squad of Japanese soldiers was already waiting outside the warehouse. Once the truck stopped, they came forward, opened the cargo bed, and began unloading the crates one by one.

Shen Yan got out and stood watching from the side. Spotting the guard squad leader also standing nearby, he turned and fetched a large bottle of sake from the cab-part of Ōtomo's personal stock, which he hadn't been willing to drink at all.

"Squad leader, could you get the men to lend a hand? There's so much here. When will we ever finish unloading it? I'm in a hurry to get back for the next load."

The squad leader looked at Shen Yan's ingratiating smile, felt the sake tucked against his chest, and the corners of his mouth rose.

"Yoshi, go call everyone inside out to help."

With that, he put the sake in the duty room, rolled up his sleeves, and joined the unloading crew.

Half an hour later, the truck was empty.

Everyone was panting with exhaustion as they waited in the warehouse for Shen Yan to make the final count.

Shen Yan slapped his forehead. "Look at my memory! Wait a moment, everyone."

With that, he carried a crate of fresh apples from the cab and set it on the ground.

"Thanks for your hard work, everyone! I was bringing these apples to a fellow townsman, but he was unlucky and ended up in an army hospital. Why don't you all share them?"

"Yoshi! Banzai!"

The Japanese soldiers cheered and crowded together, frantically stuffing the rarely seen apples into their arms.

Shen Yan smiled and stepped back, taking a pistol fitted with a suppressor and an extended magazine from his space.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft!"

He fired repeatedly. In less than a minute, Japanese soldiers lay all over the floor, delighted smiles still on their faces.

"These are Chinese apples. Beasts don't deserve to eat them!"

Shen Yan put all the bodies on the floor into his space, turned and shut the warehouse doors, then calmly began shopping for free.

The warehouse was filled with concrete shelves, iron ammunition racks, moisture-proof oilcloth, and charcoal for dehumidification. The ammunition crates were standard Japanese military issue, made of wood or iron, and painted with white Japanese labels: "Type 38 infantry ammunition," "Type 92 heavy machine-gun ammunition," and "Type 89 grenade discharger." Moisture-proof wooden boards and rubber mats covered the floor.

Shen Yan wasted no time. He headed straight for the corner where heavy machine guns and grenade dischargers were stacked. Those two weapons were more useful on the battlefield and harder to capture. Both the underground party and the Military Statistics Bureau were eager to get their hands on them.

Wooden crates vanished one after another. Type 92 Heavy Machine Guns, two per crate: he took ten crates. Type 89 Grenade Dischargers, five per crate: he took ten crates. Type 97 Hand Grenades, fifty per crate: he took twenty crates.

Shen Yan stood up, his gaze sweeping across the depths of the warehouse. When his flashlight beam passed over the innermost corner, he stopped.

Dozens of green sheet-metal crates were stacked there, each larger than the others and marked with a red warning sign: shells for the Type 89 fifteen-centimeter howitzer.

A devastating weapon!

The clone went over, crouched down, and gently lifted the lid of one crate. Two heavy shells lay inside, their bodies coated in grease. Their fuses had yet to be fitted, but the explosives in their warheads were enough to blow half a street to rubble.

Shen Yan chuckled, the sound particularly eerie in the empty warehouse.

He took five kilograms of TNT from his space, set the timer, and wedged the explosives into a gap in the shell crates.

The TNT would detonate the shells, the shells would detonate the ones beside them, and those would detonate the entire warehouse.

In twenty minutes, this place would be a huge crater.

The clone stood up and carved a line into a wall far from the blast point:

"this is payback! -- CLEANER"

After carving the final letter, he pulled the door open, slipped outside, and locked it again.

He returned to his vehicle, started the truck, and drove toward the gate.

The squad leader waved him through, and the truck left the arsenal.

Shen Yan drove toward the docks, watching the rearview mirror as he waited for the fireworks to bloom!

Twenty minutes later, an earth-shaking boom came from the distance.

In an instant, the air throughout Hongkou seemed to be clenched tight by an invisible hand.

First came a muffled underground roar powerful enough to shatter a person's internal organs, rising from deep within the arsenal-the explosives Shen Yan had planted had detonated the mountain of large-caliber shells.

The next second, the ammunition exploded in a chain reaction.

A blinding pillar of white-gold fire erupted from the ground floor of the naval landing forces headquarters building, shooting into the sky and tearing the murky night apart in an instant. Reinforced concrete walls as thick as a warship's hull shattered like paper. Floors, steel beams, ammunition racks, and crates were hurled into the air by the violent blast. Countless burning fragments became a rain of fire, tracing harrowing paths through the darkness.

A shock wave swept outward in a raging ring, with the arsenal at its center.

The Japanese-style Western buildings and shikumen lanes along the street seemed to be swept aside by a giant hand. Glass windows instantly shattered into a glittering bloody mist, wooden beams and pillars snapped, brick walls collapsed, and entire roofs were torn away. Utility poles broke in half, burning wires dangled, and the whole of North Sichuan Road was swallowed by fire and thick smoke.

The flames lit up half of Shanghai's night sky, staining even the surface of the Huangpu River a fierce orange-red.

Explosions rolled on without end, one after another. Shells detonated in succession amid the sea of fire, shrieking and bursting in waves, as though hell itself had been thrown open. Wherever the shock wave swept, houses in the expatriate district collapsed in rows. Cries and screams were drowned out by the thunderous blasts, while burning rubble, clothing, and fragments filled the air, igniting wherever they landed.

The Japanese naval landing forces headquarters building, once a heavily fortified stronghold, had half been blasted directly into ruins. Its flat roof had collapsed, its observation tower had snapped, and its gun emplacements had twisted into scrap. Only a charred skeleton remained, standing amid the sea of fire.

And in the neighboring Japanese expatriate district of Hongkou, half a block had become a hell on earth.

Flames spread wildly through the streets and alleys. Houses collapsed, trees burst into flames, and thick smoke billowed high into the sky, forming a huge, ominous black mushroom cloud that hung over Shanghai for a long time.

The earth trembled violently. Even deep inside the foreign concessions, people could feel that tremor from hell.

That night, Hongkou was no longer a Japanese military state within a state.

That night, the Scavenger used the flames of an entire arsenal to leave his most shocking mark on Shanghai.